– This is how you stop your partner from cheating | Esther Perel | SVT/NRK/Skavlan

[Applause] thank you you're a psychologist and you're a couple therapists would these be your typical clients no no no no the people who are having fun they don't come to the psychologist the people that come to me come to me because they're bewildered because they're in a conflict because they feel guilty because they feel shame or because they feel torn because they're in love with two people they on the other side they come to me because they feel betrayed because their trust has been shattered because they wonder which life they've been living in which light they've been living i get the dark side much more often of this drama tell me you have you in your book state of affairs yes you you talk to people all over the world in about about this topic not only relationship and also infidelity mm-hmm what are the differences between Europe where where we come from an America so Europe and Belgium yes and European America Europe is when you're in America its Europe when you're in Europe it's different parts of Europe right and and the rest of the world is yet a whole other story so I think it's probably important to see infidelity has existed since marriage was invented and so true that I Bou against it it doesn't hurt any less in Sweden then it hurts here but there may be less of a moral perspective it is hurtful not just wrong it's the difference between wrong and hurtful and infidelity is seen as a relational betrayal so when I travel the globe I see hundreds of people who are affected devastated by this experience but that's just if you look at a couple if I ask this audience here if they've been affected by the subject in their life I would guess that 80% of the people will say they have been affected by infidelity in their life and then it's not just cheated or cheated on it's the children of its the friend of its the sister the brother of its it's the legacy of secrets in families it's the child of it's a lot of it's a it's a very systemic broad subject that isn't just a party of two or three so how would you explain I mean how do you define infidelity infidelity is actually very hard to define because the definition keeps on expanding today we it's no longer just because you have a child out of wedlock you know you had clear proof for most of history when an affair took place today is it a chatroom is it a massage with happy ending is it watching porn is it is it you're dating apps that you continue to check on is it talking with your exes that you have reconnected with on Facebook where do we draw the line is one of the big questions about boundaries two days and at the same time there are very clear markers for understanding affairs you know and the first and foremost is the fact that it is organized around the secret I mean an affair is not about non-monogamy it's about a violation of an agreement of a trust of a contract so the secrecy is the central element and then around the secrecy is a certain level of emotional involvement to one degree or another could be hit and run but that too takes an emotional involvement to make something matter nothing and a sexual aura and the sexual aura is much more important than the idea that Affairs are about sex it's really about what do you mean by sexual aura when you ask people all over the world that I can tell you if they have been affected if they've experienced affairs and and how they experience it the one word you hear is that they feel alive affairs a fundamental acts of transgression in which people break rules sometimes their own rules sometimes their own boundaries that they have spent years putting together and the aura means that you don't need to have the act of sex you have to have the energy the erotic energy of aliveness that comes with the fantasy of this thing called an affair so the kiss that you only imagine giving can be just as powerful as hours of actual lovemaking it's about desire it's not about sex the desire is about feeling important feeling seen feeling desired having someone's attention back on you feeling that you matter all the stuff that often gets depleted inside ones committed relationships and not by full just of the other but but would you I mean could infidelity then happen in a happy relationship as well we tend to think it goes like this if I find you and you're my one and only then I no longer should be interested in anybody else and especially today when I have such a paradox of choice and thousands of people to choose from in the West when I finally find the one and only the one that's gonna make me delete my apps then I should be free from all of this and I should have everything I want with this one and only therefore if there is an affair there must be something missing and either there's something missing in our relationship or there's something missing in you and this symptom model defies the true stories of people because the majority of people who have affairs are not chronic philanderers they are actually often people who have been faithful for decades and one day they cross a line that they never thought they themselves would cross and so you want to ask for what and what starts to happen is this often when you are attracted by the gaze of another it isn't just because you want to leave the person that you are with but it is because you want to leave the person that you have yourself become and it isn't just that you want to meet somebody else but you want to meet another self there is no greater other than a different version of yourself and this goes from men and women we do we do we cheat for the same reason many women look this what I just told you goes for both traditionally we have arranged it very neatly we have been first of all let's be very clear Manpreet practically throughout history had a license to cheat you know and they had all kinds of theories that came to justify that they are natural roamers you know so we have all these evolutionary theories and biological theories to explain why men are not by nature monogamous whereas women are these domesticated creatures we don't know what women would do if they were given the permission to do the same without the consequences that they face which are very different than the one of men what we know is that men and women lie men lie by exaggerating and by boasting and by inflating and women lie by denying and by minimizing because that is what is expected from them culturally worldwide but according to you it hasn't I mean it doesn't have to be the end of the relationship no no I learned that by by working with so many couples who of course those who come to me are not the ones who go to the lawyer so they come to me because they want to know is there hope today in the West most of us are going to have two or three marriages or adult relationships and some of us will do it with the same person and so it may mean that this affair means the end of your first marriage would you like to have another one together and that gave people a dignified way to understand that you can go to a big crisis and that some affairs are breakups but some affairs are makeups some Affairs will ring an alarm in the relationship about stuff that people have become complacent about lazy about neglectful and they realize that they stand too much to lose and so they brace themselves and some Affairs just basically invite the relationship to say okay this happened it's beyond painful let's never minimize this but there is a way back from there and actually it's like in Chinese the word crisis means danger and opportunity maybe from this we can rise and create something that may even be better than what we had so so when when you get the Quai someone that says I can't stand it anymore your advice would be the same as Chris Rock yes you can no I wouldn't say first of all yes you can that's that's not the therapists response I he wouldn't be a good therapist I I would say I would say you know what is it that is what is the pain point for you what is the thing that you are most upset about and what is the bare minimum that you need from your partner I mean in the aftermath of an affair it's very clear what you need from your partner the first thing you need which is the condition by the way for making it or not is you need a partner who can acknowledge how badly they hurt you if they can't acknowledge that if they minimize it if they justify it if they explain that in fact you drove them to do it you're done because even if you don't feel guilty about the experience of the affair itself you do have to feel remorse and guilt about how it hurts the other person that isn't no cynic why not that's a condition and then from there there is the what did it mean for you so I've always said today we need a dual perspective Affairs are about hurt and betrayal but they are also about longing and loss and self exploration it's what did you go to look for there why did this happen to you how should we behave in our relationship to not to get betrayed what is it that you do to make your partner feel that they are special that they're the one you still choose every morning when you wake up that they're the one that you want to be there with the next morning and the next morning how do you manifest your love your appreciation your admiration for your partner have you shown up you know you work here you're very invested in this project you're super attentive to me you're charming you're funny when you go home is this the guy that goes home or is it the leftovers that you bring home the questions worse to you - but then how do you control your life then by because in life you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow that's correct how do you know with this commitment that you have met the one that higher power have placed in I don't believe in that conjunction with you I don't believe so you can meet somebody when you're 16 years old and marry and say this is gonna be my partner then all of a sudden when you're 44 if something happens what are you doing this situation I just want to hear because I'm I'm a believer and it happened to me you know that I just met somebody and she's sitting here and it just happened that's why I don't buy the idea that there is a one and only we used to marry till death do us apart today we marry till love dies we used to marry and have sex for the first time today you marry and you stop having sex with others you used to have monogamy one person for life and today monogamy is one person at a time and everybody says I'm monogamous in all my relationships yeah and it's importantly makes sense so the the norms are changing so fast there is nothing you can do when you leave a person then to tell them how especially if it was not bad then you that that you are so sorry that you're hurting them and you have loved them deeply and you wish them the best and you thank them for everything they've given you and you wish for them the best and yet you're going to go and it is just raw pain you can't circumvent that heartbreak is heartbreak what about children being you talk to the children of course I talk to you yeah and the children always lies so you know I said you know and parents usually say the parents I met all the kids are so much happy now you know when you ask a kid nine years old you have a new dad a new mother we you know separated married the neighbor's wife and it wasn't their choice yeah so and and the kids are they're so much better off now they're so happy so what are the kids saying I mean because we will really make a lot of kids and then we just leave them behind yes and you make many more children in Sweden than we make in America yeah but here's the thing we live in an individualistic culture in the West this is not different from u.s. to Sweden and that individualistic culture has done a few things amongst all the other things I've just named it has really brought happiness down from the heavens and it has made it a mandate happiness used to belong for the afterlife you suffered on earth and then you could be rewarded afterwards now we want to be happy and it's not like we have more desires than your grandmother had but we feel much more entitled to pursue them no it's not for the kids if you ask the children unless it's impossible in the house the children would rather have their parents stay together because that's the story that they're born into yes sir I think I think we triggered a few conversations back there in the sofas now thank you so much that's my pleasure [Applause]

Channel: Skavlan

Views: 2,739,719

Rating: 4.8703909 out of 5

Keywords: Skavlan, interview, talk show, Fredrik skavlan, esther perel, cheating, relationships, relationship advice

Id: RmiKAoAmYSg

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/mayorjimmy]

I gotta go with Chris Rock on the difference between men and women lying.

[u/BubblesAndGum]

Surprisingly insightful

[u/NewClayburn]

It's not cheating if you allow it.