20 Years Later, Esther Revisits Mating in Captivity

0:00Today's episode of Where Should We Begin is special. It was recorded live at Sessions Live, which is Esther's annual gathering of therapists, mental health professionals, coaches, and people who are just curious about relationships and the way we connect. This year marked a series of milestones for Esther. It's 20 years from the publication of her first book, Mating in Captivity. It's 10 years of Sessions Live, and it's also nearly a decade of working with me on the podcast. and as you know on where should we begin there's this deliberate choice to focus on the session and the couple and not much on Astaire as a person but I feel like anniversaries sometimes create spaces for different kinds of conversations so for this session we're going to be joined by writer and journalist Mary Alice Miller who is a colleague of mine at Esther Perel Global Media where she is the head of content.

0:54And for this, she invited Astaire to talk about Mating in Captivity and to reflect on the experiences and the influences that shaped her work. And also to revisit some of the ideas that have evolved in the 20 years since the publication of Mating in Captivity and all the questions that come with that. So here's Astaire in live conversation with Mary Alice Miller.

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2:09When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if Fatween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. Bud, switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico.

2:44It's 10 years since she started Sessions Live. and it is also almost a decade since you and Jesse Baker launched your podcast Where She Would Begin, which features real one-time couples therapy sessions. Congratulations again.

3:02I will never forget the first time I heard about the podcast. It was 2017 on the New Yorker Radio Hour, and I heard David Remnick interviewing you, and I was like, who is this woman with this beautiful accent. And then I heard clips from the podcast and I was like, what is going on? How is this happening? Who are these people opening up the most private dimensions of their life to the public for our benefit to learn and to feel a sense of recognition? And I remember thinking at the time, where is this podcast when this person who I know really, really could have used this. Where was it then? And I'm so, so glad that it's been almost 10 years of it being a relational resource for so many people.

3:46I call it a public health campaign for relationships. In 2017, for non-therapists, it was absolutely unheard of to be able to listen on a stranger's therapy session. Now there are multiple television shows where you can do just that. What is it about the medium of audio what is it about audio that allows people to connect with it so much well there's two things that a lot for me first nobody on the podcast has ever been a patient nor will ever be a patient there's thousands of people applying the first time less because nobody knew what it was like and um i i will tell you the moment when i understood the power of the audio.

4:31It's in 22, right after Australia lifts their lockdown. Melbourne had the most strict lockdown for 200 days. You could leave one hour a day your house in a range of five kilometers. People went bonkers. And they spend a lot of time listening. And they listen and it's intimate. it's in your ears and when you listen attentively to the stories of others you end up seeing yourself even if the story is not yours you recognize something and then when we did the q a the people were asking me questions as if they had been with me i had just not been with them it was like a real parasocial relationship of trust i see you i understand you i recognize you.

5:23It's all of that that goes into the intimacy of the audio. I think, you know, it is the first thing a baby hears in utero. It's our first sense. It's our most primary sense. When you look at others, you sometimes project onto them. But when you can't see them, you see yourself. And I love what you said before, that it's part of a public health campaign. And I've heard you say a public health campaign for relationships, a relational health campaign. What I have come to understand one of many things in the seven years of working together is that each of these milestones, whether it's the podcast or meeting in captivity or your second book, The State of Affairs, or the tour or the card game, they're all part of that much bigger project of bringing therapeutic insights into the public square.

6:16Can you say more about that? There are two parts to it. The first First, by the way, I had no idea what she's going to ask. No idea. Just so you know. We may work together, but... I think relationships are changing at such a speed at this moment. The norms, the rules, the definitions. And we really need to make it up as we go. And so to have a place that isn't just about tips, but a place that is also about interpreting what is happening, making sense out of it. Mnuchin, one of my main mentors, always said, if you think right, you will act better, rather than just tell me what to do. You have to understand why you're doing it and why it matters in this way.

7:09So this, to me, the notion that, you know, and the more AI is entering into our lives and the more relational intelligence and relationships ships will become basically the cutting edge of in work and in other areas of our lives so I that is one piece the second thing is when I started I just wanted I felt like the office is getting too close I want to open the door and I want to lower the walls and I want people in the general in the public square to have an access to the insights and the revelations and the changes that take place inside the session. Not enough people can come to therapy, and therapy is not the only thing that helps people.

7:55So I thought, how do we take this stuff out of the office and make it into the public square? And the podcast was one way to do so. The fact that there are so many people here, normal people, who are just here because it's interesting to you, is part of the destigmatization of therapy, this thing that happens behind closed doors in which stuff gets shared that nobody gets to talk about. We are living more and more in a psychologized society. I think sometimes in an overly psychologized society too. But it's clear that this is no longer just a practice on the side, hidden, quiet, that nobody talks about.

8:39It is hip to put your therapist's name on your binge profile of sorts. Maybe not the therapist's name, but certainly the fact that you're in therapy. It no longer means you're mad or you're sick. It means you're evolved. This is a major cultural shift. I know people who actually won't go on a date with someone unless they are in therapy. Who else knows people who this is like a, I will, right. Well, we have a huge bias in this space, right? Because we've got a ton of therapists. So we probably know lots of people who say this, at least in the privacy of therapy, if not more publicly. I also think, you know, where I'm from, I'm from Belgium, but French, Belgium, this whole part of Europe, I grew up with psychoanalysts being philosophers and public intellectuals.

9:29Because psychoanalysis in Europe was not medicalized, it became part of the medical profession here. You had a license, And from that moment on, it became more of a medical practice and less of a mental health practice and less of a cultural practice. I think that psychologists, and I'm talking about people in the field, it doesn't have to be what your degree is, have a tremendous contribution to make in the public discourse and in the cultural conversations about what's going on in our lives. And we should not leave that, excuse me, only to influencers.

10:09I said, excuse me. I don't mean to offend anyone, but when you have 40 years of practice sitting in the trenches, you have a certain experience, and it can be useful to the society at large. So I want to go way back. She just said 40 years of therapy. She has been a therapist for 40 years, which is, again, what you were saying, before I came on stage, you know, who has stayed in the same job for that long? 40 years is, is really, it's impressive. That's because there's no ageism in our field. It's one of the few fields. The more you age, the better you become. It's like a good wine. it is like good wine so i want to go way back this is like further further back than 40 years um to when you were a little kid and keep in mind she does not know what i'm going to ask her this is this is improv what is the earliest moment you can recall being interested in relationships and i'm i'm thinking of the esther perel growing up in her parents family small family business shop I'm thinking of the Esther Perel playing behind the house in the woods and acting out characters what's the earliest moment you can recall being interested in relationships wow I have a few that stand out but um so I come from a community that is all holocaust survivors which means nobody had grandparents most of the families were two people who met right after the war most of the time I have nothing, you have nothing I'm alone, you're alone, let's get married that was the contract basically we survived and we make families and we make families immediately because that is the way that we know that we are still human so these children become these very symbolic creatures.

12:19And that I understood very quickly. I just always ask, why don't I have grandparents? Why don't I have uncles? Why don't I have cousins? You know, why are we so small? But then there was another event that I remember vividly. The main thing of the things you remember is you wonder, why is it that that I remember? So I'm about probably 10 years old, and I'm watching Sissi, princess of Austria. Any of you have ever, Romy Schneider, you know, si, si. It's the romantic schmalz par excellence. And I go to my mother, who at that time, most of her friends had lost their husbands. And I said, Maman, they must be so sad that they've lost their, she says, they're relieved they don't have to wash anybody's socks anymore.

13:05And I thought to myself, wow, that cured me of any romantic. marriage from a very different angle, you know. And then the other piece that really interested me about relationships, and it's something that I talked with Ruth Kohn, who's going to be talking here as well, is that my community, and I say it about my community, I think this applies to all trauma. This is not a unique experience of ours. There were two groups of people in my community. There were the people who did not die, and they were the people who came back to life. You can let that sink in. This is true for relationships. You work with couples who are not dead and who are trying to survive or couples or relational systems or treples or families or friendships, all relational systems here.

14:00And you work with people who are really craving that aliveness. I saw people who were basically, you enter their homes and you felt the morbidity they were living tethered to the ground the world is an unsafe place you have to be vigilant at all times you can't really enjoy because if you enjoy you're not being careful you can't laugh out loud because if you laugh out loud you're not paying attention um and you you basically shield yourself constantly and then i saw people who experienced the erotic as an antidote to death it's that definition of eroticism that really interested me and how do you cultivate that aliveness why is it that the same experience breaks one and strengthens the other it's one of the most important questions we sit with with our clients all the time you know why did it break your brother and it made you who you are so those questions of relationships were really interesting then i hated school that's probably the last thing no i'm not a hated school i hated the the stringent discipline of my my school especially my high school you know i come from six hours of latin a week two hours of greek four languages it's just like and this child meant nothing the material mattered and the child had no value so i got interested in all the people who wrote about alternative education and alternative education meant rejection of authority.

15:29Well, that's a relationship theme as well. So those were, and then I began reading, you know, R.D. Lange and all these people. And I just, and I was good at it. That's another thing. I saw my friends would confide in me. You know, I had an ability of not trusting what you see. I'm just curious, for the people who are clinicians in the audience, how many of you relate to that, that moment of my friends all confided in me. My friends, my family, my parents, my divorcing parents. I mean, many of us have been, you know, talented, but also triangulated. And the other thing that that stood out to me about what you just said, among many things, is why is what breaks one brother what makes the other stronger?

16:23And I'm wondering how many of you relate to that in your offices and in your relationships and your families and your friends don't you find this one of the most interesting questions why one and you know what it because it whatever um when did you realize that these interests could actually be a job i mean a job okay so i i you know i speak nine languages my mother thought i should be an interpreter or a lawyer she thought I argued well and I honed my chops with her that was for sure but then I thought I'm going to go study psychology I thought it's interesting people are interesting relationships are interesting so then I am the product of mentorship I actually have no fancy degrees I have an MA but but and I'm getting a PhD this week by the way I forgot.

17:27You remembered. From my graduate school. But I never did the PhD. I went for teachers. I thought, I'm a disciple. I learn on the job. I need to see it being done to see how I can do it myself. And I arrived to Boston. And I went to the Cambridge Family Institute. Because my husband said, I said, I have too much personality to be an analyst. and uh no offense to analysts who are here no no no it has nothing to do with it's like i can't stick i can't just so my husband said jack soul he said you should go to the family therapy centers because peggy pap is there too and she also comes from theater and so i knocked at the door and i just said i would like to train here so i had done puppetry and i went to a bunch of people doing family therapy with kids and I said would you like a puppeteer in your sessions and I followed three therapists for about a year hours upon hours during the during the week and I had puppets with me and then when they would do the sessions I would bring it to the family to the parents to the kids and that's kind of how I thought oh I can integrate my passion for theater with my interest in psychology that's kind of how it started do you remember when I said she has a theater background it is very specifically with puppets and other plays and and i've continued to use puppets in therapy i only zoom killed everything creative well actually i mean zoom also brought out a lot of creative things in you there's a tons of things that we did on zoom particularly in the pandemic lockdown that we would have never done before.

19:18That is true. That is true.

19:24We have to take a brief break. So stay with us.

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23:13so what were the early years of learning and training to become a therapist like you've told me that in the 80s and 90s specifically sex was actually taboo in couples therapy why is that and when did that start to shift i mean basically this whole body of work mating and all of that starts with the Clinton scandal. That's what inspired me. I thought, this is so interesting. I will give it to you from a European point of view.

23:47I just, it was like, you know, America will let people divorce three, four times without blinking an eye, and disrupt and dismember the entire family system, but you have one infidelity and you're an infidel for life. The rest of the world that values family above couple, actually, have always opted the other way around. By the courtesy of women, let's be clear. And I thought that is so interesting. It's not like the French just cheat better and do it more and all of that. It's actually not at all. The Americans cheat no less, they just feel more guilty. But what is interesting is you preserve the family, and in order to preserve the family, you make a different compromise.

24:38And so the compromise is not about your own happiness or unhappiness. The compromise is for the goodness of the collective. And that is pretty much true in many other parts of the world as well. So I write about the Clinton scandal, and I just go to the networker conference and I meet my other major mentor, Rich Simon, and he says, what are you thinking about these days? And I blurt out, I'm thinking about Americans and sex. And he says, why don't you write something about it? I said, this makes for great dinner conversation, but I don't know that I can write an article. So anyone who's ever written for Rich Simon knew that there was a verb called to be Simonized and that meant 11 versions of the same article until you have finally articulated what you had to say, and it became In Search of Erotic Intelligence.

25:25That article comes out in 2002, and it goes viral, in the beginning of viral. And what I knew from then, I had had one hour of training in sexuality in my seven years of training in couples and family therapy. That is not unusual. Anybody can identify with this? Yeah, this is really not unusual. and I also had engurgitated a whole bunch of beliefs that were basically presented like truths rather than dogmas and one of them was sexual problems are the consequence of relationship problems if you fix the relationship the sex will follow just like that and I had done so much work where people got along much better laughed more, fought less everything was much better in the kitchen and it did absolutely nothing in the bedroom.

26:16And I know that I'm not the only one who knew that. But when you did change the sexuality, you actually changed the entire dynamic. The other way around was different. So that was my first thing. Sexuality was not a metaphor of the relationship. It was a parallel narrative and it speaks its own language and it acts by different rules. Love and desire, they relate and they also conflict. I had zero experience in the field of sexuality they accepted me first before the couples world and it because they it was written from somebody it's like a foreigner who comes to a place and writes a whole article about that place and has a point of view that none of the locals have ever thought about it had that experience to it and that's the beginning and slowly there were people Pat Love, Michelle Winner-Davis, David Schnarch, they were major people who were trying to integrate couples therapy and sexuality.

27:17But the vast majority of the field of sexuality dealt with function, dysfunction, performance. 97 % of the research on real desire was on women because men don't have real desire problems. They want it all the time. You know that. Now, that kind of, a bunch of biases and biases. And there are an incredible group of people that will talk at our event that have inspired me in all of this. I did not do this alone. So that's, and the couples therapy world didn't really want to talk about sex. So this, because it's all relationships. So, you know, we just focus. I mean, you could do couples therapy for five years and not a single time with the therapist ask you, and what happens between you sexually?

28:01And that was not unusual. ah so no yeah i mean i'm not deluded so what happens in your office with your clients when you start bringing up sex the first thing that happens is that your patient size you up are you someone i can talk about this with or not i mean many of us have gone to therapies where some of our major issues were not addressed because we took one look at the therapist. Of course, it was challenging for us to bring it up. But we also took one look at the therapist and said, no, not with you. So I would ask in the first session, like I would ask about where you live and the economic issues and racial issues, cultural issues, religious issues, and also sexually.

28:54And not, do you still have sex? And not, how often do you have sex? Because none of that gives us any information. so then I began writing up what are interesting questions and then then after they've sized you up they look to the person next to them to see is it can I can I really say what I think and then I understood that couples therapy that involves sexuality needs to have sessions that don't involve the other person and that means that I say it up front and when I work with you I will see you together and sometimes alone and when I see you alone those will be confidential sessions in which both of you can tell me things that are private to you and that you may not yet or may not want your partner to know.

29:39That is a position. It has its problems. It has worked better for me than to work and be the fool of the village. So you're inviting them to speak to you. I'm interested in two things. First thing, what are they saying? Second thing, what are you hearing underneath what they're saying. I begin to understand, there's a few things and a couple of call-outs here as well. So what people begin to explain to me, once you're not asking them about what do you do, then you start to turn the question into where do you go? Where do you go in sex? What parts of you do you connect with? What do you seek to express there?

30:27Is it a place for surrender? Is it a place for spiritual union? Is it a place to safely be dominant, to safely surrender, to be playful, to be mischievous, to not be your perfect citizen? What is this space? If it's a play space, what do you play there? And that language invites people to think about it completely differently. Same with fantasy. I mean, some of the people, Jack Morin and Michael Bader, I mean, I was reading, I can't, like a mile a minute about how to think about this. And Jaya. So Jaya, we met in 2006. And I can't tell you how much I learned from Jaya because she was doing the body work, the practice in front of me.

31:15And I was doing the relational part. We were doing this in tandem. And I saw the translation. It was like the text and the translation of the text in its physicality. And that was a whole other level of digging deep into what is the erotic mind? What is the sanctuary where people go? What are the psychological needs that people express through this sexual language, etc., etc.? And attachments, of course.