Esther Perel Reveals the Secret to Lasting Love & Passion

Some of you, when you say, I want more passion, it's not what you're going to do just in the bedroom. It's who you're going to be with each other. You're going to find some of you that when you are even at Platinum retreat or at your businesses or with your friends, that you are charming, that you are attentive, that you are focused, that you. That you are well dressed, that you are funny. And then ask yourself each time, who goes home to your partner or the partners that you've been with? Is that the person who goes home or is the one who goes home the leftovers?

It's time now to give you some new input, some additional distinctions and insights. They can help you make better decisions. So tonight we're gonna have two speakers that are extraordinary. And the first speaker is a dear friend of Sage of Mines. Her name is Esther Perel. And there are fans in the audience. We're fans as well. I don't know how many years it's been. My guess is 14, 15 years that we've worked together. Esther is really recognized, I think, as one of the world's most insightful thinkers about couples and what really drives the relationships, sexuality, and the paradoxes, really, of marriage in the modern world. You know, how do you really. Her first book was Mating in Captivity, which is really this whole concept of how do you want what you already have? Usually desire comes from something you don't have. So in the modern world, when you have it, how do you do that? And then she's just coming out with a book in a few days, is the only reason she's not here in person, because she has to be on her book tour. But we're grateful she was willing to join us by Skype and still do her session with us.

We.

And her new book is called the State of Affairs Rethinking Infidelity and really looking at it in a world where, you know, infidelity in a world where everything is known. Right? I mean, we live in a world where you can find out everything. There's a digital footprint to everything, and really understanding the dynamics of what's going behind that for people. Why do affairs occur? Can they be recovered from? Can you heal them? And so she's going to do a beautiful workshop for us tonight. She'll teach us a bit, and then she's going to put us through some exercises to really help us see if we can't uncover and discover some new insights. So this is a woman that I have unbelievable respect and love for would you please stand even though she's not here present, and give a giant hand to our dear friend, Esther Perot.

We all live in relationships. We have them with our family, with our friends, with our businesses. We live in a network of relationships. And today we live with a set of expectations about our relationships that are at an all time high, to such an extent that there actually wasn't a couples therapist until 60 years ago. This a profession that didn't exist partly because the families existed, irrespective of what actually happened to the couple. But today, the survival of the family pretty much depends on one thing before anything else, and that's the quality of the emotional connection between the partners. When there are two partners. And what I want to do with you a little bit is kind of go over, how did we get there? Where are we at now? What are some of the expectations that we have? Why are we all so inclined to say I want more passion in my relationship, when for most of history, this concept of having a passionate marriage would have been a contradiction in terms? And yet we all want it. We are willing to brave so much to experience that kind of intensity with our partners. I look at when things go wrong. I look at when things fall apart in couples because I believe that we have the strength and the ability and the resilience to actually overcome these things. I look at betrayal because I want to understand repair. I look at infidelity because I want to understand fidelity. I think that we learn our best lessons when things actually fall apart. And I like to imagine a world in which we experience a sense of vitality and aliveness in our relationships. Because I believe this is a line that you've heard from Tony as well, that it is the quality of our relationships that ultimately determine, determines the quality of our lives. On our epitaph, nobody's going to talk about how much we worked, but everybody is going to be there to talk about how much we meant to them and how much we did for others. And it is about that experience of relationships that I want to talk to you a little bit. So, you know, until not too long ago, we lived in villages. And in those villages we didn't have much freedom, but we knew who we were. We had a community that gave us a sense of belonging, a sense of identity and clear guidelines for what we needed to do. Because our relationships were dictated by rules and obligations and duty. And then when we married, you know, there wasn't much that had to do with love in there. If it happened, it was a byproduct but it certainly was not the central feature of it. And most of us didn't have a way out. And so the only way out that we had if we were really miserable, is that we could hope for an early death. That was kind of the way out. And we moved to the cities. And as we arrive in the cities and we have the rise of romanticism and the rise of individualism and. And the growing urbanization, we start to be a lot more free. But as we are a lot more free, we also are a lot more alone. And as we are a lot more alone, we start to turn to our relationships with a whole new mandate. Because now I still want from you what I wanted from traditional marriage. I want from you family, life, companionship, economic support, social respectability. But I also want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot. And I also want you to be the best parent and my intellectual equal, and the one who's going to inspire me in my profession and the one who's going to help me become the person who expresses himself at their utmost. And basically, we develop more and more model in which we turn to one person to give us once what an entire village used to provide. This is the model today. One person for everything and for the long haul. And the long haul keeps getting longer. And now when I come to you, I get to choose you and I get to experience with you intimacy. Intimacy, which used to be a byproduct, has now become the organizing factor. And intimacy no longer means what it has meant throughout history, which is that we work the land together. We raise our children together, we weather the storms together. Now intimacy is into me, see? And when I look into your eyes and when I want you to look into mine, I don't want you to be clicking on the computer or on the ph. I want you to connect with me and I want you to listen to me as I share with you what are my most deepest assets. And those are not my dowry, and they're not my cows. My deepest assets with you are my feelings, my worries, my aspirations, my dreams. I bring to you my internal life, and I want you to validate it. And I want you to make me feel that I matter. And I want with you to transcend my existential aloneness. Never has marital intimacy been there to help us deal with the growing atomization of our life. And yet we want it. We want it bad. Not only did we bring love to marriage, but we also brought sex to love. And for the first time, we connected two things that have never had anything to do with each other, which is marital happiness and sexual satisfaction. And we don't just want sex because we want eight children. And we don't just want sex because it's a woman's marital duty today. We want sex that is rooted in desire to own the wanting. I want to. I want you. I want you to want me. And maybe we want each other at the same time, and that would be fantastic. And this notion that sexuality is rooted in desire, we can only do because we have contraception. And we have, for the first time, the possibility of separating sex from reproduction. And now we want connection and pleasure. And we no longer just see sexuality as a feature of our biology. We see sexuality as a feature of our identity. It isn't just something I do. It is a part of who I am. And we start to have wishes about experiencing passion, intensity, fantasy, deepest erotic connections with our partners. We take it for granted, but it actually is really, really new. So we changed the expectations of marriage and committed relationships. We changed the meaning of love in marriage and committed relationships. We changed the meaning of sex. And then we did a few other amazing things. Happiness. Do you know that for most of history, happiness was basically for the afterlife? If you suffered well on earth, you could maybe be rewarded later. But now we want happiness right here, right now. And it's not just an option, it's a mandate. And then we change a few other things. We used to marry and have sex for the first time. Now we marry and we stop having sex with others. We used to think that monogamy was one person for life. Now we all think that monogamy is one person at a time. And we go around comfortably talking about how we are monogamous in all our relationships. We used to divorce because we were unhappy. Today we end up often divorcing because we think we could be happier. We used to choose our partners in the village between two or three people. Now we have a thousand people at our fingertips. And we often suffer a severe case of fomo because how do I know that I have found the One and who is the one? The one is the one who is so unique and so phenomenal that for you, I'm going to delete my apps. You are the one for whom I'm going to renounce the others. Exclusivity means something very different when I have had sexual nomadism for years before I meet you. So we have a host of new changes that are happening, and then we can add to that what is happening around infidelity? Right, because we used to cheat, or we used to have affairs, or we used to have infidelity because marriage didn't have the love and the passion that we wanted. But today we often go elsewhere because marriage fails to deliver the love and the passion that it promised. And it isn't that we have new desires today, but we often feel much more entitled to pursue them. We feel like we deserve to be happy. And if I miss something, I would want that experience. And we don't necessarily want to leave the person that we are with. We actually even do this in happy relationships. Because it's not that I'm looking for another person when I look at the gaze of another, but in fact, I actually often want to find another self. It's not that I want to leave you, it's that I want to leave the person that I have myself become. And so it's not because we have problems in our relationship, but because I experience a sense of longing to reconnect, often with lost parts of myself. Infidelity, for most of history, had nothing to do with love. Neither did monogamy, because it was primarily an economic imposition on women so that we would know who gets the children when I die and who gets the cows. Today, it is all about love. It is the shattering of the grand ambition of love. Because if I was to be the one and you betray me and you cheat on me, then it means that I am not the one. But, you know, for most of history, too, when people used to say the one and only, they usually meant God. Today, when they talk about the one and only, they talk about their partner. They talk about the soulmate. And the soulmate is what we do when we mix together the spiritual and the relational. I mean, it's a very interesting thing that in our secularized society, romantic love has become the most powerful engine of the Western psyche. We seek in romantic love transcendence, meaning belonging, ecstasy, all these things that we used to look for in the realm of the divine. And now it's all one person who has to provide all of that. And we sometimes crumble under the expectations of such a tall order for a party of two. And yet we're not willing to give it up. How many of you would like to have it all with that one person? Indeed, indeed, you know, how many of you have become too cynical to want that? So, you see, we want today something that is absolutely beautiful and unique, but damn difficult to achieve. And that's this. I want one person to be for me, stability, security, safety, predictability. I want you to anchor me. I want you to be my base, my home. But I also want you to give me novelty and adventure and surprise and discovery and exploration and the unknown. I want you to give me both to be the anchor and the wave. I want you to give me familiarity, and I want you to give me novelty. I want you to give me continuity and I want you to give me surprise. I want you to give me comfort and I want you to give me edge. And we really think that Victoria's Secret will solve this. Or sex toys, you know, and there is no Victor's Secret, you know that it still is the responsibility squarely with the women on that one. This notion that we can reconcile two fundamental sets of human needs in one relationship is the grand ambition of modern love. And it means reconciling love and desire. Now, when you love, the verb is to have. And when you desire, the verb is to want. Love wants to close the gap. Love wants to minimize the threats. Love wants to know the beloved. But desire actually needs a certain space to thrive. It needs an other to go visit on the other side, a bridge to cross and someone with whom to be curious about to go and get a sense of what is happening in their own red light district. Love and desire, they sometimes relate and they also conflict. So I want you to just take the paper right in front of you and just for a quick moment, jot down. When I love, I feel.

Go.

Just words, associations, images. When I love, I feel. And underneath I want you to diet a few words and images. When I am loved, I feel. When I am loved, I feel. And now. And when I desire, I feel. When I desire, I feel. And just fill in the blank.

So I stand it on fire tonight.

And underneath. And when I am wanted. When I am desired, I feel. Anybody that wants to just share something that stood out.

I noticed a huge difference between like, the love and the desire. And like love to me was like, understood, safe, welcomed, accepted, seen. Just all these, like. Like family, like acceptance. I'm not sure how to. How to word it. But then like with the desire, like when. When I felt wanted, like, I felt invincible.

One second, hold up. Tell me your name again.

My name is Coleman.

Coleman.

Yeah.

Take a deep breath because you're swallowing half the things you're saying because they run dicked. So, Coleman, all these experiences of love you felt were like home and family.

Yeah.

Okay. And what was on your other side of the page?

On the other side, like with. With desire, like when I felt wanted. I felt like. Like a God. Like invincible. I don't. I don't even know. I'd have to, like. I felt like a king. Yeah.

You ask your page. Take your paper. It's okay.

Yeah.

Like I. I felt it exists inside of you.

I felt invincible. I felt like a king. I felt unstoppable. I felt like my true self. I felt magnificent. I felt godlike. And I felt like a hero.

And when you want and when you design.

Yeah. All right. We're all family here, right?

Do you need a moment of encouragement?

No, no, no, I'm good. I'm good. We're definitely good. So I feel excited, I feel nervous, I feel anxious, I feel horny, I feel curious, I feel intrigued. I feel interested. Just all of that.

Beautiful, beautiful. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the world of the erotic. You know? And what stood out for you when you look at those two different. Those two realms of experience for you, what stands out?

I think, like, when I feel love, like, it's. It's. It's safe and it's like it's calm. And when I feel wanted or. Or when I desire, it's. There's. It's so uncertain, like, I have no idea what's going to happen. And that's amazing. And it's. It's. It's exciting. You don't know what's going to. What's. What will happen next and.

Right.

It's like a journey.

And for some of you, and for you, that unknown, that mystery, that discovery is an exciting trip. And for somebody else, that same unknown may be a complete threatening trip.

Right?

Yeah. Just so we are not that you understand that very same experience that you're entering a place and you have no idea and it's uncertain. And that's why things are going to just surprise you there. You find that a thrilling experience. And someone else. And often people who actually have experienced trauma will find that a very scary trick. The last thing they want is something that is unsure and unknown and mysterious. And that is why for some of us, desire is a. A place you can't wait to go to. Because sex isn't just something you do. People. Sex is a place you go. You can do sex and feel nothing. Women have done that for centuries. But when you think, yeah, just check with your grandma, you know? But when it becomes what you want, when it becomes a place where you go, you start to ask, what parts of you do you connect with there? What do you seek to express? Then you know, and part of what you're Talking about is power. For example, I think when you describe your feeling of safe, you describe something that is not powerful at all. It's very profound, but it has nothing to do with power. It's very rare that I hear the word powerful in the category of love. And I often hear the word warm in the category of love. But if I hear any temperature in the category of desire, it's usually hot, not warm, different temperature. Yeah. And in one you are brazen and go, you want to say something? Tell me.

No, I was just, I was completely agreeing with you.

Like, yeah, say it in your own words.

Yeah, like desire is hot in so many different ways. And love is warm, it's comfortable, it's soothing, it's something to be cherished.

And you often experiencing them together, do they marry easily for you?

No.

All right, tell me the rest.

This is the masculine, right? The one word.

Tell me something. When you're in the category on the side of love, it's not a category, but in the experience of love. How old are you?

Maybe like three or four or five. Like I, I envision like being at my grandparents house and like, like sharing a meal and like just. It's just pure love.

And you feel young and you feel tender and you feel vulnerable and you feel nurtured. And why, what makes these two not come together?

I think desire was more like in, you know, in teenage years or as a young adult and going through that entire transition, figuring that kind of stuff out, it was a rush. It was completely different.

And can you have. Are you, are you into women or into men or into both? Let's not take anything for granted.

Shin.

Yeah, okay. No, I'm into women and I'm happily with my girlfriend here.

Great.

So. And with your girlfriend, are you able to be powerful and vulnerable, strong and nurtured, brazen and desirous and also able to be held and wrapped? Can you marry both of those with her?

Yeah. Everything excluding like the held and wrapped part? I think so.

Even after the sex?

Yeah. I'm the one doing the holding and the wrapping.

Ah, okay, okay, okay, good. Can I hear from one or two others just so I get a little bit of a.

Hello, beautiful estruth buttercup.

How are you? Yes, hello. Talk to me.

So love makes me feel very grounded, very protected, safe, nurtured and admired, but in a slightly more distant way. Whereas desire is totally transcendent. It makes me feel wild and wonderful and completely liberated. Both feeling desire and feeling desired. I feel unleashed. Yeah, I want both simultaneously.

That is. Yes, yes. And for some of us, they marry and they blend seamlessly. And when you are inside your own body, some of you may feel that you are very much in your own home, because our bodies are the homes that we live in. And so some of you may actually feel that you are no longer in your body because you have been unbounded and you have stepped outside of the physicality of your body. There isn't one way. This is a very important thing for all of you. Do you know, as I'm listening to you about Akop, I'm thinking of an image for me that helps me understand what I call in my language also erotic blueprints. And I know Jaya is there and she's going to talk about some of the other erotic blueprints. And that is, if you tell me how you were loved, I will be able to tell you how you make love. Not just if you love me. I'll know how you love, but I'll actually know how your body translates this emotional experience into the physicality of sex. So tell me, buttercup, how were you loved as a child?

As a child, honestly, I don't remember anything about my childhood.

There are some stories that usually means that it wasn't too good.

It wasn't good. But I. If I may, I choose not to tell those stories anymore.

Good, good. Keep going. You're trying to say something.

Well, I'm thinking about what you just said about the body, and I'm thinking about desire. And it's only through my body that I feel fully alive. And so I feel that desire takes me on a journey from being viscerally alive in my body to other stratospheres. So it's not static. And the truth is I've not yet experienced the simultaneous love and desire that I know is coming to me very soon.

Because part of what you do is that in order to experience what you think is that sense of aliveness, you actually leave yourself. Yes. You step outside of yourself.

Yes. But it has to start in my body. The only way I feel alive is through my body. But then it's able to transport, which I then leave. Indeed, yes.

Yes. And I would like for you to have the experience of actually staying there once I'm all in. Stay. You understand? Staying inside your boundaries, inside your container. And to really make peace with this container so that you don't have to leave it in order to feel free, but you can be inside of it and also feel free. That's your challenge. Now that you've stopped telling the stories of the Past. There is no greater vengeance than to feel free in one's own body, especially when you had to learn to flee it in order to feel safe. Some of you were taken care of and protected by the people who loved you or who were meant to love you and to take care of you. But some of you had to learn to flee for protection. Some of you had the adults taking care of you, and some of you were actually taking care of the adults so that maybe they would get their act together and be there for you. Some of you could laugh out loud and cry out loud, and some of you were silenced very early on. Couldn't laugh out loud, isn't that a strange motion? And couldn't cry out loud, which is equally strange. And some of you were not allowed to thrive. And some of you, when you had any need, somebody said, what do you need that for? You have enough. And when you constantly, I told you have enough. At some point, sometimes it becomes difficult to have orgasm, to enjoy, to experience pleasure. Because pleasure is not about sustenance. Pleasure is about abundance. It's actually about having a lot. It doesn't matter in quantity, but it's in permission. It's in permission to experience pleasure. You need to feel the permission to be worthy of feeling good, of allowing yourself to feel good, and of allowing someone else to make you feel good. So I'm going to say one last thing and then we're going to actually really do a whole catch up together. I want you to think about this, people. Every time you think of relationships, you're going to think that there is, as in any other language, there is a vocabulary. And I think when you think relationships, there is a vocabulary of about seven verbs that probably make the core of the language for relationship. I want you to write them down, all of you. Thank you, Bertraka.

Thank you so much.

The first one. They're not in order of importance, but every single one of them is crucial. To ask. To ask. Are you comfortable asking? Do you trust that when you ask, the person next to you, hears you, wants to respond to you, cares about what you want? Do you feel entitled to ask? Do you feel worthy enough of asking, of having needs, wishes, aspirations? To ask? It's one of the first things we do without words. To give. How is it for you giving? Do you enjoy giving? Does it fill you up to give? Do you feel that you give just so that you can acquit yourself of your debt? You give so that you won't owe? Or you give in order to feel that now you Have a right to.

Ask.

Do you enjoy filling someone else up? Or do you feel that when you give, it empties you? How comfortable are you with giving? And then on the other side, how about receiving? Can you receive? For some of you, it is the most vulnerable of them all. And this is if it's true in your relationships. It's often either even more so sexually or it becomes the one place where you actually can recede is sexually. What's it like for somebody else to give to you? Do you like the surrender? Are you threatened by the surrender? Does it make you feel too vulnerable? Do you love that vulnerability? Do you feel like it makes you too little, too weak, too young? What's it like to receive? Can you let someone else do you give to you pleasure you? And how about sharing? Do you enjoy sharing? Or are you too competitive to share? Or do you feel like it's a game of fairness? What's it like sharing? To ask, to give, to receive, to share, to take? How about taking? Can you be greedy on occasion? Can you feel that you have the right to take? Or do you leave the bigger piece for the other people? Can you take in sex? Can you take your pleasure? Or do you just accept whatever you can get? How good are you about taking? Can you claim your seat at the table? This is true in your business lives. This is true at home. Can you take and can you play? How are you about playing? Playing, pleasure, fantasy, imagination, it's all part of that dimension play, which you can only do if you're not constantly worried and vigilant and anxious. Because play involves a carefreeness, it involves a freedom, it involves an unself consciousness. How are you about playing? Are you safe to play? And then the last one is to refuse. Can you say no? Because if you don't know to say fully no on occasion, you may not always know how to say yes either. This is for me, the basic grammar. And every one of you has one of those verbs, probably that could use some stretching, some muscle building, some further developing emotionally and sexually and. Or sexually. So I want you to know about the verbs. Then I want to say one other thing. Animals have sex. We have eroticism. And the difference is that the central agent of the erotic is our imagination, our ability to stay interested in us and in our partner. Our imagination. It's our curiosity. It's not our body size, it's not our age. It's very different things that sustain desire in the long haul. It's our ability to play, to flirt, to be seductive, to Tease to continue to experience ourselves as sexual, as erotic. When people complain about the listlessness of their sex lives, they sometimes may want more sex, but they always want better. And better means that in this experience, they want to feel alive. They want to feel a sense of renewal, vitality, vibrancy. That is the definition of the erotic. Some of you, when you say, I want more passion, it's not what you're going to do just in the bedroom. It's who you're going to be with each other. You're going to find some of you that when you are even at Platinum Retreat or at your businesses or with your friends, that you are charming, that you are attentive, that you are focused, that you are well dressed, that you are funny. And then ask yourself each time, who goes home to your partner or the partners that you've been with? Is that the person who goes home or is the one who goes home? The leftovers. And if you bring home the leftovers, it's very difficult to also want passion because in a way, you have passion in the other parts of your life. The other parts of your life are erotic. They're hot. You're horny there. Not in the sexual sense of the word, in the vibrant sense of the word. You're playful there, you're funny there, you're attractive there. You connect. And when you want to bring passion home, it's that energy that you want to bring home. Energy is very different from performance. You have Emily Nagoski with you who's going to have a line at some point. I'm imagining her saying, because she lives with that line in my head that says pleasure is the measure. And to allow yourself to experience that pleasure, you need to be able to connect with that energy, that erotic energy, so that you don't just have very interesting, alive, vibrant chats with others and then go home and start to talk about Management Inc. The body doesn't know how to transition like that at 11 o' clock at night. From Management Inc. To hot sex. Foreplay doesn't start five minutes before the real thing. Foreplay starts at the end of the previous orgasm. That's the real thing. And that doesn't start in bed or that doesn't start when you're undressed. It's that energy before that that makes me sit like this rather than like this. This is the catch. This is cozy, this is comfortable and I love it. But you know, the main thing when I sit like this is that I want nothing else. I don't want to be disturbed from this place. This is the position of the erotic. Tell me more. Show up, open up. Take me, rapture me, captivate me. I'm open, I'm curious. I'm right there. That's the position. That's the position that many of you have in your thriving businesses. And if you want thriving relationships, it needs that same body posture. Do you understand me? Great. Okay, let's talk together. Ask me questions or tell me your questions. Tell me your dilemmas. Tell me what stands in the way for you to have the kind of connection and passion that you say you want to have.

Hi, my name is Kylie.

Hi, Kylie. Hi.

One of the things that's in the road of me now, which is different to what it was six months ago, my situation's different. So what it is right now is I'm single mother. Sorry, single person after many years. And I have a bit of a conflict in my head because I feel that since becoming single and finding a whole new life out there, is that I have found a whole different side of myself. A whole sexual awakening. If you like, that wasn't there.

Pardon? So if you like. I said, do you like?

I do like.

Good.

But the dilemma is I keep in my head too much when I'm there and I'm not in a relationship. So the encounters, if you like, or intimacy that I have is. What's the word? Not in a relationship, one night stands, whatever. Like, that's what I've experienced at. Since I've been single. And part of. When I first came out of a marriage, I was like, yes, I've got this. Had to redefine myself, reclaim myself. And I was happy with that. But then obviously after a while then I started to feel not so good about that. And I don't know why that is because I don't think it's wrong. If it's my choice and my decision, I'm safe. I feel good about it. But then I don't know. I don't know if it's my head mucking with me, if it's culture conditioning from. Good girls don't do that.

Yes, yes, I was exactly gonna ask you that. It's exactly, exactly the same. Good girls. Finish the sentence.

Good girls don't have sex on the first night.

That's number one. And then Good girls. What.

I don't know. That's what I'm in conflict about because I have a very strong, like, I'm very comfortable that part of me isn't that. And I can feel that I was. I can own that. But then, as I said, sometimes the head comes in and then I'm like, oh, shit. You know, like.

I don't know.

It's just. Is like, what happens? Tell me something. What happens? You're giving me one of the base messages for slut shaming.

Yes. Right.

Because a woman. Let's first of all, not talk about girls. Let's talk about a woman who chooses to connect sexually with someone for whatever is. What. What does that say about her?

Well, I have two opinions. That's what. That's the conflict. My powerful feminine, I believe is my true self is. That's fine. It's perfect. It's. It's beautiful. It's exciting. It's. Makes me feel alive.

Do you think that the guy that you are with thinks lesser of you because you gave yourself to him on the first date?

I don't think of it at the time, but then afterwards I do.

Of course, not at the time, but five minutes later.

Not five minutes, but certainly the next day. Yes.

Yes. Do you, you know, do you. You see, it's a whole cultural system, right? Yes. That you internalize and that starts to take your experience and gradually turn something that was meant to be nice, pleasurable, clean, beautiful, consensual, respectful, and starts to basically turn it into something that was dirty, that was shameful, that was cheapening, and that you then have to start to feel like, what am I going to do with that thing inside of me? You know, I don't see myself as such, but that thing is just like gnawing at me and saying, that's right.

That's exactly how. Like, that's the conflict. I don't actually feel that. But then my head must. With me. And it's like, you know, I don't know whose voice it is. I don't know whose voice it is, but it's like. And then I stop and go, no, no, no, no, that wasn't.

There's no.

I don't know.

There's a man sitting behind you. Two men sitting behind three. Three men sitting behind you. Can you turn to them for a second? And I want you to ask them, and I want them to answer you in all honesty, because you may not be inventing because they themselves may have the same ambivalence in their own head, but I want you to pose the question to them. And then there's three, five other women around you, and you can ask them the same question, too. This is not a personal discussion only. This is a collective conversation. This is a cultural conversation in which the Game is rigged in which there is a double standard in which, you know, with men live with the pressure that it's through sex that they have to access all the other things which they're not allowed to want. So it has to always be in the language of sex. And women have to want love and connection and intimacy and all of those things. And so they have to go through there to actually reach the sex.

Yeah.

Each one has been given the permission to want one thing only and has to hide in order to get the other take. You start to feel dirty, he starts to feel weak and a little boy. If he wants the connection, the love that he's up to, he's in his family and he's a little child. If you want the sexuality, then you have to find some strange way to make it acceptable to still be the beautiful, smart, powerful, determined woman that you are and give yourself that permission. So I don't want you to stand alone with this question. Monsieur, in the red T shirt. I don't know, but I see you from afar. Yes.

How are you?

What's your name?

Philip. Philip.

Philip.

Yes.

Where do you. Where are you in relation to this dichotomy? This is one of the most fundamental gender conversations that goes on.

So you.

I mean, I disagree. I think it's you. Everybody has their own choice. And I don't judge.

I don't. You really don't?

Not. I really don't.

Okay.

I don't judge at all.

Okay. Can you talk to her? I want you to talk to her and I want you to. To give her a piece of your mind about the experience of making sex a clean transaction. Something that doesn't have to leave people afterwards grappling with shame.

Yeah. Sex is something to enjoy. It's an experience to enjoy together.

I want you to talk to her, not to Queen. It's fine.

An experience to enjoy together. Just an experience. That energy and exchange of energy it is to enjoy together. That's what I believe.

Is there something I want you to talk to? Yes, I want you to talk to her and I want you to give her something that allows her to know, at least from one man, you're just one person. And I want you to literally speak to her. This is a conversation by which, one by one, people will begin to undo the pieces of shame and secrecy about this.

That's what you desire, then, you know, do it. If that's your desire, then go for it. It's okay. Don't listen to all the cultural ideas and all the mind. And if it's in your heart and something you want to do then.

But is it real? Go for it.

Is it really? Okay, yeah. Yes, of course.

You're not very convincing.

I'm not very convincing?

No, no. And I don't think it's the screen only.

No.

Not convincing. As far as. I don't, I don't. I do believe it. I believe that it is okay. Like there is. If you desire something, then you should go for it. And if there's nothing wrong with it, it's. This is your. If you have beliefs, we all have beliefs. If you're letting them get in the way, then if something you desire, then you should desire it, go for it.

No judgment.

No judgment. You're judging yourself. You're allowing other beliefs to, you know, you judge yourself on what you believe. And did you. Where do you pick up these beliefs? Are they really your beliefs?

Why don't I.

Pass the mic to the fellows next to you? Where do you stand on this one?

I really don't see where the problem is. I mean, if you want to have.

Sex with someone, you're an adult, shouldn't be an issue. Oh, I'm sorry.

If you want to have sex with somebody and you're an adult, it shouldn't be an issue. It's your choice. The only person that's condemning yourself is you. That's it.

I'm sorry, I couldn't.

Hear me now.

Excuse me, Andy.

Yes.

Are you in a relationship? Nope. Uh huh. Yes. The messages about what men and women are allowed to want, they don't just exist in one's head alone and they didn't come from oneself. So if women and men are going to set each other free, they need to be able to have those conversations with each other. It's not fair to ask anybody to do this on their own. That's all. And so I just want you to help this woman from the place of a man. Maybe now you're in a relationship, but you may have been with other women in experiences where you were with them on the first night. And what this woman needs to know is that when she left those rooms that the person who actually thought of her, thought of her in her full person and not just in a kind of objectified, used way. That's the experience. It's like, how do you give yourself over and not feel empty when you leave, which is the experience that people have when they feel used sexually. That's what she's trying to claim so that she doesn't judge her pleasure, her experience, her Autonomy, her being an adult woman, all of that stuff she knows in her head. But that's not what starts to gnaw at her when she starts to ask herself, was this okay?

Can I say something? Could I. Could I say.

Of course you can.

I think that perhaps they would be maybe afraid to say that because even if they think it, they wouldn't want to hurt me or say the wrong thing to me because I've just said that I've been. I've done that. So I think there would be. It would be fair to say. And. And if they said that, that's okay because it's just their opinion, right? So I guess I'm okay with it. So don't, you know, if that's your opinion, that's your opinion. Just don't, like, say it.

You see, the reason I ask them is not because I don't think you can't come up with the answer yourself, but because I really think that if you're going to be a woman, you need to be met by adult men and not by boys. You can't have it both ways. So I want them to meet you as adult men who either will say what they really think or they will actually try to protect you either way, but I want them to meet. Meet you at the same level. So I saw that the mic was on some. With someone else just now.

I.

Yes, I.

My partner's probably cursing me now, and I'm shaking as a grown man. And that's okay.

Good.

Luke. I've been in both positions where I've both objectified and used women when I was a sailor. And I've been in a position where I've come to a place where it's okay to let. Okay to let that desire out. And not only okay, where I can actually encourage it and see it as a beautiful gift to me in a relationship, whether it be first time or now. Obviously I am in a relationship. And when I was objectifying women, when I was using them, it was dirty, and I made them feel that way, and I made them feel that way by cutting off a piece of me. Made them feel that way by making them feel used like they weren't anything. And they were there for no other reason other than to serve my personal gratification. And that would come across in the feelings of kicking them out early, sneaking away, being deceptive, being manipulative, being an egotistical pig, if you will. I don't know if those are too general or if I need to be more specific, but that's probably how I made them feel that way. I hallucinate.

And.

When I.

Was damaged enough to let go or I realized that I saw something beautiful the first time it happened, and it unlocked something in me. I went, holy shit. She is so free in herself to be able to express this whatever it is I see in her right now that I don't have to feel guilty about even myself. It set me free. It showed me a piece of her that I hadn't even recognized in me. And so it became a beautiful exchange of two people where you felt no shame in expressing who you are. In fact, you felt empowered by it. And you walked away from there with an experience that is fulfilling and uplifting, not one where you feel dirty. That's all I've got.

Mark.

Yes.

I don't know how far you are from her, but I would like you to walk over. Mark, what I would like to offer you is the opportunity, since you probably never had a chance, to say I'm sorry to many of these other women. Right?

Yeah.

And you probably have a pile of I'm sorrys that you could do because you were a pig.

Yeah.

Not by. I mean, I'm not even going to explain it, but you were. You. You said it very beautifully. You said it with great accountability. And I think that you have someone right here next to you with whom you can have the opportunity to stand accountable for some of the behavior that you've had. Because it's your behavior that has created her conflict. Not yours personally, but that story that exists between way too many men and women. Talk to her.

And as I talk to you, I'm certainly not talking to any other women in this room at all. I am.

Can I ask you something?

Sure.

Take that gum out of your mouth.

Can deal with that.

Because you don't want the tension to go into your gum. You want the tension to come out through your words, through your feelings, through your body, through your affect.

I am. I'm sorry for not seeing the truth in who I was early enough so that I could break some of the conditioning that I'd bought into that allowed me to treat women that I chose, that I chose to decide that women were going to hurt me. And the only way I could get.

Control.

Was by treating them like they were nothing, like they were resources I could use and trade, because that was all I knew how at that stage. And so to protect myself, I brought you down. I brought every woman down to the broken level that I felt I was so that I could feel okay. That's the only way I knew how to feel whole. It was never your fault. But it's all I knew.

I'm standing right behind you. Just so you know. If I was there, I would be standing right behind you. Not by putting my hand on your shoulder. And I'd ask you, and who hurt you?

My mom.

And my father and me.

I hurt me.

They just weren't there. At least that's the story I bought into. Sometimes they weren't, and sometimes they were. But I wish I had a different model at that age to teach me something different. And then I don't. Because I wouldn't be half the man I am today without it.

To the ground. I started. What did you tell him?

I told him it was okay. He's innocent. I love you. Thank you. Please forgive me. I love you.

What did he just give you? What did he just give you?

A different perspective. A perspective that the man. There's a whole different possibility from the man's perspective that. Just a different perspective. Just. I don't know what's in. I don't know what they're feeling. And I wouldn't have guessed that.

That there was hurt behind.

Yes. Pain. Pain.

Pain.

Sorry. Pain. Suffering, hurt. I would never have guessed that. And I don't know if that is always the case, but certainly it's possible.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Was this important for you?

Yes, very important. Absolutely. Very important. Why I stood up. It's very important.

Good.

Because I want the freedom. I want that freedom. I want that permission to be myself, to be my feminine, to be whatever that is for me at that time. No judgments. My choice, my decision.

You know, that is probably the primary definition of sexual freedom for a woman. It's not to do what she wants. It's to accept what she wants. It's to experience it with dignity, with freedom. And without the cheapening, the shaming that is attached to her sexual freedom. When that starts to happen, we will have a different landscape between men and women. What starts to happen is when Marx is able to talk to you about how because he felt bad. He decided to basically make her powerless and make her unable to hurt him. And he starts to give one story of male pain. And when you start to experience one story of woman emancipation, then we will have a new landscape. Things will get better, as they just did in this interaction between the two of you. So thank you very much. Can I hear from a couple of other people? Just so I get a pulse check from you? What's going on?

Okay.

I really, really didn't want to Stand up. But.

Well, you are. Thank you.

The really annoying person next to me put his hand up behind my head so that I couldn't see. So now I'm stood up. So when we were writing down how we feel.

Send me your name. My name is Miyurt.

My name is Natalie. I'm from England.

Natalie. Hi.

Hi. So when we were writing down how. How we feel when we love someone, actually, one of the first things I wrote down was scared. And.

Actually, like, a lot of the.

Feelings, like just listening to what other people write, it was things like warmth and security and safe. And mine was like. It sounded more passionate. It was like excitement and scared. Yeah. So I guess a good question would.

Be, how do you make it more warm? Scared of what?

Oh, getting hurt. How.

What. What is hurt? What hurts you?

Like having who I am as a person attacked. I suppose.

You get attacked by somebody who. Tell me. Because there's a lot of ways to fear love.

Yeah. Yeah. I just think maybe for me, romantic love, I've not. Like, I love my family. Like, I feel warmth and love for my family, like my mum and people like that. But I didn't realize literally until that second that I wrote it down that maybe that's why I'm single.

Yeah.

I don't. I don't know.

Have you ever laughed?

Yeah.

In the romantic sense?

Yeah.

Huh.

Yeah. And were you scared?

Yeah. In the end.

And has somebody told you that that's part of love?

No, it genuinely was a really scary time. Like, it wasn't a very nice time. Or suppose. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. But what I'm trying to say is that I want to understand there's often two primary ways that we fear. One is that we could lose the other.

Yeah.

And the other is that we could lose ourselves.

Yeah. I think I'm scared.

Which is yours?

Both. Yeah, definitely both.

One stands out before the other.

Losing myself. Yeah. Because actually, yeah. Thinking about it, the one time I was in love, I did lose myself completely. Yeah.

You know, that means what, that I stopped thinking about me? That I was all about the other person?

No, he just wanted to destroy me, basically. And I've forgiven him from now. But, yeah, he just. I'm like this happy, joyous person, and he wanted me to be like a little wallflower that just didn't speak or look at anyone.

Why would you forgive him for that?

Because it's just a healthy thing to do, I think. I don't know. It's helped me move on.

Okay. In my book.

Yeah.

Certain things, you move on and you don't forgive.

Okay.

Do you understand?

Yeah. He was a really shit person. Yeah. I haven't really forgotten. That's right.

For you. This is not for everybody, but for you, if you were to forgive him, it would actually be an act of forgetting yourself.

Yeah.

For other people, that's. They're not the same. Yeah. It's not one size fits all. But for you, it's actually important that certain things not be forgiven. That doesn't mean you wallow in it, and that doesn't mean you keep. You know. But no, certain things are not okay.

Yeah. It wasn't. Okay.

Good.

Are we clear on that?

Yeah, for sure.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

So you move on.

Yeah.

And you don't forgive.

Okay.

You understand that? I'm not saying stay and rage and hate and this and that. I'm simply saying, in your experience, when you go too fast forgiving because you think that's what good people do, you forget yourself and you become walf. What did you call? Wallflock? Wallpaper.

Yeah. Just someone that doesn't stand up for themselves.

Right.

So part of your standing up is giving yourself the permission to say, there's certain things I don't forgive.

Okay. Yeah.

I learned to live with it, but I don't forgive. Yeah, you'll be stronger.

Yeah, that makes sense.

You'll be stronger and you'll be less scared to love again.

Okay. You hear me? Yeah, I hear you. Definitely.

Tell me what you just heard.

That I don't need to forgive him. Because if I forgive him, I'm almost condoning his behavior and saying that that's okay, and it's not okay. I'm not gonna accept that behavior.

That's. That's. That's right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Because it just came all rushing back, and you just saw the entire destruction in front of your eyes.

What you want to hear? What do you want to hear? Sorry.

I just saw a rush come over you.

Yeah.

And I imagined I may be wrong. That you just got a can of another memory rush.

Oh, yeah.

Of what it's like to be with somebody who wants to annihilate you.

Yeah.

Okay. So if there's something more you want to add, you tell us, and if not, we leave it at that.

Okay. Well, basically, yeah. I was with a guy, and I was completely in love with him. And I believe he was in love with me in some weird way. But it got first very controlling and verbally abusive, then physically abusive, and then he tried to kill me. And then I spent a long time Actually scared that he was actually going to try and kill me? Yes. That's not okay.

Such.

Yeah, I shouldn't forget.

No, I actually think you should be majorly pissed. Yeah, I think you should. I mean, it's not about what you should be, but it's like you're telling me I wrote about being loved. I'm scared? Yes. You carry a memory of something that was frightening. Not just scary frightening. And if you keep apologizing for him or trying to be good and forgive him, you will stay frightened. You will stay single. In order not to be frightened, when somebody wants to destroy you, it takes every ounce you can have. And don't say he loved me. In a weird way, that's bullshit.

Yeah, it is bullshit.

Understand?

Yeah. Okay.

You know, whatever he had, he's not there. We can't really worry about that right now. But he wanted to possess you. He wanted to shrivel you up. He wanted to diminish you. He wanted to do all kinds of things. Things. This is about a lot of stuff. But let's not call this love, because that's a perversion of love.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay. Let's call the things by what they are so that you can begin to love. Be as scared, because this wasn't love. If you consider this love, you're never going to want to love again.

Yeah.

This is abuse. This is meant to. This is wrong. This is hurtful. This is a power trip. This is a lot of things. But don't call it love or you will never love again. They want you to see it around you. There's a whole group of people who've just come around you to support you. Turn around. I just want to get a sense. And you can all just say one sentence at this point to whoever wants to talk. Love, desire, sex, the lack thereof. The quest for passion. How do you keep passion alive? How do you stay connected to your desires? How do you not deny yourself because somebody has taken advantage of you? How do you forgive someone who betrays you or not? And when trust is broken, how do you heal it? Where do I leave you? What's one thing that you take with you from this last hour and a half that we are together? What stays with you? What touched you? What moved you? What did you just think about? What did you just feel? Remember, give me a quick pulse check. We won't go into it, but I do want to know where you are. And I think what I take from it is I love me and I love you. It's not one or the Other. And it's really being in that truth of your authentic self and, you know, checking in. That's what I can take from it. Yes. Thank you, Jessica. Pass the mic around. Just see wherever. Sadie. Hi, Esther. So, Kylie, my name is Sarah. I'm from la. If I was there, I would come see you, but I'm not Kylie. I want to share with you because. So when I met my husband.

I.

Decided to take him to bed on the first night. It was my desire. We have four kids, we're married 12 years. So there are no rules. Hello, Esther. I have a quick question. In different desires in a committed relationship.

So in say, one driver and one.

With less drive, how do you synchronize the level of desire and stay in the commitment? Beautiful question. And I want you. What's your name? Oh, my name is Yishang Liu. I'm from Texas. One thing I want you to think about, actually, is it's not about in sync. It's not always in sync. You're not. You and your partner are not hungry in the same way for the same amount. You don't measure that. You have the same kind of food on your plate. Eat with the same speed, swallow with the same, you know, chew as many times together. This is. You're two separate people. And I'm not so sure that one person here has all the desire and one person doesn't. It depends. Desire for what? But I also do know that sometimes women don't have that much desire. Not because they don't desire sex, but they don't necessarily desire the sex they can have. If you want more desire, check if what you are experiencing is what you would like to have, and if you want something else, tell him. Have the courage in one way or another to convey that to him. Your desire may be responsive. He may be forever the one who takes the initiative. And you are happy to respond if he initiates in ways that are inviting to you and make it interesting for you. In order to want sex, it needs to be sex that is worth wanting. So before you tell me I don't have desire, I want you to check. So I'm going to leave the question and I'm going to take a few more pulse checks, and then I'm going to have to say goodbye to all of you.

Hi, I'm John from Australia.

Yes.

What I take from it is. It's interesting as to the meanings which we take to events and situations and. And the emotions that we take from it. Like, I know Kylie, and you're a beautiful Soul. And if it lights you up, go and have fun. It takes a man and a woman, assuming they're talking that type of sex, to go and enjoy it. Why should it be a double standard from a guy to a girl? If you can enjoy it, go nuts. And, Natalie, you're such a beautiful soul. Just, you know, to be able to be free and actually go and actually go and find the guy and get past that situation. You and I have talked about that before. Any man would be lucky to have you. Just be open and be free and change those meanings and. Yeah, so just everybody. The meanings that we give to situations is really what I took. And just looking back at the situations which, even in my own intimate life, which I get into or don't get into and what it means to me, and really trying to manage that conversation and be empowered by it and also then try to set a. Set an emotional.

Send me one thing. Yeah, one thing that you take with you for. For you to.

To look at the conversations I have with regards to my own intimate situations that I get into and to be responsible also for creating an environment through which people have a positive experience or a positive emotional situation which I can set up for them intimately, even though they're responsible for their own emotions. But be actively proactive in trying to make sure it's great for them as well.

Yes, he got me. Hello, my name's. My name's Dimple and I'm from the uk. So the big piece that I'm taking from this was around the. With Natalie, the forgiveness that to forgive at the consequence of yourself is not okay. And that for me, is a huge piece.

So thank you for that.

I'd like to challenge this notion. I'm disturbed by this notion. And we're dear, dear friends. What I see over here is I see empowerment at the point of being victim. And we don't have enough information to know what's going on there. It sounds like he was abusive and I would rip the guy's face off for hurting you. I think you know where I come from. But this idea that if you forgive, you're disempowered or it'll happen again is a presupposition that I would challenge. I think this is bullshit. I think you're now starting now. Other people are starting to develop this belief structure as a form of empowerment, and you don't have to not let go. You can forgive for yourself. You can forgive so you can be free. You don't forgive to be a cool person or a good person. And I understand what she's trying to do to make sure you don't do that, but I'm already seeing it spread, and I think that's bullshit. I'm here to tell you right now, you don't have to be a victim to be empowered, and you don't have to live in rage to be empowered. There's a time for those things. There's a time to use your anger so you can separate from it. But I'd be much more interested in knowing what actually happened, what the triggers were, so we can empower you to recognize someone who would be abusive so it never happened again, as opposed to just being angry and separating them. I understand the intent, which is not to link love in any way to something that's abusive, and I agree with that a million percent, Esther. But watching this here again, and I'm watching the physiology that's going on, and I'm telling you this is bullshit. This is an excuse. This is an excuse to stay angry or an excuse to be a victim. And you're certainly not that. I don't feel that from you at all. But this is a slippery slope that's begun. Everything else here has been magnificent. Esther knows how much I love and respect her, but I can't sit sideways and watch this continuing.

I'm so. I mean, this is the most incredible. I was about to say, before I end, I have to clarify something.

Good. Let's do it.

Because I have a feeling that something is taken. So it says, it's perfect. It's perfect.

Let's do it.

Because what I was really saying is to one person, just to one person in that particular situation where I felt like, you're going too quick into saying, I forgive, and I just thought, nah. But that doesn't mean that you stay angry. That doesn't mean that you. All I wanted you to think is if you try to just make yourself be good, you're going to stay in touch with the fear. Once I heard dimple now tell me you gave me permission not to forgive.

Yes.

Then I started to think, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I talk to one person. I'm not making this a principle.

I agree with your.

I can't agree with you more.

I agree with you 100% in terms of too soon and rushing to it. Esther, you know how much I love you. The problem is I'm watching the physiology, and you don't have maybe the same screen to see. To be fair to you, I'm seeing what's happened. I saw a person sit down, feeling empowered for a moment. But then I can also see she doesn't have the skills then, to take that and translate that into a better relationship. And to me, that's terrible. And I'm watching. And what happens, unfortunately, Esther, is when you communicate, people then take that and they use it as a tool then oftentimes to meet their lowest value structures, to meet their own fears, to meet their own justifications. And unfortunately, through camera, I'm sure if you were here, you would see what I saw and you would have nipped in the blood. So I want you to know I Support your intent 1 million percent. Just going to forgive. So you're being a good person is bullshit, but freeing yourself from rage and anger is critical for all of our spiritual development.

Absolutely. Thank you.