Esther Perel on Sexual Desire, Relationships and Uncomfortable Conversations - with Ramit Sethi

Hey, everyone, it's Ramit Sethi here from I will teach you to be rich and Brain Trust. Today I have an absolutely amazing guest. Her name is Esther Perel and she's the author of Mating in Captivity. And you may have seen her on a couple of TED Talks. We're going to talk today about the things that most people don't talk about. We're going to talk about desire, we're going to talk about sexuality. We're going to talk about all kinds of relationships and the uncomfortable conversations that we try to avoid, but that we've been thinking about oftentimes for 20 or 30 years. Maybe we can start with just a scenario and let's you work with clients as well as you do a lot of speaking and writing. Let's say a couple comes to you and they say, you know, we love each other, but we haven't been having sex for six years. Where do we start with that? How do we think about that?

So the first thing is even in the way you're presenting it, right? Typically, we would assume people disconnect sexually from each other because they stop loving each other. Because the assumption is, if I love you, I want you, I desire you. And mating was indeed written for the couples who come in and say, we love each other very much, we have no sex, or, I know that you love me dearly, but it's been years since I felt wanted. Or they were, you know, precious lovers and at the same time famished for a different kind of connection. They can do the family life very well. They can do the partnership. They can do the extended family, the child rearing, all of that. But they are erotically often living in a void, in a dull state. And it's not about just not having sex. You can have sex and feel nothing. Women have done that for centuries. What we're talking about is an erotic connection that breeds aliveness, that makes people feel vibrant, vital, energized. It's that connection. Not if they have perfunctory five minute drive by right now.

I loved how you dove into this so much in your book because there's so many cliches when you watch TV or you talk to friends about, oh, wait till you get married, sex life disappears. And there's so many cultural landmarks we have that say this is what happens when you are dating. It's passionate, you're pursuing each other. And then the minute you get married or the minute you have kids, or the minute XYZ happens, everything changes. And usually the assumption is sex life goes down. Relationship changes. It becomes more mundane, more about cleaning the counters and less about that passionate love. Is that true? Are these cliches?

The whole thing is one cliche. I mean, you come from India marrying because you are deeply attracted to someone and have fallen in love with someone and are lusting that person. All of these are rather recent ideas. They come with romanticism. They have arrived in the west about 150 years ago and never has love been the foundation for marriage. And certainly not in love and certainly not passion.

Yes. In fact, it's so new in India that they actually call it a love marriage.

Yes.

Oh, they got married. It was a love marriage. As opposed to, you know, economic status, class, all arranged.

Right. All different. So here's what changed. Right. You had the traditional model. And in this traditional model, which was here as well, we want companionship, family, life support, social status and respectability and economic support. Then we brought romanticism into it. And now we also want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot. And we live twice as long. That's the model. And the idea, of course, is that desire has become the central organizing principle of sexuality because we have moved from a model of sexual duty in this romantic arrangement to sexual pleasure and sexual connection in which desire is. I don't do it because it's part of marital duty. I do it because I feel like it and you feel like it, and we feel like it at the same time and hopefully for each other. So a lot of conditions that need to be met here.

I love when you say systems, because that's the way I think. I'm a systems thinker, and to apply that to relationships seems a little weird and antithetical, but I think it's exactly right. And. And I think if somebody comes home every day and they throw their keys wherever they drop their shoes anywhere, you can yell at them, you can berate them, you can do everything to tell them you need to change. Or you could put a little table right there where the keys go. And that's a simplistic example. But the idea that you can try lecturing somebody, they're probably not going to change. I mean, history has shown that. You've lectured them for the last five years.

They're probably not the first person.

Yeah.

They had other people lecturing at them before.

Yeah. Okay. I want to take this to another area. This idea of changing the structure, changing the dynamics, and not just attacking somebody. I'll tell you that I have a number of friends who are Married. And, you know, we talk. And one of the things that I've heard a lot about is the. The passion word and the idea that, you know, things were really hot when we were dating. And, like, it's kind of like, you know, it's kind of mundane. And they use different words to describe it. I mean, they say it's kind of boring. And these are people who have not been married that long. We're not talking about 40 years of marriage. That's pretty terrifying for somebody who's not married to here. And I think that fuels the idea, particularly for guys, that if I had.

All your fun before. Because marriage is a graveyard.

Bingo. And if you. Once you commit, you're basically closing the door on everything else. And so there's all these pieces that go into it. And I wonder if you can talk about that.

I mean, I find it's such an interesting logic, because nobody would apply this logic to any other form of commitment. You know, people commit themselves to their businesses, and they don't at all think that it's the end of creativity, of freedom, of curiosity. Part of what happens in a relationship is this. I believe that we have two sets of fundamental human needs. A need for security and a need for adventure. A need for togetherness and a need for freedom. And we are trying to integrate these two into our intimate relationships. Because I am with you, and I want to create a cocoon with you. I want stability. I want predictability. And then as it becomes predictable, it's cozy and it's comfortable. And from cozy and comfortable, it becomes boring because it's so predictable. And the art is to juggle the two things. Yes, I need some element of predictability. I want to trust you. I want to rely on you. I want to depend on you. But I also want for us to be able to still have experiences where we don't know what the outcome will be. Sex that is foregone conclusion. Sex that has zero curiosity. Sex in which we do what works because it gets us to the outcome and to the end. And the end means he generally has had his orgasm, and that's the end. It's not interesting because I'm not going to discover anything about myself. It's like you foreclose the whole area of freedom and adventure, which involves imagination, creativity, curiosity, playfulness, all anticipation. All of that is gone.

Let's go into my favorite place, the bedroom. Oh, we're on the same page. Okay.

Which other room do people want to talk to me with?

All right, so we talked about passion. We talked about sort of a boring relationship. We're watching Netflix all the time. But I think for a lot of us, it manifests itself in the bedroom where we say, I'm kind of bored. I've done all these different things. I'm not excited. What are the other things you hear from people? What are the most common complaints you hear? And let's break it down by gender.

So I'm actually quite informed on this one right now because we just did a survey on 1500 people as we are launching our online workshop, Rekindling Desire.

Cool.

So it's exactly about that. And we've analyzed what are the main complaints, what are the main questions around sexuality and desire that people are bringing as they come to this workshop?

Mismatched desire, she wants more, he wants more, etc.

Yes. We don't want the same. We don't want the same amount. We don't want the same frequency. We don't want the same kind. It's all three. Rejection. Yeah, I've been rejected many, many times. Sexual secrets.

What's an example?

Abuse, rape. Shame over preferences and fantasies. Guilt over one's preferences. Guilt over body image. Shame over body image. Both genders. We always talk about the weight of the woman. We can talk about how endowed is the man. Every gender has its vulnerabilities. You know, doubt if you take. But, you know, I would say, if you want to divide it by gender, I would say on the side of men. Rejection is a big one. Why do I always have to initiate? Is a big one. Porn is a big one. And the split today between what turns me on, what I've been doing for 30 years while I watch porn alone and what do I do with my girlfriend, right?

And how, like, I would never do that with my wife. But I watch it on porn all the time, right?

But then I find it hard to do things with my wife that are exciting because I've created myself a certain kind of arousal template on this side.

Totally.

My solo life is a complete different story. Bad sexual communication. It is astounding how poor the communication is in a couple, especially around sex. People will talk about sex with anybody but their partner. And when they talk about their partner, it's about, do you like it? Don't you like it? I mean, there is just like, you know, at first they don't talk about it because they're afraid to offend. They're afraid to be judged. They're afraid to jinx it. And then they don't talk because they didn't talk in the beginning. So how can you bring it up now? It just compounds itself. So very bad sexual communication. People don't like certain things that they've been doing for way too long. People would like certain things that they've never dared to ask. People have been faking it for 22 years. Not just her, him too. And a very, very narrow definition of what is sex? A genitally performance driven, outcome based view of sex which is in and of itself so narrow and so boring. Imagine that you had that all of iTunes was reduced to one, so.