The KEY SIGNS That Relationship Won't Last & How To ACTUALLY Find Love! | Esther Perel

Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. I am here with an extraordinary guest today, Esther Perel, who I'm very excited about. She is somebody that has clocked an unhuman number of hours working on people's relationships. She has podcasts around this stuff and is one of the most extraordinary thinkers in terms of the what makes a relationship work and what makes it fall apart. Esther, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. I want to start with maybe something that normally people want to know, you know, what are the the things that people need to do to have a great relationship. And I want to start with the inverse. What are the things that kill a relationship? Oh, there's a long list of things that kill relationships between partners, but you can apply a lot of these these downfall principles to any other kind of relationship. And I'm not going to put them in order of importance, but I could the first one that popped in my head was complacency. Pure laziness. The sense that people often bring the best of themselves suddenly at work and in other areas and bring the leftovers to their relationships, which supposedly are meant to be so important. A lack of communication, a breakdown in communication, a profound sense of distrust, a a sense that the other person is out to get you rather than to be benevolent and caring of you. Contempt is the big killer. I think it's the the the final blow because it really implies the dehumanization of the other person. It's like I don't even I don't It's not that I don't care about what you think and what you feel is that you are not worthy of any attention. Violence, aggression of all kinds, the myriad of situations in which people attack each other. A complete physical disconnection, um, loss of affection, loss of touch, loss of cuddling, loss of all the stuff that really connects us physically beyond sexuality to each other. I mean, I can uh I can do a long list, right? Major money issues, massive amounts of tensions around money and around discrepancies of responsibility, imbalances in the relationship, in-laws, major fights around This this really is a an epic list. Now, I I'm tempted to I can imagine. Which by the way, the couple's therapy that you do, both the work show, How's Work, and then the Couple's Couples, where should we start? Those are the names of the two podcasts. Where should we begin? Excuse me. I knew I was like, I'm going to get the sequence I'm going to get the right idea with the wrong sequence of words. Um it They're amazing, and the way that people bring vulnerability and the way that you're able to tease things out is is honestly, Esther, it is breathtaking. Um I love those shows. I cannot speak highly enough about them. And and listening to them, you begin to sort of recognize themes that undergird a lot of the different things that you just said, and the one that you started with is probably the closest, complacency. Um so, my wife and I, uh as I mentioned before we started rolling, have been together now for 20 years, and one thing that we um identified early is what we call don't let the dust settle. So, it it seems to me that a lot of these things that end up being huge problems, even the mis- the profound mistrust and all that, it started with love, and it becomes profound mistrust. And so, trying to identify like what it was, and the idea that we came up with, and I'm curious to hear if this tracks with what you know, is in any of the sort of little moment, it's something small. It doesn't seem worth bringing up, so you just let it be. But then over time, those little things begin to stack up, and suddenly what once was, you know, a beautiful credenza is now buried under 6 in of dust. Um is it that or is it more profound things that people fail to address or don't have the communication skills to address? I mean it's a combination of a number of things. You know, it's funny. I was like I started talking and I suddenly realized I literally was canvassing just the sessions of the week and I could just see the an enormous amount of pitfalls that I could just list as what what will, you know, degrade a relationship. But when people start out and they have a lot of goodwill and they give a lot of benefit of the doubt and they make a point of thanking the other person, acknowledging what they do, validating how they feel. The The experience of being seen is part of the building of the trust. The experience of being known. The experience of having somebody who has deep attention on you and is curious, fundamentally curious to get to know you. That kind of penetration that is highly erotic as in you feel alive, you feel you feel vibrant. It's not in the sexual sense of the word erotic. This is what the charge that people feel. You perk up. You sit like this. Complacency looks like this. That's the position. It's like whatever you know, you don't notice anymore. You don't really pay attention. You start to feel like you're a function. You know, you are defined by the tasks that you do and no longer by the person that you are. It's a multitude of those things that ultimately create, step by step, a disconnect. You know, um that's what I mean by complacency. It's not It's um It's a laissez-faire like that, you know, a laisser-aller where you you don't notice things, you don't acknowledge them and the flip side of that is that you just acknowledge the negative. You know, you love you become completely distorted in your perception. You have a big bias. Whatever is good is an is a given. There's nothing to say about it. And whatever is bad can be amplified to the nth degree. It's interesting the way that you even changed your posture and your movements uh to really capture that idea. So, how do people avoid that? Like when when you bring people into your sessions, it's so powerful because you see and articulate things they don't seem to see. So, how is it that people become so blind to this stuff? Because people in a relationship, by the way, especially when they come to couples therapy, you know, I'm a couples and family therapist. Primarily, I'm a systemically trained therapist. I deal with issues contextually. Um most of the time when people come to couples therapy, they don't come to say, "I came to check myself out." Couples therapy is often a drop-off center. You know, they come to tell you, "Here, here's my partner. And and let me tell you what I think is the matter with that person cuz I'm an expert on the other person." People stop looking at themselves because they're completely focused on what's wrong and what's off and what's missing in the other. And the first thing you do in couples therapy is you say to the people, "We're going to reach reconfigure the lens." The day you come in and you start the session by talking about what you have done to improve things or what you have done to deteriorate things, we're working. That is powerful. A drop-off location. Uh it's Do they both show up saying like, "Oh, it's obviously them." or is is it often one of them is like, "Yo, this person is you know, doing all of this wrong." or is it just sort of equal combativeness? You can have three types of dances in a couple. You can have confrontation, fight-fight. You can have fight-flight. One is fighting, the other one is leaving. And then you can have total distance and, you know, separating, stonewalling, whatever it is, you know, fight flight-flight on both sides. So, it you have all the dances. You can have one in which each person comes in and basically says, "But you." He, she, they. It's the other, you know? And then on occasion, you have somebody who finally says, Look, Tom, the most amazing thing about this is I do work with individuals as well. You hear the story of a person. You enter into their subjective world. They tell you, "This is what's going on in my house with my partner, you know, whoever else is in the house." A few months later, you finally meet the partner. And it's like Swiss cheese. Everything that one person left out, the other person fills in. And you begin to really understand that you you really need to hear the multiple voices in a relationship. A relationship is a story. When you only listen to one voice, it is phenomenal how the mind will curate, select, discard anything that is unconvenient, uncomfortable about me. It's like and we comment about that among clinicians all the time. It's like it's uh it's like because he did this, you can't believe that she said that. But of course, the next person comes in and says, "Well, you know, she did this and this and this." Or he did this and this and this. And then I flipped. But all the preceding stuff gets taken out by the first person to only talk about what the other one did to which they reacted. This notion that the you know, deteriorated relationships, high-conflict relationships are often highly reactive. And then you only see what what the other person did to which you reacted, and they made you do this, and if they hadn't done A, you wouldn't have done B. Without realizing that your B is their A. So, how do we How do we begin to unwind this, and does it tie into the concept? So, even just now as you were going through that, you were naming things. There's three types of dances. Well, now that I know the three types of dances, I can go look for that in my own marriage. Are there times where we're fight-flight? Are there times where we're fight-fight? Are there times where we're flight-fight? And just having those words allows me to um introduce a new category to my life. Do you familiar with Lisa Feldman Barrett by any chance? No. I've been on a big kick about her since I had her on the show, read um her book, and she talks about basically having to create categories. That the way the mind um generates an emotion is the body feels some kind of way, and then you go, "Oh, this is anger, frustration, sadness, whatever." And the more categories you create for yourself, the more nuanced you can be in your response. Right. And I'm curious if as people start to untangle this, if it's about giving them the words to begin grouping what's happening. So, it's a combination of things. I am fluent in nine languages. Wow. Yes. So, language and words and naming is extremely important to me. I think that it absolutely organizes ourselves cognitively, physically, emotionally. So, um it Naming is framing. But the naming itself, you know, needs to then become also particular to the person. So, what you will notice when you hear, "What should we begin?" or "How is work?" is that I will I will paraphrase a person. I will talk in the first person imagining what it is that they may be feeling. And then I will say hot or cold. Like is you know the old game I used to play as a kid. And then if they say hot, then I will say now say it again in your own words. Because language shapes the experience. That's Foucault. That's not me. And once you tell a story, you experience the story the way you have told it. I would say that in Where Should We Begin and in my clinical work, because they're the same, my goal has always been that you come in with a story in session one and at the end of the session, you need to leave with a different story. Because we come wedded to that story. And that story articulates our experience and the meaning we give to our experience and the title we give to our relationship and the fate we give to our relationship. If by the end of the three hours of the first session, you leave with a different story, there is movement. The words no longer stick to your skin. And now we can begin to explore what else is here. When people ask you for sort of blanket statements about relationships, you always push back and say, well, that depends on the culture that we're in. And I found that very interesting because of the way that it shook me out of thinking that in my own relationship, I had simply uncovered a truth of the human condition. When in reality, I had uncovered something only about the cultural context in which I'm in. Um how does that become important? And is are you looking for ways where maybe the culture of the two different people is causing the disconnect? Like what's the power of that four step? So, this is very much this is crucial for me at all times, but it is uniquely important in thinking about work and relationships in the workplace as well because we may use the same language as in we may use the same words, but the meaning of these words have something completely different. So, you really want to make sure that you don't assume I know what you're saying. Ask. Remain curious at all times. What does that mean for you? And who told you that? So, if I talk about money, if I talk about gender equality, if I talk about the role of the woman in the home, if I talk about the role of the child in the home, if I talk about the aspirations that we bring to marriage, you know, I work with people who come from cultures where marriages and happiness have nothing to do with each other. The happiness comes from the children. The happiness comes from doing the right thing and maintaining your status and your place in the community. The happiness doesn't come from talking intimate pillow talk with your partner. That's it That's not the point. So, marriage is the word, but the definition of marriage is completely different. I did a course now for three three weeks in a row. It was called Forbidden Conversations: Death, Sex, and Money. I had people from 41 countries. The word sex is a word, but the meaning of it, how it is taught, what you're allowed to experience, what you're allowed to expect, how do you establish the trust, all of these are culturally defined. Money, you bet, you know. So, when I ask people, what is a couple for you? How do you define a marriage? What are the expectations that you bring to marriage and how are your expectations different from the generations that preceded you? Let's do a genogram. Let me go down three generations. What did your grandfather and your grandmother think is marriage? What did they think was the role of the parents vis-a-vis the children? What was their alliance or their loyalty to their own parents? How much were they allowed to do what they want and they should do what is right for them? And how much did they learn that what is right for them is never separate from how it affects those that are close to them. As in individualism versus collectivism. Why does all that matter? I have a hypothesis. Mhm. But why why does that matter? I have a guess, but I'm very curious as to why you get people to contextualize themselves after starting with you're saying a word, but you don't necessarily know for each other what it means. This thing about doing the right thing When I arrived to the US I worked for many years, almost 20 years, with a a real focus on working with mixed couples, interracial, interreligious, and intercultural families. And this notion of do I have a right to marry who I want? That's a given for you in North America. That is not a global given. And so, when people struggled with that, somebody would say, "You should do what's right for you." Well, the vast majority of the world has never raised their children to do what's right for them. They raised their children to do what's expected from them. You bring that person and everybody today is a global nomad of sorts. You know, people are moving around all the time. And it looks like because they work in tech or they work in some some enterprises that look like they are homogenized in some way, that they think alike. And they don't. If IBM takes 20,000 people that work in their company, they don't think alike. They don't value trust in the same way. They don't have the same conception of what does it mean to speak up? So, I may think you never say anything. Well, you may think that that's how you maintain harmony. I think, you know, you don't you're not engaged. You think you're engaged in preserving the well-being of the group. I mean, do you want me to go on or are we Well, I have a another question for you. So, I mean, sense what I just said. Very much so. And so, here's what I hear you saying. Let me know if this is accurate that in any context, you're going to be coming from a slightly different place. You could be coming from a different place because of your particular family. You could be coming from a different place because of your particular experiences. You could also be coming from a different place because of your cultural background or whatever. And you have to essentially define terms in order to know what your values are, know what each other expect, so that when you're talking and and I've often said it doesn't matter what you say, it matters what the other person hears. And so, effective communication is about making sure they hear what you mean. And that's sort of what I hear here is that people have to be aware of their context, aware of their partner's context, and then bring that together so that they're actually having the same conversation. Is that what lends this so much importance? And I will add one piece. The defining of the terms is directly connected with the meaning of these terms. We are meaning-making creatures. We don't live outside of meaning frameworks. It's not just what what is this? Is therefore what does it mean for you? How does that define the way that you look at your life, the way that you define success, the way that you define loyalty, the way that you define closeness? It It's not we we need to be aware of it. It's a total given that when a person speaks in their speech is them, their family, and the group that they grew up with, the world they grew up in. These things are always intertwined with each other. I make it explicit because otherwise people swim in molasses and they have no idea what's happening to them. It clarifies. It lightens up. It brings air. It you know, it That's why I never knew. You know, you say we never talk. I think we don't stop. Yeah, I had so in my previous company, I had two other partners and there would be times where we would just be butting heads and they seemed stupid to me, I seemed stupid to them, and I remember thinking, "Hold on. I know this guy's really bright." And he's not being obstinate for the sake of being obstinate. So, what's going on? And I realized that people have base assumptions that are driving the use of words or an expectation. And so, like you're saying, you know, here I am thinking we talk all the time, they're thinking we never talk. And so, I'm coming from the base assumption of we talk all the time. Why do we have to talk more? They're coming from the base assumption of we never talk. So, like come on, engage. And that has been that 65% of startups fail because the relationship between the co-founders breaks down? I cheated. I did know that because I listened to so much of your content. But yes, you were the one that taught me that. I know that comes from a a professor at Harvard actually. Um um and of course now I'm going to blank on his name, but it'll come back. I I found that incredible because I'm thinking what an enormous waste of great ideas because probably among these people there were some unique discoveries that will be completely wasted. But what it also says to me is that relational intelligence, which is also the ability to hold multiple perspectives, multiple ways of viewing something at the same time. And to be able to tap into nuance and ambiguity is key. You know, it's really that that is it's not just there's there they're not stupid, you know, of course I know this guy. It's kind of What are these people doing to each other that they're landing in a place where they end up saying such a thing when in fact they think the opposite? And and what How do you train somebody to get good at the holding that perspective? So one would just be like they have to know what the other person's perspective is and I'm curious if I'm not in a room with you and you're very good at it, but how do I grow to understand their perspective, whether it's my business partner or my significant other? So I'm thinking, you know, to put it in context, yesterday I worked with a session on a session for how is work. Um, and the woman the she she's a white woman this white woman who has worked with a black gay male supervisor. They've had a very very close relationship for working together for a number of years and a deep friendship. She thinks she left the job because they were stuck in a salary negotiation. And on some level she feels that he didn't stand up for her. But she is a she thinks this is the story of two dear friends. And that's the context. He thinks this is not just two friends. This is two friends of which one is black and one is white and of which one person it was going to look a certain way if he continues to negotiate on behalf of a white woman's salary while there's a lot of other people there whose salaries are not being touched. She can psychologize their relationship and individualize it and make it just about him and her. He can never separate the friendship from the larger categories that they both inhabit. A few days earlier, I'm So, this is what I This is the clarification. It's like, you know, it's to to allow him and her to to basically realize that they've been mourning a different story. And they came They've had a conversation in their heads for a year with each other. And they literally came to try to have this conversation once and for all, you know, by me basically holding a container for them. And a few days before, I'm working with a couple that own a gym. He He's the tech. He's the thinker. He's the synthesizer. He puts it all out there and then he, you know, she goes in She's the intuitive, you know. In the beginning, this was very attractive to them. It was a complementarity. That's another major rule of relationship. The very thing that people often come in fighting over is what was once originally very attractive to each other. When the meaning of the difference was different. So, now I'm tracking with them. How did this thing that once was so attractive to them become a thing from which they fight with each other at home? They go and have staff meetings and they basically do their fights in front of the staff. Not good. Not a good idea. Right? So, we're looking at how did the complementarity turn into a polarization? You know, but here is the the as I'm saying this probably the the last thing This is a whole seminar I'm working on relationship is to explain to people this. You never fight over the thing that you think you're fighting over or talk or argue, whatever it is. It's not the content. It's rarely the content. If I think that you don't care about me, no matter what we talk about, the fact that that's what I think is going to permeate how I interpret what you're saying. If I think that you want my well-being, I will interpret everything you say from that angle. The process shapes the experience. The form is more important than the content. This is like golden rules. If you want to write down the 10, you know, and with that comes the notion that people fight over three things primarily: power and control, trust and closeness, respect and integrity. Mhm. And once you know that, you start to look you don't listen for the noise and the content. Especially when people have 20 years together, you know, there's a lot of stories they can come back to. You just look, what is it that they are really fighting over? What do they experience from each other at that moment? Is it about power? Is it about trust? Or is it about recognition? That is so powerful. And just to echo it very quickly, my the biggest fight my wife and I have ever gotten into was over a cup of tea. And of course the punchline to the argument was, we're not arguing about the tea. What is this really about? And once we got to what we were really arguing about, then we could, you know, diffuse the situation. What was it? Um it was that I was feeling disrespected because I wanted to take her away, which that's actually not true. I at the time, I work a lot now, but then I worked to the point of damaging my marriage and my wife pulled me aside and said, "You're damaging the marriage. We need to take some time." I was so panicked about taking time off at that point in my career, and we were so poor that spending what, $149 on a hotel was like an unimaginable amount of money to me. And so when the only way I could justify it was the second we wake up, we need to get in the car, get to the hotel, so that the moment we can get into the the room that we get in, we make the most of it. And Maximizing, maximizing. Yes. And she wanted to like to connect and to bond and to go slow and for once me not trying to be efficient and and so she was you know wanted to have this cup of tea and just relax into the day, but she wasn't saying that and I wasn't saying my side of it. So I was just like Yo, you're going to have a cup of tea now? And you know it just like escalate escalate escalate until it was absolute madness. And finally me saying this is how I feel, this is why I'm you know upset and then she could explain to me her perspective. Then it was like ah, you know what you were saying of like when you know what their perspective is and you can step inside that and go, oh wow this isn't an assault on me. This doesn't mean that you don't have respect for me or you don't care about what this means to me. It's that you didn't know what it meant to me because I never articulated it. And both of you had actually a shared goal. Which you lost sight of. Very aggressive. wanted to make this a special day. You had a different idea of how to do it. That that umbrella notion needs to be added on there as well. Yeah, completely. said. You know. Okay, so I want to go back to the the three reasons that we fight. Respect and and integrity and maybe what I didn't understand about that is I don't understand how respect and integrity go together. Help me understand that. Um it's it's actually respect and recognition, but the recognition is about integrity. This is coming from the work of Howard Markman. This is not my my uh original thinking. And he has a they have a few more, but what it means is um am I seen? Is the question of recognition. Am I seen? You know, and this seen is a very very important experience of bonding. It you know, you like evolutionary thinking. You know, it is the 18 cm between the baby and the parent. It is through the eyes that this bonding takes place. The mirror neurons are are are formed, that the the the oxytocin is released. I mean, it is really profound in our scheme of bonding. So, you have one is power. You have one is trust, and then you have another one, which is you can call it respect and recognition, and you can call it integrity. But, in the end, it is about, you know, the full word, the full definition of the word integrity, integritas, which is integrated. As well as it is morally unified, it is also integrated. So, it's essential to people. Um it's that that you don't distort my intention. It's that you know where I'm coming from. It's that you um They're all interrelated, you know. They're all interrelated, but that's that's the that's the notion. The opposite of respect and recognition is humiliation, shaming. Yeah, which that to me is, along with contempt, and I don't remember what the official four horsemen of the apocalypse are. I remember that that Criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt. That's John Gottman. Yeah. Absolutely amazing. Each one of those more terrifying than the next. Talk to me about roles. How much do we need to define roles coming in? Because I found in both business and in my marriage that being very clear about roles, expectations, desires, um it meaning desire for your partner, like I desire for you to do XYZ, um have been very important to finding harmony. Yes, that's one piece. But, the second part is the ability to have flexibility in the system that allows people's ideas, beliefs, expectations, desires to change. So, talk to me about that. You've said that we may have multiple relationships with the same person throughout our life. What do you mean by that? It means that the relationship is flexible and nimble or what you like to often call these days, we call it agile, enough to adapt itself to the changes that people go through. If we live as long as we do and we want relationship that lasts decades, they're not going to look the same at 60 that they were at 25. Esther, I could literally talk to you forever and ever and ever about this. If we were going to give people a very brief sort of list of tools that they can use to get the most out of their relationships, not necessarily their romantic relationships, just relationships. What does that small bag of tricks look like? I would say this. Ask yourself, what have I done lately to affirm the importance of my relationships in my life? Is there someone I owe a phone call to? Not a text. A phone call. Is there someone I need to talk to that I've been meaning to reach out to? Is there someone I owe an apology to? Is there someone who I could help in this moment? Anytime you do for others, you actually A, are less depressed and B, you feel better about yourself. So, that's the first one. Second one is, what have I done to nurture my connections? You know, am I feeling How am I doing? Just kind of sit them in for a minute and just draw it on a piece of paper. How am I doing? Then you take two objects. Just right now, as you sit wherever you are in front of you and you look. One object that represents an aspect of your relationship story that you would like to leave behind, that you would like to free yourself from. That no longer serves you. And another object that represents an aspect of your relationship story that you would like to foster, to harness, to maintain, to develop further. And put these two objects next to you on your desk. And every day, you just ask yourself, "What have I done about this one? And what am I doing about that one? Where am I coming from and where do I want to go?" I love that. Esther, where can people engage with you? What's the best place to get more of your magic? Huh. The The portal of living doll is estherperel.com. Um for any of the people who are coaches, educators, relationship professionals, HR people, it's sessions. Um and the podcast, Where Should We Begin, which is in season four, finished. And How Is Work, which we are actually casting for season two. Any pairs, colleagues, co-workers, co-founders who want to deal with some relationship issues at work, this is the time. Um Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs are the books. And Rekindling Desire, if you're a couple that wants to reinvigorate your own relationship. Um those are probably some of the main ones. And the the new one thumb that I can whisper to you is that I actually am having a lot of fun creating what I think is going to be a fantastic card game. Really? Yeah. All right. Well, sign me up for that. I I am all about that. Nice. That's cool. Is it for couples? It's for friends. It's for couples. It's for people who've just met and who It's actually No, it's not a relationship game per se, but it is a It speaks about our relationships through stories, but it's a game. It's not just cards to answer questions. Wow. It's a game where you can really, you know, I like to play games. That's exciting. Do you have a a date when that's going to be available? Probably end of February. Okay, soon. Well, that's I'm excited. But but it's really all on a step real.com. So, um I think that I've said the main ones, right? You can do that part. It's very hard to sell one's own. Yeah, we'll also have all the links. But guys, trust me when I say that you're going to want to read the books, listen to the podcast. It's really amazing. It she is one of the unique people that her breadth of what she can talk about is extraordinary and the different types of relationships that she dives in. As you listen to the podcast, you will realize that she is as adept at handling work problems as she is at handling the sexual frustrations of a couple that's, you know, beginning to disintegrate. It's really really breathtaking. So, be sure to engage heavily. And speaking of things that you should engage heavily in, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Once you start to develop a spiritual relationship of your own understanding, you'll notice wild synchronicities in your life. You'll notice invisible doors open for you. And even though you're a science guy, you have a lot of God in your life whether you realize it or not because you wouldn't be sitting here right now being driven by this great force of inspiration doing the major things that you've done in this world if you hadn't been tapped into that source. Mhm.