Esther Perel AMA - Ask me anything | UNFINISHED19

I'm very excited about this I'm gonna make this a very short introduction because I think my next guest has achieved sainthood in Romania and probably needs no introduction but I'm going to do a short one just for the two or three of you that might need a refresher psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author s therapy Bell is recognized as one of today's most insightful and original voices on modern relationships fluent in nine languages she leads a therapy practice in New York City and serves as an organizational consultant for fortune 500 companies around the world her celebrated TED talks have garnered more than 27 million views how many of you are among those 27 million I thought so and her international bestseller mating in captivity unlocking erotic intelligence is a global phenomenon that has been translated into 25 languages more than s era even speaks her newest book is The New York Times bestseller this state of affairs rethinking infidelity as Sarah's also executive producer and host of the award-winning podcast where should we begin you can learn more at s sarahpearl comm or by following her on instagram she's pretty active I tagged her sometimes at s Sarah Purell official on Instagram she is one of the most insightful curious people I know and I am so excited to call her among one of my new friends so back again for what is sure to be another insightful no-bullshit asked me anything session please welcome to the stage as sterile [Applause] okay can we have some lights in the auditorium please this is not a talk so I need to see you because we're gonna do a session can we get some lights more so I can see the people and not be blinded all right just like it was before just turn on the light okay lights light on their audience all right it's gonna be the night session all right so people this is really not a talk it's it's actually a continuation of a number of different conversations that have already been in go on going here the conversations about dating the conversations about AI and relationship the conversations about what is the price of efficiency in life and in relationship versus the importance of aesthetics and depth in light or in life or in relationships and here's what I want to do I want to take ten questions and then I'm going to answer them so we're gonna do it in Reverse instead of talking and Q&A I want you to take literally three minutes with somebody that's sitting next to you and discuss what you think would be a very important question that needs to be asked not because it's relevant only to you but because it's relevant to all of us go okay all right so let's start question number one and it has to be one sentence a question okay where are the mics can we have more than one mic so that we don't have to run through the whole they make this faster yep what does healthy polygamy so here's the thing people polygamy is probably not the right word because in and of itself I'm sorry to say it is not a healthy system it is a very one-sided system of one man many women so I think if we're going to talk about one plus plural we should probably make it an equal opportunity proposition [Applause] [Music] you - give him another one yep good how can you approach people without having the fear of being rejected you can't the question is how much what you have degree but my question yes my question is how to say no without hurting the other the one is asking for politically correct rejection you say no without what we're not hurting the other who's that is impossible it depends if the other wants you very much you cannot avoid the pains or the pleasures of love or relationships I mean you can do it nicer you can do it nice like like Logan was talking about ghosting that's not nice you can do it nicer but the idea that you can do it and it won't hurt it's just you know it's like putting sugar in a cake and hoping it won't be sweet but in Reverse okay so how can I cope with the hurt of the other ah that's that's you know okay yes and tolerate your head having in mind the professions of you and your husband of you and Jack yes do you fight in a scientifical way [Laughter] I mean the question is really are you normal people do you do what everybody does no I will do it better because we have learned from every couple we have seen so when we want to go at it we know every dirty trick [Laughter] no seriously I won't count this question because there's not much yes go ahead I go my question relates to the one before is married or monogamy obsolete in this day and age where we are so free we're going to be free one of our physical restrictions like Moran said and you know I'm relating it to everything that was communicated these days we will be very very free in the following years so in this day and age is marriage an obsolete notion got it thank you yes hi so what do you think are the biggest challenges for people starting to date nowadays and how do we overcome them can I ask you something do you even have the word dating in Romanian what is the word baby now because by the way it doesn't exist in French it's not it doesn't exist in French doesn't exist in Spanish doesn't exist in many other you know so nah it's not the same it's not the same dating is a codified system you know there is the dating with lunch and then there is the dating with drinks and then there's the dating with dinner and every single one of them has a different connotation of level of interest that that kind of thing does not travel it's too Protestant hey let's go I have a question related to everything that happens here because I feel that people communicate so much better in this atmosphere Adam finished but what do you do when you go outside and how do you take this experience and put it out there and communicate with others because I feel there is a big gap between this kind of communication and people not taking the heads of their phones mm-hmm great two more go there I can't see you really but I know there's a hand there oh god that Mike has to travel okay is there somebody else who has a Mike in the meantime hi there was a hijacking yes no you're not that's a good one thank you you don't think it's all authentic here yeah it comes slightly from a personal perspective how do you tell someone really close like a family member who is in her 60s just be careful not to get hurt when she's going out there dating a married man say that again sorry how do you tell someone very close who is in her 60s to be very careful when she's going dating we're seeing another man not to get hurt and to complicate things a little bit the man is married and it's your mother yes don't laugh don't you is not the right moment is life because I think it's a magnificent question and [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay one more here in the back yes most of our life we are preparing and we are we are trying to build the relationships but at one point in our life we will lose that person can we do something to be prepared for that moment shall we is it really not possible to lower this huge spotlight so I can see people I like to kind of talk to you but it's very interesting because we have a few questions that are about rejection and loss and the hurts of love or relationships and the protection against what you imagine will be a bad finale so I'm going to get cluster a number of these questions together and then maybe we start with the monogamy marriage because it goes also with the I think you wanted to say polyamory I would imagine whatever sounds better so look I think we've had plenty of conversations in some way under the absent on the and on the AI and on the algorithms and all of that so I'm going to wear the hat of the couple's therapists that I am and I'm going to actually you know talk from that angle that doesn't mean that the people in my office don't use apps and it doesn't mean that their parents haven't texted the children for years so that they're having a harder time having an eye-to-eye conversation to begin with but I think when you ask the question is marriage obsolete my suspicion is that sometimes you think that marriage has been this one monolithic thing and marriage itself and monogamy are two words that have been used since the beginning of humanity but they mean something completely completely different today you know and when I say today I think in in Romania it's not difficult to just simply think pre coming you know during communism post communism you don't have to go back more than you know 91 or 89 for that matter so marriage was an economic instamate just gone to three major stages for most of history it was an economic institution and then recently here and that meant people married in order to have families sex was for reproduction it was a woman's marital duty it was for people got together for status for companionship for economic support and if love ever existed there that was a bonus but it certainly was not part of the neither the origin story nor the staying story and in addition marriage was a no exit Enterprise you married once it was for life and if you didn't like it well tough you you could always fantasize about an early death of your partner you know you were stuck and and and men had a way out because there was a double standard because they was polygamy but it wasn't called polygamy just was called being a man and therefore they had many alternative lives and double lives and and women most of the times could not because they were the property of these men because they couldn't necessarily have their own bank accounts because they couldn't go out and be independent enough to actually be able to leave and all of this really in in most Western countries before except for the Eastern European countries or the Eastern Bloc changed in the 60s in the late 60s early 70s this is not a long time then we have a marriage that is the romantic marriage and that is once you know to have a feeling of belonging and it wants in love and it wants to democratize love and and for the first time sex is no longer just a duty it's about desire and it's if you're not gonna have eight children but you're only gonna have two children or three children then you need a different motivation to be sexual and that means that you're going to have sex for pleasure and for connection and it becomes more of an egalitarian model more of I'm not implying any of realization and and in that model we can leave for the first time we can leave and if for a long time people left when they were miserable and they were really unhappy we have now evolved to a way of thinking about relationships and marriage in which we don't just leave because we are unhappy but we also leave because we think we could be happier and for that something else took place that was really important that we brought happiness down from the heavens for most of history happiness was for the afterlife you suffered well on earth and if you did a good job on it you could hope for a better next turn but this thing about bringing happiness down having talks about happiness and thinking that it is not just an option but it is actually a right and a mandate that is a completely new conception of life and of what therefore we think we can expect from relationships from our from our committed relationships all from our dating life for that matter when I say marriage I really am NOT thinking about just legal marriage I'm just thinking about long-term or committed relationships of any kind straight gay trans two or more people for that matter I think the next model of marriage that he has evolved is the identity marriage and the identity marriage takes place 10 years later often than it used to not too long ago you know in the 60s in the u.s. eighty percent who were in their 20s were married today twenty percent of people in their 20s are married so imagine how many years of relational nomadism and life we can go you know until we decide that we find as we were as we've been hearing about this the one the soulmate and all of that the identity marriage is basically you're going to help me become the best version of myself that's a real dual interest you know that that brings a whole different set of expectations so marriage is the same word and yet it has never meant the same and today it lives with unprecedented expectations never have people poured more expectations in two distinct old marriage of relationships etc to the point of the soulmate I mean the soulmates what you've been hearing in this conference a lot is how much secularization didn't make religion go away it just displaced it it displaced it in the eye and what Alec was talking earlier about about the icons and about the gurus and the prophets and the angel investors this religion thing isn't going away it's just that now we don't call God the soulmate only we call the partner that we're looking for the soulmate and we conflate the spiritual in the relational we want ecstasy and meaning and transcendence and purpose with one person everything that people used to go for in the realm of the divine monogamy that's your next thing about monogamy monogamy listen for most of history monogamy was one person for life today monogamy is one person at a time and so many people here said I am monogamous in all my relationships plural and it's supposed to make a lot of sense you know and then we want to even still be monogamous but emotionally monogamous well maybe being sexually consensually non-monogamous or even two you know to have a primary commitment in one place but to have polyamorous relationships where we actually experience the recreation of community to a multiplicity of deep attachments and love relationships so nothing is obsolete is really what I'm trying to say to you it's just in perpetual motion it gets redefined all the time because people need bonding because people need to yet safe havens hopefully they think at least when they start that their relationship will become that safe haven where they can cultivate their roots and their anchor and their stability and their security so that they can go then and experience the other dimension of life which is the novelty that changed the exploration the discovery and all of that and for that it will not change it will take on new forms there will always be marriage or a version of it that gives people those needs because the fundamental human needs won't change the form will change so the polyamory thing is basically a continuation of the conversation of monogamy the polyamorous conversation or the non-monogamous conversation of today is basically the conversation about virginity 60 years ago but 60 years ago you were talking people were talking about the idea of being able to have premarital sex to very able to actually not have to marry in order to have sex that was what your parents or grandparents did they married to have sex today you marry and you stop having sex with others you know so the conversation is about the boundaries it's about what makes commitment and what are the promises that people need to make for each other in order to experience that sense of commitment of loyalty of trust the very basic human needs we want and it doesn't change polyamorous couples talk about trust and boundaries and loyalty and jealousy and closeness and intimacy no different from anybody else the structure is different the conversation about the fundamental human needs is no different I think if we begin to look at it like that we won't have this idea that there are close relationships and open relationships and they're only measured by how much the door is either locked or open it's really a false dichotomy in my idea by the way when I say in my idea it means I can sound really confident when I speak to you but I don't think I right about anything just really very clear this doesn't mean that I'm right it doesn't mean it's true and come back next year and maybe I'll have something else to say it's like it's just a thought of the moment about the questions that you're asking you know so there's no profit standing here and telling you this is the the law from Sinai you know it's really it has to be we're in the same conversation which is why as you know I fight like you I have the same questions as everybody don't don't think that there is that voice there that okay the thing about rejection and the thing about I think that a few things have been said by loganing in mohon that I think really are very much to the point you know and that's why I love the question that followed which was how can I say no and tolerate the pain that I may be inflicting on the person that I'm saying no to and in a way you could almost divide this question between its analog version and its digital version because the digital version sanitizes us from actually having to see or hear the pain of the other you know you used to hear somebody's beginning to cry even if it was just on a phone you used to see a face that begins to break down and just goes into deformation from such disappointment and such loss but if you just do a delete or a ghosting or even an icing and a simmering which other kind of intermediate stages of putting people on hold there is no way that we can live in the capitalist society that we live in and not suffer our own commodification unfortunately you know we do romantic consumerism and we go on a nap you know to go find this one and only and it's kind of a form of emotional capitalism and so when people reject these days it just feels like it's cold it's it's just it's easy it's it's without and for lack of her use of a better word you know empathy it's a lack of heart about the way that some of this sometimes happen however I still think there is no way that you won't be hurt when you have rejected sometimes it's done worse and sometimes it's done more kindly but rejection hurts the same way that if I am happy I do this and you say it's obvious it's she smiles when she's pleased and I do this when it hurts and my body will show it how can you imagine that the rejection won't contract you and it doesn't just contract my body it contracts my vision my hope my sense of what life can still bring me for a while and the beauty of us is that we are able to be so resilient and so imaginative that we can deal with the deepest losses and somehow find a way to continue to hope again to love again to be close again to make love again and that has been the cycles of life and what helps us the poet's have helped us music has helped us nature has helped us art has helped us our friends have helped us sometimes our family helps us and every once in a while psychotherapy but psychotherapy is not the number one it's it's it lives amongst all these other things there's a reason that all these songs poems novels have been written because they help us they carry us through this state these experiences where we don't think there is any exit and yet there is so the hardest thing yes is to be able to tolerate that you want to do something for you that's going to be that will serve you but will actually maybe hurt another that's and how and to be able to know it's unbearable sometimes to hurt another person and to know that you're doing something that is painful without it meaning that you are by nature a bad person or an every evil person but it's very challenging this is the question though that I would broaden it's not just you know how do I tolerate the pain that I inflict on others it's also how do I tolerate another person having their own deep experience next to me when it isn't reflective of mine and this is probably one of the greatest things in relationships if you have had if you had asked one of the questions of what are the important ingredients this is one of the most important ingredients is the ability to make space for another person to be with themselves in your presence in the same way that you want to be able to be there for them without losing you I think I may even have said this once here I always think that one of the very interesting dynamics in a relationship is that there's often one person that is more afraid of losing themselves and one person who is more afraid of losing the other one person more in touch with the fear of abandonment and one person more in touch with the fear of suffocation when you leave you ain't often more in touch with yourself whatever the reasons you may think that you're saving your life but in effect you are dealing you are doing it for you and you are rejecting another person or abandoning another person all of that the biggest challenge for people dating I think it's not it's the same challenge as people who are in relationships I mean I I am from the IRL world in real life I go everyday up 22 floors in the elevator to my office there's about 70 people in the elevator and it is rare that anybody lifts their head and even speaks to each other and now on top of it they put a screen in the elevator so if they don't have a phone they're looking at the screen and I'm thinking where do we go so I I think this goes directly to your question about how do we leave here and take the quality of interaction that we have here you can take this with you in so many ways you know you can meet with friends and actually have a deeper conversation than the usual chitchat and have a dinner and actually ask a question that unifies the conversation we did it the first evening here with some of the speakers and you know we could have just said and made a lot of noise and two people talking and then we just basically asked what was on your mind in coming here this morning and about 20 of us told completely different stories and so moving things we would not have imagined we're going to be told but what was special wasn't just what they said it was the quality of the listening that they received you know I often think that one of the few places left where people can have one hour of undivided attention that is device free is in the psychotherapists office that's crazy so you can say we do a dinner and everybody keeps their phones off the table and and and off in their back so that when they go to the bathroom they're not taking their phones with them you know to go and check on it yeah you can you you really need to think of this as countercultural and as an own it and not be apologetic about it because you know that the quality of the connection the communication the experience that you're going to have will be superior trust it the same way that you trust the dish that you've just cooked or maybe not but it doesn't matter you know some of you do just trust it that if you create an interaction that is more quality to it and that quality today is one word attention that is the main economy that's the main currency of the moment attention this is what you're doing with me now this is what I want you to do with the people in your life afterwards and ask them to do for you and they'll thank you the same way that I will thank you this is the it is it's not new but it's it's coming it's become a rare commodity I think that when people you know I mean when you say what people can do and they did the question for me is always we're talking about meeting people are we talking about what happens after you meet people I think what I have noticed in many places at least in the States is that a lot of the dates are like job interviews it's it's awful there is just zero poetry to it it's zero imagination it's a bunch of questions that people ask each other do something be in motion don't sit just at a table and look at each other face to face create an activity and that activity will create something to talk about and more importantly what is really so strange about modern dating is that it is done one on one and the best way to actually get to know somebody is when you bring them in mid the midst of your group that's what the old dating system was about you brought somebody to the family and everybody checked now I'm not saying you need to check but imagine that instead of saying we're going on a date one on one you actually said I'm meeting my friends were here we're going to do whatever you're going to do join us and watch that person in interaction you will get so much more interesting material than just sitting in front of them and asking and when did you arrive here and how long have you been living here and what are you doing and do you plan to stay in this I mean a soup or table it's just so boring [Applause] what do we do after yes okay look I think the question about your mother is so so touchy because it could be your mother it could be your sister it could be a bit you know your best friend it's like I think it's one of the most complex things in a relationship is to know if when you think you are protecting someone you are actually really protecting them I don't know the story of the mother one bit right so I'm gonna talk in general it's like imagine and that somebody hasn't had anybody pay any attention to them in decades and for the first time someone is actually nice to them just nice maybe that person has lived alone maybe that person is widowed maybe that person is divorced maybe that person lives with somebody who doesn't say hello goodbye and that person if you tell them you're gonna get hurt or you're gonna tell them it's wrong or you're gonna tell them he's married or you're gonna tell him he will never leave it doesn't register because what they're gonna feel in the next hour when they go that evening or that afternoon is food for the Soul at such a level that they are willing to take all the risks and here's the interesting thing so much of the dating stuff that we've discussed here to me I've rarely heard love described in more risk-averse terms I've never seen anything like this I mean Trust is an active engagement with the unknown says Rachel Botsman I think it's really that it's a leap of faith if you need to control everything if you need to know anything where do you develop the trust and yet this kind of situation that you described where people throw themselves into something that could just destroy them is a risk that people have been taking since the beginning of humanity and no amount of reasoning has ever really stopped them afterwards they'll be a puddle in your lap and they'll ask you why didn't you tell me and you'd say I did and they say but you didn't say it's strong enough and you say I did it's it's one of these unavoidable things that you watch and you watch so you do your job you do the due diligence and at the same time it is possible that the person says yes yes yes I hear you I hear you tonight I start tonight I stop they come they come back they don't stop six months later tonight I stop like a cigarette but not because I think that love is a cigarette because it's this because of the thing that Mohan so beautiful describes is that dissociated space in between the moment when you say I'm not going to do it and the moment that you do it and the moment you think I shouldn't have done it and it's just an unbelievable thing if you think that it's powerful with food where he was describing on day one imagine what it's like with love and one of the most difficult things is to see someone who you think is voluntarily getting hurt and you can't stop them and you love her or you don't whatever it is do you love the person or you feel responsible for the person and I do hope that the guy doesn't promise for the next six years that he's going to leave his family to come and be with her and bla bla bla bla bla and you know that as long as she goes back he can promise and do nothing and it's it's there's a reason that the steps keyboard what he wrote and everybody else and it's just you know now I do think depending on the relationship you have with people that you can try to reason with them but it all depends on context I think here's the thing for many of your questions these are not I have a different view on this I don't attack the reason I can never say do this do that is because I need to know the story relationships take place in a context relationships are stories and I cannot know what is the next paragraph to the story without knowing where the story comes from so you take from me what you think can apply here you know in terms of because it was so important the way you said you know this woman is in her sixties that means that is an entire economic message you just said not just a gender message an economic message a value proposition message it's loaded if you said he's a 60 year old man or 66 year old men it has a completely different meaning you agree you understand what I'm saying you know and and and of course implied there is this hasn't happened to her in a long time I thought and then implied there is I don't want him to take advantage of her that's also an economic proposition economy of the heart and economy of a lot of other things and then implied is there is another marriage there which that means that there are other people whose hearts can also be broken this is a complex system it's a very complex system and we have no idea what goes on in his relationship that makes him want to be with your mother that makes your mother willing to accept this and so always ask for the text before you deliver any piece of advice the text is really important because it's what helps you interpret that's the way people have studied the Bible forever you know okay was there one more no I don't think there was one more so I'm going to ask you a question people because we have a few minutes I don't know what time it is so how much time do we have no this started at 30 minutes it was completely not set okay five minutes okay you know the thing that I am asking myself all the time when I watch the relationship conversations that we've had here and the way that you are listening to them and especially some of the ones that were asked in the sessions that I did with Jack you know what I began to think about is the challenge for many of you to begin to write a more individual individually driven story in a society in which the individual had just about no value for so long and how you grapple with that that's the occupation and all the time thinking how are they hearing some of the things that we're saying I know the way Americans hear hear some of the things we say I don't always know how you hear it how you know like your question about your mother that is just about another question that I would ever get in the States it's a very interesting thing you know and so my question to you is this how do you hear what I say to you where does this land with you why does this resonate with you what's important about it for you and if I can hear five very short little one of those for anybody who's really thought about that that would be a beautiful way to end I think for me one of the most important takeaways is how to break the molds of what we've seen in relationships from our parents our grandparents and and families and having the courage to define by myself what a relationship is and having the courage to say I don't have to be married before I'm 30 I don't have to be in a monogamous relationship I get to explore everything that I want and it's safe and I have the self-confidence to do it so thank you and how much do you have to fight a whole stereo system in your head that tells you all the things that are wrong with a woman all of that how many generations of admonitions I have ten and all of them ask me continuously over Easter Christmas birthday name day when I'm getting married but I think the difference versus a few years ago was that I don't feel the pressure anymore because it's not that I don't care about them and their opinion is just that I don't want them to define me anymore [Applause] all right find them one of another way to get a mic but another one move in the meantime working yeah so what I liked about everything I heard these days especially from you is because I heard your speeches before on TEDx and everywhere I had a chance and this morning - I started to hear your podcast understood that our society is not very different from our societies understood that the message you sent was it's adapted to our society somehow and maybe your previous visits here understate you understood how we work and what you said today about our experience before 89 and now after 89 so I appreciated that you adapted your speech to our society and I think it made me understand that you know what you're talking and who you are talking on with yes it's gonna come to the back in a minute I see you yeah though if you have to talk very loud yes I will talk very loud yeah my feeling is I'm not crazy and I'm not just another millennial dragging his past and his problems others so it gives me comfort to hear you saying what you're saying and it makes me actually feel more human again and it gives me courage to go out there and be human even if I might be misinterpreted not understood it's okay for me hi yes sir good evening good evening everybody what I would like to say is after reading your book it helps me feel more calmer yep so thank you very much hi um what I appreciate in your work very much is that I don't fish for compliments people it's not that question it's asking you a cultural translation question I been living a like 1012 years of my life in very different countries and what I appreciate very much is I think that you actually have this cross-cultural approach and everything that you say it feels very universal and it might have or might be in connection with the fact that we are all human beings and we struggle at an interpersonal level it very similar questions but I think that again it's it's very rare to hear from someone this cross-cultural approach in whatever issue that we talk about so I'm gonna go to the back for two more and then we have to stop it listen here's I'm going to get I do think that having this message with ten ants in your back is not the same as being in the middle of Manhattan with nobody around you the the aspirations may be the same but the proximity of pressure the proximity of not hurting the people that you love so much in that count on you and la blah blah all of this you have got to think about context you know I'm gonna repeat it again and again I do think that that there is and the messages are entering here but and not all of you are from Bucharest and when you go down and you go back to the countryside it's another life it's another century sometimes and that means that what you're doing you know I gave a talk in Delhi in India a while back and I called it straddling tinder and arranged marriages because the same people on Friday night were on an app and on Saturday they were home in the village you know I was sitting in the living room with people being paraded in front of them by the parents that is living cross culturally and I think on some level you do live cross culturally right here as well I think you know yeah go ahead and then we stop no we're not having a mic okay go ahead since last year when I yeah so thank you for everything since last year when I saw you I just realized one thing we think in stereotypes and this is one thing that you taught me not to think in in profiles we really have this need to put everybody in a frame and okay you're this you're that is not like that we are in individuals and we should look at the big picture thank you Bon Appetit good night it's time to go [Applause]

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Length: 48min 11sec (2891 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020