Esther Perel: How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.760 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.920 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.320 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.480 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.400 | My guest today is Esther Perel.

00:00:17.760 | Esther Perel is a psychotherapist

00:00:19.560 | and one of the world's foremost experts

00:00:21.480 | on romantic relationships.

00:00:23.360 | She's also the author of best-selling books

00:00:25.360 | such as "Mating in Captivity" and "The State of Affairs."

00:00:29.160 | Today's discussion focuses on what it means

00:00:31.640 | to be in a truly functional romantic relationship.

00:00:34.920 | We discuss this from the standpoint of identity,

00:00:37.700 | that is, how people both try to hold onto

00:00:40.600 | and evolve their identities within a relationship,

00:00:43.440 | and how a truly functional romantic relationship

00:00:46.280 | indeed evolves over time

00:00:47.760 | from a standpoint of curiosity and adventure,

00:00:50.960 | but also one in which people need to hold on

00:00:53.360 | to certain components of themselves.

00:00:55.240 | We explore what conflict in relationships looks like

00:00:57.960 | and the dynamics that underlie those conflicts,

00:01:00.640 | so focusing less on specific scenarios,

00:01:02.920 | but rather the dynamics that exist in conflicts

00:01:05.240 | in romantic relationship across all different situations

00:01:08.600 | and different combinations of people.

00:01:10.480 | And of course, we also talk about

00:01:11.680 | what healthy conflict resolution looks like,

00:01:14.300 | what a truly effective apology looks and sounds like,

00:01:17.760 | and we explore the erotic aspects of relationships,

00:01:20.740 | comparing and contrasting, for instance, love and desire,

00:01:24.120 | how sometimes those things run in parallel

00:01:26.280 | in the same direction,

00:01:27.440 | how sometimes those run in opposite directions,

00:01:29.860 | and how people can explore their own notions,

00:01:32.240 | their own models of love and desire

00:01:34.520 | in order to have more effective romantic relationships.

00:01:37.640 | By the end of today's episode,

00:01:39.140 | you will learn from the world's foremost expert

00:01:41.640 | on romantic relationships,

00:01:43.280 | how to find, build, and revive romantic relationships

00:01:47.440 | that feel most satisfying to all partners involved.

00:01:50.760 | I'm also pleased to announce that Esther Perel

00:01:52.560 | has just released a new course on intimacy.

00:01:55.160 | You can find a link to that course

00:01:56.580 | in the show note captions,

00:01:57.960 | as well as links to her books, her podcast,

00:02:00.440 | and other resources about romantic relationships.

00:02:03.340 | Before you begin, I'd like to emphasize

00:02:05.160 | that this podcast is separate from my teaching

00:02:07.080 | and research roles at Stanford.

00:02:08.680 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:02:10.860 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:02:12.780 | about science and science-related tools

00:02:14.760 | to the general public.

00:02:16.100 | In keeping with that theme,

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00:06:29.920 | And now for my discussion with Esther Perel.

00:06:32.960 | Esther Perel, welcome.

00:06:34.360 | - Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

00:06:37.000 | - There are so many questions and curiosities

00:06:40.120 | and puzzles and challenges

00:06:43.600 | around the topic of romantic relationships.

00:06:45.900 | But what I really want to know is,

00:06:49.840 | to what extent is the decision to even think

00:06:53.800 | about being in a relationship of the romantic type,

00:06:58.040 | a extension of our identity,

00:07:01.520 | or is it really a willingness

00:07:04.040 | to potentially embrace a new identity?

00:07:08.520 | And I asked this somewhat abstract question

00:07:10.380 | for a very specific reason,

00:07:11.600 | and the reason is the following.

00:07:13.360 | I think everyone who's been in a romantic relationship,

00:07:16.560 | or even who just wants one,

00:07:17.680 | is familiar with the kind of yearning

00:07:20.200 | or interest or curiosity.

00:07:22.720 | And then also with the fact that,

00:07:24.360 | just like the development of our physical body,

00:07:28.800 | it has an arc across the lifespan,

00:07:30.880 | that a relationship has a sort of developmental arc.

00:07:33.960 | There's the first meeting,

00:07:36.080 | the first week, the first month, et cetera.

00:07:38.240 | And so much of what I've seen in your work

00:07:40.720 | and in the discussion about relationships

00:07:42.920 | in the public sphere,

00:07:43.800 | seems to be trying to understand how we change

00:07:47.440 | in terms of what we want and what we ask for,

00:07:50.160 | what we feel willing to ask for, et cetera,

00:07:52.520 | across this arc of the relationship.

00:07:54.760 | But what I want to know is,

00:07:56.120 | is the decision to enter a romantic relationship,

00:08:01.280 | a willingness, conscious or unconscious,

00:08:04.720 | to actually change who we are?

00:08:06.680 | In other words, are we entering a relationship

00:08:09.280 | to just be ourselves and find someone

00:08:10.960 | with whom we go lock and key? - I got it.

00:08:12.440 | - Or are we really saying,

00:08:13.520 | hey, even whether or not we realize or not,

00:08:15.600 | if we're pursuing a relationship,

00:08:16.880 | are we really basically saying,

00:08:19.080 | I'm willing to become a different person

00:08:21.760 | by virtue of being in a relationship?

00:08:25.360 | - I think it is both,

00:08:28.200 | completely both.

00:08:30.720 | We meet an other

00:08:34.080 | in order to find ourselves.

00:08:37.120 | And we meet an other

00:08:38.920 | and want to be surprised by the self we haven't known.

00:08:42.040 | I think that all of us come into this world

00:08:47.200 | with a fundamental sets of dual needs.

00:08:51.400 | We need security and we need freedom and adventure.

00:08:56.160 | And we need togetherness and we need separateness.

00:09:01.120 | So in the relationship, you come in order

00:09:04.280 | to create that identification,

00:09:06.560 | but also that differentiation.

00:09:08.960 | It's a dialectic all the time.

00:09:12.120 | But what's interesting is even if I choose you,

00:09:17.720 | because you represent sometimes the parts of me

00:09:20.600 | that are more challenging or that I disavow

00:09:23.440 | or that I prefer to outsource

00:09:25.280 | so I don't have to be too vulnerable about them,

00:09:27.880 | what draws me to you in the beginning,

00:09:30.720 | because it is different that I think may expand me

00:09:34.960 | and make me change is also the very thing

00:09:37.720 | that becomes the source of conflict later,

00:09:40.240 | because we want to change, but up to a point,

00:09:43.480 | not too much and not on your terms.

00:09:46.560 | So we want change, but we sometimes are afraid of change.

00:09:51.360 | And so we let the other person represent the part of us

00:09:54.440 | that would want to change, but then we disconnect from it.

00:09:57.520 | So you become the representative of that.

00:10:00.680 | I am drawn to the fact that you are stable,

00:10:03.480 | grounded, structured, solid, reliable, on time, you name it.

00:10:08.480 | I know that this is something that I would like

00:10:10.920 | to be more of, and just a very simple example,

00:10:14.520 | but then I start to think of you as rigid

00:10:17.520 | because I get a little more than what I bargained for.

00:10:20.040 | And now I start to argue with your rigidity

00:10:23.520 | and my desire to actually become more structured

00:10:26.080 | and solid and punctual and reliable has somehow disappeared.

00:10:30.280 | - So if I understand correctly, we seek out others

00:10:34.880 | in order to try and initiate the process

00:10:38.280 | of change that we want.

00:10:40.240 | But then when we hit the friction point,

00:10:43.240 | meaning the point where it challenges where we are,

00:10:46.640 | then there's a form of resent or frustration.

00:10:51.200 | The reason I- - Defensiveness.

00:10:52.440 | - Defensiveness. - Yes.

00:10:53.760 | You know what it is?

00:10:55.120 | Every system straddles stability and change

00:10:59.000 | and then grapples for homeostasis.

00:11:01.080 | Every relationship goes through that,

00:11:02.960 | every system in nature goes through that.

00:11:05.680 | But the same thing is true inside an individual.

00:11:08.500 | We want change and we need stability.

00:11:11.960 | And then these things sometimes are compensating each other

00:11:15.160 | and they are complementary and at times they butt heads.

00:11:18.760 | - So a very practical question.

00:11:21.320 | - Yeah. (laughs)

00:11:23.440 | - What are the necessary but not sufficient elements

00:11:29.000 | that somebody should have in themselves

00:11:31.240 | before they go seeking a romantic relationship?

00:11:33.920 | Meaning, what is necessary in order to be able

00:11:37.760 | to embark on the process with any chance of success?

00:11:41.200 | Barring extreme pathology, right?

00:11:45.720 | Assuming that both people entering the relationship

00:11:48.000 | have the best of intentions to make the relationship work,

00:11:51.560 | in quotes. - Yeah, yeah.

00:11:52.880 | - Is it both a sense of one's own identity

00:11:56.080 | as well as what specifically they would like to change?

00:11:59.460 | Or is it some other constellation of factors?

00:12:05.360 | - Different ways to answer this.

00:12:07.240 | You know, I think sometimes people say,

00:12:11.400 | I wanna be with you because you helped me

00:12:14.200 | become the best version of myself.

00:12:16.400 | - Yeah, you hear that a lot.

00:12:17.520 | - And so what is that version?

00:12:19.720 | Who is it that I want to see

00:12:21.360 | that I think you will help me become?

00:12:24.960 | - When you talk about these romantic relationships,

00:12:27.160 | first of all, I think there's a different answer

00:12:29.680 | if we're talking about cornerstone relationships

00:12:32.600 | or capstone relationships.

00:12:34.080 | Do you know the concept?

00:12:36.200 | - If you don't mind defining those for the audience.

00:12:37.400 | - Right, so the cornerstone relationship

00:12:40.000 | is when we used to meet in our early 20s

00:12:44.520 | and together we build the foundation of our relationship.

00:12:49.520 | We grew together, we saved our first monies together,

00:12:54.280 | we got our first places together, et cetera.

00:12:56.960 | It was very much foundational.

00:12:59.080 | Capstone is the foundation has already been established

00:13:02.320 | because we tend to meet at this point 10, 12 years later.

00:13:07.160 | So during those 12 years,

00:13:08.840 | I've already actually worked, so to speak, on my identity.

00:13:13.240 | I have defined myself, my values, my aspirations,

00:13:17.620 | my constructs, how I want to see my life.

00:13:20.320 | And when I meet you, you're a confirmation for all of this.

00:13:24.800 | You're a confirmation of what I've already built

00:13:27.040 | and I am putting you and me as the capstone,

00:13:29.800 | which we put on top of what we've already created.

00:13:32.280 | You and me, you've done the same thing.

00:13:34.200 | So I am looking for someone who recognizes my identity,

00:13:38.840 | not for someone who helps me develop my identity

00:13:41.840 | from a much earlier age.

00:13:43.760 | So there's a developmental arc that changes the mandate.

00:13:47.680 | I said it's both, but the priority of,

00:13:50.600 | if it's the building of identity

00:13:52.600 | or the expansion of that identity, what you call change,

00:13:56.160 | differs if you meet somebody when you're young

00:13:59.400 | and if you meet somebody when you're in your thirties.

00:14:02.480 | - What happens when people are mismatched in terms of age?

00:14:05.840 | - I mean, there is a big age differences a lot of the time.

00:14:09.500 | And in gay relationships,

00:14:11.080 | you have often a major age difference

00:14:15.540 | that means something else,

00:14:17.060 | but it creates differentiation.

00:14:19.240 | In straight relationships,

00:14:21.000 | you often have men who are a lot more,

00:14:23.520 | a lot older than the women,

00:14:25.220 | very much rooted in evolutionary biology,

00:14:29.060 | I think, and fertility.

00:14:30.940 | But, and now we have more and more,

00:14:34.220 | a new phenomenon of older women with younger men,

00:14:37.240 | but that's actually been very rare in most cultures.

00:14:40.480 | - So that's shifting now towards more often

00:14:43.800 | people are observing older women with younger men?

00:14:46.120 | - You know, when you have four movies at this moment

00:14:48.820 | that are talking about this,

00:14:50.100 | then you begin to see the crescent

00:14:52.400 | of a new cultural phenomenon.

00:14:54.960 | I don't, I think the fact that it appears in the arts

00:14:58.020 | and in the culture usually announces something,

00:15:00.400 | I wouldn't make it yet a phenomenon.

00:15:02.660 | But you asked me a question before

00:15:04.200 | about what are the things people need.

00:15:06.840 | I mean, you know, when you embark any relationship,

00:15:10.240 | it's, again, it's,

00:15:13.960 | I tend to think as both end on a lot of things.

00:15:16.560 | I come to you with a certain self-awareness.

00:15:19.480 | How much self-awareness, the more there is, the better.

00:15:23.120 | And that self-awareness, I think,

00:15:25.120 | as its best translates in a sense of,

00:15:27.940 | you know, I think a good vow to say

00:15:31.440 | at the time of your wedding is,

00:15:34.240 | I'll fuck up on a regular basis,

00:15:36.580 | and on occasion, I'll acknowledge it.

00:15:39.180 | (laughing)

00:15:40.780 | It means that self-awareness comes within self-knowledge

00:15:44.520 | about your limitations and your ability

00:15:47.120 | to take responsibility for it without blame and shame.

00:15:50.520 | And basically accountability.

00:15:53.800 | I think accountability is an enormous component

00:15:56.480 | of relationship.

00:15:57.440 | It's okay, we all do things.

00:16:00.880 | You know, we all have our wounds and our frustrations

00:16:03.520 | and our expectations and our unexpressed needs

00:16:06.800 | and our unfulfilled longings, et cetera.

00:16:09.460 | But it's a good thing to know it and to admit it

00:16:12.480 | and to not pretend that it's not me, but it's you.

00:16:15.540 | You know, I often say that couples therapy,

00:16:18.840 | I am a practicing couples therapist for almost 40 years,

00:16:22.400 | and couples often come to therapy

00:16:25.240 | thinking that you're a drop-off center.

00:16:27.880 | You know, they come to deliver their problem,

00:16:31.320 | and their problem is their partner.

00:16:33.080 | And you're gonna fix it.

00:16:35.680 | And they're gonna help you 'cause they're an expert

00:16:37.660 | on what's wrong with the partner.

00:16:39.840 | And it's an amazing thing how people have tremendous insight

00:16:43.120 | on all the shortcomings of the other person

00:16:45.080 | and do not see themselves as part of the system.

00:16:47.840 | A relationship is a breeding,

00:16:49.840 | living system of interdependent parts.

00:16:53.240 | - Do you think that's perhaps one reason why people

00:16:56.200 | who are in these cornerstone relationships

00:16:59.000 | of whom I've known many, you know,

00:17:01.280 | even family members of mine, you know,

00:17:02.840 | met in university, met their significant other,

00:17:05.080 | and then had their first jobs, moved in together,

00:17:07.480 | all the things you described, that there's this-

00:17:09.820 | - They grow up together.

00:17:10.900 | - Yeah, and I think it probably happens at a stage of life

00:17:13.500 | when there's still a lot more neuroplasticity, frankly.

00:17:16.100 | I mean, everything I know about neuroplasticity

00:17:17.820 | is that it exists across the lifespan,

00:17:19.540 | but that it tapers off significantly in one's late 20s.

00:17:23.340 | And, you know, fortunately it's still available,

00:17:25.420 | but the notion of being set in our ways

00:17:27.860 | is a neuroplasticity phenomenon, right?

00:17:29.820 | - Yes, yes, it's the closing of the prefrontal cortex.

00:17:32.580 | - Pretty much, pretty much.

00:17:34.100 | - The fontanelle is still-

00:17:35.300 | - Exactly, it takes a lot more to open that plasticity

00:17:38.280 | later than it does earlier, certainly.

00:17:40.480 | And yet it's inversely related to the self-awareness, right?

00:17:44.920 | I mean, the younger we are,

00:17:45.880 | the less self-aware we are about our patterns

00:17:48.240 | because we just have less data over time.

00:17:51.360 | So I could see how it'd be more difficult

00:17:54.000 | for somebody in their 20s to say,

00:17:55.320 | "Hey, listen, I think I have many virtues,

00:17:59.040 | but I have this severe issue with something,

00:18:01.680 | or this particularly frustrates me,

00:18:03.160 | or here's my laundry list of issues," right?

00:18:05.220 | Whereas somebody in their 40s or 50s or older,

00:18:09.280 | if pressed, could probably make that list

00:18:11.280 | if they were really being honest with themselves.

00:18:13.480 | So it seems like-

00:18:14.320 | - I think it's a good point.

00:18:15.640 | - You know, so it seems that maybe there's a sweet spot,

00:18:19.080 | but that these earlier relationships,

00:18:21.840 | I've always been impressed by them

00:18:24.080 | and kind of romanticized them in my mind

00:18:26.440 | because that wasn't the trajectory that I took, but-

00:18:28.000 | - But they have a challenge.

00:18:29.400 | You see, when you grow up together,

00:18:31.580 | you often put a lot of energy into the building of the unit.

00:18:36.580 | And that unit then is supposed to become your base,

00:18:40.760 | your scaffolding from which two individuals

00:18:43.200 | can begin to grow and to define themselves.

00:18:46.360 | When you meet later, you are already two individuals

00:18:49.960 | that have defined themselves who now have to find a way

00:18:52.480 | to create the energy to come together.

00:18:54.680 | So it's a different movement.

00:18:56.640 | It's a different choreography.

00:18:59.140 | I think that the challenge for young couples today

00:19:01.900 | who meet early in college and have known often

00:19:05.540 | only themselves and a few people in their teenage years,

00:19:08.140 | et cetera, or none, is what happens

00:19:11.300 | when they begin to change individually.

00:19:14.780 | Can the relationship expand enough to broaden the envelope,

00:19:19.220 | to let these two people emerge individually,

00:19:23.820 | or is the jacket too tight?

00:19:26.340 | Is the vest too tight?

00:19:27.420 | And often it becomes a bit of a crisis,

00:19:31.100 | because they grew together on the basis of this togetherness.

00:19:36.100 | And sometimes they can, and sometimes it just feels like,

00:19:42.900 | that in order to become adults,

00:19:47.100 | it may need to happen with a different partner.

00:19:49.220 | And that's why I always say, I think this moment,

00:19:51.820 | we have two or three relationships or marriages

00:19:54.540 | in our adult lives in the West.

00:19:57.180 | And some of us will do it with the same person,

00:20:00.500 | but the relationship has to change.

00:20:02.780 | It's like the person changes the relationship,

00:20:07.180 | but the relationship makes room for the person to change.

00:20:10.020 | This is dynamic.

00:20:12.980 | - That just feels like such a true statement to me,

00:20:15.260 | because in my professional life

00:20:18.580 | as a developmental neurobiologist, there's a saying,

00:20:20.980 | people always think of development and then adulthood,

00:20:23.460 | but all of life is one big developmental arc.

00:20:25.300 | - That's absolutely correct.

00:20:26.140 | - And the great psychologist, Erickson,

00:20:27.780 | spoke about the different sort of challenges

00:20:29.940 | that people face from birth all the way until death,

00:20:33.980 | which, you know, nowadays hopefully will extend

00:20:36.820 | into people's 80s, 90s, or even beyond.

00:20:39.020 | - Well, his last stage is the generative stage.

00:20:41.540 | It's actually an amazing, I mean,

00:20:44.100 | he's the most articulate theoretician of stages of life.

00:20:48.020 | - I agree.

00:20:48.860 | If people haven't seen those stages,

00:20:50.060 | we'll put a link to them in the show note captions,

00:20:51.780 | but the idea is that you're basically grappling

00:20:53.620 | with some basic struggle that you either reconcile

00:20:56.060 | or you don't at every stage.

00:20:57.300 | So you could imagine that these,

00:20:58.820 | let's say these three marriages,

00:21:00.340 | let's imagine a couple that meets in their 20s

00:21:02.820 | and does three marriages,

00:21:04.780 | which implies a couple of divorces in between,

00:21:07.780 | maybe not legal divorces, across their lifespan.

00:21:11.740 | They really are,

00:21:13.140 | according to the Erickson theory of development

00:21:15.340 | or any neurobiological examination of brain development,

00:21:17.940 | different people in their 20s versus 40s,

00:21:20.980 | versus 60s, 70s, 80s.

00:21:22.780 | So this notion of three different marriages

00:21:24.380 | to me seems both logical and very grounded

00:21:28.060 | in what we know about the biology of the brain and the self.

00:21:32.100 | So-

00:21:32.940 | - A good metaphor is rooted in science.

00:21:35.940 | - And yet it's also kind of a radical idea

00:21:39.540 | when one hears it for the first time.

00:21:41.940 | It framed in the context of with the same person,

00:21:46.460 | it sounds kind of lovely and romantic.

00:21:48.380 | Okay, they meet, it's lovely.

00:21:49.740 | They have their first marriage.

00:21:50.780 | Then there's some challenge, they overcome,

00:21:53.220 | they do a second marriage.

00:21:54.100 | Then some challenge and a third marriage.

00:21:55.660 | And maybe there's even grandchildren, you imagine,

00:21:57.540 | maybe even great grandchildren.

00:21:58.500 | There's all this kind of romantic notions

00:22:01.020 | built up around it.

00:22:02.340 | But then there's also the reality that for many people,

00:22:04.620 | more than half, there's a fracture of the first marriage

00:22:08.460 | and that they either remain single or marry again.

00:22:12.820 | And so what do you think dictates whether or not a person

00:22:16.260 | can go through these series of evolutions

00:22:20.020 | and actually find and create love again and again and again,

00:22:24.700 | either with the same person or with someone new,

00:22:27.580 | or in some cases, I guess, three different partners?

00:22:30.740 | I mean, what is the sort of requirement?

00:22:33.860 | Is it a willingness to accept this model

00:22:36.260 | and understand that who they are at 50

00:22:38.340 | is going to be very different

00:22:39.300 | than who they were in their 20s?

00:22:41.460 | - You know, a good question

00:22:42.900 | is a question that has many answers.

00:22:45.580 | There's different ways to answer this.

00:22:48.100 | I think that more than thinking about it

00:22:52.420 | as they were able to overcome crises,

00:22:55.420 | it's really the ability to redefine oneself

00:22:58.660 | and to redefine the relationship.

00:23:00.300 | It's much more creative than problem solving.

00:23:04.060 | You can overcome a crisis and put it aside

00:23:07.140 | and stay the same.

00:23:08.500 | This is much more of a generative experience.

00:23:11.100 | It's a creative experience,

00:23:12.460 | is that you actually become a different unit.

00:23:15.380 | The power dynamic is different.

00:23:17.220 | The interdependence is different.

00:23:19.220 | The erotic charge is different.

00:23:21.540 | The connection to the outside world is different.

00:23:25.340 | It's really, it's enlivening.

00:23:28.940 | I think everybody understands the difference

00:23:32.500 | between a relationship that is not dead

00:23:34.940 | and a relationship that is alive.

00:23:36.860 | I am not there to help people survive.

00:23:44.060 | My work is about more than that.

00:23:47.660 | It's about helping people to feel alive.

00:23:51.020 | And the redefinition of having the same relationship

00:23:54.980 | with the same person, it has to be alive,

00:23:58.740 | not just not dead.

00:24:00.700 | And if sometimes that alive means recreating a new,

00:24:05.140 | you know, going to a new person,

00:24:06.780 | a new country, a new city, a new social circle,

00:24:10.740 | a new profession, a new a lot of things

00:24:12.740 | that we today have access to change,

00:24:15.260 | things that people did once.

00:24:17.020 | You know, when I ask an audience,

00:24:19.180 | if your grandparents grew up in the same neighborhood

00:24:22.060 | or in the same town and worked in the same company,

00:24:25.180 | I mean, most people raise their hands.

00:24:27.940 | And then I go down the generations.

00:24:29.860 | And then now it's like, how many of you

00:24:31.940 | have had three jobs in the last five years?

00:24:34.980 | So this notion that we can create new things for ourselves

00:24:39.740 | is actually one of the greatest things

00:24:41.700 | that has happened in the realm of relationships.

00:24:44.020 | We can have kids much later.

00:24:46.260 | We can join somebody who has already had those children.

00:24:49.700 | We can marry in our 60s for the first time.

00:24:52.500 | We can live in a threesome.

00:24:55.260 | We can, there's a plasticity,

00:24:57.660 | if you want to use a word that you,

00:24:59.820 | to the world of relationship today

00:25:03.060 | that is extremely rich and expansive,

00:25:06.620 | but demands a set of skills to negotiate,

00:25:11.180 | to understand the uncertainty

00:25:12.900 | that comes from having to make so many decisions.

00:25:15.460 | At the time we, in the past,

00:25:17.260 | none of us made decisions about most of these things.

00:25:20.100 | They were handed down to us.

00:25:22.180 | So that level of freedom is utterly rich,

00:25:26.100 | but comes with a tremendous amount of anxiety

00:25:29.540 | and demands maturity.

00:25:31.820 | And sometimes couples have become so entrenched

00:25:36.260 | and so locked in their story

00:25:39.900 | and confusing their story with the truth

00:25:42.860 | and feeling that they're living next to someone

00:25:44.900 | who has a completely different version of the story

00:25:47.500 | that they cannot talk to.

00:25:49.020 | Like there is no greater polarization

00:25:51.140 | sometimes than a couple that once agreed on a lot of things

00:25:54.860 | that you just think there's no way

00:25:57.580 | change can enter this system.

00:25:59.780 | - Okay, so when I hear your answer,

00:26:01.780 | what comes to mind is that, again, as a neurobiologist,

00:26:05.100 | I think the brain, the human brain has this amazing capacity

00:26:08.860 | to focus on past, present, or future.

00:26:11.720 | And sometimes two of those three things,

00:26:15.260 | it's kind of hard to think about all three at once,

00:26:17.360 | but it sounds to me as if one of the more functional

00:26:22.360 | attributes that somebody can have

00:26:24.100 | if they want to navigate relationship in a healthy way

00:26:27.980 | is to be able to at least temporarily

00:26:31.900 | discard with one's story about one's past

00:26:35.020 | and even their past identity.

00:26:36.780 | And the word that was coming up over and over again

00:26:39.100 | in my mind as you answered was this word you used earlier,

00:26:42.580 | which was curiosity.

00:26:44.460 | And I'm wondering if what you're referring to

00:26:46.100 | is a curiosity on the part of hopefully both people

00:26:48.900 | in the relationship as to what the relationship could become

00:26:52.700 | and who oneself could become.

00:26:56.300 | And my definition of curiosity is an interest

00:26:59.900 | in finding out but without an emotional attachment

00:27:03.540 | to what the outcome is.

00:27:05.320 | This is what we train scientists to do.

00:27:07.180 | You want to get the answers,

00:27:08.500 | but you can't get emotionally attached

00:27:10.340 | to the answer being A or B.

00:27:12.260 | That's anti-curiosity.

00:27:14.740 | Real genuine curiosity is about the process,

00:27:17.900 | the verb action of wanting to figure out something,

00:27:20.820 | but not being attached to a particular outcome.

00:27:24.900 | And as you were describing sort of functional trajectory

00:27:29.020 | of relationship, I was thinking, okay,

00:27:32.580 | so if one could approach relationship

00:27:34.380 | with a willingness to discard kind of stories

00:27:36.780 | about one's past and maybe even a sense

00:27:38.600 | of one's identity of past,

00:27:40.380 | be willing to let go of that a little bit

00:27:42.740 | and just be curious about like, where could this go

00:27:45.700 | if I let the relationship guide

00:27:48.100 | my evolution of identity a bit?

00:27:50.500 | And that takes some, as you said, some boldness,

00:27:53.100 | because if it's kind of scary, right?

00:27:55.220 | If you not knowing who one is going to become,

00:27:57.500 | if they let the other person, you know,

00:28:00.880 | maybe lead for a while or if they were to lead for a while,

00:28:05.740 | are these the sorts of dynamics that you're referring to?

00:28:08.020 | - I think you almost articulated

00:28:10.860 | one of the most important pieces of my work.

00:28:13.420 | I mean, curiosity is one of the top words for me

00:28:19.020 | because it stands in opposition to reactivity.

00:28:22.820 | Reactivity reinforces the cycle.

00:28:27.420 | It just creates narrow repetition,

00:28:29.760 | rapid cycles of escalation.

00:28:32.920 | It usually involves defense and attack and blame, et cetera.

00:28:37.400 | Curiosity is an active engagement with the unknown.

00:28:40.520 | And I like when you say without the attachment

00:28:43.680 | to the outcome or the emotional investment,

00:28:46.800 | I think that's absolutely accurate.

00:28:48.840 | And much of what I do is try to have people

00:28:53.360 | switch from reactive to curious.

00:28:56.440 | But that curiosity means that they're willing to enter

00:28:59.500 | empathically and respectfully

00:29:01.240 | into the realm of another person

00:29:03.040 | whose narrative is completely different.

00:29:05.720 | I'm very invested and familiar with the neurosciences

00:29:09.000 | and the whole work on the brain in relationships,

00:29:12.860 | but I am very interested in narrative

00:29:15.440 | because I believe that the story shapes the experience.

00:29:19.520 | And when people hold on to the story

00:29:21.880 | and they don't think it's a story, they think it's fact.

00:29:24.600 | This is what happened last night.

00:29:26.460 | I'll tell you what you did.

00:29:28.680 | I'll tell you what happened.

00:29:30.520 | That's not the case.

00:29:32.880 | And they don't see this as a subjective rendering.

00:29:36.800 | It's totally valid, but it's valid as your experience.

00:29:40.640 | And much of couples' conversations is pseudo-factual talk,

00:29:45.180 | but it is actually subjective.

00:29:47.440 | Once you get that, you can become curious.

00:29:49.760 | Once you are curious, you open up.

00:29:53.080 | But it is very challenging when people are hurt,

00:29:57.320 | wounded, defensive, holding tight to invite that curiosity.

00:30:02.320 | What's happening in their bodies

00:30:09.600 | is about shutdown and defense and self-protection.

00:30:13.480 | And you want, I'm doing this physically to you

00:30:15.880 | because this is where the brain and the neurobiology

00:30:20.600 | in that moment is going against

00:30:23.280 | what actually is in their best interest,

00:30:26.320 | psychologically and existentially.

00:30:28.740 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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00:31:59.880 | - I am a firm believer that when we are in a stress response

00:32:04.120 | that we become locked in a time domain

00:32:06.920 | and not to spin off into a tangent about this,

00:32:08.880 | but put differently when we are relaxed,

00:32:12.720 | we can think about time and our life

00:32:17.560 | and other things happening around us

00:32:19.160 | and others in a far more dynamic way.

00:32:21.560 | The stress response is about solving for the feeling now.

00:32:25.560 | It has no sense about,

00:32:28.000 | or it doesn't allow us a window into the cognition

00:32:31.200 | or emotions that are related to what could be,

00:32:34.300 | even though we desperately want out of there.

00:32:36.120 | And there's all sorts of evolutionary reasons

00:32:37.880 | why this would be the case.

00:32:38.840 | - Of course.

00:32:40.600 | I feel like a statement that you made,

00:32:44.120 | which is that a curiosity and a willing to discard

00:32:47.100 | with one's own narratives.

00:32:48.600 | And in particular, what you said about

00:32:51.040 | that people perceive their own experience as fact,

00:32:54.140 | when in actuality, it's just two different stories.

00:32:58.240 | Neither person is correct or one person,

00:33:01.520 | but people have these stories

00:33:02.880 | which are almost confabulation at some point,

00:33:04.720 | but they feel so true to all of us when we experience them.

00:33:08.560 | I also feel like that's a lot of what's happening

00:33:10.360 | in culture at large.

00:33:12.680 | Diametrically opposed camps really believe

00:33:15.120 | that the same thing is a reflection

00:33:17.480 | of two completely different series of facts.

00:33:20.720 | And it seems almost unsolvable at the level of culture.

00:33:24.160 | There's just too many people,

00:33:25.500 | but at the level of two individuals,

00:33:27.160 | I feel like it ought to be tractable.

00:33:30.640 | - You know, I have gone to a lot of meetings

00:33:33.120 | in the last year on issues of polarization,

00:33:37.360 | on societal levels.

00:33:39.040 | And I often think like, what is a psychologist

00:33:42.160 | or a couple therapist doing in those meetings?

00:33:44.280 | Why am I invited here?

00:33:45.400 | And then I think, you know what?

00:33:48.400 | You actually have a lot of experience with polarizations.

00:33:51.840 | Sitting for a long time with couples

00:33:55.560 | who once actually thought in the presence of the other,

00:33:59.900 | I discover myself, now can be so at odds.

00:34:05.920 | They're sitting in the same room.

00:34:07.480 | They're listening to the same session.

00:34:09.220 | They have a complete different interpretation

00:34:11.500 | of what I said and what it meant.

00:34:14.360 | And they leave and you wonder,

00:34:15.720 | did it happen in the same room?

00:34:17.680 | And the same thing is about what they describe

00:34:19.480 | about the night before.

00:34:20.720 | It's like, and if you didn't see them together

00:34:24.220 | and you saw them each alone,

00:34:26.760 | you would be completely mistaken.

00:34:29.240 | Because it's like Swiss cheese.

00:34:32.280 | Everything that one has left out

00:34:34.040 | is where the other one starts.

00:34:35.920 | So we learn a lot from doing couples work

00:34:41.400 | around the process of polarization,

00:34:44.200 | around the process of intractable conflict,

00:34:46.840 | around the sense that you are my enemy

00:34:50.160 | and there is nothing in what you say

00:34:53.000 | that I can recognize or be empathic towards

00:34:56.900 | or understanding.

00:34:58.880 | I think on a societal level,

00:35:01.800 | the people who have studied intractable conflict

00:35:04.840 | basically have a method of how you bring

00:35:10.540 | two opposing parties, factions, tribes,

00:35:15.440 | who have been in conflict and at war for a long time

00:35:20.440 | and how you bring them together.

00:35:22.800 | There is actually a method, a process.

00:35:26.760 | It's not written in stone,

00:35:28.840 | but you certainly don't start by talking

00:35:31.920 | about the things that drive you completely apart

00:35:35.000 | and unable to talk to each other.

00:35:37.400 | You start by finding some elements of your shared humanity.

00:35:41.900 | In a couple, 'cause that is the space we talk about now,

00:35:47.440 | in a couple, it's an incredible thing

00:35:50.180 | how people can literally think

00:35:52.640 | that the other person wants their demise.

00:35:55.920 | You live day in, day out with someone

00:35:57.940 | who you really think wants to hurt you, is your enemy.

00:36:02.940 | Sometimes there is evil.

00:36:05.640 | There's people who don't have good intentions,

00:36:07.960 | but in many situations, it's also a projection.

00:36:12.960 | It's also experiences that you've had in the past.

00:36:17.000 | And this is where what's interesting

00:36:19.280 | is that the narrative, the conscious narrative,

00:36:22.880 | lives here and what you call the brain

00:36:26.480 | that can only locate itself in three temporal,

00:36:29.160 | in the brain and the physiology are in a different time.

00:36:33.280 | Implicit memory is completely influencing

00:36:37.320 | explicit narrative.

00:36:39.600 | - Yeah, people are incredibly prone to confabulation

00:36:42.720 | based on these unconscious things going on.

00:36:45.080 | And it's kind of a scary thought.

00:36:46.680 | - If I feel it, this is what's happening.

00:36:49.160 | - That's right, right.

00:36:50.840 | - And because we are creatures of meaning,

00:36:53.200 | we need to reconcile those things

00:36:55.120 | and we need coherence in our narratives.

00:36:57.760 | And that coherence is what is so difficult

00:37:01.000 | for when you work with people who are,

00:37:03.200 | what is it that they're holding on to?

00:37:05.120 | I mean, you know, one of the classic examples is some,

00:37:08.600 | you know, someone says, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to.

00:37:11.300 | And the other one says, that's not the case.

00:37:14.640 | You know, like if someone tells you,

00:37:16.840 | I didn't mean to hurt you,

00:37:18.240 | you would think that someone would say,

00:37:21.240 | ah, that's reassuring.

00:37:22.760 | I like to hear that.

00:37:24.000 | I hope that's true, makes me feel a lot better.

00:37:27.760 | Rather than proving to you that that's not true,

00:37:31.680 | you wanted to step on my toes,

00:37:33.520 | you intentionally put those heels on

00:37:36.440 | or those shoes or, you know, those fists to step on me.

00:37:41.440 | And that coherence of maintaining the idea

00:37:46.020 | that if I feel that you hurt me,

00:37:47.920 | you must have been wanting to hurt me

00:37:50.680 | rather than, you know, I can be hurt

00:37:52.760 | and that doesn't mean you intentionally

00:37:54.360 | were trying to do anything.

00:37:55.760 | It's as if I need to justify my being hurt

00:37:59.800 | by the intention of what you did.

00:38:02.120 | And to just make sure, sometimes that's the case.

00:38:06.040 | It's not that there are people

00:38:07.720 | who intentionally want to hurt some people.

00:38:10.200 | But at other times, what I'm highlighting is that

00:38:13.680 | the coherence to make sense of why I'm feeling this way

00:38:16.800 | demands that I also define what you are trying to do to me.

00:38:21.760 | - I mean, and in reality,

00:38:24.160 | most people are terrible at understanding

00:38:27.360 | how they themselves feel,

00:38:28.840 | let alone someone else's intentions.

00:38:31.680 | I mean, if somebody apologizes and says,

00:38:33.840 | "Listen, I'm truly sorry, I screwed up."

00:38:37.560 | And the other person says, "I don't believe you."

00:38:41.440 | I think what they're really saying,

00:38:43.600 | you can tell me if I'm wrong,

00:38:44.780 | is I don't feel better as a consequence of your apology.

00:38:47.840 | - That's because your apology, I screwed up is incomplete.

00:38:51.060 | - Hmm.

00:38:51.900 | - Most of the time, people say that I made a mistake,

00:38:56.540 | I'm sorry, but it doesn't acknowledge

00:38:59.060 | what the other person felt in response to what we did.

00:39:03.020 | - So let's say that the apology also includes that,

00:39:05.140 | I, you know, I really messed up.

00:39:07.820 | It makes total sense that you would be upset.

00:39:11.100 | You know, we had an agreement that we would meet at seven

00:39:14.300 | and I didn't get home until nine

00:39:16.340 | and I didn't notify you until eight.

00:39:19.740 | I would be upset too, that's totally justified.

00:39:22.840 | That sucks, that's got to really suck.

00:39:26.560 | At that point, if the other person still feels like,

00:39:33.660 | it's still frustrating,

00:39:35.740 | presumably it's because either this is a pattern.

00:39:41.700 | So this one apology doesn't encapsulate all the other,

00:39:46.060 | the sort of a litany of other things that relate to this,

00:39:49.520 | the feeling unseen or unappreciated,

00:39:51.420 | or, you know, there's often a lot more behind the event.

00:39:54.500 | - You've apologized many times.

00:39:55.340 | - Right, or yeah, it could be a pattern of apologies

00:39:58.180 | that don't equate to change,

00:39:59.980 | or it could be a pattern of an apology

00:40:02.220 | that doesn't encapsulate all the other things

00:40:04.580 | that weren't voiced.

00:40:05.820 | Because sometimes people won't voice their grievances

00:40:09.180 | because they, for whatever reason,

00:40:11.300 | but there's a lot of resent that's built up, right?

00:40:13.580 | So in that moment, when somebody tells another

00:40:17.940 | that they are not convinced, emotionally convinced,

00:40:22.940 | what are the tools that you give each

00:40:25.840 | in order to be able to navigate that sticking point?

00:40:28.440 | - I think apology is an amazing topic

00:40:31.120 | in the realm of relationship.

00:40:32.560 | It's a huge piece.

00:40:34.240 | Apology, forgiveness, ownership, responsibility,

00:40:38.080 | accountability, that whole range of things.

00:40:40.680 | I think if you give that apology, many times somebody,

00:40:45.880 | and it's not that you're doing this every Tuesday,

00:40:48.400 | the person will probably just say, thank you.

00:40:52.360 | If you have someone who can't receive an apology

00:40:58.480 | and the apology is sincere,

00:41:02.000 | that's the first and foremost thing

00:41:04.120 | that accompanies an apology,

00:41:05.800 | then you begin to ask,

00:41:09.080 | why is this person struggling to receive this?

00:41:14.440 | Because it is the thing that you should be getting.

00:41:17.240 | And then you start to ask yourself,

00:41:22.040 | is it because if I accept your apology,

00:41:29.320 | it's as if I agree that what you did wasn't so bad.

00:41:33.400 | It is repairable.

00:41:34.740 | And in order to really make clear that the grievance is big,

00:41:39.880 | I cannot receive your apology.

00:41:43.440 | That's one of the dynamics that often occurs in that moment.

00:41:47.480 | And so you ask sometimes, you sit and you see,

00:41:51.200 | you see somebody who pretends to say, I'm sorry.

00:41:53.200 | You see somebody who just says,

00:41:54.520 | come on, what's the big deal?

00:41:56.280 | And then you see people who really are sincere.

00:41:59.760 | And then you watch what's happening to the other person.

00:42:02.280 | Are they relieved?

00:42:04.120 | Are they suspicious?

00:42:06.200 | Are they feeling like they would dissolve

00:42:09.640 | a certain element of their identity

00:42:11.640 | if they don't hold on to this?

00:42:13.760 | Is it as if they're saying, you can get away with it?

00:42:19.920 | It's not as bad because accepting the apology

00:42:23.000 | is to minimize the issue.

00:42:25.760 | And then you switch to burn on the other side.

00:42:28.280 | You know, in Judaism, you apologize three times.

00:42:33.280 | And if after the third time,

00:42:35.480 | and you've done a real reckoning apology,

00:42:38.680 | if at the three time, the other person does not accept it,

00:42:42.080 | the burden passes over to the other person.

00:42:45.220 | - Interesting.

00:42:46.120 | - This is my money this.

00:42:47.200 | And I think it's an incredibly interesting idea

00:42:50.240 | that at some point, the person has made the amends

00:42:55.480 | when they have.

00:42:57.040 | And when you cannot receive it,

00:42:59.520 | then now the burden passes on you.

00:43:01.860 | - I'm just gonna hover there for a second

00:43:05.320 | because I agree that apology is such an interesting

00:43:07.880 | and important concept.

00:43:09.820 | And you mentioned that accepting somebody's apology

00:43:13.380 | at an emotional level, not just saying,

00:43:15.480 | thank you, I accept your apology,

00:43:16.780 | but really internalizing that

00:43:18.400 | and allowing space for it to shift your experience

00:43:22.360 | of the thing that hurt.

00:43:24.100 | - And by the way, accepting the apology

00:43:26.800 | doesn't yet mean that you forgive.

00:43:29.280 | Forgive is your freedom.

00:43:31.480 | You decide at what point you do it,

00:43:33.400 | and you may do it alone.

00:43:35.080 | It's not always a dyadic experience.

00:43:37.640 | Apology is a dyadic experience, but forgiveness is freedom.

00:43:41.760 | - Yeah, I appreciate that distinction

00:43:44.800 | now that you've given it.

00:43:45.640 | I mean, I appreciate you giving that distinction.

00:43:47.620 | I did not make that distinction before.

00:43:48.800 | - I love this topic because it's so,

00:43:50.720 | it's really so many things happen underneath.

00:43:54.160 | You know, there's issues of shame around apology.

00:43:57.440 | What's the difference between shame and responsibility?

00:44:00.820 | What is the capacity of a person to have real distress

00:44:03.880 | rather than empathic distress?

00:44:06.400 | Real empathy rather than empathic distress.

00:44:09.000 | And so it's a portal into a lot of things, you know.

00:44:14.000 | There are people who can never apologize.

00:44:16.880 | - Is that right?

00:44:17.720 | - Oh, yeah.

00:44:18.540 | - Because to do so would what for them?

00:44:20.480 | - Shame.

00:44:22.800 | I think a lot of that piece is around shame.

00:44:25.040 | It's not, I'm a, because self-esteem,

00:44:28.820 | as my friend Terry Real says,

00:44:30.760 | is your ability to see yourself as a flawed individual

00:44:34.480 | and still hold yourself in high regard.

00:44:37.840 | When you admit you're flawed,

00:44:39.720 | it means there's something wrong with you.

00:44:41.920 | Then it's very hard to say, I'm sorry.

00:44:44.980 | This is the essence.

00:44:48.040 | How do you see yourself as imperfect, flawed,

00:44:52.400 | but you still respect yourself

00:44:53.960 | and you hold yourself in high regard?

00:44:55.560 | If you can do those two things,

00:44:57.080 | you can apologize very easily.

00:45:00.320 | - I find that so much of being an "adult," again, in quotes.

00:45:05.040 | - Yes, yes, you would hope.

00:45:07.480 | - Involves the disambiguating two things.

00:45:12.480 | One is we're taught to really trust our own experience

00:45:19.320 | to some extent, to stand our ground

00:45:21.680 | when we know A is true and B is false.

00:45:26.380 | But then also part of being an adult

00:45:28.080 | is admitting when we're wrong.

00:45:30.820 | And there's no rule book, no real-time rule book for that,

00:45:35.820 | especially given that people have different versions

00:45:38.920 | of the same thing often.

00:45:41.040 | But it seems to me that one of the great challenges

00:45:46.040 | in not just in romantic relationship,

00:45:48.360 | but in relationships of all kinds

00:45:50.360 | is to really be able to slow down

00:45:54.120 | and enter the state of mind and body

00:45:56.000 | that allows us to do the kind of processing

00:45:57.820 | you're talking about.

00:45:58.860 | So at a very practical level, I'm curious,

00:46:00.960 | let's say a couple comes into your office

00:46:03.600 | and they're dealing with either a single hurt

00:46:07.160 | or a litany of hurts or something like that.

00:46:10.100 | Do you believe it's important for them

00:46:13.360 | to shift out of their emotional state

00:46:15.320 | to be able to process differently?

00:46:16.640 | Do you have them, at the beginning of a session,

00:46:19.000 | do you have them do a couple deep breaths together?

00:46:21.320 | Do you have them recall a time

00:46:22.660 | when they felt particularly bonded?

00:46:24.640 | Is there an effort to shift their somatic state

00:46:27.120 | in order to bring their mind to a place of more curiosity

00:46:30.640 | or is going straight to the issue often the best way in?

00:46:34.400 | - First of all, I like that we,

00:46:36.080 | that it's interesting we're going from apology to conflict.

00:46:39.240 | It makes total sense.

00:46:40.580 | I spent the last year creating a whole course on conflict

00:46:44.400 | and how do you turn conflict into connection?

00:46:47.400 | What is good conflict?

00:46:49.240 | You know, I think conflict is inherent to relationships.

00:46:52.680 | And then what are problematic ways to deal with conflict?

00:46:55.700 | Yes, on some level there is very little you can hear

00:47:00.700 | if you are in a state of hyperarousal,

00:47:04.600 | if you are in a position of self-protection.

00:47:07.360 | I mean, all these stressful places,

00:47:09.940 | all these cortisol levels going up, et cetera,

00:47:12.880 | are not gonna help you.

00:47:14.200 | But at the same time, you can't,

00:47:16.940 | in the moment that someone is completely agitated,

00:47:21.900 | talk with them about trusting.

00:47:23.880 | I mean, it's just like the physiology is not corresponding.

00:47:27.000 | So it's a real dance.

00:47:29.760 | I don't do the breath often, sometimes.

00:47:35.080 | I mean, I actually don't do anything all the time.

00:47:38.360 | I am working like a tailor.

00:47:40.160 | I do fittings.

00:47:41.280 | I mean, I think the richness of therapies

00:47:44.040 | is in its art on some level, maybe.

00:47:47.160 | But sometimes I just say,

00:47:50.440 | "I think you need to stand up and move

00:47:53.140 | "and just listen to what your partner has to say,

00:47:55.520 | "but don't sit."

00:47:57.340 | Sometimes I say, "Don't look at each other."

00:48:00.480 | Sometimes I say, "Turn to each other."

00:48:02.740 | Some things are better done face-to-face

00:48:05.420 | and some things are better done side-by-side,

00:48:08.180 | you know, parallel play, fishing.

00:48:10.400 | There's a lot of, like, you know, driving.

00:48:13.880 | Every parent who's ever had a kid in the back knows this.

00:48:17.200 | You don't, you have both.

00:48:19.300 | You have moments when you need to be able

00:48:20.800 | to look into each other,

00:48:21.800 | and then you have moments where you just need to do this,

00:48:25.480 | something about the side-by-side.

00:48:27.160 | Then it's also the limits of words.

00:48:30.880 | When is it important to talk?

00:48:33.480 | And when, you know, we're talking

00:48:36.060 | because we are homo sapiens,

00:48:37.820 | but in fact, if we were animals,

00:48:39.320 | we would be just making noises.

00:48:41.800 | We're not really making sense.

00:48:44.160 | So stop talking.

00:48:46.200 | So what I try very hard to do

00:48:50.420 | is to not let people show the worst side of themselves.

00:48:55.420 | They can do that at home.

00:48:57.020 | They don't need to come and shame themselves in my office.

00:49:00.700 | And I do know that certain situations

00:49:03.080 | will draw the worst out of people,

00:49:04.900 | but that doesn't mean that that's who they are.

00:49:06.540 | And that's one of the big things as a therapist

00:49:08.940 | is to not fall for that.

00:49:10.940 | And just, because if you met these people alone,

00:49:13.740 | they would be charming.

00:49:15.820 | And if you had met them maybe two years before,

00:49:17.800 | they would have been charming too.

00:49:19.320 | So something's happening between them

00:49:21.940 | that is making them act and react

00:49:25.100 | from places of deep hurt and fear and attack

00:49:29.660 | and all of that, and aggression.

00:49:32.080 | And sometimes I see them alone.

00:49:35.120 | I don't think that you are capable

00:49:37.920 | of having this conversation at this moment

00:49:40.120 | because you're not willing to take any responsibility

00:49:42.720 | when you're sitting next to your partner.

00:49:44.160 | You're in a blame fest and we're not going to do that.

00:49:46.800 | So I'm going to talk with you alone.

00:49:48.680 | And then I'm going to prepare you to come to your partner

00:49:51.720 | with at least one or two things that you can own.

00:49:54.780 | What am I doing to contribute to this mess?

00:49:58.800 | Or what am I doing to make things better?

00:50:01.380 | I like to start the session by asking,

00:50:03.200 | what did you, and if I'm dealing with a kind

00:50:05.520 | of chronic conflict, low intensity warfare, or bigger,

00:50:09.640 | it depends what kind, there's different kinds of conflict.

00:50:13.560 | But I like to ask, what have you done this week

00:50:15.600 | to make things better?

00:50:17.360 | - What a great question.

00:50:19.200 | - What have you done to make your partner feel

00:50:21.400 | that they matter?

00:50:22.360 | Rather than what happened this week?

00:50:26.520 | You know, I kind of have a sense.

00:50:28.080 | Please do not tell me the last unraveling.

00:50:30.720 | You know, I got it.

00:50:32.680 | It goes from one, from zero to 60 in no time.

00:50:35.500 | And none of this, I don't need the details of the story.

00:50:40.500 | I need to know what you're doing to each other.

00:50:42.880 | What feelings you're instigating in each other.

00:50:45.280 | I don't need the plot.

00:50:46.960 | The plot is, you know, there's only three dances.

00:50:52.200 | This fight, you know, aiming at each other,

00:50:55.760 | withdrawing from each other, or one person withdrawing

00:50:58.480 | and one person pursuing.

00:50:59.960 | These are three types of major choreographies of conflict.

00:51:05.280 | Nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya, or psst, quiet silence,

00:51:09.000 | or one goes after the other who is closing the doors

00:51:11.460 | and they follow them through the house,

00:51:13.460 | which is following them to a lot of other things.

00:51:16.840 | And from that place on, you decide, okay,

00:51:20.180 | who is doing what to whom?

00:51:22.620 | Who is feeling what at the hands of whom?

00:51:25.940 | How, what is influencing this?

00:51:29.460 | You know, this person is once again feeling

00:51:32.880 | that when this one didn't talk to them,

00:51:34.620 | they were being given the silent treatment

00:51:36.820 | that they used to feel when they grow up.

00:51:39.140 | And this feeling of neglect and dismissal

00:51:44.140 | is just crushing them 'cause they suddenly feel

00:51:47.180 | like they've been rejected completely.

00:51:49.620 | And this one is feeling like they're once again

00:51:52.100 | being attacked and invaded by this other person

00:51:54.660 | who keeps following them and wants to talk

00:51:56.820 | when they have nothing.

00:51:58.660 | And is remembering when they were living in the place

00:52:01.840 | where they grew up, where they couldn't wait to get out

00:52:04.580 | because they were feeling completely flooded

00:52:06.580 | and overwhelmed by the shit show of their house.

00:52:09.660 | And these two stories are now dictating what's happening

00:52:12.980 | between these two people.

00:52:14.460 | These two people are no longer adults in the room.

00:52:17.820 | Their younger selves have completely taken over.

00:52:20.500 | Their amygdala is completely flooded.

00:52:22.860 | And then it matters, it depends.

00:52:25.340 | Sometimes because I'm a little bit narrative driven,

00:52:29.420 | I may make the mistake to actually go to the story

00:52:33.540 | when in fact these two people really put,

00:52:36.240 | sometimes I sit for 10 minutes quiet.

00:52:38.820 | I say, we're gonna just wait for our systems to regulate

00:52:43.300 | 'cause even I get agitated.

00:52:45.440 | It's not like I don't absorb it.

00:52:48.140 | I say, I think we need some sitting here.

00:52:50.900 | Sometimes I put music.

00:52:52.460 | I love music, so I put music.

00:52:55.780 | I just say, I don't think a single word

00:52:59.900 | is gonna help here.

00:53:02.580 | Sometimes I say, I think we should stop the session.

00:53:05.180 | I mean, it depends.

00:53:07.860 | If you think there's something that can be gained,

00:53:09.900 | if you start to feel like it's just gonna make it worse.

00:53:12.820 | And sometimes I, in the middle of the session may say,

00:53:17.380 | when's the last time you made him a cup of tea?

00:53:19.780 | And the fact that you can still make a cup of tea

00:53:25.020 | to someone who you would like to strangle,

00:53:27.180 | it's really special.

00:53:29.060 | It's amazing how we can inhabit

00:53:31.300 | two completely contradictory feelings at the same time.

00:53:36.180 | I can't stand you, get me the hell out of here

00:53:40.100 | and I can't imagine my life without you.

00:53:42.980 | Those things coexist, love and hate side by side.

00:53:46.880 | - I'd like to take a quick break

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00:55:35.460 | There's something that I really want to revisit

00:55:37.460 | that you said.

00:55:38.900 | You said it incredibly clearly,

00:55:41.040 | but I have never heard this described.

00:55:44.140 | And I think it's so, so very important

00:55:46.860 | for people to hear and internalize,

00:55:49.740 | including me, that I'm gonna ask us to visit it again,

00:55:53.000 | but not because you weren't clear,

00:55:54.540 | but just because I think-

00:55:55.380 | - No, I'm curious, what is it?

00:55:56.820 | - So as a biologist, when we teach biology,

00:56:01.700 | the good biologists, good teachers,

00:56:04.700 | we emphasize names only because people need to know them.

00:56:07.580 | This is called that, this is called that,

00:56:09.020 | but it's all about verbs.

00:56:10.300 | It's all about processes and dynamics.

00:56:12.660 | And what you just described

00:56:14.020 | as the three verb states of conflict,

00:56:19.020 | I think I've never heard articulated that way.

00:56:22.980 | - So you described, if I understand it correctly-

00:56:26.540 | - Pursuer, pursuer.

00:56:27.380 | - Right, either one person pursuing another.

00:56:30.220 | - No, pursuer, pursuer is where people go at each other.

00:56:32.780 | - Oh, pursuer, pursuer is loggerheads.

00:56:33.620 | - And those are escalations.

00:56:35.380 | - Okay, two arrows pointing at one another.

00:56:37.700 | - Two arrows, yes.

00:56:38.540 | - And not in a good way.

00:56:39.460 | - No, not in conflict, it's usually not at a good way.

00:56:42.740 | And there's a whole interpretation of an attachment style

00:56:47.500 | that underlies why do people in the situation of threat

00:56:51.820 | go on the attack?

00:56:53.360 | You have two people fighting,

00:56:55.680 | you have two people flighting, fleeing,

00:56:59.280 | and you have one person who flees

00:57:01.360 | and one person who fights.

00:57:03.560 | That's another language for pursuer, pursuer,

00:57:07.100 | distancer, distancer, pursuer, distancer.

00:57:10.920 | - And in each of those cases,

00:57:13.280 | it seems that the first step

00:57:15.640 | to getting to a more functional dynamic

00:57:18.760 | to try and sort this out, whatever the conflict is,

00:57:22.280 | is to somehow change one's mindset

00:57:26.720 | from talking about the story of what led there

00:57:31.360 | or stories of what led there

00:57:33.840 | to really starting to parse the feeling states of ourselves

00:57:38.840 | and hopefully empathy for the feeling state of the other.

00:57:42.160 | - It's feeling states and physiological states.

00:57:45.680 | It's two different things.

00:57:46.760 | The physiology is more primitive, more basic.

00:57:50.360 | It's physiology, senses, feelings, thoughts,

00:57:55.360 | is the way I would, you know,

00:57:58.600 | but because we, I say it, you know,

00:58:00.320 | because we are homo sapiens and we think,

00:58:03.180 | we really, this thing about coherence

00:58:06.280 | and thinking that what we say has meaning

00:58:09.040 | is extremely powerful to the point sometimes of delusional,

00:58:13.800 | you know, 'cause I have to believe this

00:58:15.880 | because there would be too much dissonance

00:58:18.880 | if what I feel and what I think

00:58:21.720 | and what therefore happened

00:58:23.560 | didn't all have a coherence to themselves.

00:58:26.520 | And, you know, sometimes when you see it in the room,

00:58:30.640 | you kind of say, they never said that.

00:58:34.120 | - Yeah, it's almost like a psychosis of sorts.

00:58:36.920 | I'm not calling either person psychotic, but.

00:58:38.640 | - It's psychotic because it's a disconnection from reality.

00:58:41.280 | I would say it's such an inhabiting

00:58:45.680 | of an internal reality that it is disconnected

00:58:49.920 | from the possibility, and this is where curiosity comes in.

00:58:54.000 | It's the possibility that what you are experiencing

00:58:57.360 | is completely real in its experience,

00:59:01.160 | but that doesn't mean it is factual

00:59:04.880 | or it is real in reality, you know?

00:59:08.000 | And to, when I'm hurt and when I am thinking

00:59:14.500 | that you want to harm me, it's very difficult for me

00:59:19.500 | in that moment to be willing to be empathic towards you.

00:59:25.840 | And there are relationships where this is the truth.

00:59:29.480 | I want to constantly come back to that

00:59:31.360 | because not everything is imagined.

00:59:33.720 | - Sure. - You know?

00:59:35.140 | But there are many other relationships

00:59:38.020 | where why would, why, you know,

00:59:43.080 | why would he want, maybe he stepped away

00:59:48.080 | because he just thought that whatever was gonna come out

00:59:51.700 | of his mouth, he would regret.

00:59:53.740 | It's not because he doesn't care about you.

00:59:57.140 | In factually, it's the opposite.

00:59:59.320 | And he knows what he can sometimes say,

01:00:02.860 | he, they, she, it doesn't matter,

01:00:05.380 | but not because he wanted to just throw you to the wolves.

01:00:09.740 | - It's almost like we lose our theory of mind,

01:00:12.060 | our ability to place ourselves in the mind of another

01:00:15.700 | in a healthy way when we're in these stress states.

01:00:19.340 | I'm curious.

01:00:20.180 | - It's funny you call it stress states

01:00:22.100 | because stress to me is so physiological

01:00:25.700 | that it doesn't include the relational component.

01:00:28.420 | - Sure.

01:00:29.260 | - I mean, there needs to be a word for stress

01:00:31.260 | that involves the emotional reality

01:00:33.380 | and that emotional reality that now

01:00:36.420 | may be somewhat imagined, and this is why it's complicated,

01:00:40.920 | was once true.

01:00:42.480 | What now is an internal truth.

01:00:46.500 | Once was what really happened.

01:00:49.020 | And that's why we imagine,

01:00:51.380 | and this is how we interpret the dynamic.

01:00:54.100 | It's very important to add that.

01:00:55.920 | So the past was real.

01:00:59.140 | There was someone in the past who actually did this to me.

01:01:03.620 | But when you do this, I think of them,

01:01:06.660 | I bring those two things together.

01:01:08.840 | I collapse the past and the present.

01:01:11.840 | And that's why I'm convinced

01:01:13.300 | this is what you're doing to me too.

01:01:15.660 | And so how do you take somebody out of their physical

01:01:20.340 | and mental and emotional past

01:01:23.020 | to be grounding themselves into the present

01:01:25.860 | so that they can consider that this person

01:01:28.320 | that is next to them is not doing to them

01:01:30.620 | what once was done to them.

01:01:32.460 | - Right, and my mind immediately goes to

01:01:35.220 | what you just described as a shift from focusing

01:01:38.300 | mainly on the past and how it's making us feel

01:01:41.280 | in the present to how we're feeling in the present.

01:01:45.020 | Acknowledging and understanding something did happen.

01:01:47.860 | That was real, as you said.

01:01:49.440 | And yet with this curious eye toward the future

01:01:53.260 | of what could unfold.

01:01:54.300 | - That's probably the hardest nugget of couples therapy.

01:01:59.300 | I mean, I do individual work too,

01:02:02.300 | but if we talk relational therapy,

01:02:04.580 | this is one of those nuggets

01:02:06.020 | because people are not aware that they are in their past.

01:02:11.020 | They are convinced that this is in the present.

01:02:14.040 | It's a collapse of time zones and realities.

01:02:18.140 | It's what makes us so rich.

01:02:20.840 | It's what makes us so able to be creative and artful,

01:02:24.680 | but it's what sometimes makes it very challenging for us,

01:02:28.740 | especially in romantic relationships.

01:02:31.020 | 'Cause you asked,

01:02:31.860 | at first you began with romantic relationships.

01:02:34.300 | A lot of what we say here is true

01:02:36.620 | for friendships and work relationships,

01:02:38.860 | but there is only two relationships that mirror each other.

01:02:42.140 | It's the one we had with our first caretakers,

01:02:45.100 | mostly our parents,

01:02:46.420 | and the ones we have with our romantic partners.

01:02:49.360 | People can sit in the office and tell you,

01:02:51.020 | "I don't have this with anybody else."

01:02:53.860 | And it's true, often.

01:02:56.140 | You believe them.

01:02:57.300 | Because nobody gets as close to you

01:03:00.220 | and nobody elicits in you those kinds of early yearnings

01:03:05.220 | and emotional needs than a romantic partner.

01:03:09.900 | And that is very interesting.

01:03:12.000 | - I don't know if it's a bug or a feature,

01:03:15.100 | as the engineers say,

01:03:17.180 | but it is remarkable to me

01:03:19.140 | that the very same neural machinery

01:03:23.740 | that forms the underpinning

01:03:26.500 | of infant primary caretaker relationship

01:03:30.060 | is repurposed for romantic relationship.

01:03:33.020 | I mean, I marvel at that.

01:03:34.460 | - Interesting. - Right?

01:03:35.300 | I mean, the brain doesn't have like,

01:03:36.780 | "Oh, here's your developmental wiring circuits."

01:03:38.820 | And then guess what?

01:03:39.640 | You get to hit adolescence and you go through puberty,

01:03:41.460 | and then you get this new circuit

01:03:42.660 | for forming a romantic attachment.

01:03:44.580 | - It's the same one.

01:03:45.420 | - The brain imaging shows us that it's repurposed.

01:03:48.700 | So it's like if you got a two plus two equals four

01:03:51.460 | algorithm in that circuit,

01:03:52.860 | let's call that securely attached,

01:03:54.420 | although I realize that language is not sufficient,

01:03:56.820 | but for just purposes of discussion.

01:03:59.260 | Okay, well then great.

01:04:00.180 | Then you get healthy romantic attachments as adults

01:04:02.420 | or you as an adult,

01:04:03.860 | and perhaps you can navigate in and out of things

01:04:05.980 | that are unhealthy more quickly.

01:04:07.580 | However, if you got a two plus two equals five algorithm

01:04:11.800 | wired into that circuit,

01:04:13.460 | well, then you're forever looking for something

01:04:16.020 | that is essentially dysfunctional.

01:04:18.580 | That's the simplest version of this.

01:04:19.420 | - Tell me more about this repurposing.

01:04:21.780 | - Yeah. - It's really interesting.

01:04:22.860 | - Yeah, so beautiful work by Alan Shore

01:04:25.660 | and others has shown- - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:27.540 | - It's work I know you're familiar with,

01:04:28.940 | has shown that you image the brain of infant

01:04:31.340 | and typically it's mother,

01:04:32.540 | but they've done other caretakers as well.

01:04:34.460 | And you see this incredible mirroring of,

01:04:36.780 | sure, right brain, left brain activity,

01:04:38.500 | more dopaminergic or serotonergic activity.

01:04:40.740 | Basically the takeaway is that you see a lot of coherence.

01:04:44.820 | What's going on in the mother

01:04:46.060 | is going on in the child and vice versa.

01:04:47.820 | And there's a lot of reciprocity.

01:04:50.980 | But sometimes in unhealthy caretaker infant relationships,

01:04:55.300 | the so-called anxious, attached, dissociative,

01:04:57.740 | or avoidant type scenarios, the ABCD baby type thing.

01:05:01.980 | People can look that up.

01:05:03.780 | If they like, we can provide a link.

01:05:05.580 | You see a mismatch in the neurochemistry

01:05:09.540 | and the activation of these brain areas.

01:05:11.660 | In other words, the brain circuitry for attachment

01:05:14.100 | is set up so that anxious states are evoked

01:05:17.620 | when calm states should have been.

01:05:20.380 | Have there been better parenting?

01:05:21.220 | - Yes, yes, yes. - Okay, all right.

01:05:22.660 | But then you take those,

01:05:24.820 | you essentially run the same sorts of studies

01:05:28.180 | on romantically attached young adults or older adults.

01:05:33.180 | And what you see is it's the same sets of neurons,

01:05:35.940 | the same circuits.

01:05:37.380 | I mean, this is remarkable.

01:05:38.460 | Nowhere else, to my awareness,

01:05:40.640 | nowhere else in the nervous system

01:05:42.500 | do we repurpose neural circuitry from early in life.

01:05:47.500 | You know, it's as if there's a neural circuit

01:05:49.060 | for sensing thirst and drinking early in life.

01:05:52.220 | And then later it's used for sensing how to navigate a city.

01:05:55.200 | Okay, now those are two very disparate things,

01:05:57.460 | but this is like outrageous, right?

01:06:00.500 | And so I say it's either a feature or a bug, we don't know,

01:06:04.420 | but it is the way it is, right?

01:06:06.060 | I always say I wasn't consulted at the design phase.

01:06:08.380 | - What do you think was the evolutionary logic of that?

01:06:11.860 | - I like to think in a kind of romantic way

01:06:14.560 | that some of our most important work in our lifetime

01:06:18.860 | is to try and resolve these developmental miswirings

01:06:23.860 | that are the consequence

01:06:25.220 | of faulty caretaker-infant relationship.

01:06:30.060 | And you can't blame the infant.

01:06:31.900 | Now, does that mean we blame our parents

01:06:33.340 | to the point of ostracizing them?

01:06:34.740 | Well, one would hope not.

01:06:35.780 | Maybe in some cases that's necessary.

01:06:37.320 | But I think, I like to think that what we've observed

01:06:41.260 | over the last 10, 20, 30 years, in no small part,

01:06:44.820 | seriously, thanks to your work,

01:06:46.940 | reflects an evolution

01:06:49.900 | of how we are thinking about attachment,

01:06:51.620 | that we are actually getting better

01:06:53.260 | at understanding the self.

01:06:54.860 | And there's something about the human brain

01:06:56.800 | that wants to understand itself.

01:06:58.660 | - Very interesting.

01:06:59.500 | - So I like to think that in a hundred years,

01:07:01.760 | not only will there be more models of relationship

01:07:06.740 | as functional, healthy relationships,

01:07:08.980 | but there will also be a deeper understanding

01:07:12.000 | of what this whole thing of love and attachment really is.

01:07:14.340 | And the parallel I use is one of biology.

01:07:16.540 | We understand so much more about brain function now

01:07:19.420 | than we did just 10 years ago.

01:07:21.120 | Addiction, for instance,

01:07:24.500 | not just a condition of failure of willpower,

01:07:27.460 | but this understanding about dopamine and other molecules.

01:07:31.860 | I think we now look at a fentanyl addict

01:07:34.540 | or a heroin addict very differently.

01:07:36.460 | They're caught in a neurochemical algorithm

01:07:39.660 | that is not serving them well.

01:07:41.540 | It doesn't remove their responsibility,

01:07:43.740 | but there comes a point where they can't recover themselves

01:07:47.540 | and they need certain supports.

01:07:48.620 | And those supports are starting to emerge now.

01:07:50.200 | So my hope is that this is built into our evolution

01:07:55.200 | as some sort of vector toward progress.

01:08:01.060 | - You know, it's interesting because some models

01:08:05.700 | of couples work, of couples therapy will say,

01:08:11.660 | you have recreated with each other

01:08:14.620 | patterns of your early life

01:08:18.900 | in order to be able to transcend them.

01:08:22.940 | - Right, the repetition compulsion.

01:08:25.440 | You get the same thing over and over again.

01:08:27.740 | Lord knows I've had that and some wonderful partners.

01:08:30.540 | And by the way, as I say that,

01:08:32.000 | I'm also taking 50% of the responsibility.

01:08:35.020 | So it's, or a hundred percent of the responsibility

01:08:36.880 | for the choice.

01:08:38.060 | As they say, you didn't have six hard relationships.

01:08:40.860 | You had one hard relationship six times, right?

01:08:43.940 | And I think Paul Conti says it that way.

01:08:46.020 | But that, yes, that the repetition compulsion

01:08:49.860 | is a unconscious attempt to resolve the core conflict

01:08:54.520 | that arose during early attachment.

01:08:56.860 | Do you subscribe to that view?

01:08:58.580 | - I think it's a very useful idea.

01:09:01.980 | You know, I was thinking at one point,

01:09:03.940 | it's like sometimes when I listen to you

01:09:07.340 | and, you know, there is an exactness

01:09:09.780 | in the things that you described

01:09:11.620 | often rooted in science and research, et cetera.

01:09:14.580 | Couples therapy or psychotherapy, relationship thinking,

01:09:18.620 | you don't have an exact answer.

01:09:22.700 | It's, first of all, you don't have an exact answer

01:09:29.660 | because modern relationships are more complex than ever.

01:09:32.460 | And I don't think any relationship expert

01:09:34.340 | at this point can have answers.

01:09:36.880 | You have invitations, you have ways of thinking

01:09:40.020 | that are useful.

01:09:41.980 | And here is the question.

01:09:43.500 | Is it true for me is answered by, do the people,

01:09:48.500 | does it resonate for them?

01:09:50.380 | If they buy it, then it's true.

01:09:53.420 | It's a framework.

01:09:54.620 | I can analyze this tableau in multiple ways.

01:09:59.420 | If this is the one that resonates for you,

01:10:02.100 | this is what we're going to go with.

01:10:04.740 | And that's what makes it true.

01:10:07.040 | This is a very interesting thing.

01:10:08.600 | There's multiple, I mean, to me it's interesting

01:10:10.880 | because there's a whole movement

01:10:12.480 | within the world of psychotherapy and psychology

01:10:15.200 | that wants to actually become much more normatized

01:10:19.120 | with protocols and the same thing for everyone.

01:10:22.360 | I think that much of what, at least relationship therapy,

01:10:25.760 | which is really the world that I practice in,

01:10:28.640 | is existential and it's meaning making.

01:10:32.040 | And there's a lot of ways to do that.

01:10:34.900 | So if this interpretation works for you, be my guest.

01:10:39.900 | But that's not because it is more true than another.

01:10:44.260 | It's the one that was useful for you.

01:10:46.780 | And that makes you much more humble.

01:10:49.700 | - I love that answer.

01:10:51.060 | - It's a little bit like when you raise kids, you know?

01:10:53.940 | You think that, I used to think that all these things

01:10:56.820 | I had done with my first one, you know,

01:10:59.100 | is because I had such good ideas.

01:11:01.460 | Then I had a second one and none of these things

01:11:03.860 | worked with them because it was a different person.

01:11:06.580 | You know, so I realized that the first one,

01:11:08.500 | it worked because there was a fit

01:11:09.860 | between my method and the person.

01:11:11.980 | And this is the important thing in therapy

01:11:14.220 | is that it's an issue of that fit

01:11:16.820 | is what you're looking for.

01:11:18.580 | - We hear a lot these days about the

01:11:20.700 | different attachment styles or languages of love.

01:11:25.420 | You know, the love languages, you know,

01:11:26.820 | people will say, I, you know, I emphasize, you know,

01:11:31.100 | gifts feel very rewarding or acts of, what is it?

01:11:35.020 | Words of affirmation, you know,

01:11:37.540 | unstructured time or et cetera, et cetera.

01:11:40.220 | Or people will, I think nowadays,

01:11:42.260 | if they look into it a little bit,

01:11:43.860 | they'll realize that they are either, you know,

01:11:46.900 | more avoidant or more anxious.

01:11:48.500 | These things can shift.

01:11:49.420 | I mean, I think it's wonderful that people

01:11:51.180 | are thinking about these things in the same way

01:11:52.820 | that I think it's wonderful that people understand

01:11:54.500 | that there's a molecule called dopamine.

01:11:56.580 | They can do certain things, serotonin, certain things.

01:11:58.940 | But I'm curious as to whether or not you feel

01:12:01.580 | that the naming of things and the assignment of oneself

01:12:05.100 | to a category can sometimes be limiting

01:12:08.920 | in terms of one's ability to really embrace this curiosity.

01:12:13.340 | And you also use the word invitation

01:12:16.180 | and you are describing couples therapy

01:12:18.780 | and healthy relationship as a bit more of an art form

01:12:21.740 | than a reductionist protocol oriented science,

01:12:24.620 | which I love because to me, you know,

01:12:28.140 | despite being a scientist,

01:12:29.700 | some of the great mystery of life

01:12:30.980 | and certainly of romantic relationship

01:12:32.580 | is when you find yourself in happy places

01:12:36.820 | that you didn't anticipate finding yourself

01:12:38.500 | or in a place of forgiveness and close friendship,

01:12:42.120 | when at one point you can recall being,

01:12:44.540 | like you said, like you just,

01:12:45.960 | this person is like embodies the worst things in your mind.

01:12:50.600 | So I think, I wonder if the processes

01:12:55.600 | that you found useful in your clinical work,

01:13:00.240 | is it possible to formalize those in a way

01:13:02.520 | that people can start to adopt to them?

01:13:05.520 | In other words, do you think that we can learn

01:13:09.160 | to navigate relationship in more healthy ways,

01:13:12.840 | not just by saying I'm anxiously attached

01:13:15.400 | or avoidant or securely attached,

01:13:16.840 | I'm looking for someone that has that,

01:13:18.020 | or my love language is this and they love to do that.

01:13:20.500 | And so therefore we're a perfect lock and key.

01:13:22.600 | I think people are starting to think about relationship

01:13:25.120 | in a more nuanced and sophisticated way.

01:13:27.920 | And yet also what I'm hearing is,

01:13:30.400 | it's a lot more dynamic than that.

01:13:31.960 | And that some of those categorizations

01:13:33.840 | that we assign ourselves can really perhaps be limiting

01:13:37.340 | to what could be.

01:13:39.640 | - It's a great question.

01:13:40.640 | But I have a moment now as if I'm in the session with you

01:13:44.360 | where I have like five things that are arriving here

01:13:46.960 | in front of my brain and I'm thinking,

01:13:49.680 | which one am I going to enter?

01:13:53.480 | I'm going to actually start with just the actual question,

01:13:58.680 | but then I probably is an opportunity to say a little bit

01:14:01.280 | about how I approach this thing.

01:14:04.560 | I think some naming is very useful.

01:14:08.280 | It frames it.

01:14:09.480 | It gives it a foundation, something to hold on to.

01:14:14.480 | Language matters.

01:14:17.880 | If we would not be having a conversation

01:14:19.880 | without having a shared language at this moment.

01:14:22.740 | But within that, you and I are using the same words

01:14:26.000 | and may have very different meanings attached to it.

01:14:28.740 | So that's the richness of the process is what do you mean

01:14:33.040 | when you say invitation, curiosity, conflict, et cetera.

01:14:38.040 | For example, when I do the work on conflict,

01:14:41.400 | I did provide language.

01:14:43.880 | For example, one of the things that happens in conflict

01:14:47.000 | is we have confirmation bias.

01:14:49.760 | That's a cognitive framework that is often present

01:14:53.080 | in situations of emotional conflict.

01:14:55.880 | Of conflict, which involves always an emotional dimension

01:14:59.320 | could be political too.

01:15:01.360 | Confirmation bias means that I am looking for evidence

01:15:04.480 | that reinforces my beliefs

01:15:07.200 | and I disregard any evidence that contradicts it.

01:15:11.440 | Now this happens between two people.

01:15:13.000 | This happens between two parties.

01:15:15.200 | This is a, that's a very important naming.

01:15:18.720 | It's interesting.

01:15:19.560 | I've noticed this, this, this, this,

01:15:21.200 | but all you mentioned is that.

01:15:23.040 | Okay, cognitive bias.

01:15:26.680 | Another cognitive bias that is very common

01:15:29.520 | is fundamental attribution error.

01:15:32.320 | We have this idea that I am complex and you are more simple.

01:15:36.600 | If I'm in a bad mood, it's because there was traffic.

01:15:40.240 | There's circumstances, there's context.

01:15:42.280 | If you're in a bad mood,

01:15:43.280 | it's because you're a cantankerous person.

01:15:45.440 | That's just your personality.

01:15:47.160 | You know, we'll categorize and totalize

01:15:49.640 | the behavior of others

01:15:50.680 | and we'll have lots of nuance and poetry for our own.

01:15:53.840 | That's a concept.

01:15:56.440 | That concept is very useful.

01:15:58.400 | It's neutral.

01:15:59.400 | It doesn't blame anybody.

01:16:00.800 | And it says, we all do this.

01:16:02.880 | I like that kind of naming.

01:16:04.800 | It's very different from the kind of naming

01:16:06.600 | that pathologizes people.

01:16:08.560 | The kind of naming that unlocks you into one identity.

01:16:12.000 | You may have addiction.

01:16:13.520 | And addiction may be really important.

01:16:15.880 | It may have destroyed your life,

01:16:17.840 | but to just say you're an addict.

01:16:19.960 | So I worked in an addiction center for two years

01:16:23.760 | and there were a lot of other things happening

01:16:27.320 | in these people's lives.

01:16:28.480 | And to just focus on this one thing,

01:16:31.000 | it reduces the person,

01:16:33.760 | but it also reduces your ability

01:16:35.360 | to do something with the person.

01:16:37.680 | It narrows your lens.

01:16:39.360 | So there's always this question about how wide is the lens

01:16:43.320 | that you not get overwhelmed.

01:16:46.240 | So you want to make it smaller, but not that small,

01:16:48.680 | that you're looking through a keyhole.

01:16:51.480 | A person is more complex than a keyhole.

01:16:53.680 | We don't just treat symptoms.

01:16:57.040 | We work with lives.

01:16:58.800 | That's the difference, for me anyway,

01:17:02.240 | in the work that we do.

01:17:03.840 | And then when you begin to think about lives,

01:17:06.720 | then you start to think about culture.

01:17:09.000 | What is happening in the world of relationships today?

01:17:12.200 | It's such an incredible thing that is going on.

01:17:15.240 | And if you don't put that in the broader context,

01:17:18.640 | I'm trained as a systemically oriented family therapist.

01:17:21.560 | And that means that you're looking at the interaction

01:17:24.520 | of different systems.

01:17:26.600 | And I think that a lot of what happens

01:17:28.720 | is a hyper-individualization of these things.

01:17:31.760 | And the naming is useful

01:17:34.040 | when it expands your understanding.

01:17:36.440 | The naming is not useful when it locks you into a symptom,

01:17:41.400 | a reductionistic thing that gives false certainty to profits.

01:17:46.400 | - I can't agree more. - Now you've got a piece

01:17:52.720 | of my mind. - That naming

01:17:54.680 | that expands one's understanding

01:17:57.640 | and maybe even lends itself to a hint of curiosity

01:18:00.400 | stands a chance of having some rehabilitative quality to it.

01:18:06.040 | I feel that nowadays there's such an overuse

01:18:09.760 | of psychological terms, like narcissist, gaslighting,

01:18:14.760 | therapy terms.

01:18:17.040 | It's almost the way that if people were to talk

01:18:20.320 | about neurobiology as neurosurgeons, right?

01:18:24.320 | I'm not a neurosurgeon, but I have friends who are.

01:18:26.920 | And neurosurgery is something people train

01:18:30.320 | for many, many, many years for,

01:18:31.880 | just as being a clinical psychologist,

01:18:34.160 | people train for many years for.

01:18:35.960 | And have a ton of in-office experience,

01:18:39.400 | real world experience.

01:18:41.080 | Nowadays, the naming and the attachment of names

01:18:43.440 | to particular top contour features of people out there

01:18:47.480 | seems to be largely for the purpose

01:18:49.640 | of closing off possibility

01:18:52.640 | as opposed to increasing possibility.

01:18:54.840 | However- - It's both.

01:18:56.760 | Because on the one hand,

01:18:58.480 | more than many other forms of medicine

01:19:01.000 | or healthcare or care, psychotherapy, psychology,

01:19:05.360 | but certainly psychotherapy was always stigmatized

01:19:08.600 | and still is in many parts of the world.

01:19:10.520 | It's for the crazies.

01:19:11.800 | It's for people.

01:19:13.720 | There must be something fundamentally wrong.

01:19:15.560 | I mean, it's something that nobody went around talking

01:19:17.800 | about the fact that they are in therapy.

01:19:19.280 | You went to see a therapist, you know,

01:19:21.400 | now you're putting it on your dating app.

01:19:23.640 | You know, it's a status symbol.

01:19:25.400 | So there is a de-stigmatizing that is very important,

01:19:28.880 | but there is also words that are weaponized

01:19:31.760 | and they are not useful and they are separating people.

01:19:36.760 | And we have enough separation at this moment

01:19:39.280 | in our societies in the West.

01:19:41.600 | We don't need more efforts to pull people apart.

01:19:46.080 | We need efforts to bring back the collective,

01:19:48.840 | the community, the shared experience,

01:19:52.840 | because we are too far apart.

01:19:56.080 | And that's why I think that some naming is useful

01:20:00.440 | and some naming is not always that useful.

01:20:04.640 | - Well, amen to bringing people together more.

01:20:07.720 | Yeah, such an important mission right now.

01:20:12.400 | I'd like to explore the possibility

01:20:17.600 | of something that I've heard, but I don't know if it's true,

01:20:20.760 | that sex, which of course doesn't just include intercourse,

01:20:27.120 | but the things that lead into

01:20:28.940 | and out of sexual intercourse,

01:20:30.920 | but that sex is a microcosm for the relationship at large,

01:20:35.920 | meaning that the dynamics that show up

01:20:39.400 | in intimate interactions are somehow reflective

01:20:43.600 | of a larger working out or dynamic in the relationship.

01:20:48.600 | To what extent do you think that's true?

01:20:52.960 | It's a concept that I've heard.

01:20:55.560 | It sounds interesting, and any discussion about sex

01:20:59.780 | tends to get people's ears pricked up,

01:21:02.580 | because depending on where you live in the world,

01:21:05.340 | it's either something that people talk about

01:21:07.900 | casually, openly, or with a lot of electricity around it.

01:21:12.860 | But I always like to say, as a biologist,

01:21:15.300 | we can all agree on one thing,

01:21:16.660 | which is that we're all here because sperm met egg,

01:21:19.680 | if not in human, in dish, and then eventually in human.

01:21:22.540 | So we're still at that point in human evolution.

01:21:25.420 | So what are your views about intimacy and sex

01:21:30.420 | as a reflection of the relationship?

01:21:34.580 | And here, what I'm thinking of again are these,

01:21:37.420 | when you described conflict,

01:21:40.100 | you described these three different positioning of arrows,

01:21:43.180 | towards one another, away from one another,

01:21:45.640 | one chasing the other.

01:21:46.780 | Is there a parallel for healthy relationship

01:21:51.220 | that we can offer up?

01:21:52.780 | - Sexually?

01:21:54.380 | - Before talking about this question of whether or not

01:21:57.620 | sex is a microcosm of the larger relationship,

01:22:00.980 | the health of the relationship.

01:22:02.700 | - Let me start like this.

01:22:03.860 | I mean, I've studied sexuality

01:22:07.260 | for quite a few decades now in relationships,

01:22:10.100 | but I think maybe because of what you said around the world,

01:22:14.140 | love and desire are universal experiences,

01:22:19.740 | but the way that they are constructed

01:22:22.060 | are highly culturally contextual.

01:22:24.300 | And so the most archaic rooted traditional aspects

01:22:30.220 | of a culture or a society are lodged around its beliefs

01:22:34.180 | and attitudes and behaviors

01:22:35.940 | towards sexuality and relationships,

01:22:38.100 | especially the sexuality of women,

01:22:40.000 | American elections case in point.

01:22:44.020 | But the most radical progressive changes

01:22:46.400 | that take place in a society

01:22:48.380 | also occur around sexuality and relationships,

01:22:52.540 | sexuality of women in particular.

01:22:54.820 | So sexuality is a window into a society.

01:22:58.940 | Sexuality is also a window into a relationship

01:23:02.340 | and into a person that invites deep listening.

01:23:06.840 | One of the big challenges is that modern sexuality

01:23:12.860 | has been, I mean, traditional sexuality

01:23:16.240 | was identified with procreation.

01:23:18.700 | Modern sexuality is identified with performance and outcome.

01:23:22.440 | Sex is something you do, to which I say,

01:23:26.920 | let's drop the performance and outcome for a moment

01:23:29.460 | and let's think of it as an experience.

01:23:31.900 | So now you're gonna start to see the choreography I draw.

01:23:37.660 | When I think of sexuality as an experience

01:23:39.700 | and I say sex isn't just something that you do,

01:23:42.380 | sex is a place you go.

01:23:45.260 | So my question to you is, where do you go in sex?

01:23:49.100 | Inside yourself and with another or others?

01:23:53.580 | Do you go to seek deep spiritual union,

01:23:57.780 | a deep intimate connection, transcendence?

01:24:00.660 | Do you go to a place for vulnerability,

01:24:03.780 | a place to surrender, a place to be taken care of,

01:24:07.180 | a place to be safely powerful, a place to be naughty,

01:24:11.060 | a place to have just plain fun,

01:24:12.980 | a place to abdicate your responsibilities

01:24:15.620 | of good citizenship because sexual desire

01:24:17.900 | is quite politically incorrect.

01:24:19.940 | Where do you go in sex?

01:24:22.180 | What parts of yourself do you try to connect with?

01:24:25.020 | What is it that you're expressing there?

01:24:27.140 | Sexuality is a coded language

01:24:30.580 | for our deepest emotional needs.

01:24:33.420 | Our wounds, our fears, our aspirations, our longings.

01:24:39.500 | It's that.

01:24:40.740 | That is, you know, sex is never just sex,

01:24:44.040 | even when it's hit and run.

01:24:46.100 | And then it becomes really interesting.

01:24:48.220 | So one of the things that, one of the assumptions

01:24:52.620 | that existed very much at the heart of my field

01:24:55.820 | and that I challenged or questioned

01:24:58.460 | was that sexual problems are by definition

01:25:01.760 | the consequence of relationship problems.

01:25:04.540 | So you fix the relationship and the sex will follow.

01:25:08.980 | And I, together with many colleagues,

01:25:11.820 | have helped a lot of relationships get along better,

01:25:15.500 | fight less, laugh more, enjoy each other,

01:25:18.460 | and it changed nothing in the bedroom.

01:25:20.460 | Because, in fact, maybe sexuality

01:25:24.740 | is not a metaphor of the relationship.

01:25:27.220 | Maybe sexuality is a parallel narrative to the relationship.

01:25:31.320 | And that, in fact, when you change the sexuality

01:25:35.380 | in a couple, you change the whole relationship.

01:25:39.620 | But not necessarily in the other direction.

01:25:42.380 | So that opened up a whole,

01:25:45.940 | that was one of the foundational ideas

01:25:48.100 | for "Mating in Captivity," my first book,

01:25:50.020 | because I have been trained to think like this.

01:25:52.660 | And then I began to think love and desire,

01:25:55.740 | they relate, but they also conflict.

01:25:58.460 | They're not one and the same,

01:26:00.060 | and they don't need the same things.

01:26:02.460 | They don't thrive on the same elements.

01:26:04.900 | And modern relationships, romantic relationships,

01:26:08.740 | have wanted to reconcile those two fundamental sets

01:26:12.980 | of human needs into one relationship.

01:26:15.700 | That is the grand experiment of modern love.

01:26:20.500 | - And am I correct in interpreting what you just said

01:26:22.700 | as that love and desire are fundamentally separate,

01:26:27.700 | that they can exist in parallel,

01:26:29.540 | but that any goal of society, much less a couple,

01:26:33.620 | to try and unify those as one thing is not going to succeed?

01:26:38.620 | - No, no, no, not at all.

01:26:40.460 | It actually has been remarkably successful.

01:26:43.020 | The romantic ideal is tenacious.

01:26:45.620 | You know, many other philosophies and ideologies

01:26:48.020 | of the end of the 19th century have all gone.

01:26:50.940 | This one has survived many others.

01:26:53.340 | - I'm relieved to hear you say that.

01:26:54.580 | - The romantic-

01:26:55.420 | - Maybe I grew up on too many,

01:26:57.300 | I don't know how many romantic comedies I saw,

01:26:59.060 | but I grew up in a home where love, sex,

01:27:03.900 | and romance were discussed in very, almost ethereal terms.

01:27:08.540 | - Yeah, no, no, no.

01:27:09.380 | I think that it's a, but it is an experiment.

01:27:12.460 | It's not something that we have tried throughout history,

01:27:15.780 | in human history.

01:27:17.140 | So I think that if you ask,

01:27:21.620 | it's an exercise I like to do sometimes.

01:27:24.020 | I say, divide your page with a line in the middle,

01:27:28.700 | up from top to bottom.

01:27:30.300 | And on the top left, you write,

01:27:32.140 | when I think of love, I think of.

01:27:35.020 | Then go to the other side,

01:27:37.260 | and when I think of sexuality, I think of.

01:27:40.820 | And then you go back and you say,

01:27:42.500 | and when I am loved, I feel.

01:27:45.820 | And when I am desired, I feel.

01:27:48.740 | When I'm wanted.

01:27:50.540 | And when I love, I feel.

01:27:52.940 | And when I want or I desire, I feel.

01:27:56.540 | And when I think about the love between me and my partner,

01:27:59.260 | if there is a couple,

01:28:00.940 | and when I think about the sexuality

01:28:03.060 | between me and my partner,

01:28:04.260 | and then you let people free associate about this.

01:28:07.180 | And there are words that you find back and forth,

01:28:11.700 | and then there are words who just never appear

01:28:13.740 | in the other column.

01:28:15.060 | - Do you recommend that couples exchange these documents?

01:28:18.020 | - Yeah, they do it at the same time.

01:28:19.180 | Then they read it out loud in front of each other.

01:28:21.100 | I do this in groups, you know, huge audiences as well.

01:28:24.220 | But what I'm asking people to see is

01:28:26.860 | when you look at what you responded in both categories,

01:28:30.260 | create a line between those two.

01:28:34.660 | Is it a thick line?

01:28:37.100 | Like what happens in love is completely separate for me

01:28:40.460 | than what happens in desire.

01:28:41.820 | I need a complete different set of things.

01:28:44.580 | I express myself differently.

01:28:46.020 | I interact differently.

01:28:47.460 | Or is it very much that when this exists,

01:28:50.780 | it completely ignites that.

01:28:52.700 | They are interrelated, interdependent.

01:28:55.140 | One feeds on each other, one reinforces the other.

01:28:58.260 | There is a degree of variety about that.

01:29:00.620 | For some people, love and desire are inseparable.

01:29:04.500 | And for some people,

01:29:05.500 | they are often irretrievably disconnected.

01:29:08.420 | And I think the model wants them to be really together.

01:29:13.340 | And for a lot of people, it's exactly what they aspire to.

01:29:17.620 | For other people, it's more challenging.

01:29:20.220 | - Because somehow in them there's a split

01:29:22.740 | between these two things.

01:29:23.580 | - Because some people

01:29:25.140 | experience love in such a way

01:29:31.480 | that it sometimes becomes challenging for them

01:29:34.960 | to make love to the person they love.

01:29:38.340 | What I mean by that is that

01:29:40.260 | love comes with a sense of responsibility,

01:29:44.660 | worry, care about the wellbeing of the other person.

01:29:49.940 | And some of us sometimes have learned to love

01:29:53.320 | in a way that comes with extra worry,

01:29:56.660 | extra responsibility, extra burden.

01:29:59.260 | We were the parents of our parents.

01:30:01.700 | We took care of our depressed parent.

01:30:05.160 | We took care of our alcoholic parent.

01:30:07.500 | We learn to love with a sense that is not free,

01:30:11.740 | that is not curious or playful,

01:30:14.100 | because curiosity cannot happen in a state of stress,

01:30:17.620 | as you so well said.

01:30:19.860 | When we experience love with that extra sense of burden,

01:30:23.540 | it is difficult to be with someone that you feel close to,

01:30:28.380 | and at the same time, go inside yourself

01:30:30.840 | and completely chill and relax in pleasure land.

01:30:34.780 | That's one of the scenarios, there's many others,

01:30:37.060 | but this is one of the more common ones,

01:30:39.220 | Michael Bader's work,

01:30:41.020 | that makes it difficult for some people

01:30:44.860 | to experience love and desire at the same time.

01:30:48.700 | The more they love,

01:30:50.220 | the more challenging the desire becomes for them,

01:30:52.940 | because desire is to own the wanting.

01:30:56.180 | It exists in, you can't make someone want.

01:30:59.140 | You can make someone have sex,

01:31:00.460 | but you can never make them want.

01:31:01.920 | Want is your sovereignty, your autonomy, your freedom.

01:31:05.300 | And for some people, that wanting cannot exist

01:31:09.340 | when they are with someone that they feel so responsible

01:31:12.500 | and worried and anxious about.

01:31:14.980 | And that's the attachment piece that you're talking about.

01:31:18.660 | So this is how the attachment style often manifests

01:31:24.080 | in the way that you then organize your sexual self.

01:31:28.980 | - What percentage of infidelity

01:31:32.260 | do you think reflects somebody's inability

01:31:36.140 | to integrate this love component from desire component,

01:31:42.580 | such that they find that they only experience desire

01:31:47.580 | or strong desire outside their committed relationship?

01:31:54.820 | - Look, I wrote an entire book about infidelity,

01:31:59.620 | as in what happens when desire goes looking elsewhere.

01:32:03.660 | I think that some people go outside

01:32:09.540 | as a response to a lot of discontents in the relationship,

01:32:13.380 | loneliness being the first one,

01:32:16.180 | neglect, indifference, conflict, rejection,

01:32:21.180 | sexual rejection in particular.

01:32:27.180 | But some people go outside

01:32:29.620 | and it has very little to do with the relationship.

01:32:34.060 | It sometimes has to do with how they organize themselves

01:32:38.060 | in the relationship to the degree

01:32:41.060 | that in order to feel a certain freedom

01:32:43.580 | or ability to think about themselves,

01:32:46.000 | they need to be outside.

01:32:49.100 | And I used to say,

01:32:51.500 | I have seen a lot of infidelity in happy relationships.

01:32:54.820 | It's not always a symptom of a flawed relationship

01:32:57.900 | by no means.

01:32:59.660 | And that in those situations, people tell me,

01:33:03.020 | it's not that I wanted to find another person,

01:33:06.120 | it's that I wanted to find another self

01:33:08.740 | or to reconnect with lost parts of myself.

01:33:12.220 | And I don't say this to promote or to condone or anything,

01:33:15.600 | but I just listened across the globe.

01:33:18.580 | One word, it's not that I wanted to find another partner,

01:33:22.960 | it's that I wanted to find something else inside of me.

01:33:26.660 | And I don't know how to do that

01:33:28.300 | in the relationship that I'm in.

01:33:30.100 | And that's not because of the person I'm with,

01:33:33.020 | that's because of what I do to myself

01:33:35.540 | in the context of intimate connection.

01:33:38.780 | And the word that you hear all over the globe

01:33:42.060 | when you interview people who are in affairs

01:33:45.460 | is that they feel alive.

01:33:48.820 | It's kind of the erotic as an antidote to deadness.

01:33:53.740 | They feel that aliveness.

01:33:55.560 | And that doesn't necessarily involve sex.

01:34:01.260 | It's about something, aliveness is the erotic,

01:34:05.500 | not the sexual.

01:34:06.900 | And the erotic is the quality of aliveness,

01:34:10.340 | vibrancy, vitality, hopefulness,

01:34:13.380 | curiosity, imagination, playfulness.

01:34:16.140 | It's those elements that often people lose

01:34:20.460 | for a host of reasons.

01:34:23.820 | Life, work, children, dying parents, illness,

01:34:29.980 | economic hardship, you name it, you know.

01:34:33.740 | And there's a sense that they need to go elsewhere

01:34:37.580 | to find that.

01:34:38.980 | And some people would say bullshit justification

01:34:43.980 | and some people understand that at the heart of affairs,

01:34:48.580 | there is betrayal and long and duplicity

01:34:51.660 | and lying and all of that.

01:34:53.460 | But there is also longing and loss

01:34:55.660 | on an existential level.

01:34:59.920 | That's a very different lens into this.

01:35:02.540 | So the people for whom that reconciliation

01:35:07.280 | that you talk about is more challenging

01:35:09.380 | are often people who are often more likely

01:35:15.020 | to compartmentalize.

01:35:17.360 | - What you just said brings me back to this idea

01:35:19.740 | that we were exploring at the very beginning

01:35:21.660 | of this conversation,

01:35:22.540 | that it seems that so much of navigating relationship

01:35:25.460 | in healthy versus unhealthy ways

01:35:28.560 | depends on this internal dynamic within ourselves

01:35:32.060 | of an ability to be in close intimate relationship

01:35:35.580 | with another.

01:35:36.420 | And yet hold on to enough of our own identity

01:35:41.860 | and evolve that identity

01:35:43.480 | within the relationship to the other.

01:35:45.140 | - That is the definition of intimacy

01:35:47.300 | or a definition of intimacy.

01:35:49.760 | And that is probably the number one task

01:35:54.380 | of every relationship, romantic relationships

01:35:57.020 | is how do I get close to you without losing me?

01:36:02.020 | And how do I hold on to me without losing you?

01:36:06.760 | Now, you know, I said to you in the beginning

01:36:08.800 | that we grow up and we have both needs,

01:36:11.320 | togetherness and separateness.

01:36:13.160 | And then we come out of our childhoods

01:36:16.280 | and some of us need more space, freedom, separateness.

01:36:20.460 | And some of us need more protection,

01:36:22.300 | connection, togetherness.

01:36:24.260 | Of course, we tend to meet somebody

01:36:26.180 | whose proclivities match our vulnerabilities.

01:36:29.480 | And so you find that in many relationships,

01:36:31.740 | you have one person who is more afraid of losing the other

01:36:36.740 | and one person who is more afraid of losing themselves.

01:36:39.820 | One person more afraid with the fear of abandonment

01:36:43.820 | and one person more afraid with the fear of suffocation.

01:36:46.720 | - This is a recurring dynamic that you see.

01:36:49.740 | And does it swap back and forth across couples,

01:36:54.520 | male, female, I'm assuming in that example,

01:36:58.200 | heterosexual relationship,

01:36:59.560 | but even homosexual relationships,

01:37:01.080 | you'll see it switch back and forth

01:37:03.040 | or it tends to be a pretty stable feature.

01:37:04.560 | Meaning one person in the couple

01:37:06.560 | tends to be afraid of abandonment by the other,

01:37:10.980 | the other person more deeply afraid

01:37:13.740 | of abandonment of themselves.

01:37:15.440 | - Right, it doesn't switch back and forth.

01:37:17.920 | It switches by relationship,

01:37:20.060 | but not within one relationship.

01:37:22.620 | You may have been in different roles

01:37:25.260 | with different partners.

01:37:26.300 | - Indeed I have.

01:37:27.140 | So interesting.

01:37:31.220 | Again, not because you weren't clear,

01:37:33.260 | you were incredibly clear and concise about this,

01:37:35.780 | but I think this is such an important concept.

01:37:38.080 | Maybe you'd repeat it for us again,

01:37:40.820 | just so that people can really drive

01:37:43.580 | into their consciousness

01:37:45.080 | and maybe ask themselves the question,

01:37:47.120 | are they more afraid of abandonment by the other

01:37:49.700 | or abandonment of themselves?

01:37:52.220 | - You know, one of the ways

01:37:53.860 | that you sometimes can see this is that,

01:37:56.240 | I mean, in the tour this week,

01:37:59.700 | one woman stood up and basically said,

01:38:02.340 | I recently divorced.

01:38:03.780 | I would like to be able to enter another relationship again.

01:38:06.540 | And I said, is the issue an issue of trust

01:38:09.060 | or is the issue, was there betrayal?

01:38:11.060 | Was it what's led?

01:38:12.340 | She says, how do I allow somebody to enter into my life

01:38:16.780 | without losing myself?

01:38:18.580 | So it's in the language, it's one person,

01:38:23.520 | but this could, and really, I think it's very important

01:38:26.460 | for me, many of these things are not gender specific,

01:38:30.620 | nor orientation particular, this is human.

01:38:34.500 | But then I answered a little bit

01:38:36.980 | with some of this and other things.

01:38:38.700 | And so then the next question is,

01:38:41.180 | how often do you not say what you really think?

01:38:45.220 | Because you want to please or you want to harmonize

01:38:50.220 | or you want to avoid conflict.

01:38:53.140 | How often did you then resent the partner

01:38:55.540 | who actually stood for their ground?

01:38:57.400 | Because if you're afraid to lose yourself,

01:38:58.940 | you're often more the one who stands for your ground.

01:39:00.860 | You don't give in because you,

01:39:03.260 | and if it's rigid, you don't give in at all

01:39:05.300 | because you think that every time,

01:39:07.140 | even the language, agreeing is giving in

01:39:10.220 | and giving in is losing a part of myself.

01:39:13.260 | I mean, it's built in.

01:39:14.980 | It's so, you know, it starts here

01:39:19.300 | and it continues all the way.

01:39:20.660 | It's like, so, do you know what I mean?

01:39:23.780 | And it's like, it's a sequence of things.

01:39:26.340 | You break apart in small granular pieces.

01:39:30.220 | How does it play out for you when you lose yourself?

01:39:34.500 | What are the things you do not do

01:39:36.820 | that facilitate this dissolution?

01:39:41.660 | And to the other person who is,

01:39:44.500 | when you're afraid, sorry, of losing the other,

01:39:48.380 | and when you're afraid of losing yourself,

01:39:51.140 | like where's your rigidity?

01:39:53.460 | Where is your kind of totalistic thinking?

01:39:56.340 | Where is this lack of flexibility?

01:40:00.100 | And that may manifest in, I don't travel to those places.

01:40:04.560 | You know, the sentence that indicates

01:40:06.900 | that we're dealing with this bigger issue

01:40:09.380 | is something sometimes very anodyne.

01:40:12.220 | You know, I don't go to those kinds of restaurants.

01:40:15.500 | You know, why shall I go to those kinds of places?

01:40:17.860 | And you kind of want to say,

01:40:18.740 | why is there such intensity about the restaurant?

01:40:22.180 | What are you fighting against?

01:40:23.460 | And what are you fighting for?

01:40:24.580 | And why are you even fighting?

01:40:25.940 | We're talking about going out,

01:40:27.420 | supposedly meant to be fun.

01:40:30.060 | Now you start rewinding.

01:40:32.300 | You know, what is this statement connected to

01:40:36.260 | that we are going to have, you know,

01:40:38.260 | so now you have conflict meeting, identity meeting,

01:40:42.260 | connection to another person.

01:40:44.420 | This is when, and it is sleuth work.

01:40:48.340 | It's fantastically engaging and exciting.

01:40:51.900 | It's like, I'm sure when you do scientific research,

01:40:54.960 | it's that sleuth work that you say,

01:40:57.100 | this thing doesn't fit at all.

01:40:59.380 | You know, why do you want me to wear blue shoes?

01:41:02.380 | Why do you make such a big deal out of the blue shoes?

01:41:04.620 | What are blue shoes for you?

01:41:06.260 | Don't start talking about the shoes, please.

01:41:08.940 | Talk about, you know, boundaries,

01:41:12.140 | but boundaries today is a concept

01:41:13.980 | that has become so ill-used almost.

01:41:16.940 | So it's talk about how the preservation of the self

01:41:21.940 | now involves not wearing blue shoes.

01:41:24.460 | I mean, you get what I'm-

01:41:26.460 | - I do, and my mind keeps flitting back

01:41:30.780 | to this parallel construction of these circuits

01:41:32.700 | were built in infancy and childhood and adolescence.

01:41:35.860 | And what kind of flashed to mind

01:41:38.340 | is when we are adolescents and teenagers,

01:41:40.740 | there's this fundamental question that we ask

01:41:42.860 | that rarely do we ask again later in life.

01:41:45.500 | I mean, maybe people do,

01:41:46.900 | but the question is kind of, who am I?

01:41:49.340 | You know, teenagers try on a lot

01:41:51.300 | of different identities often,

01:41:52.900 | and how they dress, you know,

01:41:54.740 | is one of the ways in which they self-identify.

01:41:56.900 | Their music, I mean, the music we listen to

01:41:58.660 | when we're teenagers and young adults,

01:42:00.440 | it's forever stamped into us

01:42:02.280 | as like some core part of our identity.

01:42:04.620 | It has an emotional weight that music

01:42:06.780 | that we arrive to later doesn't,

01:42:08.860 | unless it resonates with that early music

01:42:10.860 | or recapitulates that rather.

01:42:13.380 | So in my mind, I'm thinking,

01:42:15.540 | I wonder if these circuits that are struggling

01:42:18.460 | with holding onto self versus a kind of a playful,

01:42:22.140 | curious exploration of new things, novelty,

01:42:25.260 | which is so fundamental to relationship.

01:42:28.600 | And they're not, they're, as we say,

01:42:30.820 | as neurobiologists are really antagonistic,

01:42:33.500 | that they're really in a push-pull.

01:42:34.900 | I mean, there's so many things that we're discussing today

01:42:37.660 | that really feel as if these are like circuits

01:42:41.460 | that can't be co-active easily,

01:42:43.680 | that they're like,

01:42:44.520 | that we're in this internal grappling match.

01:42:46.980 | And what keeps coming to mind-

01:42:49.500 | - But they also need each other.

01:42:51.300 | - Right, they're like the, right,

01:42:54.900 | it's like the front axle and the back axle of a vehicle.

01:42:57.620 | Like you can't exist without both.

01:42:59.460 | - You just made me think of something,

01:43:00.940 | because you asked before that,

01:43:02.900 | the thing about the sexuality,

01:43:04.620 | and I like the concept of erotic blueprints,

01:43:09.620 | which I work with a lot.

01:43:12.620 | And I try to really kind of distill it

01:43:17.380 | in this "Desire Bundle" course that I'm releasing that,

01:43:22.220 | 'cause I thought,

01:43:23.060 | how can people ask themselves a set of questions?

01:43:27.360 | Like a lot of my work is about finding the good questions

01:43:30.460 | that will, a good question is like a portal, right?

01:43:34.580 | And the line on top,

01:43:36.660 | which is the answer to your question is,

01:43:38.940 | tell me how you were loved,

01:43:41.580 | and I will tell you how you make love.

01:43:44.020 | Not just how you love, but how you make love.

01:43:48.900 | Meaning that your emotional history

01:43:50.700 | is inscribed in the physicality of sex.

01:43:53.780 | And it's all about what you asked me in the beginning,

01:43:57.140 | identity and change.

01:43:59.700 | Holding on to oneself, connecting with the other.

01:44:02.180 | Sexuality is the place where this occurs

01:44:05.300 | at the most fundamental level.

01:44:08.560 | It's to be inside oneself

01:44:10.820 | and inside the other at the same time.

01:44:12.980 | Their universe, not their orifices.

01:44:15.860 | That is what is the experience,

01:44:17.580 | that temporary oneness that then again,

01:44:20.500 | opens up as two people.

01:44:22.300 | So people who struggle with that emotionally,

01:44:27.080 | how do I stay connected to me and then to you

01:44:30.160 | without these polarities, experience that in sex.

01:44:34.780 | And then you ask a set of questions.

01:44:36.500 | How did you learn to love and with whom?

01:44:38.880 | Were you protected by those people who took care of you

01:44:43.020 | or did you have to flee for protection?

01:44:45.980 | Did they take care of you or did you take care of them?

01:44:49.380 | Did they hold you, rock you, cuddle you,

01:44:52.780 | or did they harm you or violate you or shake you?

01:44:57.760 | Was it okay to laugh and to cry?

01:45:00.360 | Was it okay to experience pleasure?

01:45:03.280 | Was it safe?

01:45:04.800 | You know, a set of questions like that.

01:45:07.580 | And this is where people enter their erotic blueprint

01:45:11.080 | and get to see that their emotional challenges

01:45:16.080 | are directly, if you film them,

01:45:18.760 | if you watch them making love,

01:45:22.000 | you'll understand their emotional challenges,

01:45:26.020 | but then comes the next level.

01:45:27.760 | And if you then study their fantasy lives,

01:45:31.280 | then you'll understand the depth of their emotional needs,

01:45:35.200 | which are brought into their sexuality.

01:45:38.320 | - Fascinating.

01:45:39.520 | - You get it?

01:45:40.340 | - I get it, I get it.

01:45:42.120 | And it makes me think that this earlier discussion

01:45:46.160 | we were having, you know,

01:45:47.000 | is sex a microcosm for the larger relationship?

01:45:50.960 | It sounds to me like the answer is yes,

01:45:53.520 | but especially the relationship to self,

01:45:57.520 | and especially like there's a lot of information

01:46:00.800 | in one's desire template or blueprint

01:46:04.360 | about how one was cared for or not cared for.

01:46:08.720 | - Your sexual preferences,

01:46:10.840 | your sexual fantasies are a translation

01:46:15.840 | of your deepest emotional needs.

01:46:19.400 | Not sexual needs, emotional needs.

01:46:21.980 | You know, my mother used to say,

01:46:23.960 | "Tell me about your friends and I'll tell you who you are."

01:46:26.800 | And then I said, "You tell me about you sexually,

01:46:29.160 | and I will know a heck of a lot about who you are."

01:46:31.760 | But you have to translate, don't,

01:46:34.880 | the problem of sexuality in modern society

01:46:37.500 | is the literalness with which we approach it.

01:46:40.160 | And in our pornographic society ever more so,

01:46:43.200 | to our detriment.

01:46:44.580 | - Right, I couldn't agree more.

01:46:46.260 | And I think that there also seems to be this attempt

01:46:49.080 | to directly translate from,

01:46:51.000 | well, if somebody had issues with their mother,

01:46:53.280 | then they're going to have issues with women as an adult.

01:46:56.220 | Or if they had issues with their father,

01:46:57.520 | they're going to have issues with men as an adult.

01:46:59.760 | - That's confirmation based.

01:47:00.920 | - Right, but in reality, it's the algorithm.

01:47:03.680 | It's the algorithm.

01:47:05.640 | It's that these algorithms that are laid down

01:47:09.120 | in our neural circuitry earlier,

01:47:10.860 | they don't care about male femaleness.

01:47:13.680 | I mean, it doesn't change

01:47:14.520 | whether or not people are heterosexual or homosexual.

01:47:16.940 | It ain't to them, I believe.

01:47:18.840 | I think these are frankly biologically driven.

01:47:21.680 | But the idea is that our ways of being

01:47:25.720 | don't translate directly that way,

01:47:27.500 | that these are deeper processes.

01:47:28.960 | So if one had issues, for instance,

01:47:30.580 | with who's male and heterosexual,

01:47:33.040 | but they had issues with their father,

01:47:34.440 | they could have the same issues with women as an adult,

01:47:38.040 | right, that it could translate,

01:47:39.360 | that it's not always mapping male to male,

01:47:41.960 | female to female.

01:47:43.000 | - I have a segment of my podcast

01:47:46.360 | Where Should We Begin that opens the tour

01:47:49.900 | where basically they talk about how they met,

01:47:54.580 | and then they fight about everything all the time.

01:47:58.600 | And they think that they're fighting,

01:48:01.080 | this is the line of the show,

01:48:02.460 | they think they're fighting about the closet,

01:48:04.620 | the cat litter, and the cat.

01:48:06.640 | What I think they're fighting about

01:48:08.720 | is that when she says, "Why didn't you close the closet?"

01:48:11.640 | he instantly thinks of his dad,

01:48:14.040 | who was this military guy who told him,

01:48:17.680 | and he's basically in a fight saying to her,

01:48:20.860 | "You ain't telling me what to do, you ain't the boss of me."

01:48:24.240 | So she can never make a request

01:48:26.440 | for which he doesn't feel like she's controlling him.

01:48:29.640 | And he answers with this fight,

01:48:31.560 | and that throws her into the,

01:48:34.200 | she grew up all alone, took care of her two siblings,

01:48:37.520 | mother was gone, et cetera, et cetera.

01:48:39.480 | And she hoped her whole life

01:48:41.440 | she would finally meet a partner

01:48:42.920 | and she wouldn't feel alone,

01:48:44.400 | and there would be somebody to support her.

01:48:46.600 | And every time he says to her,

01:48:47.880 | "You ain't the boss of me, don't tell me what to do,"

01:48:50.060 | she says, "Oh, I'm going to be alone

01:48:51.480 | for the rest of my life.

01:48:52.760 | Here I am in the worst place

01:48:54.800 | that I always wanted to avoid."

01:48:56.640 | This is what they're fighting about.

01:48:58.480 | But they're talking about,

01:49:01.240 | "Why did you leave the cat closet open?"

01:49:04.080 | - Beautiful example, beautiful example.

01:49:07.360 | It cuts across our preconceived notions

01:49:09.360 | that if somebody had a good relationship with their mother,

01:49:11.580 | they will have good relationship with women,

01:49:13.120 | if they good relationship with father, with men.

01:49:15.640 | - It's a little bit more subtle

01:49:17.360 | and complicated nuance than that.

01:49:19.760 | I think the frameworks are useful,

01:49:22.060 | but they are frameworks.

01:49:24.200 | And they're models that help us to think

01:49:27.560 | and make sense of things.

01:49:29.600 | But it's a little bit like in science,

01:49:32.240 | the truth of today is the joke of tomorrow.

01:49:34.600 | - I hadn't heard that, but that one's going up on X.

01:49:41.160 | And repair work is something that is so fundamental

01:49:46.160 | to healthy relationships.

01:49:49.120 | - It connects to what we discussed about apology.

01:49:52.380 | - What is your recommendation

01:49:55.680 | for how couples think about repair work?

01:49:59.180 | Let's assume that they're still together

01:50:00.860 | and there's some, at least a hint of a hope

01:50:05.100 | to recover the relationship.

01:50:07.080 | Should repair work be framed as,

01:50:09.900 | in a particular way to facilitate it?

01:50:14.440 | You know, how does one begin?

01:50:17.100 | I mean, I can sort of been,

01:50:19.880 | we've been doing a lot of threes today.

01:50:21.100 | So I can imagine mistakes, misunderstandings and betrayals.

01:50:26.100 | Right, there are mistakes like,

01:50:27.800 | I accidentally step on somebody's toes.

01:50:29.360 | There's a misunderstandings,

01:50:30.720 | two people thought the same thing

01:50:31.560 | and then they're outright betrayals.

01:50:33.460 | And my understanding from your work is that

01:50:37.220 | you've seen many couples, indeed helped many couples,

01:50:39.700 | recover from all three of those categories

01:50:42.220 | to the point where they are quite satisfied

01:50:44.260 | with their relationship.

01:50:45.400 | - There's a sequence to this.

01:50:46.900 | And it's true in intimate relationships.

01:50:48.820 | It's true in friendships.

01:50:50.040 | I'm very interested in friendships these days.

01:50:52.380 | And in friendship therapy, I do co-founders where,

01:50:56.140 | I mean, there's other diets that I'm very interested in

01:50:58.820 | beyond the romantic unit.

01:51:00.940 | - But you said something before

01:51:03.340 | that I thought actually I may come back to.

01:51:05.820 | When you said, you know,

01:51:06.660 | it's about acknowledging that you were wrong.

01:51:08.900 | Sometimes you may not have been wrong,

01:51:12.740 | but you were hurtful.

01:51:13.960 | And rather than get all, you know,

01:51:18.360 | I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything.

01:51:20.180 | It doesn't matter.

01:51:21.220 | What you did, even if you don't think

01:51:25.180 | it was anything terrible,

01:51:27.420 | seem to have really upset your partner.

01:51:29.420 | Do you care about that?

01:51:31.700 | Or do you want to just kind of stand?

01:51:34.260 | So I think the first piece in repair work,

01:51:38.700 | and I think by the way that repair

01:51:40.540 | is not the end of the story.

01:51:42.600 | The revival is the end of the story.

01:51:44.580 | - Much better word.

01:51:46.140 | - You know, the erotic recovery,

01:51:48.380 | erotic in my sense of the, in my definition of the word.

01:51:51.420 | So that's when I say it's not enough to survive.

01:51:54.600 | It's, I'm a child of survivors.

01:51:58.020 | I wanted to see people who,

01:52:00.060 | how do they continue to live?

01:52:02.660 | Not just how do they stay alive?

01:52:05.860 | And I think that's a fundamental difference

01:52:08.420 | in our lives and in our relationships.

01:52:11.740 | It's a huge piece of,

01:52:13.500 | it's really at the heart of my work and of my life,

01:52:15.900 | you know?

01:52:16.780 | So every trauma process,

01:52:20.880 | you know, of nations or of individuals,

01:52:26.880 | demands the acknowledgment of what happened.

01:52:31.560 | And that acknowledgment involves remorse and guilt

01:52:38.120 | for the hurt and the harm that it caused.

01:52:42.980 | Even if you don't feel guilty for the act itself,

01:52:47.180 | and you think the act is justified.

01:52:49.080 | The consequences of the act on the other person

01:52:53.140 | is where the guilt and the remorse must take place.

01:52:56.140 | Without that, there is very little option for repair.

01:52:59.680 | If I don't feel that you even know what you did to me,

01:53:04.400 | my, you, my dad, you, my boss, you, my political enemy,

01:53:09.360 | I mean, that, it's really at the root.

01:53:12.000 | So after you do the remorse and the guilt,

01:53:17.000 | the next part is to be really careful

01:53:20.900 | that you don't sink into the self,

01:53:22.840 | now I'm going back to relationships, into the shame.

01:53:25.760 | I'm such a terrible person.

01:53:27.040 | How could I do something like this?

01:53:28.680 | So I feel so bad about myself

01:53:30.740 | that I still can't feel bad about you.

01:53:32.640 | Now that's narcissism.

01:53:34.800 | That's a different story.

01:53:37.400 | The point is not for you to still think

01:53:39.400 | that you're at the center.

01:53:40.560 | You were at the center when you hurt,

01:53:42.000 | and now you're at the center of your own wound.

01:53:45.360 | It's really a process of reckoning with the other person.

01:53:49.760 | And it's slow and challenging for some,

01:53:51.960 | and it's immediate for others.

01:53:54.760 | And then I think the next piece in a relationship

01:53:58.840 | is not just to apologize and to show your remorse,

01:54:03.840 | but it's actually to show that you value the other person

01:54:07.080 | because hurting a person,

01:54:08.760 | and especially when it's betrayal and careless,

01:54:11.440 | is a devaluation of the other person.

01:54:13.700 | You didn't matter.

01:54:14.840 | That me mattered more than you.

01:54:18.400 | For whatever the reasons, it was still selfish,

01:54:21.200 | and I devalued you.

01:54:23.080 | And to become the vigilante of a relationship

01:54:26.100 | is that you become the person who protects the relationship

01:54:30.000 | by showing that the other person really matters.

01:54:33.160 | And in detail, that sometimes means,

01:54:35.360 | you know, how are you today?

01:54:38.640 | Is there anything you want to talk about?

01:54:40.080 | Do you still think about it?

01:54:41.880 | You know, this is a big one to carry every day.

01:54:45.720 | Are you able to go to see this movie?

01:54:48.160 | Can we, you know, just without being so afraid

01:54:51.400 | that every time you ask, you're going to get blamed again,

01:54:55.640 | or you're going to feel so bad about yourself.

01:54:58.080 | It's a little bit step out of yourself and just reach out

01:55:01.580 | and just check in half the time.

01:55:03.420 | When you say, how are you?

01:55:04.840 | And do you want to talk?

01:55:05.680 | The person says, no, I don't.

01:55:07.960 | But I just wanted to know that you are prepared to,

01:55:10.240 | in case I needed to.

01:55:12.600 | Set the conditions.

01:55:14.140 | Make me feel that you value me and our relationship,

01:55:17.280 | which you have just trashed.

01:55:19.120 | And then the third thing is what I call the erotic recovery.

01:55:22.600 | It's the regeneration or the generation of new cells.

01:55:26.820 | And, you know, I need a new skin to come over the scab.

01:55:32.760 | That's the real, you know, repair is not yet healing.

01:55:36.340 | The healing is, I know I hurt myself somewhere.

01:55:41.900 | It's here.

01:55:43.040 | I can feel it when I touch it,

01:55:45.040 | but I don't feel it the whole time.

01:55:47.360 | It's not front and center every moment

01:55:50.480 | of my obsessive rumination.

01:55:53.020 | But when I touch it, it's tender, it's wounded.

01:55:57.520 | It's a place that I need to make sure not to hit again.

01:56:02.200 | And don't hurt me again.

01:56:03.560 | And don't do this to me again.

01:56:04.800 | I can't recover from that twice.

01:56:07.400 | It's very, it's that vulnerable.

01:56:09.560 | And then it says, let's go do new things.

01:56:12.480 | You know, erotic recovery is not about comfortable

01:56:15.600 | and familiar and the return to the status quo.

01:56:18.720 | Erotic recovery is about new, risky, curious,

01:56:21.980 | playful, unknown imagination outside of the comfort zone

01:56:26.540 | so that we can see ourselves anew as who we are

01:56:31.220 | and who we are together.

01:56:33.640 | And I think that's where the revival takes place.

01:56:36.900 | It's hopeful, it's possibility, it's adventure.

01:56:40.720 | It's got that energy.

01:56:42.600 | - Beautiful, aspirational, and realistic too.

01:56:46.960 | This notion of, not notion, forgive me.

01:56:51.240 | This act of truly getting outside of oneself

01:56:55.080 | to be present to the way the other person feels

01:56:57.200 | irrespective of who was right or who was wrong,

01:56:59.320 | if it was a misunderstanding, betrayal,

01:57:01.060 | but especially in cases of betrayal.

01:57:02.960 | The exiting of, as you said,

01:57:05.780 | either a stance of not wanting to look at it for oneself

01:57:09.200 | or of self-flagellation, both are self-centered.

01:57:12.800 | So really getting into genuine care for,

01:57:17.800 | if not caretaking, or the offer of care

01:57:21.240 | for the other person. - I can't believe

01:57:22.260 | I hurt you that bad.

01:57:24.540 | You know, one of the big things is people are often shocked

01:57:27.720 | at the hurt of the, I told you I wouldn't care

01:57:29.960 | about what I thought, or I didn't think about it.

01:57:32.720 | I just didn't, because there is a dissociation

01:57:34.680 | that takes place when you take off.

01:57:37.040 | And so, when people are faced with the raw

01:57:41.640 | hurt, wound, suffering, collapse, fracture

01:57:47.720 | of the other person, they find it very hard to tolerate.

01:57:51.240 | And this has to happen.

01:57:53.400 | You have to be able to know the consequences of your action.

01:57:57.680 | If you want to, you know,

01:57:58.880 | freedom in the existentialist, Sartreian terms

01:58:01.700 | involved the ability to take responsibility

01:58:04.440 | for the consequence of your actions.

01:58:07.040 | This is it.

01:58:08.300 | I'll help you face that.

01:58:10.420 | That doesn't mean that you become the worst creature

01:58:12.760 | on the planet, but you are, you have to face that.

01:58:15.800 | And that is something very hard for us,

01:58:17.880 | because sometimes we meant it,

01:58:19.360 | sometimes we thought we deserve it,

01:58:21.160 | and sometimes we didn't think that

01:58:23.640 | that was gonna be the case.

01:58:25.140 | And so, it's sometimes easier to stand

01:58:28.960 | in front of someone else's anger than someone else's hurt.

01:58:33.320 | - Yeah, absolutely.

01:58:34.720 | And what you're describing also perhaps

01:58:36.960 | at least partially explains why sometimes, not always,

01:58:40.320 | apologies are insufficient, necessary but not sufficient,

01:58:43.560 | because there are certain modes of apology

01:58:47.400 | that don't show us that the person who's apologizing

01:58:52.400 | is really outside themselves.

01:58:54.240 | They're in their own guilt, they're in their own shame,

01:58:56.280 | and therefore, they're not really present to how we feel.

01:58:58.840 | - There's a beautiful book by Harriet Lerner

01:59:00.840 | about apology that I often recommend in these situations,

01:59:04.480 | 'cause she really analyzes, if you ever do apology,

01:59:08.740 | this concept of sincerity, of the apology

01:59:14.440 | that actually shows that I care about you

01:59:16.720 | and not just about restoring my dignity

01:59:19.960 | and my pride and all of that.

01:59:21.920 | The maneuvers that are about self-preservation

01:59:25.560 | versus the maneuvers that are really

01:59:27.360 | about restorative justice.

01:59:30.360 | Who is ready for relationship?

01:59:34.120 | And for people who are not in relationship or who are,

01:59:37.340 | what sorts of questions should they be asking themselves?

01:59:42.480 | What sorts of things should we all be doing?

01:59:46.580 | - You know, it's a question that I ask people often,

01:59:50.880 | almost in the first session.

01:59:53.120 | Knowing yourself as well as you do,

01:59:56.280 | what do you think makes it hard to live with you?

01:59:59.320 | - Great question.

02:00:00.400 | My answer's far too long to give here.

02:00:03.480 | Everyone will be relieved.

02:00:05.200 | - That will give you some of the material about,

02:00:08.160 | nobody's ready, as in, I'm prepared, I'm perfect,

02:00:13.200 | I'm fully baked.

02:00:15.160 | I say to every person, everyone has relationship issues

02:00:19.040 | they're going to have to address

02:00:20.080 | at some point in their life.

02:00:21.160 | The only question is with whom, not if, just with whom.

02:00:26.000 | Who's the one that you're going to do the work with?

02:00:29.600 | We're all works in progress.

02:00:32.040 | We are notoriously imperfect, rather unpredictable.

02:00:36.280 | And many relationship problems are not problems

02:00:38.640 | that you solve, they're paradoxes

02:00:40.120 | that you have to learn to manage.

02:00:42.120 | - Well, I want to make clear that before what I say next,

02:00:46.760 | that if I had my way, we would continue this conversation

02:00:51.960 | for many hours, if not days.

02:00:54.280 | Perhaps there's an opportunity for that in the future,

02:00:56.200 | but I was told, and not surprisingly,

02:00:59.400 | that you're in tremendous demand.

02:01:01.080 | You're on a live tour now.

02:01:02.560 | I can't wait to see this.

02:01:04.120 | It's all sold out, so I'll have to wait like everyone else.

02:01:07.000 | But it sounds like an incredible experience.

02:01:09.680 | Indeed, I know some people, and I've spoken directly to them

02:01:13.160 | who attended one of your lives recently,

02:01:14.960 | and they sound like a completely immersive

02:01:17.840 | and experience like no other.

02:01:21.120 | So I'm very excited about that.

02:01:23.560 | My only regret about your tour

02:01:24.920 | is that we have to halt this conversation

02:01:28.960 | in the next couple of minutes.

02:01:30.400 | And there are a couple of things

02:01:31.360 | I just want to reflect back to you

02:01:33.160 | that are all from a place of real deep appreciation.

02:01:36.840 | First of all, for bringing forward what you've brought today,

02:01:41.020 | you're one of these exceedingly rare people

02:01:45.520 | with whom when they speak, gems just fall out of them.

02:01:50.760 | And I know I'm not alone in this sentiment.

02:01:52.720 | I mean, just in today's conversation,

02:01:55.160 | you've transformed the way that I think about relationship,

02:01:59.520 | self, identity, neurobiology, love, sex, so many key topics.

02:02:04.520 | And in a much larger way, as you pointed out,

02:02:12.360 | and I completely agree,

02:02:14.340 | the themes that you're talking about

02:02:16.420 | are not just fundamental for us to resolve as individuals.

02:02:19.080 | They are not just fundamental for us to resolve in couples

02:02:21.760 | or whatever relationship configuration

02:02:23.380 | people happen to be in.

02:02:24.920 | - They're societal.

02:02:25.980 | - They're societal, that we can look at anything,

02:02:30.000 | an election, two countries battling one another,

02:02:33.760 | political groups, whatever.

02:02:36.040 | At every level, this is what it means to be human,

02:02:39.440 | built up from the same fundamental circuit,

02:02:41.960 | same fundamental dynamics.

02:02:43.360 | And I really see you as not just a pioneer,

02:02:47.920 | but the pioneer of this parting of the veil

02:02:51.520 | from what has, I think, until this point in human history,

02:02:54.440 | been a lot of descriptions of things,

02:02:56.440 | of what's right, what's wrong, this and that,

02:02:57.960 | and some of that might be true.

02:02:59.900 | I don't know, I'm not qualified to know,

02:03:02.420 | but that you represent a real parting of the veil

02:03:05.360 | into the next evolution of what it means

02:03:08.280 | for humans to interact in more healthy ways

02:03:10.680 | and with curiosity and sense of invitation

02:03:13.680 | toward more love, connection, and peace.

02:03:16.720 | So, there really aren't words to express

02:03:20.560 | how enthusiastic and appreciative I am

02:03:23.400 | of what you brought here today and what you're doing.

02:03:25.220 | And so, I just wanna say deep heartfelt thanks.

02:03:28.680 | And I know I speak for many, many people.

02:03:31.760 | - Thank you so much.

02:03:33.800 | - Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

02:03:35.540 | about romantic relationships with Esther Perel.

02:03:38.240 | To find links to Esther's new course on intimacy,

02:03:40.480 | as well as links to her books, her podcast,

02:03:42.880 | and other resources, please see the show note captions.

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02:04:16.520 | For those of you that haven't heard,

02:04:17.680 | I have a new book coming out.

02:04:18.880 | It's my very first book.

02:04:20.480 | It's entitled "Protocols,

02:04:21.880 | An Operating Manual for the Human Body."

02:04:24.040 | This is a book that I've been working on

02:04:25.200 | for more than five years,

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02:04:30.240 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep,

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02:04:35.800 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

02:04:38.240 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

02:04:41.600 | for the protocols that are included.

02:04:43.680 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

02:04:47.600 | There you can find links to various vendors.

02:04:49.960 | You can pick the one that you like best.

02:04:51.720 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

02:04:53.480 | An Operating Manual for the Human Body."

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02:05:18.280 | If you haven't already subscribed

02:05:19.440 | to our Neural Network newsletter,

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02:05:24.640 | that includes podcast summaries,

02:05:26.200 | as well as protocols in the form of brief

02:05:28.360 | one to three page PDFs.

02:05:30.140 | Those protocol PDFs are on things like

02:05:32.640 | neuroplasticity and learning, optimizing dopamine,

02:05:35.440 | improving your sleep, deliberate cold exposure,

02:05:38.000 | deliberate heat exposure.

02:05:39.040 | We have a foundational fitness protocol

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02:06:01.200 | Thank you once again for joining me

02:06:02.440 | for today's discussion with Esther Perel.

02:06:04.560 | And last, but certainly not least,

02:06:06.880 | thank you for your interest in science.

02:06:08.940 | (upbeat music)

02:06:11.520 | (upbeat music)

Esther Perel: How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships

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