Esther Perel Explains Why People Are Unfaithful

and more about desire that the fair sometimes are an antidote for death that even happy people cheat and you said the majority of couples with Affairs actually stay together yes all very counterintuitive yes of course on the one hand we would we know that infidelity is a leading cause for divorce but here is much more infidelity than there are divorces and so most people stay together at least the first time around but see this is the same logic as mating in captivity right I didn't write the book in mating for people who don't get along and also no longer have any sex together it's the same about affairs it would be easy to say obviously people have affairs because they don't like their partner and because they have miserable relationships now if they do they actually divorce these days if they have affairs is because the relationship is good enough for many other things and the easy thing would be to say people have no sex because they don't have good connections people have affairs because they have bad connections that's true but I see people up to people coming in and say I love my partner the last thing I want to hurt is hurt my partner so that I want to do is hurt my partner and I'm having an affair that's a much more complicated question why would people risk losing everything for a glimmer of what is this link back to your first talk yes okay this is same it's the continuation mating rappers with the dilemmas of desire on the inside of relationships and rethinking infidelity looks at what happens when desire breaks free and anyway it goes looking elsewhere so it is a natural continuation but the logical thing is to say people do this because they have problems in the relationship it's the symptom model an affair happens because there's a flawed relationship rather than actually grappling with much more complicated imponderables of existential ennui and complexities of love and desire by which actually affairs happen and sometimes they have nothing to do with the relationship relationship is actually perfectly fine that's not what it's about and then you enter into the question of transgression after all infidelity has existed since marriage was invented so marriage has changed continuously and infidelity has a tenacious a tenacious nasteria skill only Envy you know and that's a line that has become very very clear that there's a robustness of infidelity no single model of infidelity of marriage manages to outdo like a race no matter how much marriage tries to adapt to the times infidelity tops it there's always another way so now we need to look at the power of transgression what is it about us from Adam and Yvonne that wants to break free out of the very constraints which we have sometimes created which yesterday we thought were the ones we wanted I wanted nothing more and this family and these children and this secure job and this big hole home I have and all of that and then one day all of that feels so meaningless it's been it's been the shackles it's been the thing I wanted to break I have done always what was expected of me and now I want to do what I really want to do and that narrative goes back to what I talked about when I spoke about what people regret when they die you know it's you hear the conversation between the dutiful self and the selfish self between the thinking about others and the thinking about me and the places where they go together and the places where they clash and so here is this thing called infidelity which by definition is an act of entitlement and selfishness but if there's a lot more to do with what I do for me then what I'm actually doing to you and yet when it is uncovered what it does to you is so shattering and so gutting so painful more so than it ever was because socially it breaks everything down you know I was in Morocco last week Mahesh and I had a conversation with a young group of young women and young men in their 20s from the villages actually who were working in the city and at one point I said you know in America in the West in general the push today is that if a woman can finally leave she doesn't just have to stay there and bear her misery she should just get out and so one of the girls said to me may madam if we had to divorce all of the unfaithful men all of Morocco would be divorced I just thought here is the difference you know I am fascinated by how we one day want certain things and how the next day those are the things that we think are imprisoning us how we can have multiple loves how we can have different kinds of loves how we became one person here and then we remember that there are all these other parts of us and they suddenly manifest elsewhere how sexual revolutions don't happen at home and how the same person who here is completely sexually shut down in this other place is lustful and free and eager and why they can't bring it home and all these imperfections and some level you would say that infidelity is an imperfect compromise to imperfect lives is it almost just something endemic of us as a society I was up setting up our own rules and then wanting to break them but it has always existed and we've always had rules and we've always wanted to break rules the rules change and you know let's be very clear fidelity was an imposition on women in order to know about patrimony and lineage you know now that we can't now that you can't prove it by the children you prove it by the exclusiveness but it's changed from an imposition on women to a dual gender conviction instead of giving more freedom to women we've taken the freedoms of men away put it like that what was the reaction to your talk and what were you trying to get people to take away the I wanted a conversation that will embrace complexity as always I think I deal with subjects that are complicated and that people often want to simplify it to make them reductionistic and simplistic and are often very polarized so the conversation about infidelity becomes a conversation about villain and victim and good and bad and perpetrator and saint and I think it is not the truth and I don't believe that these kinds of conversations that are polarized that are extreme in which you take the extreme example and you make that become the norm and you think that if you don't condemn it means that you condone and if you try to understand it's as if you're justifying these kinds of discourses they exist in politics they exist in society they exist in the conversation about infidelity and they breed narrowness judgmental-ness and discrimination and they don't help couples and families and children that's for sure so that's what I see I see these all-or-nothing conversations and I'm thinking that's an example of an authoritarian discourse of a rigid narrow and I get drawn there and I want to loosen this up because it's it's a lie it's dishonest it's a it's a dishonest way to looking at dishonesty right and it doesn't capture the nuances of the human heart which is really what infidelity is about the question is not is it good or is it bad that question is what do we learn about love lust and commitment by studying infidelity it is an amazing window the same way that sexuality is a window right if you look at sexuality from a societal point of view you would say that the most progressive aspect of a society in our culture large themselves around the changes that take place around sexuality covering your head abortion nakedness sexual education homosexual marriage all of these us around the sexual window and the most traditional archaic side of a society also large themselves if you want to control a population control the women control what they can wear how much skin they can show what comes what kind of interaction they can have with men and who has the education and the information of the children and the sexuality of children who owns the sexuality of children and how much does an adult have a right on the sexuality of children in an abusive way and all of that it is so foundational it's almost amazing how little we talk about it when you see how essential it is to progress and change and to tradition and rootedness and infidelity is right in there with that because infidelity has been one of the ways we control sex if there is a taboo against infidelity is because somebody understood human nature we are fickle we are curious and we are greedy we are not generally meant to stay put in one place there would be no taboo if there was no sizable threat and what's more threatening than human nature what are some of the other myths about sexuality but some things that we don't talk about or don't understand to watch the rest of this fascinating interview click on the link below and go to London real academy.com there you can sign in with your social media log in and watch the rest of the episode for free along with all of our episodes on London real my webinars and all of our premium content all located over at London real academy.com so click on the link below you'll be directed there and you can watch the rest of this fascinating interview and I'll see you there

Channel: London Real

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Keywords: esther perel, esther perel infidelity, esther perel explains why people are unfaithful, esther perel infidelity series, esther perel rethinking infidelity, esther perel marriage, esther perel quotes, infidelity, infidelity ted talks, infidelity statistics, sex, esther perel london real, estherperel, londonrealtv, london real

Id: LancT_0yMAo

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2015