How To Have Successful Relationships with Esther Perel

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Couples therapy really became a discipline of its own in the center that it is today when the expectations around intimate relationships began to rise. The more we expect from the couple and the more we need couples therapy to help us with those expectations.

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Just go to athleticgreens.com/hymen to get your free year's supply of vitamin D3 and K2 and five free travel packs with your first purchase. you'll get it delivered straight to your door and I promise you'll feel the difference Athletic Greens can make in your daily wellness routine. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/Hymen. Now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy and that's a pharmacy with an F. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman and this is a place for conversations that matter. If ever been in a relationship, which I think is most of us, this conversation is gonna matter to you 'cause it's with one of my good friends, an extraordinary teacher, visionary, and wise woman on the subject of all things relationship, Esther Perel. Esther is an icon, not just a human, but mostly I know her as a human. She's a psychotherapist, she's a New York Times bestselling author. She's recognized as one of the most insightful and original voices on modern relationships, which are complicated. She's fluent in nine languages, which would be enough for her resume if that's all there was, and I'm so jealous of that. She practices in New York City and is an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Her TED Talks are amazing. They've garnered over 30 million views and her best-selling books, which you should read, called Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs. And it's not a political book, it's about relationships. Our global phenomena that are translated into 30 languages. She's also the executive producer and host of two podcasts, not just one. Where Should We Begin? and How's Work? Where Should We Begin? essentially is a podcast where you get to be in a therapist's office with a couple working on their issues, like a fly on the wall. It's fascinating, trust me and I encourage you to listen to it. It's one of the top podcasts out there. And the other one, How's Work, is similar but with colleagues from work or relationships related to work. Her latest project, which is so awesome, Where Should We Begin? A Game of Stories, is just a fabulous way to engage in intimacy, connection, and conversation with the people in your life. It's a card game, essentially a game of stories and conversation starters.

So we're going to talk about that. We might even try a little bit about that.

So welcome, Esther.

Thank you, thank you Mark. It's a pleasure to be here.

So we've known each other a long time. We've had fun in Costa Rica, we've had many Passovers together and had lots of fun over the years. And mostly I know you as a friend, not a therapist, but I've heard you speak many times and I'm just blown away by your insight into the nature of human relationships, which are infinitely complicated, often stressful and difficult. And personally, you know, I've had a lot of success in my life and my career and business and in so many ways. But relationships have been my holy grail. I've had three marriages, multiple relationships, and I just seem can't figure it out. So I'm really excited for this conversation. And I really, I'm not, I don't.

Want, this was just meant to be a session, but you wouldn't tell me.

I'm not looking for necessarily personal advice. I think you're welcome to share anything and ask me anything, but I just think it's, it's such a vexing problem, and I I was thinking about who do I know who has really healthy, great relationships? Who do I know who's fulfilled and happy and satisfied? Who do I know who's really alive and vibrant in their relationship and it's a source of happiness instead of stress or struggle? And honestly, I have a list, but it's a very short list of people.

And.

Your work really talks about how, yes, relationships can be a great source of happiness and fulfillment, but they're also a source of stress. So why are relationships so freaking hard?

But you know, the thing that you also said is you've had three marriages and many relationships, but you also have other relationships with friends, with your children, with siblings. And in that sense, I would say that friendships, family relationships haven't really changed that much. Parent-child relationships have changed, but there is one relationship that has really undergone an extreme makeover, and that is our romantic relationships. We expect more from them than we ever have. It's an unprecedented set of expectations that we bring to modern love. And that makes it much more complicated than the particular expectations that we used to have for long-term basically generally marital relationships.

And those things that we expect are a lot. We want people to be our best friend, our lover, our mother, our companion, our work partner, you know, all of that.

And we want companionship. Look, marriage or romantic relationship, well they were not called romantic relationships. That's the first thing is that they were quite separate. Marriage was primarily a financial arrangement. It was a companionship for life that gave you family, succession and social status. We still want all those things too, but now I also want you to be my intimate partner, my erotic partner, my trusted confidant, my passionate lover, all in one. And we live twice as long. Let's really add that since you are the longevity person. We live twice as long. And so we are asking one person basically to give us what once an entire village used to provide. And we even have gone a step further. The thing that many, many people talk about today is the partner as a soul mate. And that's a very new concept. Soul mate and one and only basically used to be God. Now we want it to be a person. And we basically bring to this romantic love expectations for ecstasy and meaning and transcendence and wholeness, things that people used to look for in the realm of the divine. as the union analyst Robert Johnson says. And then I want you to help me become the best version of myself. It's like Love as an Identity Project. And, you know, he likes a beautiful image. It's a tall order for a party of two. It's a new Olympus. And as he describes, when people climb a mountain, the view at the top of the mountain is spectacular, but the air is also thinner and not everybody can reach the top. those who reach the top have an amazing view, better than all relationships in history. But so many people don't get there. Why? Because this is part of your question, you know, why has this been so hard for me? Our childhood is often, you know, a few things that were done really, really beautifully and well, and then people who got either too much of something or too little of something, right? Too much attention, too much intrusion, too much impermeation of boundaries, or not enough attention, neglect, abandonment, aloneness. Too much or too little basically is really what we can often summarize at some of the challenges of our childhood. And we bring those developmental traumas into our adult love And really, Mark, this is probably the most interesting thing. People can sit in my office and say, I don't have these issues with anybody else. And I have long lasting friends and colleagues and students and mentees. And I always say there's only two relationships that mirror each other. And that is the one that you had with your original parental figures, the ones who took care of you, and the ones that you encounter in your romantic life. That's where the antechamber, the resonance innox is right there.

And that's where all the juicy stuff is, right? Where you learn about yourself and where you discover the parts yourself that may have more darkness that you like or that are actually capable of great love. I mean, all of it is sort of in that Crucible of relationship that shows up. And it seems like the pressures of expectation on relationships today are so high, you know, like you said, to be soulmate, lover, partner, confidant, you know, just grocery shopper, dishwasher, you know, bed maker, whatever it is. And it takes us out of the sort of this story of actually, how do we navigate this?

Because the needs that I have for the person with whom I want to renovate a house. I'm not necessarily the same as what I want with the person with whom I raise children. I'm not necessarily the same as the person with whom I would like to experience erotic intimacy. I'm not necessarily the same with whom I want to travel. I'm not necessarily... and basically we have a model in which we really do expect that we can do all of those things and navigate these roles and flexibly move from one to the other, from the mundane to the sublime, from desire to love, from security to freedom, from togetherness to individuality, from connection to independence, and that all of this should seamlessly be handled by two people. And that is a challenge. Relationships are complex social systems. Really, they do. and they involve a lot of complicated things, you know, about how we manage expectations, how we communicate, how we establish trust, how we feel safe to be open and vulnerable, how we apologize and take responsibility for the bad stuff we do, and how we straddle some of these contradictory needs and emotions in one social relational system. that is really the challenge. But we don't give up. We are tenacious. You're still looking for love. You're still hoping for love.

I'm taking a break. I'm like, I gotta figure out why I keep doing this and then, you know, just kind of figure it out.

Yes, that is true. And you have said that before too. But many of us continue to hope that we will have that relationship. I mean, the longing for love, for intimacy, for connection, doesn't really go away. We may defend against it. We may say, I'm taking a break, I'm being chased for a year, I'm not doing anything, I'm not dating. But the need doesn't disappear. It just is on hold.

Yeah. And we often pick partners that are reflections of our unconscious challenges that we haven't really thought of or worked through or dealt with. And it seems like that's where a lot of us bump up against. So we're picking people based on matching some type of dysfunction in us that it all comes out. And I wonder how you see that in relationships, how you deal with that with your clients.

I was presenting, you know, an episode of Where Should We Begin this Morning to a group of students. And it was a really, what I look for so much in that choice that you describe is what is the invisible complementarity, right? Here is this one person and basically she lives with a chorus of people that speak to her, speak through her, her mother, her brother, her grandmother. I mean, there's all these people. For every decision she makes, she has a Greek chorus, literally giving her input. And she finds this man who basically, at 13, lost his mother and father at the same time to through various issues of health and mental health and divorce, etc. And she is all alone, you know, with no needs, supposedly, meeting a woman who has plenty of needs and never questions them. And it's a perfect match until it is not. Until it is not, right? And she, you know, very happy that he doesn't say much because she has already enough people talking in her head all the time. You have all these ways in which I seek you out sometimes for the very things that you're trying to get away from.

Yeah.

And I can give you a few other steps to the dance of.

Who.

Chooses who for what. At its best, You kind of can say we reenact those things, we replay, we get this resonance so that we can finally work through some of these things. And at other times you kind of say, you know, you were deprived and you systematically put yourself with people who are not particularly generous. Yeah. And you love generosity. I think that's something I would say to you. You are a fundamentally generous person.

Yeah.

And you often find yourself with people I'm more in a scarcity mentality. And at first, you are loving these people because you love to give to them. And then at some point you wonder, and what about me?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, or the expectations get sort of endless and it's impossible to fulfill them because you can't ever fulfill that for somebody else. And they're looking to you for all these things. And instead of being self-contained, they'll often be looking to you for their fulfillment, their happiness, their meeting their expectations. And that seems like a recipe for disaster.

But in the beginning, it's great because you think I can do it. And I am honored that you think I can do it. And I love the fact that I can actually succeed at it. That makes me feel so good that I can give you what you need. And then slowly it becomes, you know, you need too much. I don't get much myself. Do I really want to be in that room? You know, how much is love caregiver? And at what point, you know, and so this is that, you know, the very things that are initially attractive often become the source of conflict later.

That's interesting. So, so we know that 50 of marriages end in divorce.

Right.

And, and people don't want to get divorced. So why, why do couples struggle like that? And what do they do wrong when trying to sort of fix conflicts in relationship?

Well, let me suggest maybe something first. I would like us to imagine that not all divorces or all breakups are synonymous with failure. When people have lived together for 20, 30 years, 15, whatever, when people have buried parents together, build homes together, raised children together, dealt with economic adversity together, They have done a lot of what marriage or companionship or companion at coupledom is about. I think it's unfair and inaccurate and shame inducing to think that the only marker of success or the main marker of success is longevity. In this case, it's, you know, some stories end because life changes, because people have fundamentally different needs, because there is a loss and they cannot overcome the grief together. you know, there are lots of reasons of why people divorce. That doesn't mean it was a failed relationship. Yeah, that said. So this is the first thing. I. I. Differs means it's the end, but sometimes it's the end of something that was limited, maybe, but still very good.

Yeah, I feel like that. I feel like that with my last relationship, that it was really this incredible gift and incredibly beautiful and perfect for both of us and what it was and had a chapter that needed to be written, but then. It was over.

Right. The next thing is that divorce rate increase when women have greater economic independence. That's a very important thing. You know, in the Soviet Union, 97% of divorces were initiated by women because there was economic equality. Everybody earned the same $1. And so we were together for all the other emotional reasons. And if those needs were not being met, then there was no reason for her to wash his laundry. By definition, divorce is initiated more often by women and the divorce rate goes up when women have an alternative. That is a very important social factor to include in what we otherwise look more as relational factors, social and economic factors. But that means that the reasons for staying together become more emotional. They become more about connection, communication, intimacy, sharing, thriving together. And that when that disappears, then the sense is for what? Now, I would add to the conversation about divorce today is that, you know, it used to be that people divorced if they were really unhappy. Today, people will divorce if they think that they can be happier. And the happiness mandate is at the heart also of this, you know, is this good enough? Can it be better? Or the midlife question, is this it? Will this be the next 25 years more of the same? Is there more life? So all of that are part of the modern questions of divorce, which are very different from what it used to be.

Totally, and I think people are more willing to jump out of things that aren't working. There's less reasons to stay together like you said. And I think a lot of people try counseling, but I think one of the challenges that I think for relationships is that there's a lack of ability for couples and people in general to have conscious communication that's not violent, that allows each person to share what their experience is without conflict. And that simple skill of communication is not something we learn. And I think that's where a lot of religions break down.

And you want me to refund this?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I want to know what you think because that's my perspective, but it may not be true.

So here's the thing.

Because you do counseling and so you find that you work with people and try and trying to actually help them talk and communicate and you see the challenges that people have in hearing and learning what each other are feeling or wanting or thinking or needing.

So, you know, I do couples therapy. I have a real predilection for working with couples because I find it one of the most fascinating relational systems that we have at this moment. This couple can really induce bliss and hell in a level that is amazing. So do families for that matter. And I work with families as well. Here's the thing. It used to be that when people came to couples therapy, they came actually for their children. They didn't come to couples therapy. They came and slowly we would identify that there was something maybe in the relationship that also was interacting with the challenges that the child was having. Couples therapy really became a discipline of its own in the center that it is today, when the expectations around intimate relationships began to rise. The more we expect from the couple and the more we need couples therapy to help us with those expectations. When the couple was not the central unit of the family, but because the family was more important than the couple, and people stayed together for the family. Today, not the children and not the family, it really will keep people together. They may keep them a few more years, but ultimately what keeps people together is the quality of the relationship between the two people. So therefore, couples therapy becomes a much more sought after practice. I don't just do communication. I was thinking, and I was editing another podcast session. And it's an incredible session. It's the first session of season five that I'm producing now. And they come in and he says, you know, we are both people who like things to be done, who like to do things our way. And I said, that's okay. That's interesting. But what is, what I'm hearing also is that you are two people who like other people to do things your way.

Yeah, that's what they meant, right?

So then I ask, you know, on what, how did you learn, you know, to say yes and how did you learn to say no? And he begins to tell me a whole story of how basically his father would continuously belittle him, lecture to him, be contemptuous. You know, we would start with the conversation to her son. And then what followed was often, you know, berating him for all the things that he wasn't doing right and living up to expectations. And she grows up with a drug addicted mother, father who commits suicide. And she is the adult in the house from that little raises her two children. They say to me at one point, we fight about everything. We don't communicate. And I say, I don't think you fight about everything at all. Actually, I think you're fighting about the same thing all the time. The moment he experiences you are saying to him, you're incompetent, you're not doing it well, you're not doing it right. He is in that original wound of him, of his. And the moment he says, you're not gonna tell me what to do. You know, I'm doing it, I'm out of here. And he goes for a break. You think I'm once again all alone, with all the responsibilities and the four children on my shoulders, and I will always be alone and I will never have anybody by my side. And you fight about that original wound. That's what every argument is actually about.

It's the same story over and over.

You know, and that was so illuminating for them that it wasn't about the chore chart that she had made, and it wasn't about the kids, and it wasn't about his parents. It was about you know, I don't want to be inadequate and I don't want to be alone. Those were the themes that each one was really, and then we started to work. So that becomes different than just communicating, how do you say things nicer?

Yeah, yeah. How do you get people to kind of move past those really primordial conditionings of childhood? That's the $64,000 question.

Yes. I think the most important thing is that you teach people two things. Or when I say teach, it means you help them see two things. You help them separate the past from the present. The fact that this brings back vividly the experience of back then doesn't mean that it is actually what used to happen back then. The past and the present Sometimes feel like they come together into one, but they are not. And the second thing is that you then say at seven, you were helpless. At seven, you couldn't respond. At seven, you couldn't just leave the house and say, this is dangerous for me to be here. You, you, you know, whereas now you are an adult and you have choices. So and then you go and you basically help them, first of all, through the body to separate the past from the present. In this moment, I get that tension, like I want to start fighting, like this man was a master of defiance, you know, but he got all his confidence through defiance, which means that it was pseudo confident. And when she would actually say, go ahead and do things, I'm with you, I support you, then he would start to talk about all his doubts. He was always sure only when he was in opposition. When he was in a fight, then he knew what he wanted. But when he had somebody who was actually loving and giving, then he didn't know what to do with himself. And you go through the body and you track the feeling because a feeling is also embodied. Then you articulate the experience. And then you know what I really did with them. I really had a lot of fun. They had a lot of fun. I said, lay down flat on the floor. And then I said, Now continue the argument. Do you know that you can't fight when you're lying flat? Yeah.

Or if you take your clothes off, I think that's another thing I've heard from couples. Everybody take their clothes off. It's hard to have a fight.

You know, it's like we are meant to fight in straight up position, like battles, you know? So then it opened up a completely different, and it went from the fighting to the action behind the fighting, which is often the fear of loss. which is often, will you leave me? Will you be there for me, etc. And then you go deeper, deeper, deeper. And that takes some time.

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Yeah, I will start with what destroys relationships.

And I'm taking notes.

I'm taking notes. I will really refer to the work of John John Gottman and John and Julie Gottman here on what destroys them. You know, they have a wonderful way of kind of separating between the masters and the disasters. And they talk about the Four Horses of Apocalypse.

Yeah.

And basically what will kill relationships is chronic criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and the killer of them all is contempt. because contempt, and this we know also in large scale traumas, is contempt is the dehumanizing. Contempt is whatever you feel or think is irrelevant and doesn't matter. You don't even reach me. So that those four horses apocalypse, I think kind of summarize things well. And one of the things, defensiveness.

Criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling basically shutting down. Right, shutting people out.

Yes, yes. And contempt. Which is basically, you know, shame is one side and contempt. Shame is contempt for oneself and contempt for the other. It goes in both directions. I think when I once wanted to write a paper, I wanted to write a paper about what are creative couples? because we talk about lasting couples, we talk about stable couples, but we rarely talk about what is creative couples or what you may include in successful couples. And what was fascinating is what you said before. The majority of people, when I said, do you know couples who have a spark, couples who inspire you? And people would on occasion come up with one, maybe two, often none. It was really scary to them because if I said, can you come up with entrepreneurs, with artists, with writers, with intellectuals, people have lists of people that inspire. But here is everybody wanting to be in a relationship and not many people, you know, can think about, yeah, I like that. I want to do this. I never wrote the paper because what people ended up saying seemed rather banal to me, as in that's... I know that. But then I have been sitting on this thing for years thinking, actually, maybe it's not that known. But what they said was this, and that was very interesting. This is not in order. One is admiration. Admiration for your partner. It's not respect, it's different. Admiration always implies a level of idealization. It's I look up to you. I admire you for who you are as a person, as a human being, more than just in your role as a partner, as a parent, as a, you know, so that was one big one. Two, the relationship is basically a foundation with wings. Meaning there's a solid anchor of trust. And that solid anchor of trust interacts with the ability to take risks. in life and in the relationship and to be playful. It's what I often have looked at the combination between the integration between our need for security and safety and predictability and reliability and our need for change and novelty and exploration and discovery. These two fundamental human needs. I think that the The best relationships have a nice balance between what is togetherness and what is separateness. They have people have their own lives. But before I even continue, I think the best thing to say is this, there is no one size fits all.

It's all, yeah.

I can't tell you one, it's like you with health. It's not like you have a sense in health that it's an interaction of different parts. Of course. If it is more of this or more of that, you know, some couples have Venn diagrams that are completely overlapping. They do everything together. They spend all their time together and it works beautifully. Yeah. And some other very creative and successful couples are much more differentiated and actually they have a strong core, but with big individual lives, you know, separate. So there is no one size fits all. I really would love that to be actually my opening line to your question before I even say what makes I think it's a success. People who feel free in a relationship, that makes for success. For sure, people who feel oppressed or under surveillance, or who have to constantly lie or hide or, you know, don't not say what they bought or what is, you know, that kind of stuff. Those are major differences that I would add to the to the to the Gottman list, you know, it's a degree of autonomy. Matched with a deep sense of belonging. These two together is a beautiful dance.

It's beautiful. But I think there's some really practical ways that you talk about for people to achieve whatever it is their best relationship is, right? Boundaries, routines, rituals. You know, what are the kinds of things that you help people establish within the relationship to build that foundation, that structure? Because it's not something we know automatically. It's not something we we actually are taught. How do you help people build those structures in those relationships and help them get to that?

So it's very interesting. This couple that I was mentioning before, where he kind of walled himself off with no needs because he was all alone and there was nobody who could help him anyway. And she is like permeated by all these voices. I thought that I had done a rather limited session with them. I really thought, I didn't really reach them, I didn't really go underneath the noise, etc. And then I get a letter today that you never know, you never know about how much some of the tiny things that I did that I thought were almost slightly, you know, they were not, basically I would say, It's one thing to say, how about you tell Esther about this versus shutting your partner up and talking for them. Of course, you want to bring something up, but you also want to let them tell their own story. How about when you have a problem or a question about sex or about children, you don't first go to your mother and grandmother, but you also go first to your partner. Yeah. And you set the boundary with all the people from your family so that you can create a more sacred space with your partner. The boundary is not always inside the relationship. It's between the relationship and the outside world. How about you are able to make a request that isn't a protest? So say what you need rather than what the other person is or is not doing. Just make a request. and stick to that. And adding up these things, basically they write to me three weeks later and say there's been a fundamental shift. We haven't had a single fight. I was able to no longer go and talk to my mother about everything. He feels much more open to me because I'm much less critical with him. And I appreciate his openness. And that makes me more fond of him. And that makes him more a sexual with me and more expressive of his desire for me. And it becomes the opposite of the escalation in the negative direction is now a kind of escalating.

Yeah.

The going up in the positive direction. That's the work. Yeah.

It's so powerful. So powerful. And, and, and I think that, you know, you, you've created a really fun during COVID a really fun game that I'd love to do and, and share with everybody. And I think it's just so fantastic. And, you know, we've had all the stresses of quarantine, isolation, lack of travel, our social circles are shrinking sometimes when we need the most. And our relationships are often, you know, challenged. But you, you created this card game, which is sort of came out of this isolation lockdown, and it's a way for all of us to reconnect. And I just love it because it's like sometimes, you know, It's heavy talking about relationships and love and working stuff out and it's like a lot. But you created a fun, playful way to enter into the space of intimacy and connection and relatedness that I think is just so beautiful. So, by the way, everybody, the game is called Where Should We Begin the Game? And you just go to estherperel.com, where should we begin the game with dashes in between each word and you'll find it. And it's just fabulous. So tell us a little bit what inspired it. and what it is and maybe we can play a little bit with it.

Yes, love to. One day as I was working in the middle of the pandemic, experiencing my own sense of isolation, my constant need to be in a state of vigilance, in risk assessment rather than risk taking, and lacking intimacy with my close circle, I just thought, I can't only You know, talk about these things in therapy or even in the podcast in the most heavy way, you know, that is permeated by this pandemic fear. And I said one day, I'm talking about the importance of celebrating even at times like this, about the importance of self-care and about taking care of others and well-being and joy in the midst of tragedy. You know, and I did think about myself. It was, there was a very personal connection as a child of two parents who were Holocaust survivors and spent years in concentration camps in Germany. I had heard a lot about lockdown and not two months or 15 months of lockdown, but years. And I remember my mother always saying to me, honey, there is laughter in hell. You don't survive otherwise, on occasion you have got to be able to look at the absurdity and the tragedy of your life and just, you know, become develop power over it and mastery over it through humor, through play. And it stayed with me. And so one day I just said, I want to create a game. I don't just want to talk about the experience of playfulness and remaining curious, you know, I want people to have the I felt that during the pandemic we lost touch with the erotic. The erotic is serendipity, spontaneity, improvisation, curiosity, everything that you go outside to discover, you had to suddenly be much more shielded from. And I thought, if I can create a game on the inside that people can play together, I really will create an antidote to the seriousness and the heaviness of the moment. It came out that at this moment there was the perfect timing that it became connected to the social re-entry and to the anxiety of the re-entry. And so the connecting and the reconnecting is even more timely. I wanted it to be a game of stories because like my podcast, Where Should We Begin, I believe that stories are the way we make sense of our lives. Stories are bridges to how we connect with people. And so it's not just conversation starters and it's not just, you know, icebreakers. It's really storytelling that can be done between strangers on a first date, between co-workers or between best friends, basically. And it has, let me explain it to you actually, three components, three parts. So it has, The play cards, which are really fun to hold in hand, the play cards. And play cards really have a whole variety, you know. A text message I fantasize receiving, the best prank I've ever pulled off. It is hard for me to say no to. I'm surprised I'm still alive after. An important object I have lost. In my family, my role is the most unexpected compliment I've ever received. A friendship I need to end. I mean, I just took the first 10 that I had.

Wow, that's incredible. So it's a way for people to get intimate with each other and talk about things that they don't normally talk about and build deeper relationships with each other.

You know, I had a dear friend this week. We were playing together and, you know, there is prompt cards. So these blue cards are the prompt cards and they share something that's changed your world view from your teenage point of view, that you would never tell your mother, that is taboo, that you would never tell your co-workers. And so she gets a card and it says, Share something cringe-worthy. And the next thing she receives is, so all the people, the players submit a story card to the storyteller. and the Storyteller gets to choose between the cards that were submitted, including one that they choose themselves. And on occasion, peer pressure is done with those little tokens in which I put a token on your card because I wanted her to tell the card, a person I unintentionally hurt. That is cringe-worthy. See, you combine the story.

Yeah, yeah.

And she proceeds to tell us about this dear friend. And basically she introduced that person to another friend and just said, this friend is very rich, very fat and very kind, and sends it to the person in question. And you know, everybody's going, Cringe-worthy.

By accident, send it to him.

By accident.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

You know. It's multiple variations. It's a multitude because you never get the same prompt cards with the stories. The prompt cards give you the lens, the vantage point to which to tell the story. And the stories are just mind-blowing, mind-blowing stories that I've been hearing, I've been playing non-stop people I've never met and people that I knew very well. And during the pandemic, it was all virtual, so I couldn't hold the cards. Everything was on a screen. Wow. That is the big transition is to finally actually have it as an object in your hands.

So can you actually play this online as well as in person?

Well, that's what you and I are going to try to do right now. Okay. All right.

Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it.

So, you know, for example, let's say that I give you the prompt card. Share something that you've never told anyone.

Okay.

And I would put in front of you different story cards, right? One that you would pick. So this is different from the way we play normally. You can play it in the committed version with all the rules, and you can play it in the casual version where you just make up your own rules. Because the stories are the stories. Yeah. So a rule that you secretly love to break.

A rule that I secretly love to break?

Or my most irrational fear? Or I can't believe I got away with?

You want me to answer all three or just one?

No, you pick one of them. Share something you've never told anyone. A rule I secretly love to break. My most irrational fear. I can't believe I got away with.

Gosh, so many things in there. I get to pick one. What did I secretly get away with? What is my most irrational fear?

Or something that you can't believe you got away with? You've done so many mischievous things, my dear.

What have I, can't believe I got away with?

No, you don't have to pick that one. You pick which one you want.

I think, My most irrational fear might be like a fear of sharks. I'm like, I definitely get freaked out in the ocean. I control it, but I'm always spinning in my head about being attacked by a shark. Particularly when I was in Hawaii all winter and there were like three or four shark attacks. And I was like, you know, just, feeling. And maybe it's not irrational, but it definitely, it's probably not the likelihood of getting bitten by a shark is pretty low. So, I think I kind of over reacted.

What's the image? What's the gory image? What's the image?

The image is like, you know, shark coming and biting my leg off and just being bleeding all over. Just like all the images I've seen of shark attacks in oceans. I think it was because of jaws. When I was like 13, I saw jaws and it just ruined me for life.

Right, right, right, right, right.

So that's a big one.

But it doesn't stop you.

It doesn't stop me, but it doesn't stop me. But I definitely feel anxious and stressed. And what did I not get, what did I get away with that I don't can't believe I got away with?

I do the things I do that I love so much.

Yeah. Like, I can't. I can't believe I actually get paid for doing what I do and. And, like, actually, you know, get to have this blessed life that I did. I mean, I just. It's like, how do I get away with being so blessed? It's like, you know, I I kind of try to receive it, but I'm like, wow. Like, I I feel so blessed to have. Because I see people struggle with finding the meaning of life and being physically healthy and having meaningful. you know, relationships with their community and having, you know, just goodness in their life. And I, I just, like, can't believe I get all the magic that I get. Like, I just, I'm like, so it's, I think it's, you know, someone said it's a reflection of how much you give in the world, but I don't know. I just, I always feel like over a bunch.

I was just gonna say the same thing. I was gonna say the same thing. I mean, you are, you fundamentally a life lover.

Yeah.

You know, and you love to live life at its fullest and you give in that way, but you don't feel that you're giving because you feel that you receive while you give. Yeah. That's true. Which, by the way, are two very, very important verbs that I work with in my work with couples a lot.

Give and receive.

Yes. Well, seven key verbs. You know, since I speak many languages, what you were saying before, I have always really enjoyed looking at love as a vocabulary and a language. And what are the key verbs that you need to be able to conjugate so that you can start to speak that language? In every language, there are a few basic verbs that become the structure of the language. So in relationships, it is to ask. How do you feel about asking? Can you ask? do you feel comfortable asking? Do you feel deserving of asking and therefore deserving of receiving because you ask? Yeah. Do you never ask because you don't want to owe? Do you never ask because you don't know what you need? I mean, the whole exploration of the verb to ask. Do you enjoy giving? Do you find that you give in order to acquit yourself of a debt? Do you feel that you give in order to then be able to ask, you know, do you feel enriched by the giving? Do you feel depleted by it? calculate how much you give. What is your experience of giving? Do you feel that you were given to? What is your experience around receiving? And you can use these verbs in the relational sense or even in the sexual sense, right? In my work around sexuality, I use the same verbs. How do you feel about receiving? Does it feel good? Does it feel deserving? Does it feel too passive, too weak, too at the mercy of, too dependent, too something? or does it actually really, you know, feel like filling you up, Etc. So to ask, to give, to receive, to take, you know, like little children. It's mine. It's mine. Yeah.

That doesn't seem like a good one.

No, to take it. So if it's also a way of saying I, you know, I don't need to just never eat because I feel like other people are more hungry. I can take a piece. It's fine. There is for everybody. I don't stand out. I don't. I'm not greedy. I'm not too much. Taking is a very important verb. And certainly sexually taking is an important verb as well. To share, to imagine, to play, to want, and to refuse. Because if you can't say no, you don't really have a good experience of knowing how to say yes. And so these verbs really kind of out there neutral, they're rich, they're deep, everybody can interpret them in their own way. They're a fantastic set of conversations. They're all included in the cards, but not like this, but they are part of the questions that and the stories that are involved in the card game.

It's so beautiful. And I think, you know, the ability for us to be present, to listen, to drop in has been so usurp by our crazy modern lives and technology. And I think that's the beauty of COVID for me personally was to sort of witness how much I was in a fast forward way of living that wasn't allowing me to drop into the present in myself, in relationships, even in my work in the way that I wanted to. And so, you know, having this game, which is just so fun and easy and interesting. It sort of.

Let me read you a few other questions.

Yeah, it takes us out of all that busy doing crazy stuff and drops us into relational work.

I mean, I've sat in groups, Mark, you know, of six to eight people where one round literally took two hours. I mean, it's just gripping stories. and often people don't even know what they're going to tell. They start like you, yeah, I don't know, nothing, that's difficult. And then suddenly the story presents itself. You know, a game is a container. Playing is the creation of a space in which people get permission to explore, to be curious, to ask questions, to open up, to divulge under the guise of the game. And so it's a fantastic container. For creativity, for imagination, for surprise. And the storytelling is the oldest thing people do when they come together. They tell stories.

So true.

One guy last week, he got a card, Gutsy, was the prompt. And then he got the question, Gutsy. And then the prompt was something I need to work harder. Now that was the story card. So basically you get everybody to submit your story card. and you get to choose one of them unless people put tokens in which they begin to put peer pressure. And so he picked the one that said, I have to work harder at. And the next thing he starts to tell us is about how he's always been a conflict avoidant and he always, you know, makes everything look like it's fine, everything is fine. And then what that led him to, and it was just like we had never met this person. we were a few people who had never met this person. And I'm telling you, don't bother asking, what do you do? The guy runs a mega company of, you know, this and that and the other. It's irrelevant. This gave you an entry into this person's story, their life.

Yeah.

There's. And it was like, wow. And that's the effect that you really want. You leave and you remember exactly what people told you?

I think that's such a key point, Esther, because I think most people are not really great at inquiry and curiosity and asking questions and relationships. And when I find, when I meet someone, if I just start to ask them questions and I start to ask their story and pull it out of them, people are just so happy to share and they never get asked. And it's such a powerful tool for building connection, relationship, intimacy, and it's what your cards do, which is what I love.

Especially now, you know, people come to work and somebody says, so how was the pandemic for you? Excuse me. And, you know, do I want to answer? I want to say something, but at what level? What can I say? How interested are you really? So to create these questions that are basically containers, they have, they provide a frame. so that you can then improvise and be spontaneous. So you get just the right amount of both. You get rules and then you get everything. Once you follow the rules, you get this whole expansive space where you can ask loads of questions that are relevant in this moment. One of the things that is keeping me up at night.

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting, as you know, what I found in my relationships is like when I take the time when we drop in and really get to the deeper layers of conversation of what's underneath in our stories and sharing, it's really powerful. And I didn't do these cards, but I did another set with my wife, and it was just such a beautiful way for us to learn about each other, to understand what moves us and motivates us and what lifts us up, what scares us, what inspires us. And I think, you know, we don't really have many of those opportunities in life. And it's just such a beautiful, it's.

Like such a beautiful invitation that you've created. So we have the safe version for work so that you can take out all the cards that have a pink triangle, which are the ones that are for the date and for the sex.

Oh, okay, all right.

Yes, you can so that it has its multiple settings where you can play and what are the questions that are suitable here and maybe not suitable there. So it's done for you, so you don't have to constantly worry and fret. Can I ask this. Is this too personal? Is this okay? You get the permission because you've picked the colors that you're gonna be playing with. But yes, curiosity, active listening, asking for more. My favorite question in therapy, but also in the game is tell me more.

Tell me more. That's the joke of the therapist though. It's like, tell me more. What do you think about that? Tell me more.

And then there always is more.

Yeah, there always is more.

There's always is more.

Yeah, there's always more. Yeah. So, you know, in sort of conclusion, what are the things that you've learned after decades of working with couples and relationships that are sort of nuggets of wisdom that you would lead people with about that could help them with relationships that they may be struggling with? You know, what are the things that people should anchor to. And of course, there's your book, Meeting in Captivity and the State of Affairs and your podcast and all that, which is great. People should dive into that in your TED Talks. But I wonder if you could kind of distill down what you've really learned.

The first thing I would say, and I think I have really, really learned it from the millions of people that listen to Where Should We Begin? is that you're not alone. these days, on the one hand, we have unprecedented expectations of our couples lives, but at the same time, we are also in a machine of fake news on social media. So people curate and posture and filter and you kind of don't know where is the truth. You know, when people lived in the village, you heard the fights of the neighbors and you heard the frolics of the neighbors. Now your best friends can come and tell you that they're breaking up. And you never saw it coming.

Yeah, right.

Nobody tells you the truth about what goes on in the couple's relationships. And yet, and then you're left thinking, these are... Everybody's great, right? They're doing great. And we are alone with our problems. And so I think really, where should we begin? Showed me that when you listen deeply to the stories of others, you see yourself in front of your own mirror, and you don't feel as alone, and you get the tools for the conversations that you want to have. that's the first thing I really realized that this is a unit that doesn't talk. Friends talk to friends, couples often talk to nobody about what's really going on. They may be struggling with infidelity, they may be struggling with infertility, they may be struggling with bipolarity and mental health issues, they may be struggling with unresolved grief, they may be struggling with economic hardships, with unemployment, with and they won't talk about it to anybody because they have to present themselves a certain way. And it breaks my heart sometimes to see how alone people are with some of these major, major challenges. So that's the first thing I've really learned is to make sure that that's part of the game too, is to give people a tool to make hard conversations less difficult. the second thing that I have really learned is this couple that I was describing where I thought, oh, my God, this is, you know, they really came in to say, we need you to tell us, are we broken? Are we beyond repair? And, and I thought, at the end of the session, I thought, I don't know where this is going. And I have been so many times surprised by people where I There's not much left here. And then when you change one thing, like this woman, she stopped trying to change him and she went ahead and took responsibility for her contribution and she changed a few things about her own behavior. And it just unleashed a cascade of changes for the better. And that is a real important piece. Sometimes it looks like everything is over, interconnected and it's like impossible heap of nuisance. And yet if you make one shift, it has the power because systems are interdependent parts to activate everything else. That's the second thing that is very important. The third thing is that there is a big difference between what you feel inside and how what you experience inside affects the people around you. You may be depressed and feel weak and hopeless and helpless and anhedonic. But when you are in relationships with those who love you, you often wield all the power.

Yeah.

Because you activate everybody around you to try to make you feel better, to give you advice, to try to lift you up, and in the end they feel defeated and deflated like you. So power doesn't always come from the top down. Power often comes from the bottom up.

Yeah.

Places that are not nearly that obvious. I think we really don't understand enough the complex interplay of power dynamics in relationships. If you want to change the other, change yourself. And maybe the last thing I would say is beyond most issues that people argue about, there generally are three themes. Control and power, care and closeness, and respect and recognition. Whose priorities matter? Who has the power here? Can I trust you? Do you have my back?

Yeah.

And do you value me?

Yeah, those are huge.

These are the three major themes that many, many couples basically struggle about. But it comes in the forms of talks about sex and money and family.

And.

But that's not the issue. It's not the issue. It's the emotional crucible in which those issues play off.

Yeah, so it's the story under the story. this is essentially what you're talking about. Yeah.

What is really going on here that I don't see that is not being said? What are they really fighting about? Like the couple where she fights about being alone and he fights about being inadequate. That's, you know, caring closeness and power and control.

Yeah. Incredible. Well, Esther, your work is so important and. And it's just such a beautiful light on a very challenging topic for so many people, which is relationships, whether it's work relationships or love relationships. And I encourage you to check out your work. You know, everybody should go check out your books, Mating, Captivity, State of Affairs, your podcast, where should we begin and how's work? And of course, your game, where should we begin? Right? Is that the name of it?

No, what, where should we begin? A game of stories.

Yes. Give me, yeah, where should we get a story? So, I don't even go to esterperel.com, E-S-T-E-R-P-E-R-E-L.com, and it's all up there. And, thank you so much for everything you do and inspiring so many and helping people navigate a very tough landscape, which is much harder than disease, honestly. I think you do as much harder than what I do.

To interconnect, Amr, relational health and physical health, I mean, we didn't even to touch on that, how much these two are related, you know, stress at home, domestic violence, the pressures of caretaking go directly into your body. Yeah, that's a whole other subject, but we are closer sometimes.

Well, the interesting thing about that, just to finish, is that women tend to live longer when they're alone, and men tend to live longer when they're in marriages and relationships. So I don't know what that says about dynamics of relationship that maybe don't serve women as well as men sometimes.

That's an old set of research, you know, that the quality of life of a woman, emotionally speaking, is often diminished when she's in a marriage and the quality of health of a man in a relationship is increased. And that has to do with the dynamics of power and caregiving and responsibility or what we call emotional labor.

For sure.

So much more things we could talk about. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being on the Doctor's Pharmacy. If you've all been listening, if you've all been listening to this and you loved it, please share with your friends and family. If you've struggled with the relationship and found ways of making it work, let us know. We'd love to hear. Who knows? Maybe we'll all learn something.

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