Esther Perel Sets The Record Straight on Relationship Myths. Do THIS if You Want Your Relationship To Last Forever!

0:00I am so excited for you to dive into this interview about the red flags to avoid in relationships and also what you can do to find real love with Esther Perel. And if you don't know who Esther is, she's incredible. She's been on the show many times. And she's got a tour right now around the country. Her tour is An Evening with Esther Perel. It's sold out nationwide. And the only show that has tickets remaining is in Los Angeles at the YouTube Theater on September 10th. You can grab your tickets now before they sell out because 95 % of the tickets are already sold. Just go to lewishouse.com slash Esther to get your ticket today.

0:36That's lewishouse.com slash E-S-T-H-E-R And get your tickets today Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Very excited about our guest We have the inspiring Esther Perel So good to see you Oh my gosh, I'm so happy you're here Back again Back again Every time you come on People are captivated by what you have to share And you've been working as a therapist for how many decades now? Close to four Four, almost four decades you've got two massive podcasts about relationships and intimacy and at work but we had you on last a week before the pandemic started and i feel like more and more relationships have failed and there's also been a lot of babies that have been you know born because of the pandemic do you feel like i think the stats before was 50 percentage of marriages fail do you feel like the percentage has gone up or is it still kind of the same some people have figured it out other people haven't and people are you know somewhere in between so i'm not a statistician and in fact it is lesser than 40 than 50 and it depends by social class okay more educated people marry later and divorce less it's actually education and social class has something to do as well with duration of marriages.

2:02But I think what I would say as a start is that disasters are relationship accelerators. And that means that what we've experienced in these last two years, I was here March 11. I know, it's crazy. And I went in lockdown March 14. And so that's why I will always remember the date of our last conversation. But what happens in a period of disaster like this and prolonged disaster, right, with prolonged uncertainty, is that you have a sense that, especially in the beginning, we really had a clear sense of mortality. Things suddenly felt much more fragile. And when life is short, when you have that acute awareness of life is short, then you'd say either, what am I waiting for?

2:55Let's move in. Let's get married. Let's have babies. Let's go. Let's do because I don't know what happens tomorrow. Or we say, I've waited long enough. I'm not taking this anymore. I'm going to wait this out a little bit. But as soon as I can, I'm out of here. Because when you have a sense of mortality and when you have acceleration, you basically have a reorganization of your priorities. What matters to me most? What can't I live without? And what won't I tolerate living with anymore? That is what has happened. And so typically, research has always said that in pandemics, in disasters, in large psychosocial events like that, there is more breakups and more babies.

3:43Interesting. I think before you mentioned that something like 50 % of marriages end in divorce and then 70 % of the next marriages end in divorce. Second marriages have a higher rate of divorce than first marriages. Why is that? I think that there's a lot of ways to explain it. But first of all, often children are older. second there is a sense that um i waited too long in the first one to make this decision and i no longer want to feel afterwards where i say i should have done this much sooner there is less of a sacredness to the experience and you feel like i i was the first time you feel like you know depending on if you come from divorce of your or your belief systems or your values about the stability of relationships.

4:35It means so much to break those vows sometimes. And then the second time, you've already done it once. I've already done this. I don't need to tolerate this for 10 more years like I did the first time. There was less of a sense of shattering of all the grand ambitions of love and of marriage that you had engaged with. Wow, that's interesting. You've already done that experience once of dissolving this entire complex relational system that is emotional, psychological, economic, inter-familial, and you did it. And so it feels slightly less impossible, ominous. It's not as scary the second time. It's not as scary.

5:18You've done it before. You know the pain. You can handle it again. Third marriages is less. It's less. Yes. Less divorces. Less divorces. Why is that? I guess people have a sense that they finally have done either their personal work, they've grown up, they've matured, they've taken responsibility, they've gotten the sense as the constant factor in all their relationship is them. You know, so finally, maybe they took a good look at themselves. And hopefully this time, it's not that they found a better person, it's that I think they have become a better partner. I was talking to you about this before we got on the interview about how my entire life, I've been the centerpiece of relationships not working out.

6:01I've been the core. I've been the person who's been involved in the relationship and therefore I've chosen and stayed in relationships that didn't line up with what I wanted. In my most current relationship with Martha, when we started dating, I was telling you this, when we started dating, I said, it'd be really cool to enter a new relationship with emotional accountability, with therapy, with support from an outside perspective, where we both are working on ourselves and we're getting clear if we're in alignment with our values and our vision and our lifestyle for what we want to create, where we're not just connected sexually or chemically, which is what I chose a lot in the past and stayed for, but more based on a different foundation.

6:47and it's been a beautiful experience for both of us to witness emotional accountability and therapy together when things are great not when things are you know bad and you have to like repair something but to try to build agreements as we build our relationship and I'm such a fan of it and I've been telling all my friends about this who are getting in relationships like you know find something find a book you can work on together or a therapist or something you work on together have you ever worked with couples who got into a relationship early when there wasn't issues and they started working with you many really many many many many so the traditional you know idea of premarital counseling is one thing but there's also you know people want to talk about conscious uncoupling but they could also talk about conscious coupling yes right it's like in the beginning you're not in your early 20s you're in your late 30s you've had your experiences you have a sense of what are the vulnerabilities that you bring to the relationships you have a sense of what makes it hard to live with you you know as well and um and you say i actually want us to go when we are still when we still have a lot of what is called positive sentiment override what does that mean it means that you get the benefit of the doubt that you're still in multiple appreciation, that you see the bright side of things, that you see the cup half full, that you're not yet building resentment and deprivation and, you know, the things that sometimes accompany relationships on the bitter side of them.

8:23And I think that I like it when people come early. I think it's fantastic. One of the big changes for me as a couples therapist over decades was that indeed, we learn that people come to therapy when there are problems. Therapy is a problem-ridden narrative. If everything's fine, why don't you go to therapy? And if you already need to go in the beginning, there must be something really wrong because who goes? That is so old for me. That has been scrapped, you know. You go because you have a sense that you want to prepare yourself. You want to bring your strengths and your challenges from the beginning into the relationship and prepare it.

9:05And I think it is a fantastic idea. It doesn't mean that you already have problems. It means that you say, I want to do a preventive approach. I want to preempt. I want to be mature about it. And it's interesting because you talk about the distinction between chemicals and values. Right? And you just posted a clip of a conversation that we had back then, exactly two years ago, where I talked about the difference between a love story and a life story. It's a bit that. You don't need too much consonants of values to love somebody. What is the difference between love and life story? The experience of a love story.

9:46The word story is important, right? So the story of love is a story that I can fall in love with all kinds of people with whom I would never live a life with. We come from completely different worlds. We have different aspirations, different values. But in the midst of that, something very precious unfolds between us in a very small container that is deeply intimate and often deeply erotic. It doesn't need how do we negotiate children, in-laws, economics, careers, the political environment around us, all of that. We don't have to talk about any of this. In that beautiful container of intimacy and erotic intimacy lives a love story.

10:34A life story is a negotiation with the whole world. A life story, first of all, goes through a developmental arc. I may meet you in my 20s and here I am in my 40s, 50s, 60s. So it's a developmental arc. It exists over time. It needs to include change. It needs to include the addition and subtraction of new people, the death of people and the birth of people sometimes. It needs to include how we negotiate with all our friends. A love story can live alone in a little room without seeing anybody, you know, because it feeds on itself very, very beautifully. But a life story must include other people, a social circle, a community, you know, activities, passions, hobbies, careers.

11:20There's a lot of other things, and those demand a consonance of values, of aspirations, of ambitions, the ability to not just foster the togetherness, but also to develop the differentiation. It's us and it's you and me. It's the together and the separate. Yeah. And so the love story, when people develop what they consider... That doesn't mean... Go ahead. because I know what people say but the life story involves love the fear is that when I distinguish it this way is there no love in the life story of course there is love in the life story but all I'm saying is you can love a lot more people and they're not necessarily the same people as the ones with whom you will have a life story and do most people who develop a love story with someone else and not also see if this could be a life story is that where you see it suffers or struggles if they're only thinking of the love story but not all the other factors of life?

12:23No, I think that if you meet someone, like I used to go on a trip and have a beautiful story with someone, a nice adventure. That person belongs on the trip. It doesn't need to come back from the trip with you. And sometimes they come back on the trip and it takes another week or two of a lot of, you know, texts and calls and this and that. And then slowly you reintegrate your life and they become a part of a memory of a beautiful trip they're a short story right they're a love story and a short story you know once you say i think i may want to live with this person and we want to build with this person it's a different architecture and i need different materials for that architecture and part of the materials is love and feelings but part of it is culture and aspirations and values and beliefs, all of that now starts to become important too.

13:19And sometimes when people fall in love or when people have incredible sexual connection, they think that that also means that they can build a life together. And sometimes that's the case and other times it's not it is not a guarantee a powerful erotic connection doesn't necessarily mean that you can also straddle a whole set of life experiences experiences you know i feel like a lot of people that i've known in the past have entered a relationship through a sexual connection a sexual chemistry erotic experiences fun times things like that and then they start dating and then they start entering a relationship based on that foundation as opposed to based on what do you see for your life you know what are the values the background the culture the religion the money all these different things do you want kids do you not want kids and i feel like that ends up being a struggle for a lot of people myself included in my past until i started i tried something differently you first had the sex and then you met the person Exactly.

14:29Yeah. And created a story about who the person would be, right? Without actually communicating in a, and giving space and time to experience who the person was, right? And same for them with me. Why do you think most people start things that way, you know, in general, as opposed to, hey, let's give it time. Let's ask deeper, more intimate questions like you have in your game. Let's get to know each other. Why do you think that is? First of all, that only began to happen with the democratization of contraception. This is, before the 68, this was not possible. So it's very recent, you know, that we start making love first, and then we find out each other's names.

15:13Is that true all over the world, or is that more in the U.S.? It's true wherever people can experience, you know, premarital sex, basically. In the past, you first had to marry in order to be able to have sex. When I say in the past, it's in the past here. And that's when I was a teenager. And in much of the world, it still is the case. So we are part of a very sexualized society in which sexual freedom and sexual expression has become a part of our values. Sexuality used to be a part of our biology. and now it's a part of our condition. Now it's a part of our identity. And so we have changed the meaning of sex in the culture at large and then we have changed it in our relationships.

16:05And so we start from a place of attraction. Am I drawn to you? Am I attracted to you? It's the first thing I think when I swipe. What do I do? I look at, you know, where do I get a little frisson, you know? Who catches my attention? And it's purely physical, you know. So it is a recent development. For most of the people here, this is not their grandparents' story. So this is still in the family. It's not like you have to go into history books. Sure. How do you feel like people could set up for a healthier relationship as opposed to, what would you recommend or suggest for people in order to have a healthier foundation?

16:49seeing that it seems so sexualized now everything seems so like physical swiping looking at someone's sexual identity attraction as opposed to i guess true intimacy and connection how would you set up a relationship now there's so many um different pieces to this i think the first thing look i write about sexuality i'm not going to minimize it but i do understand that you know it's very important it's a beautiful thing to have a powerful erotic connection with someone but don't confuse the metaphors you can have a beautiful erotic connections with someone and that does not necessarily translate into a life experience right a life story a life story that said um the next thing that changed culturally if you want to really take on the big myths it's the notion that we are looking for the one and only.

17:42The one and only, my soulmate. Is my everything. Yes, my everything. Your soulmate used to be God, not a person. You know, the one and only was the divine. And with this one and only today, I want to experience wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence. And I am going to wait 10 more years. We are waiting 10 years longer to settle with someone, to make a commitment to someone, for those of us who choose a someone. And if I'm going to wait longer and if I'm looking around and if I'm choosing among a thousand people at my fingertips, you bet that the one who's going to capture my attention is going to make me delete my apps, better be the one and only.

18:26So in a period of proliferation of choices, we at the same time have an ascension of expectations about a romantic relationship that is unprecedented. We have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today in the West. It seems like a lot of pressure. It's an enormous amount of pressure. We crumble under the weight of these expectations because a community cannot become a tribe of two. This is a party of two. And with you and me together, we are going to create best friends, romantic partners, lovers, confidants, parents, intellectual eagles. Business partners. Business partners, career coaches.

19:06I mean, you name it. And I'm like, seriously? One person for everything? One person instead of a whole village? So that's the first myth. And the notion of unconditional love that accompanies this is that when I have that one and only, I have what you call clarity, but translated into certainty, peace, and freedom, you know, or safety. Yes. Which is the other side of the same thing. So that to me is if you want to set yourself up, really the idea that you're going to find one person for everything is a myth. Keep a community around you. Absolutely. Keep a set of deep friendships, really deep friendships, deep intimacies with friends, with mentors, with family members, with colleagues, you know, that.

19:58so that's the first thing for me in having good relationships is is um diversify diversify relationships but not sexually yeah no no for some people it will include that for the vast majority it won't but the notion that there isn't a one person for everything and that that doesn't mean that there is a problem in your relationship when that happens the second thing is stop constantly looking at people as a product where you evaluate them and you evaluate yourself. You know, in our market economy, everything has become a product we include it. And so love seems to have become the moment that the evaluation of the product stops.

20:40You have finally been approved when you have been chosen and when you choose. This is Eva Elouza, a sociologist, who writes about this very beautifully. It's like love finally becomes the moment the moment you can experience peace, you're no longer looking, selling yourself, proving yourself, trying to capture somebody's attention. It's exhausting. And once you are in that mentality, you also are continuously looking for the best product. You never say, you know, how can I meet a person who? People don't often talk about how can I be a person who? That's so true. Okay. So it's what you're looking for in the market economy of romantic love rather than who are you?

21:21How do you show up? What do you bring? What responsibility do you take? How generous are you? Et cetera. Absolutely. Second thing, for what I think sets you up for a better relationship. And the third thing is understand some of the things that are really important to you and don't get involved with someone on the hope that some things will change. Do things ever change with a partner that you want to change? Yes. Things do change a lot. I mean, many different things can occur in a relationship, but it's different from I'm coming in here to turn things around, you know, because so much of us wants the experience of acceptance.

22:08So with acceptance, I would say this, another thing to prepare yourself. you can love a person wholly W-H-O-L-L-Y without having to love all of them. What do you mean by that? It means that the notion of unconditional love is a myth. Adult love lives in the realm of ambivalence which means that relational ambivalence is part and parcel of all our relationships. We have it with our parents, our siblings, our friends, which means that we continuously have to integrate contradictory feelings and thoughts between love and hate, between excitement and fear, between envy and contempt, between boredom and aliveness.

23:02You continuously negotiate these contradictions. That ambivalence and living with that ambivalence is actually a sign of maturity rather than continuously then evaluating. See, in the beginning you evaluate, is this the right one? Is this the one and only? Is this the... Then it becomes, shall I stay or shall I go? How do I know I have found the one? Is the pre-marital or the pre-commitment relationship. And then afterwards it becomes, is it good enough? We continuously continue with the evaluations, right? Is it good enough? Or how happy am I? Am I happy enough? love so that's the unconditional love no we live with ambivalence in our relationship there are periods where we think what would life be like elsewhere and then we come back and then we say i can't imagine it without it this is what i've chosen i'm good here but it's a conversation the idea that you will be accepted unconditionally is a dream we have for our parents when we are babies it's not part of adult love right so it's unconditional love is not something that we can expect to come apart.

24:07Involitional love is a myth. So, the one and only is a myth. You asked me how do we set ourselves up for relationships up front. There is no one and only. There is one person that you choose at a certain moment in time, and with that person you try to create the most beautiful relationship you can. But you could have done it with others. Timing is involved. Lots of things are involved. So there is no one and only. There's no soulmate. Soulmate is God. You can think that you have a soulmate connection with someone, that you have a deep, deep meeting of the minds, of the souls, of the heart, of the bodies.

24:44But it's a metaphor. It's not a person. It's the quality of an experience that feels like soulmates. That's number two. Number three, there is no unconditional love. We live with ambivalence in our deepest love relationships. There are things we like and things we don't. And things they like about us and things they don't. And moments they can't be without us and moments where they wish on occasion they could be away from us. And that's normal. Number four, the happiness mandate. Continuously evaluating how happy I am. You know, if you continuously pursue happiness, you're miserable a lot of the time.

25:26What should we pursue instead? We pursue integrity, depth, joy, aliveness, connection, growth. Those things that ultimately make us say, I feel good. I'm happy about this. But I don't pursue happiness. Happiness is the consequence of a lot of things you put in. You pursue caring for someone, having their back, feeling they have your back, wanting the best for them, what the poly people call compersion. You know, those things you can pursue. Compersion? What's compersion? Compersion is feeling joy for the happiness of the other person. Is this a polyamory relationship? It's a concept that is...

26:06Where it's like they're with another sexual partner. But I think the word is bigger than just, you know, contained within the poly community and culture. It is the notion that you want good for the other person, even when it doesn't have to do with you. Right. You're proud of them. You admire them. and you enjoy their growth, their successes. What about when someone says, I'm with this person, they make me happy. What does that happen when you're looking for someone to make you happy in the relationship? Well, the day they don't, you will say, they make me unhappy, or they don't make me happy, but it's they do to me.

26:44I'm the recipient of what they do. They have the power. They can give, they can withhold. I depend. I crave, I long, I yearn, I respond to them. And what should we be thinking of instead of this person makes me happy? How should we approach that? We give each other a good foundation from which we can each launch into our respective worlds. Oh, that's cool. A home is a foundation with wings. or I like to think a good relationship is a foundation with wings. So you feel the stability that you need, the security, the safety, the predictability as much as you can, as much as our life allows us. And at the same time, you have the wings to go and explore, discover, be curious, be in the world, sometimes together and sometimes apart.

27:49What do you think happens when people are in a relationship and let's say they're together for a year or a couple of years and they decide, okay, we want to get married. But maybe one or two or each of the individuals don't accept something fully about the other person. Maybe there's like three things that they really don't like or don't accept or wish they changed. I'm just trying to think of something where you're like, I love so much. We have this great connection. We have so much fun and we're growing and building a relationship. But behind their back, you're telling your girlfriend or your guy friends, I wish they'd changed this, this, or this.

28:23I don't like this thing. I don't like this thing. That's ambivalence. What does that mean? Meaning that you have to be able to live with the contradictory thoughts and feelings of what you like and what you don't like. What makes you want to be here and what makes you not want to be here. What happens when we don't accept that, though? And we like, you know, hopefully they'll change out of this or grow out of this thing that I don't like about them. What happens? when we're in that space we're not fully accepting when you get married you're not just making a deal with your partner you're making a secret deal with yourself that this is going to change and then when it doesn't you get very upset or pissed because your deal with yourself which you never said out loud it's the private bargain you do with yourself and all of us when we pick someone make private bargains with ourselves too and it's often that bargain that is broken more than the one because the partner never promised you that this will change.

29:16Exactly. And so it just creates more resentment. When we want something to change, we don't accept it. Expectations are resentment in the make. The more expectations you have, the more things you can be disappointed of afterwards. Right. Especially when they're not articulated. I think what you need to know is what are some of the things. If you are with someone who, if you go back to the erotic connection, If you're with someone with whom you have a very difficult erotic connection and you know that this is something that really is important to you, being seen, being touched, being held, being kissed, being stroked, being made love to is really a language that is very important to you.

29:57And you don't want to live without it. Then listen to yourself. if it's not an important part for you because that is not the way you express yourself most then then you know that this is not the center part the center piece of your relationship you have other things that you share if you know that you don't want children or the reverse that the other person doesn't want children don't go in there hoping that they're going to change your mind their mind because that is not fair to you nor to them if you are with someone who says i do not want to marry and you do or if you are with someone who says i see love plural i do not see myself just with one partner and this is to be clear to you that that's not okay or that you want it differently listen to yourself those are values that involve life decisions that you don't sit there waiting until they're going to catch up with you.

30:57And what happens when two people's values are not in alignment? Can they still have a beautiful life story or do you feel like there's always going to be some type of unnecessary struggle? I think it depends on the degree to which people can live with what we call a sense of differentiation. Meaning if I am okay wanting to go to church and that's not part of what you do. We come from the same faith or we come from different religions. And one of us wants to adhere to their tradition and wants to participate in the practices of their religion. And it's okay doing it without the other. It doesn't feel that that needs to be shared.

31:39It doesn't experience every time they sit in church, I wish you were sitting next to me. Why do I have to come here alone all the time? You know, that. So it's accepting someone's choices. It's accepting that your choice, if you practice it, you can accept to do it without your partner. So it's you accepting it. It's you accepting it. Of course, the other person. But the other person can often tell you, go if you like to be there. I don't want to go there on Sunday morning. I have other things to do with your time. Sure. Okay? Religion is a major one on that. Travel is another one on that. Children, work, etc.

32:16Family, in-laws. It's difficult to say to someone, I'll have a child alone. You don't have to participate. But it is easier to say, I will continue to practice my religion because it is central to me. You don't have to be a part of that. We have other things that we will share. But you need to know to do that and feel okay about it. If all the time. Now, that doesn't mean that on occasion you don't miss and you wish you part of it. There's a great sermon. I so wish you had been there to hear it. Great. But if it's chronic and you just feel this hole all the time. and you know from the beginning that it is a unifier for you and your partner doesn't show curiosity because you can come from something else and say, I'm interested in this.