Esther Perel's SECRET FORMULA for Desire in Long-Term Relationships (Never CHEAT Again!)

What makes thriving relationships is not only feelings, it's a mix of feelings, actions, beliefs, touches.

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What are the core reasons or the core things you see over and over that either end or make a relationship challenging to be in the longer you're in? What are the challenges that come up over and over that you see?

So there's always three questions, right? What's a driving relationship?

A thriving one.

Yeah. What can go wrong and how do you fix it? Okay, so you started with the middle question.

What goes wrong?

I think there's a number of things in a relationship that become the kind of cornerstones of the demise. Okay? And I'm not going to list them in order, but they all are part of each other. Indifference and contempt and neglect and violence are probably the four most important.

Okay?

I'm not talking about big violence. Microaggressions are plenty. Indifference, when you start to feel like the other person fundamentally is not really caring about you anymore, or you don't care about them, what they feel, what they think, who they are, what they're about.

They just don't care. You've lost interest.

But it's more than losing of interest. It's also when you are doing different, you degrade the other person. They're less important to you. They don't matter. And ultimately, what we feel in relationships is that we matter. That is the essential reason for connecting to people, is that we are creatures of meaning. I matter to you. I'm someone. You care about me, you want my well being, you're proud of me, you want good for me, you're benevolent, all of that. When you are indifferent, the whole thing goes. And then you start to that coldness that creeps in, that sense of estrangement, that complete disconnect that. The second one is neglect. Neglect. When people just basically take each other for granted. You know, they take more care of their car than of their partner, their dog or their dog, anybody, anything, their yard, anything, anything. Gets attendance, their business, their business for sure. Their business for sure. You know, everything gets priority. Everything gets reviewed, evaluated, attended to 360s, you name it. You know, new input. My God, it's like people have this idea that they put it all in when they were dating. And then once they seal the knot, it's like as if they tied the knot. It's like now they don't have to do squat anymore. And they go into this kind of complete sense of complacency and laziness. It's an amazing thing. They think this thing is just gonna live on its own like a cactus. Violence, violence, the abuse, the level of disrespect. I mean, most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship degrades. Because you can't get away with it. Because you can't get away with it. Because if you talk like this at work, you're Gone. Because if you talk like this with the police, you're gone. Because if you talk like this on the street, you're being punched. But with your partner, you have that sense that they're gonna be there anyway. They're just gonna take it because it's family. And family is this kind of. This thing that doesn't dissolve so easily, so you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone and a dismissal. That is phenomenal. So that kind of violence. I'm not talking physical violence and all the other big, big things.

You're talking about aggression or resentment or all of that. All of that, you know, passive aggressiveness. All those things.

Yeah, all of that. And then contempt, I think, is the top one. Contempt is the killer of them all. Because in. In the contempt, there is a real. There's the degradation of the race. It's that. That complete this. You're nothing. You're nothing. I can kill you with that one gaze, that one eyebrow that goes up that, you know, who do you think you are? What are. And that's it. You're done. You're done.

So how do we even get to.

This place of these places after having.

Been so in love and so romantic? Right?

Is desire reflect that?

Or if we're not desiring the person anymore, then we start to feel one of those categories? Or does that not play into.

Look, the truth is this. There's only two relationships that resemble each other. The one you have with your parents or the people who raise you, and the one you have with the people you fall in love with. People can sit in my office all the time and say, I have this with no one else. I don't have this with anybody at work. Nobody among my friends ever thinks like that. You're the only one who speaks like this or thinks this about me or with whom I do this. No, the only one. And now we go back in history, and I'm sorry to be the psychologist, but that's really. It is the place where we often learned about closeness, trust, loyalty, commitment, sharing, taking, receiving, asking, all these essential verbs of relationships. We learned that at home.

We also learned jealousy and all.

Possessiveness, vengeance, you name them. The beauty and the not beauty.

Yeah.

We saw it all as children, right? We saw the fights, we saw the love.

We saw the.

We saw the coldness, the lack of intimacy.

The intimacy, yes.

And we bring that with us. And we often promise ourselves, I'll never be this one. I'll never be this way. I'll never talk like this. I'LL you know. And we find ourselves often much closer to the apple.

And then resenting ourselves to the tree, we resent ourselves.

We're like, how did we do that?

Well, why did we get to this place?

And then we feel ashamed about it. And since we don't like to feel ashamed about it, we hide it. And one of the way we hide it is we blame the partner. That's just one of the ways. There's a lot we are very resourceful in not owning our own.

Right. Exactly.

Exactly.

Wow. Okay.

And where does sex play into all this and desire?

One of the fascinating things for me in looking at sexuality is that it's probably one of the dimensions of relationship that has changed the most in a very, very short amount of time. For most of history and in still the majority of the world, sex is for procreation. Sex is a marital duty on the part of the woman. Nobody cares, particularly if she likes it and how she feels and if she wants it. And men have the privilege to go and find sex elsewhere in a very short amount of time. We're talking 60 years. We have contraception, which is the liberation of women for the first time, to free sex from reproduction, from mortality, from death, in pregnancy and in childbirth. Sorry. All of that. And for the first time, sexuality moves from just biology and a condition to a part of our identity and a lifestyle.

In 60 years.

In 60 years. The women's movement, which goes after the abuses of power. The gay movement, which introduces the concept of identity to sexuality. The fact that sex is for connection and pleasure. The fact that for the first time we have sex before marriage and many times a lot, we used to marry and have sex for the first time. Now we marry and we stop having sex with others. Okay. Monogamy used to be one person for life. Now monogamy is one person at a time. And people go around telling you, I'm monogamous in all my relationships, and it makes perfect sense to them. Okay, all of that in a very short amount of time. The fact that I choose you to marry or to live together doesn't matter. Commitment, because I'm attracted to you, because you give me butterflies in my stomach. And the fact that I think that if I don't have these butterflies anymore, maybe I don't love you anymore. And the fact that sexuality in long term relationships is rooted in one thing only. Desire. I feel like it. I want to not. I have to not. We want many kids. After two kids, the only reason to continue doing it with you is because we feel like it?

Right.

It's fun, it's pleasurable, we connect, it feels good, it rounds up, deepens our relationship, the whole thing.

That's it.

And hopefully it's at the same time and for each other. Because plenty of desire continues. But it's not always at home.

Right?

Exactly.

So this is an amazing revolution.

Sex that is confusing all of us.

And how do we sustain it? So that's why I became fascinated in the nature of erotic desire. And how do we sustain desire? Because it is the first time ever that we have a grand experiment of the humankind where we want sex with one person in the long haul that is fun and connected and intimate and playful. And we live twice as long. Go figure.

Right? Exactly. For 60 years you're going to be with them or whatever it is.

It's an amazing ideal.

So how do we navigate this? If we're going to choose one partner.

And be with them until we're both gone? How do we navigate the challenge of keeping the desire continuously?

I think the first men and women.

Because the woman probably sees other men who are attracted to her and vice versa. So it's like how do both parties do this?

Look, we know that women get bored with monogamy much sooner than men.

Wow.

Is this a fact or is this fact?

That's research. That's not just fact. That is man's desire in long term relationship goes down gradually. He actually is much more able to remain interested and maybe just because he's interested in the experience itself and he has a partner there. Women's desire post marriage really.

Wow.

And it's always been translated as. Well, that's because women care less about sex rather than. It's because women care less about the sex that they can have in their committed relationships, which is often not interesting enough for them. And it often has to do with the fact that the story, the character, the plot is not. It's not seductive. The romance, which is an essential ingredient of turn on for the woman often disappears in the long term relationship. It's like people look at each other at the end of the day and you want to fool around. You want to do it. You're up for it tonight. Now this is really not very much of a turn on for most women. And the idea that foreplay often starts at the end of the previous orgasm, you know, and not five minutes before the real thing.

Right.

Which for her is not the real thing. The whole. The real thing is everything else.

So it's essentially the game. Yes, it's creating a game.

Seduction It's a plot, it's a coming close. It's a team. It's what animals call pacing. It's that I come to you, but I don't overwhelm you. I come just a little bit so that you can come a little bit toward me. And then I don't immediately answer. I actually go back a little bit too. Have you ever seen animals? They do this kind of pacing, and it is an essential playful ingredient of seduction and excitement. So women's desire plummets. But we interpret it as women are less interested in sexual rather than women are interested in probably just about the same kind of things that many men are. But women have always known what to choose above, what turns them on, which was what gives them stability and security.

Safety.

Security.

Family, Someone to protect. Be there. Right.

So we want one partner today to give us everything that involves stability and security and everything that involves playfulness and mystery. Okay. That's the grand ideal. Okay. I want to be cozy with you, and I want to have an edge, and I want you to surprise me and I want you to be familiar, and I want you to give me continuity and I want you to give me novelty.

That's it.

As if it's a right. And no Victoria's Secret is going to solve that. Yeah, Right. So then there becomes what is desire? Desire is to own the wanting. If you ask people a question that goes like this, I turn myself off when I turn myself off by not. You turn me off when. And what turns me off is you're going to hear, I turn myself off when I do emails, when I spend too much time on the phone, when I overeat, when I don't exercise, when I have bad days at work, when I don't feel confident, when I numb myself, when I feel dead, when I don't feel thriving, when I'm not alive. You will really hear that it has very little to do with sex. And when you ask people, I turn myself on when or by I awaken my desires, not you turn me on when. And what turns me on is. Which is. That is you're responsible for my wanting. What people will talk to you about is when I'm in nature, when I'm connected with my friends, when I get to do my sports, when I play music, when I listen to music, it's stuff that gives me pleasure, that is alive, that is vibrant, that is vital, that is erotic in the full sense of the word as life force. And from that place, people remain interested in having sex with somebody else for the Long haul. Not because they've scratched their arms for two seconds. It's I feel good about myself. The biggest turn on is confidence, right? Confidence. You ask people, when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner? Every description has to do with when they're in their element, when they're on stage, when they're with, when, when, when they're doing their sport, when they. When they are radiant, when they are in their studio, on the piano, on the horse, you name it. It's when they are in their element, that is, they don't need me to take care of them.

They're not depressed and down and lonely and sad.

They're not needy, they don't need me. Because desire is about wanting you. Love is also about needing you. Caretaking is a very powerful experience in love and it is a very powerful anti aphrodisiac.

So how do you experience love and desire at the same time?

You calibrate it.

So sometimes you're.

It's the same as when you walk. You have to move from one foot to the other. A balance is not about staying on one side. A balance is the ability to see. Right now we don't need caretaking. We can be mischievous, we can be naughty, we can be playful, we can break our own rules. We can stay home and not go to work at 8 o', clock, right? And now we are in a playful zone. Now we are feeling that we are bringing our own little transgressions home. We are alive. We're not just being dutiful, responsible, good citizens, right? It's that it's very small. You know, I always think when I go and I see people at lunch and you see them talking and they're well dressed and they're awake and all I see who is here with their partner because you can see them, they're engaged, they're giving the best of themselves. That's erotic. No, the majority are not there with their partner. They're there with their friends, with their colleagues. Their partner is going to get the leftover when they come home at night. Sorry, you know what? Forget the night date. Meet at lunch, when you actually have energy. You know, when you. And. And in the middle of the day like that, when you're awake, when you have something to offer, it's a very small thing. But they don't do it. They don't do it. And you say, why not? Why not? Why don't you stay an hour extra at home in the morning? And not just because when you have a headache and just say this matters to me. All in all, you know, committed sex is premeditated sex. It's not just gonna happen because whatever is gonna just happen already has. So you're gonna make it happen because you say we matter, we're important. Let's do this. Doesn't mean if you're gonna make love or have sex. It just means we're gonna take this hour and there's nothing else that matters in this moment but just you and I to be together, to check in, and then we'll see what unfolds. That's the erotic space in which sex may happen. Probably will, doesn't have to, but it is the place from which it is much more likely to emerge. But people don't do that. They do the responsibility. That's the love. Right? The citizen, the commitment, the caretaker, the burdens, the safe. And then they say, I'm bored. I would be, too.

Exactly.

There's no mystery.

There's no risk taking.

Right?

Exactly.

Yeah. There's no risk taking. That's the word. If you want desire, it's risk. And the risk is an emotional risk. It's not about sexy risks. It's really a risk on the emotional front is that I bring something else to you differently from the way I typically present myself. What can I do today that will be different from the ways that I've done it until now? How can I do something that I think would actually improve our relationship? Me. Right. Not something that I want or that you want, but that I think would be actually good for us, that third entity, the us. Right. And you check every time. You know, how often do you just go on the tried and trodden? As in, you know, it works. Sex that just works for most people is really not interesting enough.

Right. So.

Because what does it mean? It works generally.

Right. What about the people listening are saying, man, that sounds like a lot of work? That every day you have to change, do something different and unique and be.

Not every day, but what you can do every day is just a quick check with yourself. You know, is there something that I should notice? Is there something that I can be thankful for? Is there a little note that I could write? Is there, you know, just a way that I can show up? It's small. It's really small. Here's the thing. There is work and then there is the creative work. You know, I'm talking about a level that is creative and that elevates you and that actually gives you. You feel taller. You just feel like you're engaged, you feel awake. Rather than this, this is the other seated position. It's comfortable, it's great. But nothing happens here. Sure, here's the essential word, is curiosity. When you curious, you lean forward and you watch. You're open to the mysteries of life. This is please don't bother me with anything because I don't want any stimulation. I've had my share and this is the position that most people have at home. So when people say it's too much work, I basically say, look, if I was to say this, in your business, would you say this is too much work or you would say, that's very good advice. This is high rate consulting fees. It's like, excuse me, but you don't think for a minute that your business would thrive if you let it languish like that. Never. You have a reward system. You have incentives, bonuses, you have bonuses. But there is no incentivized system in the private domain. So people just think, why bother, right?

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Quince.com Lewis and that's the difference is that the ones who have good relationships are the ones who created their own internal incentivized system.

What are some of those incentive systems that you've seen over time that really work or affect for long term relationships?

I would say the first thing is almost one of the first things that our parents teach you. Please and thank you. Do you know how many people stop thanking their partners? Thank you. Thank you for doing this for me. Thank you for picking up the shirts.

Thank you for, you know, making you feel appreciated.

Yes. Appreciation. Appreciation is huge. Gratitude, acknowledgment of the presence of the other in your life. Not did you do this? Did you call? Did you pick up do this?

Expectations.

Expectations. Of course. You know expectations is often a resentment in the make thank person. First of all and because it also makes it feel like this is not a given Nobody owes you squat. You're not owed anything. You're not that important. You're actually quite replaceable. And with the divorce rate that we.

Have, what's the rate at right now?

It's about 50 on first and 65 on second.

65 on second. Wow.

It's not good, right? It's really, you know, it costs a lot of money. It's not good for the health, you know, it's not good for the jobs.

Okay.

Now, you could say, maybe people should marry, but it doesn't matter if it's marriage legally or. The idea is that we can do better. We can do better in general, I really think that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships. I mean, nobody's going to write you worked 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week. And, you know, no, they're going to say, he was there for people when they needed to. He was there at every game, he was there at the party. He's the guy who, when you were in his presence, he had charisma. Not because he could stand in front of a huge crowd, but he had charisma because when I was in his presence, he made me feel special. It's a different charisma. So appreciation, gratitude, thank you. Little things to go out of your way rather than just to do the minimum. A lot of people start to do the bare minimum just so that they can't be scolded.

Right.

Go an extra thing on occasion. Just do something for the other person just because it matters to them. Even if you couldn't care less.

Right.

Rather than. I don't. It's not important to me. I don't. I don't need this or I don't care about this. Give each other a lot of individual space. Not everything needs to be shared. People have different passions, different interests, different friends, and they need those separate spaces to exist. Admiration, I think, is huge because admiration is also that you kind of really see the otherness of the other person. Don't try to make your partner into one person for everything. There is no such a person. Find multiple sources of connection, of intimacy, of friendship, so that you can have a group of people support you and don't have one person who has to be there for you for everything, especially when you're in the dumpster.

We used to have a village of people to do that, and now we just expect one person to be the village, right?

Yes, yes, yes. One person for the whole village. And then we're upset when they don't fulfill the mandate. I Mean, that's the more important, like I can't talk to you, you're not supportive of me, you're not excited for me. Excuse me. Find other people, right?

You know, I can't be everything for you. Yeah, no.

In this next section, Esther shares what most people misunderstand and what they get wrong about relationships.

You know, relationships seem to be some.

Of the hardest things for people to figure out.

I have my friend Matthew Hussey, who helps women find men. And every girl that seems to be.

That I know is always like, louis.

Can you help me find a good man? It seems like women are just trying to find the right partner, find great relationship partners.

And then when you're in a relationship, it seems to be like people are.

Always struggling in relationship relationships, whether it be intimate or work related relationships, business partnerships. Why are relationships seemingly so hard for so many people when it's the thing we need the most to feel alive, to feel happy and feel connected?

This is the million dollar question. You know, I'm a relationship therapist.

For 35 plus years I work with people in their romantic relationships, family relationships, friendships, co founder, colleagues, co workers. So love and work, the two pillars of our life, as Freud said. And if I could just say, why is the simple feeling of loving or caring not enough? Because the entire human drama is really complex. The same way as nature is complex, so is human nature complex. And I spent my whole career studying what is changing in relationships. Are they more complicated today? Are they more painful today? You know, have our expectations changed? And that I have answers to. I don't have answers to why is it so, you know, but I do.

Is it more complicated now, relationships 50 or 100 years ago?

Yes, absolutely.

Why is that?

Why?

For a very simple reason. For a long time we live, and we still, in many parts of the world, live in traditional societies where relationships are clearly codified. There are clear rules, there are obligations, there's a tight structure from which you can't get out. But it tells you clearly who you are, where you belong, where you're rooted and what's expected of you. And you don't have too much questions about whose career matters more and who's going to wake up to feed the baby and who has a right to demand for sex. And everybody, every husband knows exactly what they can ask from their wife, and the wife knows exactly what she should not tell her husband. And children know their place and adults can interact. All of this was super regulated. You know exactly that on Sunday you go to visit your family and that you have to call your grandma and that, and nobody.

And you go to church or you.

Go to any other religious institution where you go to pray, to be with the community, et cetera. And you know what? Nobody needed to explain to you why it's important. You just went because I said so and because that's what you do. That's what we do, and that's what we don't do. Because what will the neighbors say? And there is a community that looks over you all the time. And the streets are narrow like that. And everybody knows what's going on in the neighbor's house right now. Your best friends could be breaking up, and you didn't even see it coming. Nobody knows what goes on in the neighbor's house. That's where should we begin? Became, I think, so powerful. It gave you back a sense of what actually goes on in other people's lives so that you're not alone wondering, am I the only one who's going through all of this? This tight structure of our society has moved into what we call today network societies. Network work societies is not tight knots. It's loose ends. It's loose threats with commitment that can be revoked at any moment. That's why your women are constantly writing to you. I thought we had something, and the.

Next day he disappears.

I thought we had to develop the sense of trust, you know, where is the care? Where is the loyalty? Where is the continuity? All these things that now are not just set, fixed, they all have to be negotiated. Everything that was a rule is now a negotiation, a conversation. Who's going to go to work? Are we going to move you to the west coast? Or are you going to move with me to the East Coast? Are we going to have children? Are we ready to have children? How many children? Do we even want children? You know, on and on and on. Am I happy at work? Oh, I could do better. Should I stay a few more months?

Should I leave?

Should I, you know, is this what I really want to do? Is this who I really am? Is this my passion? This identity quest the whole time? Is this who I want to be? And all of these questions are rather new questions. Why? Because in the past or in other parts of the world today, you kind of know who you are.

Seriously.

You're the son of somebody. It starts with that, Ben, you know, and you probably will even do what your father has done if you are a man, and maybe not too much of any of the outside the house, if you are a woman. Or you may begin a charting course of Working outside the house. And all of these things are very, very normative.

And now it's different.

We don't have any of that at this moment. We basically, I call it the identity economy. We spend our time trying to figure out who am I. We have an enormous industry of self help with this belief that we are self made, that we can have selfies, that we do self care. It's this self, self, self that is so focused, such the center of everything and so fragile. The frequent self has never been more fragile. We are constantly making sure that it doesn't get overwhelmed, that it doesn't get triggered, that it doesn't get violated, that it doesn't get shattered because it stands there alone like the little Dutchman with his face trying to hold back the dike, you know, and that is the times I think we are in at this moment. And there, that's the waters I think you swim in.

Sure. Well, I think that's where suffering, inner.

Suffering comes from on the surface is when you obsessively think about yourself, trying.

To improve yourself and feeling not good enough.

Right.

I think it's the combination comparing. Now, I don't know that people didn't compare themselves when they all went to and stood on the steps of the church on a Sunday morning. I think communities, people have always compared themselves. But there was much, there was a different type of social control, the one that we have on social media today. Social control has always existed. So suffering is part of life, community. And not being alone is what helps us with all our experiences. Definitely with suffering. I look at the disappointments of relationships and the struggles that we have. Why are they so challenging? What is the challenge? What can you do about it? When is it you who can do something? And when do you have to realize the limitations that what you will do will not change another necessarily when it does and when it doesn't. And how does this manifest at work and at home? You asked me how relationships have changed. I think we've never had more expectations of love and work than we do today. I think we expect today from love and work many things that we expected before, from religion and from community. We want our relationships to be transformative, transcendent, meaningful, spiritual, purposeful, erotic, passionate. And we want it at home and we want it at work.

How do we get it at work too?

Oh, because we want work to be purposeful today. We want work to, you know, to give me a sense of identity, of meaning, of self fulfillment, of development. I don't just want to go to work Only for the paycheck. I need the paycheck. But I also want the paycheck to be meaningful to me. Work has become an identity economy. It's not just what am I going to do? It's who am I going to be? And it parallels. It parallels, you know, what do we talk about at work? Transparency, belonging, authenticity, trust, psychological safety. I mean, when did the entire emotional vocabulary enter the workplace to such a degree that soft skills, what they used to be called, which are emotional and social skills, relational skills, which used to be seen as feminine skills and feminine skills, you can idealize them in principle but disregard them in reality. And these soft skills have very quickly become the new hard skills. And that's why I'm working in the workplace. It's not because I have changed and I suddenly am interested in work. It's because work has changed and is suddenly interested in what I have been doing for decades.

In this next section, it might be a sensitive topic for some of you because Esther reveals why someone might cheat on their partner even when they seem happy in the relationship.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned from researching and doing this work on this topic in the last few years? Biggest thing you've learned about yourself or about humanity in general?

Yeah. There are two themes, I think, that stand out, Actually, three things, probably, that stand out. One, I, too, for a long time, thought affairs only happen in troubled relationships. If you have everything you want, there should be no need to go looking elsewhere. Then I began to hear more and more people come into my office and say, I love my partner. I'm having an affair. You know, in the same way that when I wrote Mating in Captivity, people would say, I love my partner. We have no sex. And I was like, you know, I thought, if you love, you desire. And now I thought, if you love, you're faithful. So this idea that not all affairs are symptoms of relationships gone awry, that people in happy relationships also stray and it isn't because of their partner or because of something in the relationship that there's another theme here, that affairs. And this led me to the second thing, which is that you always have to look at infidelity from a dual perspective. At the heart of affairs is betrayal and hurt, but there is also longing, longing for an emotional connection, longing for intensity, longing for a different sexuality, longing to reconnect with lost parts of ourselves, longing to suddenly feel alive because people have allowed themselves to feel dead on the inside. That what it did to you and what it meant to me that you have to be able to figure out both is a much more useful way to help people.

Yeah. How do we, you know, all those things you're talking about, longing for a desire, someone else, or a different experience or something from the past, or all those things you talked about, how do we get those things in our partner if we're feeling those things that they're missing? Even if we love our partner.

Yeah.

Or, you know, someone comes to you and it's like, I love my partner, but I feel like I'm missing these other things. How do we not miss those things or create those in our relationships?

Do you know how many times I say to people, tell me something. The person that is here in this other relationship is that the one who comes home, I mean, the one that your partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband is dealing with, is not nearly as charming and as attentive. You know, when you prepare your suitcase and you fly and you choose your carefully chosen clothes and you prepare yourself and, you know, you don't bring work with you when you go to, you know, but when you go home, you're on your phone the whole time. You bring the leftovers. You're not nearly that attentive. You're way less charming. Humor is gone, you know, and. And then you tell me that your. Your wife is boring or your husband is boring. And you, who are you here versus who are you there? Not who are they, who are you? So that's the first thing. It's like, what happened to you that you let this thing seep out of you? And what makes it difficult for you to bring this back into your own relationship? Why is it? Why is that why people neglect themselves in some way?

Right.

Why is it that there you can be such a free woman and here is this boyfriend of yours who think you hate sex. You have no interest. You are utterly, you know, frozen. And this one is like, it's the same woman. What happens, you know, and on top, that's the bigger lie. The bigger lie is not only that you're having a lover. The bigger lie is that your husband, your boyfriend, has no idea what's the truth about you and why. And then different stories. Sometimes it's stories from childhood. You know, I have no idea how to bring that part of me in the context of family, because family was the place where sexuality was the most dangerous. So I have never known how to experience pleasure at home. Home was a place where I made sure to be safe. Pleasure, I took somewhere else. Then you start to see the way that people have carved out and Compartmentalized themselves and the reasons behind it now is real therapy work. That's a difference. You know, that's when you start to really try to understand why, why, why can't you integrate the different parts of you?

Is it kind of like the idea of always dating in your relationship? It's like always trying to be your charming self and not forgetting it, how you got into the relationship. Don't, like, forget that. Is that kind of the concept?

I don't know if it's always dating, but that feedback, for sure. The couples that are erotic couples are couples who maintain a level of attention on each other. They don't take each other for granted. They flirt. They are physical. They continue to play with each other, Create desire. They create desire. I mean, it doesn't just stay. I mean, it is an amazing thing to see how attentive people are to their creative projects, to their artwork, to their businesses, to. And how often rather neglectful. Even a date night, it's nice, but what do you bring to the date night?

I mean, just going through the motions or is it creative?

You know, look, we know that if you do familiar activities with your partner, it's very nice, and it creates a real sense of comfort to go back and to repeat things that you enjoy. But we know that if you want to bring excitement into a relationship, you need new experiences. You need to have this relationship be one in which you take yourself out of your comfort zone, in which you discover something in which you explore traveling. But it doesn't have to be just traveling by going abroad. It's traveling. It's taking yourself to new places, to new experiences with each other, to new thresholds. All the research backs that up. It also breeds testosterone. For that matter, novelty breeds testosterone. That's the work of Helen Fisher. And if you look at it metaphorically or biologically, it makes all sense in the world. Growth involves exploration, involves curiosity, involves discovery. We know it, and it revolves risk taking. We know it in business, and it is no different in the relationship, in the business of intimacy, if you want to call it like that. Do you do any of these things?

Of course. Yeah, we do it. Yeah, for sure. And if we're not, my girlfriend always remind me, like, let's go try something new. You know, if it's been like a week or two where we've kind of been doing the same thing, just like going to the movie or to the same place to each is like, let's go try something new. And I'm like, yeah, we need to. So she's actually good at that because sometimes I can just be focused on my vision and my work and just like not stop. And it's comfortable to just do the same thing and not have to think about creating something new. So. But I could see a difference in that creativity and that uniqueness when we go do something different as opposed to the same thing. I can feel the desire and curiosity, testosterone.

And then you say thank you. I mean, the difference. One person says, it's so nice. I mean, I wouldn't have thought about it. I love it when you take me. You remind me. And then I don't mind doing it if I feel appreciated for it, right? Because then, okay, it became my role. For some reason, I have more availability in my headspace to think about those things. And as long as I know that you really appreciate it, that you value this, that you're coming along not just to do me a favor, then I'll come up with more and more ideas and I will keep this going for years. For years. You know, and we study erotic couples. I mean, there is, it's not an unknown. We know that there are people who maintain a certain spark and it has nothing to do with how often they make love. But they are engage with each other. They enjoy each other's company. After decades, they still find each other interesting. They're not bored.

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Should we know about this? What else should we know about this?

I wanted to say one other thing that I had discovered that to me was really important because it is not getting enough attention. Attention these days. Everything these days is about you make it or you break it. You end. It's not good. You leave, you can do better. You leave, you're not happy, or you could be happier. You leave. And I think that the people who actually want to stay after an infidelity in their relationship are often judged and look down upon what's wrong with you. You let him walk all over you. You let her boss you around. You know?

Yeah, that's scary too. It's kind of like your friends are constantly pressuring. You can do better.

You don't even tell them. Yeah, the majority of people I meet won't tell their friends to feel guilty.

Or they feel like, weak or whatever. Yeah.

Yes. You dump the dog on the curb.

Right. You know, forget everything that happened.

That's right.

The five years of the relationship, just.

That's right.

Three, five or 25.

Right out. And I think sometimes out is what needs to happen. But sometimes this happens in a good relationship and it happened and it, and, and we need to know what to do when it happens. But just to judge people and shame them for staying isn't fair.

That's not good.

It's not right. I don't. And I Think it really is not giving relationships the credit they deserve.

Because they're not perfect.

Yeah, because they're not perfect. And you know what? Sometimes what comes afterwards is going to be even better than what was before.

The wake up call.

It's the wake up call. Like when you have an illness, it gives you a new perspective on life. Do I recommend you to get sick?

No.

But do I accept that sometimes out of that crisis, you will actually reprioritize your life and live with a different level of honesty and authenticity? The same happens in a relationship.

You've seen this with couples you've worked.

With again and again. Really again and again. But you have to believe in the strength of people to actually take this, learn from it, resuscitate and revitalize.

Yeah.

In this section, Esther talks about the key to building a long term, successful relationship.

Should we expect moving forward in relationships with our time, that monogamy is something that we're going to be able to do or with the there's always something better option and that it's more available now than ever. Especially with social media, online dating, there's distractions constantly.

Yeah.

You don't have to leave your house anymore.

Exactly.

You can pretty much cheat on your partner while lying next to them in bed.

Exactly.

But we are by definition already doing serial non monogamy. You know, most of us don't come to marriage monogamous. We've gone to marriage after years of nomadism, sexual nomadism. So monogamy is a concept that has already been redefined throughout. You asked me before about how his marriage changed, but monogamy had nothing to do with love. For most of history, monogamy became about love with romanticism. It's the sacred ideal of the romantic ideal. Because. The sacred cow. Because monogamy means I'm everything. I'm it. I'm the one, I'm chosen. I'm unique. And if you are interested in someone else, it means I'm not enough versus monogamy, which was basically for patrimony and for children, you know, so.

So how should we navigate this moving forward?

I think, look, if I had Talked to you 70 years ago about premarital sex and virginity was a precondition, you would have looked at me like, this is a taboo. This is a impossible today, premarital sex in the west, it's like nobody blinks an eye. Okay. It would have been inconceivable.

Okay.

If I had talked to you about going from families of eight, 10 children to families of one child. You would have looked at me inconceivable if I had told you that we were going to be conceiving so many children through assisted reproduction. Inconceivable. So today when you say open relationships or non monogamous relationships, or periodically non monogamous or monogamy, Shala Dan Savage or you know, or polyamorous, people will say, can't work, impossible. You know, the fact is monogamy is the new frontier. But you can have it as negotiated through divorce or through what most people have always done, which is proclaimed monogamy and clandestine adultery. Or you can do it through a model of transparency in which people have consensual non monogamy. This is it. This is the options, right?

What do you think going to be working the most?

There's going to be a little bit of everything. There are some people who really need stable, committed, monogamous relationships. They don't want open doors. And there are other people for which open doors probably should be the model from the start. That's kind of who they are. That's their curiosity, that's the way they live their life. And it's not because they're less committed or less loving. It's because their sexuality is organized in a certain way and it lives together with a certain arrangement. And all of that is going to be redefined as we go along. It's de facto what's going to happen. It will be the next frontier. But if you see it on the level of marriage, people say, you know, if you say, okay, let's look on the, you know, you have to look at it from the place of before marriage. You know, A Swedish philosopher said, today monogamy only exists in reality. It doesn't exist in your memories and it doesn't exist in your fantasies. So this is not because I advocate it. It's just, first of all, there's nothing to advocate. It's very simple that by definition we have multiple sex partners before marriage. We are not monogamous anymore in the traditional sense of the word. The world has been in flux and we don't really know where it's going. We don't. What we know is that people still seek to connect. People want to love, people want somebody who loves them. And how that will play itself out is the mysteries of life. But the fundamental human need for love, for connection, for passion, for transcendence will never change. The expressions, the forms, the institutions in which we will seek those fundamental human aspirations will continuously transform. That's really how I see the, the evolution Taking place.

Sure.

What do you think of what I'm saying?

Oh man. It's just so, you know, it's confusing because you hear so many different options that work, that don't work. You see people that love each other other that go through breakup and divorce and then you see the pain and the struggle and the emotional toll that it takes on some people. Then you see people who are in, you know, committed monogamous relationships who feel guilty because they want to be able to explore, but they can't because they've made this choice and they've committed to it.

Monogamy is a practice. We are not by nature biologically evolutionary monogamous. It's a practice, it's a choice. And it's a choice.

Not our makeup.

No. And it's a choice then. And it's. And monogamy is a continuum. You have mind, you have fantasy, you have memory, you have a lot of things. At what point do we become non monogamous? Where does non monogamy start? And all of these concepts are fluid concepts today. There is just no way to define it like that.

Right.

So we make good choices and we make compromises and we sometimes don't just do what we want. And we often need to think about the consequences of our actions and we need to think about the larger picture. And something that may be perfectly desirable for tonight may not be worth it for the next weeks and the next years. And I think that in the era of self fulfillment and the right to happiness, we don't have more desires today than the previous generations. We just feel more entitled to fulfill our desires and we feel that we have a right to be happy. My personal happiness, the switch, the greatest switch is from a social organization in which I think about the well being of others, collectivist thinking thinks about the well being of others. And I sacrifice my own individual needs for the well being of others. To the other side of the continuum is I have a right to pursue my individual needs and the others will have to adapt to it. And I think that we are a little bit on the extreme end of the other side at this point. We really take ourselves a little very seriously and sometimes at a detriment of other people to whom we do have an obligation and a commitment to not just our partners, the world. The world.

So where should we be? Somewhere in the middle, you think?

Or what's in an examined state? I don't know that it's always in the middle, but in an examined state, in a state that doesn't just say What I like, what I feel. The fact that I have options doesn't mean I have to exercise all these options. The problem of consumer life is that we don't know anymore to make choices. Same with the cereals in the supermarket. Why would it be better with love? So I could get better. I could get better. I'm like, you know, I'm a victim of fomo. You know, I'm a. How do I know this is the best? No, you don't. Yeah, when do I find the best? No, you don't. You don't find your partner. You choose your partner. It's very different, you know, if you think you're going to find somebody who is the person who's going to make you stop looking. It doesn't work this way because. No, it doesn't. Because at some point your inner rumblings will start up again and then you.

Will say, oh, probably start looking.

You know, it's like you just say, this is it. This is where I decide to put my roots in this moment, you know, and I'm gonna try to deepen them. I think we are all living with paradoxes of choice.

Yes.

You know, from which phone I get. But we cannot commodify a partner and just kind of beta test the partner and beta test the relationship and check out to see is it good enough or can I find better? Yes, you can. The fact is, you could find other. I'm not sure it would be better, but you definitely can find other. And there are lots of people you can love, and there's only a few you can make a life with, and they're not always the same. There are a lot of people you can have love stories with.

Right.

But they're not the person you would make a life with.

How do you know when it's the person you can make a life with?

I think values enter into there a lot more. I mean, you can have magnificent love stories with people you would never live with, Right? They're just too different from you. They have not the same values as you. One wants child, one does not. One wants to travel, the other does not. One wants career. The other very major. Different classes, different weltanshauing, as they used to say in German, you know, visions of the world. But you can love them. You can have a beautiful love story with that person and be transported in your experience with them. But you know that that's not the person with whom you're going to build a home, a future, a trajectory, maybe a family if you want that, that, that's not the person with whom. And for that you need more of shared vision, shared mission, shared values. Stuff that is not just in the domain of feelings, but also in the domain of beliefs. It's different views about money, views about independence and separateness versus connection, views about emotional expressiveness, views about power.

Wouldn't you say that those differences that we have also attract us to other people? That we have some of those differences? Maybe we don't share the same values or beliefs, but it's also different, unique, interesting. And so it also brings us together. Or do you think it's not enough?

I think that what attracts you originally is often what becomes the source of conflict later. The very thing that is so attractive because it's different is also the very thing that becomes difficult because it's different.

Interesting.

So of course it's a mix and match, you know. But what makes thriving relationships is not only feelings. It's a mix of feelings, actions, beliefs, touches physicality. It's a more all encompassing thing. A beautiful love story can be just about feelings and you can, can love more people than those that you can make a life with. That doesn't mean you make a life with people you don't love, but it means that there is a whole other set of ingredients that enter into the making of a life which is the creation of a world. It's a little different. And in that world you often can be on the side of. You know, there's a lot of sentences today that I never heard 20 years ago ago in couples therapy. This is a raw deal. I'm not getting my needs met. Where is my return on investment? Excuse me, Somebody owes you. It's like, wow, I am in a relationship for what it's going to give me. That is an important piece. Don't misunderstand me. But I'm also in a relationship for what I'm going to give to this person, for what I'm going to give if I want children, to these children, not just for what they're going to bring to me. It's like the level of narcissism has to be shrunken a tiny bit on occasion.

Right, Exactly.

It's just like, you know, I mean, I'm part of that same, you know, landscape, but on occasion, I think it's like you calibrate it on occasion. Some, some of us need to really learn to think more about ourselves and some of us really need to think more about others. Some of us live with the fear that we're going to be abandoned and some of us live more with the fear that we're going to lose ourselves. Some of us are better takers and need to learn to give, and some of us are consummate givers, and we need to learn to take. And often we find a partner who is exactly the missing link. And that can be beautiful complementarity if we actually get to use the other person to become more whole to learn from them. And we need both. You need to be able to think about yourself and to know what you want and all of that. But you also need to be able to remember that others exist near you, your family, your friends, your loved ones, and that that's what will make the difference the day you die and who will show up at your funeral.

Here, Esther shares how to build trust in a relationship. And this is so crucial for everyone.

How does someone regain trust then? Because we were talking about this earlier. How do you regain trust and regain open communication if someone's been unfaithful or just hurting them for a couple of years in a relationship and you feel like it's not working?

You know, it's interesting because you're asking me this, and yet you, as an amazing role model, have spoken about some of your own experiences of abuse. So you know this question. How do you let someone touch you, come near you, not feel like they're going to harm you? Understand the difference between caring touch and hurtful touch, Allowing yourself to experience pleasure again, allowing yourself to surrender without thinking that while you're not on guard, nothing bad is going to happen.

Really challenging, right?

Okay. But it's that same trajectory, right? It's like you hope that it's not because one person hurt you that you lose your faith in humanity. You hope that you know that there are people who are not harmful, that they really are good people that care and love you, probably trust with your eyes more open. It doesn't have the same naivety. And it depends if you're asking me how do I trust you again after you have cheated on me, or how do I trust another people? I think it's two different stories.

What about the person you're in a relationship with?

It depends as well, because it's hard.

To let go of stuff in the past, right?

So it depends how long is the past? If you and I have been together for two years and this just happened, it's a different story than if you and I have been together for the past 20 years and we have a family and we have built a life and we have buried parents and we have birthed children and we have built homes and we have created jobs and we have a whole life together. And in the midst of this, this experience happened. And you, my woman or my partner, male or female partner, went out. And then you kind of want to know, how did this happen? What happened to us? Where were we at? You know, is this related to the relationship? I think the big distinction for me is to figure out what betrayals take place because the relationship had disintegrated in some way or degraded, and which ones have nothing to do with the relationship. People who have been sick, people who are unemployed, people who have lost their sense of confidence, or people who have made a lot of money suddenly the other way around. People who suddenly feel like they deserve something. Because in a way, when you allow yourself this experience, it's because you feel you deserve it. You justify it to yourself. You come up with good explanations for why you, of all people can do this.

Right?

I need to understand what you were thinking about me while this was going on. Did you even think about me? Did you think what this would do to me or to our kids, if we have kids? Did you feel guilty about it? Were you tortured in any way? Or did you? Did I disappear from your screen and you were so grandiose that I didn't exist anymore? Did you want me to find out? Are you relieved that it's come out? Do you actually want to come back? And are you coming back just because it's convenient to you, or are you choosing me?

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Important feature in the trust is not only that you won't do it again, but that you really are choosing to be with me again. And that you're not just here because it suits you or because I make the money or because we have a comfortable or whatever. Because it's comfortable. I what I really want to trust is that you love me and you want to be with me and not that you're here while you're Thinking about the person there.

Yeah.

And that goes hand in hand with something else. I think that's probably the most important thing about hurt and the breach of trust is I come to you and I say to you I'm really sorry that we know from any trauma that it's the wrongdoer coming to acknowledge what they've done if the perpetrator doesn't. Isn't able to acknowledge it. And I'm not calling this perpetrators, but we know in the experience that when you hurt someone, nothing helps you more than the person who hurt you to say to you, I have remorse and I feel guilty for hurting you. Even if they don't feel guilt about the experience of the affair itself. Maybe you think that the affair was one of the greatest things that you have experienced in the last fantasies or whatever.

Yeah.

Or you've been a mother and a.

Wife for the last seven years and you haven't had a minute to think about yourself and you felt like you had completely died inside.

And.

And for the first time you reconnect with your own sensuality and your aliveness and you remember that you're more than just a mother and just a wife, for example. So you may think this was really important to me, but nevertheless, what it meant to you and what it does to your partner are two different things. So my acknowledging that remorse and that guilt is essential is the first step. First step, yeah. And that is very different from feeling shame. Because when I feel shame and I feel so bad about myself, I can't believe I did this. It's more self involvement. Right.

It's more about make it about me so you can say it's okay or whatever. Yeah.

Yes. I feel so bad about myself that I can't feel bad for what I did to you. Right.

Right.

So I have no empathy. I still have. Not in the empathy. It's like you need to be able to feel bad for making the other person feel bad. And that means that you can't be so bad about you because then it all about you. Big difference between shame and guilt. Okay. Guilt is a relational responsibility. Guilt is an accountability to the other. That's the first one. And the second thing is that I then become the vigilante of the relationship. Meaning that I for a while, while you are asking me the same questions again and again because you're trying to figure this out because your whole reality has just been shattered, I am able to tell you it's okay. I am here. Just keep asking. I'll answer you. I'm not Going to say, come on, enough already. Haven't we gone over this? Let's move on, let's move on.

It's over.

Don't you see? It's. No, I cannot rush you. I have to give you the space to make sense, to be in your pain, to hurt, to get angry, to push me, to pull me until we slowly settle. And there is a period like that of that acute crisis that you just can't push. You have to go through it because it is in the nature of the beast.

It's a process.

It's a process.

No one's going to rationalize it right away and move on. It might take some time.

Some.

Some people, takes years, probably that you've been working with where it takes years then to fully trust again.

Right? But you know, even when you say fully trust, trust for what? Like, I saw this couple recently, last week, actually, and you know, I said, you still leave your children with him. You have your money together, you share a home together. While your mother was in the hospital in the last year, he continued to come see her every week. He still is paying for your alcoholic brother. You trust him for a lot of things. It's not one big categorical. You don't trust that he really has finished his story with this woman because you actually know that he fell in love with this woman. And you're right not to trust him. You are right, because he doesn't trust himself yet. He's going to take some time to come back. And this is a very ambiguous period for the two of you where it's very, very shaky because you want him back, but you know he's not fully back. And he wants to come back, but he knows he's not fully there. But you trust him for many other things and you need to remember that, too. And it'll take a few months. It'll take a few months because he has made a decision. He wants to come back. He believes in what you've built together. But yes, for a moment, he was ready to go, wow. And I. My work is. I hold this. I offer structure, calmness, reassurance. And I basically try to not make anybody make rash decisions. Because when your limbic system is hijacked, you better not make a decision about your life.

Just be emotional.

No, you're just in reptile mode.

Yeah. In your sessions, what do you find is the root of most divorces or breakups or separations? Is it infidelity or is it something else?

Infidelity is high up there, but is it the consequence or is it the cause? That's the question you want to ask. Is it? You know, in some relationships, affairs are the death knell for a relationship that was already dying on the virus, but it was already dead. This was just the way out. And in other relationships, the affair actually is an alarm system that jolts people out of a state of complacency where for the, for the first time in a long time, they realize, oh, my God, I better pay attention. I have so much to lose here. Wow. So it can make it and it can break it. I think the biggest killer for relationships in general, doesn't matter if they're short term or long term, is contempt. You can have volatile relationships, but people scream, fight, but they make up. And they know that fundamentally they care deeply about each other. Contempt is a form of dehumanization. That's the research of one of the big researchers on relationships, John Gotta.

Really.

The four horses of apocalypse, he calls them. One is criticism.

Four horses of what?

Apocalypse.

Apocalypse.

Got it.

Criticism. Criticism is. I can't just say, I want you to do this. It's like, you know, you had to let this sit here again, know, it's like you, you're doing this on purpose. Right? I've had to tell you five times, I don't want that iPad on the table here. You know, what kind of a thing is this? You know, this is just in spite. Can't you just ask for something rather than make a judgment on the entire person? Because criticism is a veiled wish behind the criticism. There's actually something I want from you, but I have a way of asking it in such a way that guarantees I'm never going to get it right.

This passive aggressive energy, you can leave.

The passive out of it. It's aggressive, direct. I'm like, at you. I'm picking, I'm going after you. So because it's less vulnerable than to put myself out there with a request and say, you know, it would mean a lot to me when I ask you this, that you would do this.

And.

And sometimes I've already asked it to you like that twice or three times. And I begin to get more and more upset by the time people come to me. They've often asked me very nicely for years before. I don't get to see that because usually people come to the therapist late in the game. Defensiveness. Defensiveness, right. It's like every time I say something to you, you can't just say, that makes sense or tell me more or let me try to understand this. Yes, I'm really sorry. Yes, that is a bad habit of my. No, I constantly defend and counterattack and put it back on you. And so defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, stonewalling, silent treatment. I talk to you, you look up, you know you're somewhere else. I can't get a response. You withdraw, you withhold all of that. And contempt is that gaze. You can, with one facial expression literally reduce somebody to nothing. Wow. And I think that one is probably the end of the rope.

Those are the four killers of relationship.

Those are the four killers. But what people think they divorced for is that they couldn't communicate. But why they didn't communicate is because they were doing one of these four things. Or they had arguments about money, or they didn't agree around the children, or they had no sex, or they had terrible sex, or, you know, they think it's a. There's a reason, there's a topic. But in fact the topic is less important than the way they were dealing with the topic, you know?

Yeah.

You have two kinds of couples. Those who are at each other like this in the negative space. They are high conflict or they are avoidant. Too much avoidance, that's it. That's like everybody's gone off somewhere. And too much conflict is escalation upon escalation. On these two axes sits the death of a couple.

So what's the perfect relationship? A little bit at each other, a.

Little bit of voice. Yes, this, I mean, this conflict, you resolve it, you move again, you get close again, you, you know, it's a dynamic thing. Estrangement is like, you know, I don't even know who's living here. Was the last time you had a conversation about something? Was the last time you touched each other? When's the last time you looked into each other's eyes? You know, when's the last time you talked about something else? And what needs to be planned for tomorrow? It's not always negative. It's just the affection leaves, the warmth, the love, the aliveness, the vibrancy. It seeps out.

I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over@greatness.com newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

Hey there, it's Katie Nolan, host of Casuals, the sports podcast where we don't care how much you know about sports, we're just happy that you're here. Every week I hang out with some of my good friends to discuss the biggest stories across sports and entertainment, but in a way that's like, fun and not boring. Want to know Sue Bird's favorite Diana Taurasi story? Or how heavy the Larry o' Brien trophy is? Or even what baseball team is right for you based on your moon sign? We got you. Listen to Casuals every Tuesday and Thursday on the Sirius XM app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Bye.

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