Sex? After Kids? Tell Me More, Esther Perel

If it's been a while, and you know what I mean, then this episode is for you. Eroticism, touch, sex. These things often feel impossibly far away in our partnership during the period of raising young kids. And who better to talk about these themes with than the preeminent expert on all things relationship and intimacy, the one, the only, Esther Perel.

Everything that family life flourishes on, consistency and routine is often what kills the erotic. Eroticism thrives on this mystery, on the surprise, on the unknown. And it's as if people have enough of that coming just from their children. And it's like eroticism thrives on everything that family life defends against.

You don't want to miss this episode. And I mean it. You don't want to miss this episode. We'll be back right after this. Hi, Esther.

Hello, Becky.

I am so excited to have you on the podcast. And when I told the members of our community that you were coming on people, I don't know, a more sophisticated way of saying it, they freaked out. They just freaked out. They're so excited. And I joined them in that feeling. So I'm just so happy that you're here.

It's a treat, really.

So for anybody listening who is not familiar with you or your work, tell us a little bit about who you are and the types of things you're interested in.

So I'm a couples and family therapist. I was trained particularly in working with families and with couples, and I've had a predilection for working with people from multiple different cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds. I spent many, many years working with mixed families. Then I brought to that the subject of sexuality, because it was also a cultural lens of how we look at sexuality in our relationships. And I am the author of two books, Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs. I have two podcasts, Where Should We Begin And How Is Work? Which both feature anonymous, raw, live couples therapy sessions, one in the romantic sphere, one in the workplace, where I invite you to come behind closed doors and see what really happens in the lives of couples behind closed doors. But this is what you do with parents. You do something very similar. You bring the parents out of their isolation, out of their shame, out of their, you know, this is just happening to me thing. Why can everybody else have normal kids and handle situations well? And you create a community for the challenges of parenthood today. Like, I try to create a global community for the challenges of modern love.

And I love the overlap that we're entering into here because so many of the challenges in Parenting are the challenges of partnership while parenting, maybe especially while parenting young kids. And when I think about the questions that come up the most from parents, when I might say to them something like, okay, I hear all this stuff going on with your kids. All important. We'll get to it. Let's kind of just put that to the side. Tell me about what else is going on in your life. Tell me the other things that are going on in your home. The state of the partnership is almost always, like, the first thing to come out. You know, some version of, oh, there's so much conflict with my partner. I hate my husband. You know, we have different parenting styles. I do everything. I'm resentful. You know, we're so disconnected, fighting all the time. Sex. Oh, sex. Oh, my goodness. None of that. That is so far from what's happening. And the relationship between how someone feels in their partnership and how their family system is functioning and the behaviors their child is, in a way, therefore, displaying are also interrelated.

They're absolutely interrelated. But I will give you. I will even push it a level above is this. This is the first time in the history of humankind that the survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple. We used to get married, or that basically was the way to be in a committed relationship. And there was that one time for life, you were stuck. Today, you can leave. And so the only reason there's no excommunication there is women who have enough to take care of themselves economically. The only reason the family will stay together is because the couple is relatively content. That means that if you're going to want to give everything to your children, you really want to make sure that one of the things you give them is a relationship between two adults that is alive and thriving.

Give everything to your children. Let me open that door. What do you see?

Well, there is an unprecedented child centrality that has almost reached an apex of folly at this point. And it is living side by side with a high, unprecedented rise of expectations of our romantic partnerships. And these two are clashing on resources, time, money, attention, intimacy, connection. Who's going to get it?

So just tell me if this is right. I have higher expectations of partnership than we've ever had while I'm pouring more of my energy into my kids than I ever have.

Yes, that's exactly.

And those are really hard to do.

In very simple terms. Well, it's a pull, for sure. It's a pull. So. And at the same time, if you really want to give more to Your children make sure to give more to the couple. Hmm. Because otherwise comes a time when there won't be a couple for the children.

So I wanna jump into specific and I'm gonna a little bit make this up, but it's a myriad of so many people's stories. And I just hear their voices, right, Hearing what you're saying, put more into my, into my partnership. My partner is someone I feel very angry with right now. My partner puts no energy into me or into the kids. My partner comes home and thinks they can just waltz in and play with the.

And doesn't think it's a big deal.

That I've been, you know, taking care.

Of the family the whole day.

How can I put more into my partnership when I feel like I'm owed more by my partner?

Right, but that is one litany you just gave me now, which is, you know, I'm a couples therapist. It's often a drop off center where somebody drops off another person to come and say to me, here, here's the problem. Let me explain to you. I'm an expert on this problem. And then you can go and fix it. And much of what you start to do when you work with a couple is basically you try to divide accountability. You know, what is it that you do that you bring? How is this, what are you doing together that keeps this problem in place? That's an ecological view. How is the couple organized in such a way that you keep on being resentful and your partner keeps on being missing in action? So the first thing is, does your relationship matter to you? That's just the first question. Now you can say, I don't have anything left to give to this relationship. And then it divides in a few different strains. So we need to break your question in small pieces.

I like your first question, and I want to allow the listeners to sit with that as their, I don't know, probably also driving or, I don't know, in a pickup line or doing something else like that. That question really hit me just like, does your relationship matter to you? It's interesting how quickly it seems like someone say, but this, but this, but just to sit with the question, does it matter?

Correct.

And like, if the answer is a yes, allow that, like, allow that to.

Be enough for then, no, that's the second follow up. Okay, then the follow up is, and what is it that you do to express its importance? Because when you take care of your little Smurfs, you are organizing activities, you are making sure that there is novelty. You go and make sure that they have new clothes, new friends, new explorations, new discoveries. You bring a tremendous amount of energy into that relationship. And so there is plenty to talk about, plenty to reflect upon, plenty of pictures to look at, etc. Now tell me, how have you manifested? How have you shown to yourself, forget, even to your partner, that your relationship matters? What have you done for that? Typically, the kid has a play date every week. And many of the couples of the kind that you've just described have three dates a year. My birthday, your birthday, and our anniversary. And maybe we'll have sex on the anniversary just to make sure that we can still, you know, prove we are a couple, so to speak. So does it matter to you? And if so, what is it that you do that makes that importance visible?

You know, it's so, so simple, what you're asking, and this is what I was saying to you before we were recording. Like, you have this way of reframing things with such simplicity, but they're so. It's so provocative at the same time, is like a myth out there or a fantasy. Like, my partnership should work out in a way or without.

Without this effort or why. Why is that so hard to put.

The energy into your partnership, to say.

Yeah, I have to plan things too.

And I also, just like with kids.

I say sorry, I repair, I reconnect.

I, you know, do fun things together.

We plan play.

Why does that feel so unnatural in partnerships?

When I wrote Mating in Captivity, I tried to really understand what happens to this, what I call the erotic energy, right? The creative energy that makes us feel alive, vibrant, vital. That's what you call to play, to roll on the floor, to laugh, to create, to tickle, to look at each other, to laugh together, et cetera.

That's erotic energy. You're not just talking about, like, sexy time.

No, no, no. I'm talking about that creative outburst, that energy that makes you feel alive. Everyone understands it with children and the way that I understood why it happens. There's a few different things happening in the couple. You know, first of all, when you have kids, it's a revolution in the couple. It completely shifts all the resources, the time, the attention, the intimacy, the money. It all shifts. Why? Because when you are in a relationship, you negotiate continuously two poles. You negotiate your need for stability and predictability and reliability. And then you also negotiate your need for novelty and exploration and risk and change and movement, et cetera. But when you have a child, you become stability, you become security, so that the child can become adventure. The child itself is an adventure that you're going on and that you are accompanying. And so you try to stabilize yourself. And as a result, when people say, actually, if you ask me about sex, is that people say, sex in a couple, you must be kidding. And I say, no, no, let's not talk about sex, but let's talk about that. Erotic energy, playfulness, imagination, aliveness, curiosity, engagement, etc. It is alive and well, but it is eros redirected. It all goes to the children with the idea that the adults will kind of survive like a cactus that you don't even need to water. And on occasion, you look at and it will give all its energy to the little ones and slowly it will begin to gasp. And then one person says, what is going on here? Where are we at? We haven't, you know, whatever. We haven't gone hiking, we haven't been alone, we haven't gone on a date. When is the last time we went dancing? When's the last time we touched each other and looked at each other the way that we are constantly adoring each other's kids? And when's the last time that when you say, how are you? I didn't answer, how is Jimmy? But actually, how are you? And not what you did and what you got done and what is off the list? How are you? What's happening to this person right here next to me who is going through a lot of things, that is the loss that takes place, eros redirected. All that energy goes to the little ones. And then there's the next tension, which is that everything that family life flourishes on, consistency and routine is often what kills the erotic. Eroticism thrives on this mystery, on the surprise, on the unknown. And it's as if people have enough of that coming just from their children. And it's like eroticism thrives on everything that family life defends against.

So those two poles, right?

Yes.

You're saying once you have young kids, it's actually understandable that you lean more into the stability and predictability side. It's understandable. No one's doing anything wrong.

And it used to be fine when we thought that family life should be about family and that we didn't really care if a couple was romantic and parents slept in separate beds the day after they were done conceiving. And all of that worked perfectly fine when we had a different conception of the adult relationship.

And in this day and age, right.

Where we are overwhelmed with information, I.

Wonder also if that pull into the.

Rigidity and the Stability.

Right. Parents these days, it's like, this is how you have to do this with your baby and this is what you have to do. There's so much rigidity.

Right.

And so much focus on, you know, the right way. I feel like these days there's even more of a pull, you know, toward that. Toward that end.

Yes. Because parenting and child rearing practices have become very dogmatic in the West. Highly dogmatic, with a sense of over responsibility on the parents, under responsibility on the institutions and the society. So the parents are literally filtering through all the unknowns and all the pressures, and it's all on them. And every small movement can make or break the future of their little ones with a sense of complete overwhelm and panic.

Yeah.

So the system that is in place, when I say the system, I say the culture at large is really no longer saying child development is a natural process that you go to certain stages and the role of the parent is to shepherd you to through those stages. No, today child development is an artificial creation on the part of the adults that are taking care of these children. And depending on how they respond to them, how they expose them, et cetera, they're going to create this creature versus that creature. So we are in a phase where culture is more important than nature. That changes, by the way, that changes every 10 years.

Are we close?

I don't know. But I know that every time that we get hooked on a dogma when it comes to parenting, ten years later, the truth of today is the joke of tomorrow, 100%. So we have to really be clear that these are not fundamentals. You have three. You know that what works for one is very different from what works for the other. And that what allows you to really flow is the fact that you can change because you see who is the other kid.

I always say that my kids each require me to lead with a different part of me. Like they all require parents.

Very well said. That's extremely well said.

And so that's required me to do a lot of work to build certain. Certain of those parts are more natural to lead with.

That's right.

And others, you know, weren't, you know, so.

Which is super important in when people get into the. I'm not a good parent. Of course, you seem to have been perfectly fine for child number one and two or one and three or whatever. And this one is more challenging because they call something in you, a part of your leadership that is more difficult. Yes. But that has to do with the relationship and the fit between one temperament and another, not your competence a hundred percent.

I feel like it calls out one of the more underdeveloped parts of you. Right. So I'm gonna push this back to you. How did you manage this all? Like, when you had young kids, your parenting, your partnership, your. And the other thing that I know we both care a lot about is to be playful or have any erotic energy in a partnership. So many, especially women, have lost that in themselves. Right. Like the ability to create space.

You know, I remember saying to my husband, there's a few things we're not going to do. I do not want us to one day wake up and just say, there's nothing here. I worked with enough couples. I also understood that we are going to do these things very differently. And I'm going to leave every once in a while for a week, and you're going to manage perfectly fine. And if that happens, then I should know that I need to trust you so that when I'm next to you, I don't need to constantly monitor you with the remote control. I made a lot of what I think are not particularly popular things in the American context. I didn't accompany my kids to their games every Saturday. I thought that this is bizarre. So I had a way of offsetting things by bringing in a cultural difference as a European and from many other places where I've lived. And I just knew that this is not the truth. This is just one way that people do it here. But. But people do other things completely different. And this was true from sharing the bed to letting cry to the bottle. From the beginning, I read child rearing books in French, in Flemish, in Hebrew and in English. And for everything that I was told, this is how you should do it. I then went to read and I saw that there is other cultures where they say the exact opposite. And I thought, oh, well, then I can go for my own intuition. If there isn't one truth, then I can figure out which one is the rhyme that fits here. And that was so important for me. I always wanted to write an article about that very experience of what it was like from 0 to 3 to read child rearing books from different cultural contexts. It really gave me such permission to not think that I was doing it wrong. Later I, you know, we had our fights because I also came from a model of, you know, I thought we're going to be equal. And no, we fell into traditional gender roles and gender divisions. That was just like. This happened to me as well. But what we did have is a shared desire to make sure that the relationship stays vibrant. Because I had seen too many couples die on the vine and I was determined not to make that happen. So we traveled alone from the moment. They were very little, small, little things. But we gave ourselves time away. We continued to go and listen to live music because we like that and it's an energizing thing. Or to go dancing every once in a while. I mean, we continued to do things that were not just in the identity of the parent. We were two colleagues. We would go to conferences together, we would learn new things. So we had new things entering into our system as well. I wanted to socialize. I understood that if you want a rich social life, you invite people to your house, they come to you, then the kids are there, they can meet these adults, they can develop relationships with them over decades. They're in their late 20s now. They know these people since they're born. And it became a kind of an extended family of sorts. And I was deliberate about a lot of these things, I have to say. It became a mission for me to arrive on the other side and to feel like, I'm so glad now we have a few more decades, hopefully alone again. But not like, you know, I have nothing to say to this person.

Well, here's something I want to say to all the listeners because what I hear you saying though is being deliberate, being intentional, and there's a tension, there's like a little bit of a fight for being able to maintain your relationship and being able to have that vibrancy and that energy. It doesn't just happen. And I like your example.

You know how I say it? In a long term relationship, everything that's going to just happen already has. It's extremely deliberate. Yes, it's deliberate to say, I'm gonna put my hands on your hand, even though it's more hairy than on the little silky skin of the baby. Because we need to stay connected. It's deliberate to say let's go out and not to dinner and sit across the table from each other and finally talk about the kids. Because now we have each other's ear. It's deliberate to say, you know, we are going to take a night away and not feel guilty about it, but actually think that this is extremely important to resource ourselves. It's willful, it's deliberate, it's premeditated, I would even say. And so is the physical connection. Sometimes you have to just say it feels good, you know, it's deliberate sometimes to go to the gym, not every time you go to the Gym, you just want to go there and you're running. But somehow in your head you know that you have rarely regretted afterwards. So if the connection is good, it's deliberate to say, I want to invest in this. But it's equally deliberate to tell your partner, thank you. This is important. You see, what feeds the system is the acknowledgement of the effort too. So when you have little ones, I think it's very natural in a family to have a role distribution. You asked me before, what's one of my important core truths. This would be one of them. One parent, the frontline parent. This is true in same sex couples. No different. So it's not always gendered, but there is a frontline parent. It's also the one that wakes up more easily, that has a different sensory threshold. It's the one that maybe is not working for the moment or works with more flexible hours and can attend more to the disruptions that children bring in the life, all of that. But everyone understands frontline parents. The frontline parent looks at all the stuff, the domesticity, the chaos, the needs of the children, the childcare, whatever, the doctor's visit, you name it. The other parent, you can blame them and resent them for not doing what you do, or you can thank them for thinking about the stuff that you can't think about because you're too involved. So if you understand a role distribution is at 1.

Like what, though?

Like what? Because I'm just. I'm just hearing someone saying, like sitting on the couch watching tv.

No, Right. Like one person says, shall we go for a hike? While the other one is talking about what needs to be done, or shall we take a bike trip? Or shall we go. Shall we call so and so and go out on set? How can you think about it? Don't you see the freaking mess that is? You know, you only talk about play and having fun. Yes, because you don't. And you need someone who reminds you. In every couple over time, where people say we were able to maintain it, there is always one of them that says the other person just didn't let it go. They made sure that we had a coffee or a breakfast. They made sure we had our date night. They made sure we still physically connected. And even though I didn't feel like it, it's because they didn't let up. So instead of fighting the difference, develop a complementarity around it.

And there's so many. And I love the way you say and thank the other person for holding that pole or that part. And so one of the things you do that I love is you turn things on their head and help us all see things differently. So I'm thinking about someone who recently wrote in this as a question for you.

Right.

So it was a woman married to a man. And she said, you know, I do. Exactly. I'm the frontline parent. It's not what she said, but essentially, I'm the frontline parent, and I need my husband to do more with the kids. I need him to come home from work earlier. I need him to acknowledge the mental load I have.

And. And then at the end of the.

Day, he is basically trying to have sex with me. Like, doesn't he understand that, like, I can't have sex after feeling so alone and so unsupported? What, like, help us see that a little bit differently. And what would be some steps?

First of all, I've been that person. Just so it's not. I can think this way, and I can, but I also force myself to think a different way. And the first thing I would want you to think is that probably he feels just as alone. Because first of all, quite often, if you think all he wants is sex, you're missing it. All he wants is to connect with you, to feel less alone. But it is also the case that for men, intimacy, tenderness, connection, touch, affection, are only allowed through the license of the sexual language.

Just pause on that for a second. Because I think that's so important.

And when we divide, she wants intimacy, she wants not to feel alone. He wants sex. We're often off. It is sometimes true, but it is often off.

Well, you're saying we probably want the same things.

We want the same thing.

And that doesn't mean. Your husband didn't say, that's true, sweetie. I want vulnerability and intimacy. That's not right.

That is not the language in which it will be spoken. The woman has. You know, every woman has received a licensed language that is. Help me. Every man has received a licensed language, which is make love to me. But we want the same thing. We don't want to be alone. We don't want to feel disconnected. We don't want to feel that we've become a function in the house, that the other person barely sees us anymore, that we're just a machine and that we're just on a task list all the time. So here's what I say to this woman instead of, you want him to help you. This may be all true, but it's not useful. So I'm going to try to give you a different Way to approach your guy and your predicament. Because if you continue as is, it's just going to be more of the same. And I know where it goes. I'm 40 years doing couples work. I kind of know where it goes. I see it. I see you around the corner before you get there. And that's why I say it like that. It's really annoying because I'm going to make you say things that are not what you really want to say. So I'm twisting you. This is. I know the moment, you know? So if you went to your husband and instead of, I need you to do more with the kids, I miss you. I miss us. You know, it's like, days go by and we barely talk, connect, check in with each other. It's like, what the hell has happened? And I would love to be able to think more about us. I know you've been asking for that. I know that you often reach out and I'm just called to you. I know that I'm often resentful. Of course, I think I'm legitimately resentful, and I think I'm right. That may be so, but that may not be wise. And I have a feeling that I would be much more available to us if, when I ask you certain things, you could also be more responsive to me. So you first acknowledge him, then you take ownership for what you're not doing, and only then do you ask for more for what you want.

That order of operations really matters. Right? Because as soon as we lead with you're not, or I need the defensiveness, then we're against each other, right?

Yeah. You're in an adversarial situation. But it's not just that it is defensive. It's that when you are in that dance, you reinforce in the other the very position that you actually don't want. Why would they want to do more when all you're telling them is that they do nothing? Tell them that you also want to feel closer to them. If that's the case, which I hope it is, because if all you want is just a helper, then your partner is picking up on something. Which is why I ask you, does your relationship matter?

All right, if you're feeling like I'm.

Feeling, you're left wanting so much more. There are so many more questions I want to ask Astera, and I'd love to absorb all of her wisdom.

Well, guess what? You don't have to wait too long. Next week, Astera will be back answering the questions that came directly from you. You don't want to miss it. I'll see you next week. Thanks for listening. To share a story or ask me a question, go to goodinside.com podcast. You could also write me@podcastoodinside.com parenting is the hardest and most important job in the world and parents deserve resources and support so they feel empowered, confident and connected. I'm so excited to share Good Inside Membership, the first platform that brings together content and experts you trust with a global community of like valued parents. It's totally game changing. Good inside with Dr. Becky is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsem at Magnificent Noise, our production staff and includes Sabrina Farhey, Julia Natt and Kristen Muller. I would also like to thank Erica Belsky, Mary Panico, Ashley Valenzuela and the rest of the Good Inside team. And one last thing before I let you go, let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves Even as I struggle, and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain Good Inside.

So I have an idea you might.

Be thinking, oh, so much of this.

Episode resonates, but it's such a hurdle to get over to talk about these.

Things with my partner. Well, one of the things I know from working with couples is talking about tricky topics is much easier when you have a third. What do I mean, a third? Instead of talking directly about a topic to a partner, the two of you talk about an episode you both listened to, or an article you both saw, or a book you both read. So right now, consider sharing this episode with your partner as a way to bridge the gap. Maybe add a note like, hey, there were a lot of really interesting points that made me think about things differently. Thought you might be interested in this too. Or take it a step further and write, I miss you. I'd love to reconnect. Maybe we can both listen to this and talk about it together.