Red Flags To Avoid In Relationships & How To Find Real Love w/ Esther Perel EP 1277

You can love a person wholly without having to love all of them. Adult love lives in the realm of ambivalence. That ambivalence and living with that ambivalence is actually a sign of maturity.

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin. I have been using AG1 for years now to start my day, and I've also known the founder for 12 years, and I've watched his success over that time, which is why I'm so excited to say that we have partnered with Athletic Greens for this show. And there are so many different vitamins and minerals and superfoods to keep track of. I honestly just don't have the time to figure out how to make the right meals to get the right amount of all the healthy stuff into my body on a daily basis. So that's what got me into AG1 in the first place. One scoop of AG1 is all I need that gets me 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, whole food source superfoods, probiotics and adaptogens. It's so easy. Without even really thinking about it, I just shake up a bottle of it and now I'm supporting my gut health, my nervous system, my immune system, my energy, recovery, focus and aging, all of it all in one place. It has quickly become part of my daily routine, and I owe a lot of it to the fact that I genuinely love the taste. It's got the kind of tropical taste that I actually look forward to, and it's not one of those drinks that you have to force down. It genuinely tastes good. And most of you know that I travel a lot. I speak around the world for this business. And when I can't drink AG1 in the office or at home, They have these incredible travel packs that make it so easy to throw in my bag and keep up with my routine when I'm on the go. And right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop and a cup of water every day. And that's it. It's simple. There's no need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. And to make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/soG. Again, that is athleticgreens.com/soG to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Esther Perel. So good to see you. Oh, my gosh. I'm so happy you're here.

So good.

Back again. Back again. The fourth time. Every time you come on, people are captivated by what you have to share. And you've been working as a therapist for how many decades now?

Close to four.

Almost four decades. You've got two massive podcasts about relationships and intimacy and at work. Now you have this game, which we'll talk about and we'll play the game here soon. But we had you on last the week before the pandemic started. And it's been two years now, and I feel like more and more relationships have failed. And there's also been a lot of babies that have been born in the last six months because of the pandemic. Do you feel like, I think the stats before two years ago was 50% of marriages fail. Do you feel like the percentage has gone up since the last two years, or is it still kind of the same? Some people have figured it out, other people haven't. and people are, you know, somewhere in between.

So I'm not a statistician, and in fact it is lesser than 50, and it depends by social class.

Okay.

More educated people marry later and divorce less. It's actually education and social class has something to do as well with duration of marriages. I think what I would say as a start is that disasters are relationship accelerators. And that means that what we've experienced in these last two years, I was here March 11th.

I know, it's crazy.

And I went in lockdown March 14. And so that's why I will always remember the date of our last conversation. But what happens in a period of disaster like this and prolonged disaster, right, with prolonged uncertainty, is that you have a sense that, especially in the beginning, we really had a clear sense of mortality. Things suddenly felt much more fragile. And when life is short, when you have that acute awareness of life is short, then you'd say, either, what am I waiting for? Let's move in, let's get married, let's have babies, let's go, let's do because I don't know what happens tomorrow. Or we say, I've waited long enough. I'm not taking this anymore. I'm gonna wait this out a little bit, but as soon as I can, I'm out of here. Because when you have a sense of mortality and when you have acceleration, you basically have a reorganization of your priorities. What matters to me most? What can't I live without? I tolerate living with anymore. That is what is what has happened. And so typically research has always said that in pandemics, in disasters, in large psychosocial events like that, there is more breakups and more babies. But we are just coming out of it. So the babies are about to be born and the breakups are now just proliferating. But we don't know, I think, the exact statistics.

Interesting. I think before you mentioned that something like 50% of marriages end in divorce and then, you know, 70% of the next marriages end in divorce.

Second marriages have a higher rate of divorce than first marriages. Why is that? I think that there's a lot of ways to explain it, but first of all, often children are older. Second, there is a sense that I waited too long in the first one. to make this decision and I no longer want to feel afterwards where I say, I should have done this much sooner. There is less of a sacredness to the experience and you feel like, I was, the first time you feel like, you know, depending on if you come from divorce or your belief systems or your values about the stability of relationships, it means so much to break those vows sometimes. And then the second time, you've already done it.

I've already done this. I don't need to tolerate this for 10 more years like I did the first time.

And let me just-- There's less of a sense of shattering of all the grand ambitions of love and of marriage that you had engaged with.

Wow, that's interesting.

You've already done that experience once of dissolving this entire complex relational system that is emotional, psychological, economic, inter-familial, And you did it. And so it doesn't, it feels slightly less impossible, ominous.

It's not as scary the second time.

It's not as scary.

You've done it before, you know the pain, it's, you can handle it again.

Third marriages is less.

It's less divorces.

Less divorces.

Why is that?

I guess people have a sense that they finally have done either their personal work, they've grown up, they've matured, they've taken responsibility, they've got, they've gotten the sense as the constant factor in all their relationship is them. You know, so finally, maybe they took a good look at themselves. And hopefully this time they, it's not that they found a better person, it's that I think they have become a better partner.

I was talking to you about this before we got on the interview about how my entire life I've been the centerpiece of relationships not working out. I've been the core, I've been the person who's been involved in the relationship and therefore I've chosen. and stayed in relationships that didn't align up with what I wanted. In my most current relationship with Martha, when we started dating, I was telling you this, when we started dating, I said, it'd be really cool to enter a new relationship with emotional accountability, with therapy, with support from an outside perspective, where we both are working on ourselves and we're getting clear if we're in alignment with our values and our vision and our lifestyle for what we want to create. where we're not just connected sexually or chemically, which is what I chose a lot in the past and stayed for, but more based on a different foundation. And it's been a beautiful experience for both of us to witness emotional accountability and therapy together when things are great, not when things are bad and you have to repair something, but to try to build agreements as we build our relationship. And I'm such a fan of it. And I've been telling all my friends about this who are getting in relationships. Like, you know, find something. Find a book you can work on together or a therapist or something you work on together. Have you ever worked with couples who got into a relationship early when there wasn't issues and they started working with you?

Many.

Really?

Many, many, many, many. So the traditional, you know, idea of premarital counseling is wanting, but there's also You know, people want to talk about conscious uncoupling, but they could also talk about conscious coupling.

Yes.

Right, it's like in the beginning, you're not in your early 20s, you're in your late 30s, you've had your experiences, you have a sense of what are the vulnerabilities that you bring to the relationships, you have a sense of what makes it hard to live with you, you know, as well. And you say, I actually want us to go when we still have a lot of what is called positive sentiment override.

What does that mean?

It means that you get the benefit of the doubt, that you're still in multiple appreciation, that you see the bright side of things, that you see the cup half full, that you're not yet building resentment and deprivation and, you know, the things that sometimes accompany relationships on the bitter side of that. And I think that I like it when people come early. I think it's fantastic. One of the big changes for me as a couples therapist over decades was that indeed we learned that people come to therapy when there are problems. Therapy is a problem-ridden narrative. If everything's fine, why don't you go to therapy? And if you already need to go in the beginning, there must be something really wrong because who goes... That is so old for me, that it's been scrapped. You go because you have a sense that you want to prepare yourself, you want to bring your strength and your challenges from the beginning into the relationship and prepare it. And I think it is a fantastic idea. It doesn't mean that you already have problems. It means that you say, I want to do a preventive approach.

Absolutely.

I want to preempt. I want to be mature about it. And it's interesting because you talk about the distinction between chemicals and values.

Right?

And you just posted a clip of a conversation that we had back then, exactly two years ago, where I talked about the difference between a love story and a life story.

Yes.

It's a bit that. You don't need too much consonance of values to love somebody.

What is the difference between love and life story?

The experience of a love story, the word story is important, right? So the story of love is a story that I can fall in love with all kinds of people with whom I would never live a life with. That we come from completely different worlds. We have different aspirations, different values. But in the midst of that, something very precious unfolds between us in a very small container that is deeply intimate and often deeply erotic. It doesn't need how do we negotiate children, in-laws, economics, careers, the political environment around us, all of that. We don't have to talk about any of this in that beautiful container of intimacy and erotic intimacy lives a love story. A life story is a negotiation with the whole world. A life story, first of all, goes through a developmental arc. I may meet you in my 20s and here I am in my 40s, 50s, 60s. So it's a developmental arc. It exists over time, it needs to include change. It needs to include the addition and substruction of new people, the death of people and the birth of people sometimes. It needs to include how we negotiate with all our friends. A love story can live alone in a little room without seeing anybody, you know, because it feeds on itself very, very beautifully. But a life story must include other people, a social circle, a community. you know, activities, passions, hobbies, careers. There's a lot of other things and those demand a consonance of values, of aspirations, of ambitions, the ability to not just foster the togetherness but also to develop the differentiation. It's us and it's you and me. It's the together and the separate. Yeah.

And so the love story, when people develop what they can say- that doesn't.

Mean, by the way, I'm sorry.

Go ahead, you're good.

Because I know what people say, but the love story involves love. The fear is that when I distinguish it this way, people say, Is there no love in the life story? Of course there is love in the life story. But all I'm saying is you can love a lot more people, and they're not necessarily the same people as the ones with whom you will have a life story.

And do most people who develop a love story with someone else and not also see if this could be a life story? Is that where you see it suffers or struggles? If they're only thinking of the love story but not all the other factors of life?

No, I think that if you meet someone, like I used to go on a trip and have a beautiful story with someone, a nice adventure. That person belongs on the trip. It doesn't need to come back from the trip with you. And sometimes they come back on the trip and it takes another week or two of a lot of texts and calls and this and that. And then slowly you reintegrate your life and they become a part of a memory of a beautiful trip. They're a short story. They're a long story and a short story. Once you say, I think I may want to live with this person, I may want to build with this person, It's a different architecture and I need different materials for that architecture. And part of the materials is love and feelings, but part of it is culture and aspirations and values and beliefs. All of that now starts to become important too. And sometimes when people fall in love or when people have incredible sexual connection, they think that that also means that they can build a life together. And sometimes that's the case and other times it's not. It is not a guarantee. A powerful erotic connection doesn't necessarily mean that you can also straddle a whole.

Set of life experiences.

Life experiences.

You know, I feel like a lot of people that I've known in the past have entered a relationship through a sexual connection, sexual chemistry, erotic experiences, fun times, things like that. And then they start dating and then they start entering a relationship based on that foundation as opposed to based on what do you see for your life? You know, what are the values, the background, the culture, the religion, the money, all these different things. Do you want kids? Do you not want kids? And I feel like that ends up being a struggle for a lot of people, myself included in my past. until I started and tried something differently.

You first had the sex and then you met the person.

Exactly. Yeah. And created a story about who the person would be, right, without actually communicating in a and giving space and time to experience who the person was, right? And same for them with me. Why do you think most people start things that way, you know, in general, as opposed to Hey, let's give it time. Let's ask deeper, more intimate questions like you have in your game. Let's get to know each other. Why do you think that is?

First of all, that only began to happen with the democratization of contraception. This is before the'68, this was not possible. So it's very recent, you know, that we start making love first and then we find out each other's names.

Is that true all over the world or is that more in the US?

It's true wherever people can experience premarital sex, basically. In the past you first had to marry in order to be able to have sex. And I say in the past it's in the past here, and that's when I was a teenager. And in much of the world it still is the case. So we are part of a very sexualized society. in which sexual freedom and sexual expression has become a part of our values. Right? Sexuality used to be a part of our biology and now it's a part of our condition. Now it's a part of our identity. And so we have changed the meaning of sex in the culture at large and then we have changed it in our relationships. And so we start from a place of attraction. Am I drawn to you? Am I attracted to you? It's the first thing I think when I swipe. What do I do? I look at, where do I get a little frisson? Who catches my attention? And it's purely physical. So it is a recent development. For most of the people here, this is not their grandparents' story. So this is still in the family. It's not like you have to go in the history books.

Sure. How do you feel like people could set up for a healthier relationship as opposed to what would you recommend or suggest them for people in order to have a healthier foundation? Seeing that it seems so sexualized now, everything seems so like physical swiping, looking at someone's sexual identity, attraction, as opposed to, I guess, true intimacy and connection. How would you set up a relationship now?

There's so many different pieces to this. I think the first thing, look, I am right about sexuality. I'm not going to minimize it, but I do understand that, you know, it's very important. It's a beautiful thing to have a powerful erotic connection with someone, but don't confuse the metaphors. You can have a beautiful erotic connection with someone, and that does not necessarily translate. into a life experience.

A life story.

A life story. That said, the next thing that changed culturally, if you want to really take on the big myths, it's the notion that we are looking for the one and only. The one and only, my soulmate.

Is my everything.

Yes, my everything. Your soulmate used to be God, not a person. You know, the one and only was the divine. and with this one and only today, I want to experience wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence. And I'm gonna wait 10 more years. We are waiting 10 years longer to settle with someone, to make a commitment to someone, for those of us who choose a someone. And if I'm gonna wait longer, and if I'm looking around, and if I'm choosing among a thousand people at my fingertips, you bet. that the one who's going to capture my attention is going to make me delete my apps better be the one and only. So in a period of proliferation of choices, we at the same time have an ascension of expectations about our romantic relationship that is unprecedented. We have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today in the West.

It seems like a lot of pressure.

It's an enormous amount of pressure. We crumble under the weight of these expectations because a community cannot become a tribe of two. This is a party of two. And with you and me together, we are going to create best friends, romantic partners, lovers, confidants, parents, intellectual egos.

Business partners.

Business partners, career coaches, I mean, you name it. And I'm like, seriously? One person for everything? One person instead of a whole village? So that's the first myth. And the notion of unconditional love that accompanies this is that when I have that one and only, I have what you call clarity, but translated into certainty, peace, and freedom, you know, or safety, which is the other side of the same thing. So that to me is if you want to set yourself up, really, the idea that you're going to find one person for everything is a myth. Keep a community around you.

Absolutely.

Keep a set of deep friendships, really deep friendships, deep intimacies with friends, with mentors, with family members, with colleagues, you know. So that's the first thing for me in having good relationships is diversify.

Diversify relationships, but not sexually.

No, no. For some people it will include that. For the vast majority it won't. but the notion that there isn't a one person for everything. And that doesn't mean that there is a problem in your relationship when that happens. The second thing is stop constantly looking at people as a product, where you evaluate them and you evaluate yourself. You know, in our market economy, everything has become a product we included. And so love seems to have become the moment that the evaluation of the product stops. You have finally been approved when you have been chosen and when you choose. This is Eva Illouz, a sociologist who writes about this very beautifully. It's like love finally becomes the moment you can experience peace. You're no longer looking, selling yourself, proving yourself, trying to capture somebody's attention. It's exhausting. And once you are in that mentality, you also are continuously looking for the best product. You never say, you know, how can I meet a person who... People don't often talk about how can I be.

A person who... That's so true.

Okay, so it's what you're looking for in the market economy of romantic love rather than who are you, how do you show up, what do you bring, what responsibility do you take, how generous are you, etc.

Absolutely.

Second thing for what I think sets you up for a better relationship. And the third thing is understand some of the things that are really important to you and don't get involved with someone on the hope that some things will change.

Do things ever change with a partner that you want to change?

Yes, things do change a lot. I mean, many different things can occur in a relationship, but it's different from I'm coming in here, To turn things around, you know, because so much of us wants the experience of acceptance. So, with acceptance, I would say this, another thing to prepare yourself, you can love a person wholly, W-H-O-L-L, why? Without having to love all of them.

What do you mean by that?

It means that the notion of unconditional love is a myth. Adult love lives in the realm of ambivalence, which means that relational ambivalence is part and parcel of all our relationships. We have it with our parents, our siblings, our friends, which means that we continuously have to integrate, contradict, feelings and thoughts between love and hate, between excitement and fear, between envy and contempt, between boredom and aliveness. You continuously negotiate these contradictions. That ambivalence and living with that ambivalence is actually a sign of maturity rather than continuously than evaluating. See, in the beginning you evaluate, is this the right one? Is this the one and only? Is this the... Then it becomes, Shall I stay or shall I go? How do I know I have found the one? Is the pre-marital or the pre-commitment relationship? And then afterwards it becomes, Is it good enough? We continuously continue with the evaluations, right? Is it good enough? Or how happy am I? Am I happy enough? So that's the unconditional love. No, we live with ambivalence in our relationship. There are periods where we think, What would life be like elsewhere? And then we come back and then we say, I can't imagine it without it. This is what I've chosen. I'm good here. But it's a conversation. The idea that you will be accepted unconditionally is a dream we have for our parents when we are babies. It's not part of adult love.

Right. So unconditional love is not something that we can expect from others.

Unconditional love is a myth. The one and only is a myth. You asked me, How do we set ourselves up for relationships up front? There is no one and only. There is one person that you choose at a certain moment in time, and with that person you try to create the most beautiful relationship you can. But you could have done it with others. Timing is involved, lots of things are involved. So there is no one and only.

There's no soulmate.

Soul mate is God. You can think that you have a soulmate connection with someone, that you have a deep, deep meeting of the minds, of the souls, of the heart, of the bodies, but it's a metaphor. It's not a person. It's the quality of an experience that feels like soulmates. That's number two. Number three, there is no unconditional love. We live with ambivalence in our deepest love relationships. There are things we like and things we don't. and things they like about us and things they don't, and moments they can't be without us and moments where they wish on occasion they could be away from us. And that's normal. Number four, the happiness mandate. Continuously evaluating how happy I am. If you continuously pursue happiness, you're miserable a lot of the time.

What should we pursue instead?

We pursue integrity, depth, joy, aliveness, connection, growth. Those things that ultimately make us say, I feel good. I'm happy about this. But I don't pursue happiness. Happiness is the consequence of a lot of things you put in. You pursue caring for someone, having their back, feeling they have your back, wanting the best for them. what the poly people call compersion, you know, those things you can pursue.

Compersion, what's compersion?

Compersion is feeling joy for the happiness of the other person.

Is this a polyamory relationship?

It's a culture where it's like they're.

With another sexual partner.

But I think the word is bigger than just, you know, contained within the poly community and culture. It is the notion that you want good for the other person even when it doesn't have to do with you.

Right.

You're proud of them. You admire them. You enjoy their growth, their successes.

What about when someone says, I'm with this person, they make me happy. What does that happen when you're looking for someone to make you happy in the relationship?

Well, the day they don't, you will say they make me unhappy. Or they don't make me happy, but it's they do to me, I'm the recipient of what they do. They have the power. They can give, they can withhold. I depend, I crave, I long, I yearn, I respond to them.

And what should we be thinking of instead of this person makes me happy? How should we approach that?

We give each other a good foundation from which we can each launch into our respective worlds.

Ooh, that's cool.

A home is a foundation with wings. Or I like to think a good relationship is a foundation with wings. So you feel the stability that you need, the security, the safety, the predictability as much as you can, as much as our life allows us. And at the same time you have the wings to go and explore discover, be curious, be in the world, sometimes together and sometimes apart.

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

That's ambivalence.

What does that mean?

Meaning that you have to be able to live with the contradictory thoughts and feelings of what you like and what you don't like, what makes you want to be here and what makes you not want to be here.

What happens when we don't accept that though? And we like, you know, hopefully they'll change out of this or grow out of this thing that I don't like about them. What happens when we're in that space? We're not in a fully accepting space.

When you get married, you're not just making a deal with your partner, you're making a secret deal with yourself that this is going to change. And then when it doesn't, you get very upset. or pissed because your deal with yourself, which you never said out loud, it's the private bargain you do with yourself. And all of us, when we pick someone, make private bargains with ourselves. Really. And it's often that bargain that is broken more than the one, because the partner never promised you that it would change.

Exactly. And so it just creates more resentment. When we want something to change, we don't accept that.

Expectations are resentment in the make. The more expectations you have, the more things you can be disappointed of afterwards. Especially when they're not articulated. I think what you need to know is what are some of the things... If you are with someone who... If you go back to the erotic connection, if you're with someone with whom you have a very difficult erotic connection, and you know that this is something that really is important to you. Being seen, being touched, being held, being kissed, being stroked, being made love to is really a language that is very important to you and you don't want to live without it. Then listen to yourself. If it's not an important part for you, because that is not the way you express yourself most, then you know that this is not the centerpiece of your relationship. You have other things that you share. If you know that you don't want children, or reverse, that the other person doesn't want children. Don't go in there hoping that they're going to change your mind, their mind, because that is not fair to you nor to them. If you are with someone who says, I do not want to marry, and you do, or if you are with someone who says, I see love plural, I do not see myself just with one partner, and this is clear to you that that's not okay or that you want differently. Listen to yourself. Those are values that involve life decisions that you don't sit there waiting till they're going to catch up with you.

And what happens when our, when two people's values are not in alignment? Can they still have a beautiful life story or do you feel like there's always going to be some type of unnecessary?

I think it depends on the degree to which people can live with what we call a sense of differentiation. Meaning, if I am okay wanting to go to church, and that's not part of what you do. We come from the same faith or we come from different religions. And one of us wants to adhere to their tradition and wants to participate in the practices of their religion. And is okay doing it without the other. doesn't feel that that needs to be shared. Doesn't experience every time they sit in church, I wish you were sitting next to me. Why do I have to come here alone all the time? You know, that.

So it's accepting someone's choices.

It's accepting that your choice, if you practice it, you can accept to do it without your partner.

So it's you accepting that.

It's you accepting. of course, the other person. But the other person can often tell you, you go, if you like to be there, I don't want to go there on Sunday morning.

I have other things to do.

Sure, sure. Okay? Religion is a major one on that. Travel is another one on that. Children, work, family, in-laws, it's difficult to say to someone, I'll have a child alone. You don't have to participate. But it is easier to say, I will continue to practice my religion because it is central to me. You don't have to be a part of that. we have other things that we will share. But you need to know to do that and feel okay about it. If all the time, now that doesn't mean that on occasion you don't miss and you wish you'd parted away. There's a great sermon. I so wish you had been there to hear it. Great. But if it's chronic and you just feel this hole all the time and you know from the beginning that it is a unifier for you and your partner is, and your partner doesn't show curiosity. because you can come from something else and say, I'm interested in this. Let me see what this is. If you want to go back to live in your home country and your partner has zero intention of leaving where they are, listen to them. Don't hope. If they tell you, Yes, I would like that at some point, then listen carefully. If they're saying this to pacify you, if they're saying this to make sure that you don't leave them, or if they truly intend to to do this at some time.

And don't hope something's gonna change. Don't hope they're gonna do something later after you get married or in a relationship.

Start from the place that it's not gonna happen. See how it is.

Can you accept that?

Can you accept that? Then if things change all the better, but don't start with the hope that it will be different.

Right. And how does jealousy play in relationships? I used to be extremely jealous and insecure.

I remember that.

And then something switched in me, I don't know, five years ago, six years ago maybe, somewhere around that time where I was like, you know what? This does not support me or my relationship at all. This jealous nature or this- that you.

Knew even when you were jealous.

Oh yeah, I knew, but I couldn't let it go.

Right, so it's not what you said to yourself that changed what- Something changed.

Yeah, I don't know exactly what it was, but I remember just keeping like, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of feeling this way.

So what did you change? Not what did you say to yourself?

I think I changed fully accepting the person's decisions and lifestyle and what they were doing and trusting that everything was gonna be okay and not needing to be jealous. I think I was just afraid, like, are they talking to some guy or something? You know, is there something behind my back that they're doing? I don't know. It was a worry of like an anxiousness, right? So... And then I was just like...

Wait, wait, wait. Yes. Part of what accompanies jealousy, you know, jealousy starts at one and a half year old. It's not an early emotion. It needs a sense of self first. It needs the beginning of self-awareness as a baby to be able to experience jealousy. It's not like fear and joy and disgust and sadness.

So where does it come from?

Where it comes from and how evolutionary psychology has all kinds of explanations for jealousy. But where it comes from interpersonally is that it requires having a sense of who you are before you begin to experience how you respond to what other people are doing. I want that too. I don't want to lose something. What changed for you? is that you became more confident. You felt less that your sense of self-worth is in the hands of the other person. And that they turned away from you, that means that you are not enough.

Exactly.

Or that you're going to lose them or that they're going to leave you. That's what changed.

And then I'd be like hurt or empty or sad or in pain because of their actions. And I think that's 100%. I think I didn't feel like I was good enough or something where I was just like, you know what? it's all going to be okay. You know, if they do something or...

But this, it's all going to be okay, followed in different sense of yourself.

Absolutely.

Where you were less in a panic, less in the grip of they're going to abandon me and I'm not good enough. And from that place you began to say, It's okay.

Absolutely.

Nothing bad is going to happen to me. That's how we diminish jealousy. It's not how we react to what the other person does, it's how we feel about ourselves that changes how we react about what the other person does.

Absolutely, and it's been an incredible freedom and gift that I received or gave myself, but it took me 30 something years to learn it. And it feels incredible. It feels incredible, but for years I struggled with it. and I think a lot of people in general, at least guy friends that I knew growing up, struggled with it as well, where they didn't feel comfortable or maybe their female partner didn't feel comfortable with them doing certain things without them there or whatever. And now I'm just like at peace of whatever my partner wants to do. I'm like, live your life. Have you ever had a conversation about.

Jealousy with your girlfriend? I've talked about it where I'm like.

I'm so- It's highly cultural. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I've talked about it with her, I'm like, I'm so glad I'm not jealous.

Right, but Americans think that being jealous diminishes them. They pride themselves when they say, I'm not jealous.

Really?

Yes, it's a kind of a thing like it's not a nice thing to feel. Other cultures, well, Latin cultures, it's intrinsic to love.

It's how you love. If you're not jealous, you don't love the person enough.

Yes. That's a distortion in the other direction. But it's very cultural jealousy. Jealousy, if you track the magazines in America, is a subject that disappears for decades sometimes and then suddenly re-emerges. But it is often seen as a negative emotion. It isn't seen as an emotion that is simply part and parcel of the experience of love.

Is jealousy then a healthy emotion in a life story?

It sometimes. can be a perfectly healthy emotion and sometimes it can be very, very challenging and sometimes it can become pathological. It covers a whole range.

Where is jealousy a good thing when someone has jealousy?

When is jealousy a good thing? When have you experienced jealousy and you didn't feel like it was debilitating and crippling you?

I mean, debilitating. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I think there might be.

I don't.

I mean it was always debilitating for me, I think, before I learned to process it and let it go. Because I realized it wasn't supporting my thoughts and my emotions, and I was saying or doing things that wasn't the highest level of love, I would say, or the most conscious way to communicate, you know, when those scenarios would happen. So I just realized it wasn't supporting me, and I didn't feel good when I had that emotion or those jealous thoughts in a relationship.

But if you were part of a culture that told you that jealousy is not something you want to get rid of, but it actually signals certain things to you, and it communicates certain aspects of love, you would have had a different experience.

Maybe, yeah.

You know, now, when is it positive? Probably the easiest example for me is if I ask, people all over the world, by the way. When do you find yourself most drawn to your partner? Not sexually attracted, just drawn to.

When other people are interested in that more?

That's one of them. That is one of the main four.

When other people are flirting or giving them attention.

Yes. When I see them with other people, when I see other people captivated by them, when I see the magnetism that they have over other people, when I see how others are drawn to them, when they don't belong to me. Now, if you are jealous in a feeling that is really crippling and painful, then you do not enjoy that. You feel uncertain, you feel insecure, you feel scared, you feel like they could leave you, you realize that maybe, you know, they're not attached to you. But if you are more grounded and if you feel more secure in your connection to your partner and to yourself, then when you see that experience, you have a tingling. of jealousy, but it is a jealousy that actually increases your appreciation for your person.

Interesting, yeah.

So that's an example of when do people experience jealousy in a way that actually is fueling...

Healthy jealousy, right? Okay.

I don't...

But I don't... Maybe it's a different.

Kind of unhealthy, because I don't think this is a puritanical definition of health. It's just... This is the issue, is that it's problematic? Or is it additive?

That makes sense.

It's more than is it healthy or unhealthy? I think healthy and unhealthy doesn't help us in this moment.

Is it hurting you or the relationship or is it supporting the relationship? Yes. So you think there's four ways?

Yes.

What's the other three then?

So let me ask you, when do you find yourself most drawn?

To Martha? I find myself drawn to her, I mean for me, I feel drawn when she loves and accepts me for who I am. When she's affectionate, when she is a pre, you know, sharing appreciation with me and gratitude with me when she's joyful and her most expressed self, like just pure energy and love and fun and play. I have a lot of appreciation and admiration for her when she is living her dreams also, like she's doing what she wants to do fully. And I'm like, that's inspiring. You know, it draws me to her. What else? I think the fact that she is so in integrity with her word draws me to her because then I feel more and more connected and grateful and appreciative and safe in the environment. So, I mean, sexually, so many different ways that I'm drawn to.

But you, you know, When I say the first four, it's just simply because I've gone around the world asking this question. And I just began to see themes, right? The first one is when I see my partner in their element.

Yeah, doing their thing, their part.

Doing their thing. Competent, radiant in their element. It could be on stage, at work, on a horse, on a slope, you know. But it is basically when they are self-sufficient. And when they are radiant and they're in their element and they're passionate about something and they are alive, and all of those things also mean that I am not needing to be burdened by a certain form of emotional caretaking.

She doesn't need me.

They don't need me. That's it. And when they don't need you, you can want them.

Yes. If they're always needing you, how does that affect the relationship?

Let's wait a second. So they don't need you in that moment. And that not needing you clears the pathway for desire. It allows you to want. Because if you were needed and you need to take care of them, then you are loving, but you're not necessarily desiring.

Got it.

And what happens over time when people say this, and the admiration is extremely important here, because I think it's much is bigger than respect. Admiration involves a certain idealization, and it means that there is a sense of otherness. She's different, she's other, she's her own thing. And in this space between her and you, between me and the other, lies the erotic élans. When people ask about sustaining desire in the long haul, this is the place.

In their element, in their own way.

Yes.

Not reliant on each other to be.

That's love. Love and desire, they relate and they also conflict. And herein lies the mystery of eroticism. So that's number one in her element. When she's joyful, when she makes me laugh, when she... those two, it's like there's a sense of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality, of energy. That is erotic. That is erotic. That's the number two.

Okay.

You know, and usually it means when there is an element of surprise.

Yeah, she's very adventurous.

Because it's unsolicited. But you know, sometimes people say when my partner is vulnerable. And I say that is because it's not usually the case. Right, so surprise.

It's surprise.

If they were always vulnerable, it would not be on the list of when am I most drawn to my partner. It's because it's different. It's the side of them I don't get to see so often. It's the side of me that they don't get to see that often. So when they accept me fully, and I can open up in a different way because it's different, it's unusual, it's out of the ordinary. That's number two. Number three is when I see my partner through the eyes of the others. That's the jealousy piece that you described.

When you see others admiring or respecting or attracted to sexually or any of those things.

What does it mean? It means my partner doesn't belong to me. It means that other people can look at them too, can fantasize about them too. I always say your partner doesn't belong to you, they're just on loan. with an option to renew.

Right, every day, right?

Exactly.

Interesting.

And the fourth one is when we are apart or when we reunite. So that desire is also rooted in absence and in longing, and not just in being there.

How important is creating space in a relationship, whether you're dating or in a marriage, and creating day apart, days apart, weeks apart, and has it ever become too long apart for a relationship to stay growing, if it's months apart or something.

So the first question is how important is distance in a relationship? I will also add something that I learned from the poet David Whyte this week when we had a conversation together. And he talked about the importance of silence in a relationship.

Not always having to speak or...

Yes, or the importance of being able to be with yourself while being in the presence of the other.

What would that look like? Like reading a book and the person's in the room.

Could be that, could be that you go away for a few weeks because you want to go do a meditation retreat or a project that you're interested in, or, you know, it's the notion that it, or the fact that you keep certain things to yourself, but that you stay in dialogue with yourself. and a dialogue that isn't always shared with your partner.

When you mean silent with yourself, do you mean like not speaking at all for part of this time? Or do you just mean not talking?

You're taking it literally. It's literally, but it's also the metaphor of it. So I'll explain the context. Our conversation was called because that's your question about how important is distance. I would say distance is very important in a relationship. But the way I define it is this: Every relationship straddles freedom and commitment, togetherness and separateness, connection and independence, every relationship. In every relationship there is often one person who is more inclined to the connection and one person who is more inclined to the separateness. One person more afraid of losing the other, and one person more afraid of losing themselves. One person more in touch with the fear of abandonment, one person more in touch with the fear of suffocation. We all have both. But we organize our relationship in which one of us will take on the role of this duality.

And it might evolve seasonally too. Completely.

So we need connection and we need distance. We need the things that are joined and together and we need the things that are separate. The separateness doesn't mean that there is deadness in the relationship. So when you ask how long can we be apart, it depends what you do with the space in between. If you keep the space in between alive, We are away, we have been together five, six years and you have to go do a project and you're gone for three months. But during those three months you have a whole letter writing experience where you are communicating in a very different way than the usual everyday communication. Every two days or so at night you sit down and you write a letter, not just what you've done, the catch up of the day, but then you create an aliveness to that space in between that can be even richer than when we are living together and we're standing in the kitchen every morning.

That's interesting. That's powerful, yeah. What would you say was the biggest challenge that you faced internally throughout relationships, that you had to face yourself?

Oh, I think, you know, I met my husband Jack when I was 22.

You're what? 35 now? Yes.

I like it. And actually 35 years together.

Really? 35 years together.

Married, married. Wow, that's amazing. Together even more than that.

Wow, it's powerful.

You know, but I probably swallowed the romantic ideal quite a bit as a young girl too. Are you gonna meet the right man with this man? If you meet the right person, you will never feel alone again. you will never feel lonely, you will never be sad, you will... Seriously, you know, whatever you feel, you will feel again until some of it you may feel until you drop dead. But if it changes, it's not because the magical potion of the other person is going to suddenly sprinkle its dust over you. So that was getting rid of some of the myths.

How long did it take for you internally to let that go or evolve or heal those first minutes.

Ah, yeah, I would say the first decade, you know, it's slowly over time you begin to, you know, you begin to realize that I think, you know, he was. I looked up to him. I still look up to him. He's a very smart guy. And I really wouldn't let any idea leave the house before it was vetted and approved by him.

Interesting.

Is this smart? Is this. good. Can I publish this?

Getting approval.

Getting approval, you know, from the mentor.

Interesting. That was the first 10 years. Yeah.

No, maybe a little bit less than 10, but certainly five years.

Okay.

I really needed him to. To validate everything I would write and to validate and say it's. It's good because he had the PhD. I don't want to, you know, the whole. And then finally I was told one day, you know, I have my own things to write.

He said that? Yeah.

I'm not gonna be your problem.

I gotta work here, yeah.

And I was just like, oh, who's gonna help me? Who's gonna help me? You know? And beginning to write without depending on him that much was a major transition. Mating in Captivity was written completely on my own.

Without his approval of every chapter?

I had a An editor that I hired who was phenomenal, but it was no longer, it was not an emotional dependence. It was a professional relationship. So that was a major transition. I think also understanding the difference between equality and equity.

What is the difference?

It's not 50-50.

The relationship is not 50-50. No. No relationship.

No, it's 100-100. You know, and complementarity. There are certain things that I will never do, that I rely on him, and certain things that he will never do, and he relies on me. And they balance each other out. And there's a fundamental sense of fairness, complementarity. If I want to go do something, it's just go do, enjoy, be the best. This complete generosity. And that generosity towards distance or freedom or individuality, this is a very important thing. So here's a question for you and for your listeners as well. Ask yourself, you can do it in relation to work, you can do it in relation to love. To me that was a very important question. I understood early on that I needed freedom. No, I mean put it differently. I could tolerate the lack of security better than I could tolerate the lack of freedom.

You needed freedom more than insecurity.

So I understood early on that I'm gonna be self-employed meaning I can tolerate not knowing when the next check is gonna come from, but I prefer that than somebody telling me when I can take a vacation.

This was back in the 80s, right?

Yes, yes. This is my 20s. Early 20s.

I just.

But then I applied it to relationships.

Interesting.

I knew that I need to be with someone to whom I can say, Go do your thing. And someone who says to me, Go do your thing. More than someone who does this.

But back then, that wasn't really thought of that much, was it? It wasn't really as acceptable or maybe, I don't know, people didn't really think that way, or did they? Look, maybe the US is different.

No, but you also need, you know, the same way that I said to you, sexuality changes in a relationship when you have contraception. Well, freedom changes in a relationship when you have economic independence for women.

Interesting.

Otherwise, you know, if the woman cannot conceive of her life separately from her.

Partner, then what happens?

And at that time, primarily male partner, but I would say all partner, then you cannot talk about freedom because that means you can't leave. It means that you continuously depend on the person. And the law supported that. It's a legal issue. It's not just a psychological issue. Economic independence is an economic dependence on the part of women and mothers was legal. It wasn't just a statement of her ambitions.

Interesting. Do you think more people are able and wanting to get divorces now because both parties have economic independence and you don't need to stay because someone is providing or paying certain bills that you can provide for yourself and either party.

So divorce went up in the United States when women entered the workforce in a way that they could support themselves economically.

Was that because- Divorce changed. Was that because they were more independent financially or because they were off doing other things and there were maybe distractions.

Because of economic independence, which would allow them, it's a few different things legally. It's alimony, so that children continue to be cared for. Right. And she's not entirely responsible for them or she doesn't lose them and they go with the father. So now we're in the reverse side and you know, the tension is on the other side, but it's a few pieces. It's being destitute, it's losing your children, it's not having anybody to care for you, and it's not being protected by the law. Those four things need to combine with having an economic independence that then allow you to not be destitute, be able to take care of your children, not rely on your partner in case they don't support you or can't support you, etc. So that is the history of divorce. You can't separate the history of divorce from the economic changes and the legal changes around family policy.

How long do you think people should date before they get married to really know, like, if they're giving themselves the best chance for not divorce, let's say?

Depends how they date.

Interesting.

If their dating is a, you know, service level. Exactly. A parading of the best things of me, then it doesn't matter how long, it doesn't change. Right. But I would say that the dating, the most important pieces of dating, I think the dating is really bizarre at this moment, because most people, because you date and you date alone. You see the person alone when in fact you learn so much more from seeing people in social situations.

You mean with their friends or family.

Or- I mean date on, bring a person on date too. to people. You know what I did? I had a dinner at my house and it was a bunch of single people and then one of them at one point said, I actually need to, you know, they were talking about relationships and long term and how do you know all these questions that you're asking me? And at one point one of them said, well, I actually need to go because I have a blind date. So I said, Bring them here.

Where are you going?

Exactly. What are you going to do? Sit in a noisy bar where you can't hear each other? Bring them over. We know so much more. And anyway, she was really bold. She did it. The guy came too. So everybody doing their part. And there's about 12 of us there. And he shows up. And we just tell him, We're in the middle of this conversation.

No, it was crazy.

And then I, you know, but the point was, you know how much we learned about this guy? She learned about him, but we all did too.

You learned a lot.

A lot. He wasn't the family where he's from and he's thinking about couples. I mean, seriously, he... And he was.

Adventurous, he was willing to come and be a part of this experiment.

Yeah, the whole thing. And I actually ran into this woman a few years later.

Were they still dating or not?

No, they didn't date, but she never forgot it and neither did he and neither did I. Right. You know, bring people you meet in your circle. First of all, your friends see things that you don't see. Yeah. And they often don't want to tell you and they see it and they know you. Second of all, you'll see how a person interacts with the social circle rather than in this kind of dissociated space. So I think that this notion of we sit alone, we sit alone, and only later do we begin to introduce each other.

Months later, right? Let me introduce him now to the family. Let me introduce him after. after six months sometimes. And then like, huh, I don't like this, this and this, but now you're already developing something.

It's my boys, you know, I said, did your friends meet her? Who knows her?

No one.

You know, I mean, you make sure.

They expose them to people quickly.

Yes, yes. And you don't have to go and get them checked. It's not that you can go and to, you know, go to a concert, share some activity together. But we learn about people not in a vacuum. We learn about people in social situations. You learn about people in how they treat the cab driver, the waiter, the dry cleaner, the person on the street, the homeless person, the policeman, everybody. Just watch people in action. See how they relate to others while they're trying to be super nice to you. And that is a more precise piece of information than how long should we date. Yes, that's powerful. Thank you so much for listening.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, 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.