Esther Perel: How To Strengthen Your Relationships and Enhance Your Life I Bitesize

it is the quality of our relationships that determines the quality of our lives the story is never just created by one person it's a co-creation the way i speak is influenced by the way you listen the way i see myself is influenced by the way you see me [Music] why is it when relationships are fundamental to how we feel about ourselves whether we feel fulfilled whether we feel happy why is it that so many of us struggle with what really is a core part of being a human being i think that you know we are wired for connection we are social creatures we don't survive well alone and at the same time our dependence on others our interaction with others can cause us situations of utter bliss and situations of utter grief i tend to think that it is the quality of our relationships that determines the quality of our lives in the end it is the people and the way they will remember you and the way you will live inside of them that will give the ultimate um description of the life you've led and meaning of what you have met what you have represented for others you know we like to know that we matter that i mean something for for you and that you mean something for me we creatures of meaning and this meaning making is a set of stories that we tell ourselves about our relationships do you like me do you not like me do you find me attractive do you value me do you respect me do you think i'm smart do you think i'm good person you know will you leave me all of these fundamental questions are continuously relational questions that's why it's so core relationships are continuously a story what my my friend terry reel calls of harmony disharmony and repair connection disconnection reconnection that's the rhythm of a relationship you know it's not what it was bad now it's really good it was bad it's really good for this and then something else will happen and it doesn't even have to be put in the term of bad and good things emerge new issues appear in life because we change and that doesn't mean the relationship is bad you know and there is no perfect relationship but to know all of that people need truth and the truth is not easy to come by because everybody today has a tremendous pressure to prove that their relationship is perfect that they're doing great and this kind of fake happiness kind of thing and in fact people get a lot more when they know you have had loss you have you you've had illness you've had unemployment you've had economic hardship you've been finding it really tough to spend three months with your partner 24 7. me too and how are you doing tell me what's been challenging for you tell me what you have found useful share the resources of your relationship intelligence with me yeah and i'll do the same and that makes the world a little bit of a better place you're a relationship counselor a relationship therapist but in many ways what you're offering people is so much more than relationships because if your relationship improves you get to know more about yourself so in some ways i think it's all about relations what you do and in some ways it's not it's about helping us understand ourselves better because when we understand ourselves better we're going to show up in a much more meaningful and different way in our relationship with much less of our own baggage it is about relationships but in many ways it's just about being a human being the reason you think this way i would say is because we have a way of thinking that there is the relationship and then there is me there is the self and then there is the relationship but the when you think in a relational perspective like i am a relational thinker and i am a narrative thinker as in stories then i don't see these two as separate the self is relational there is no way of thinking about yourself outside of that framework this notion sometimes that people have that you have to know yourself first you have to love yourself first you know and then you can go and be in a relationship never made sense to me because you only know yourself through your interactions with others even if it's the ones in your head but they always are relational so i don't divide those two things and yes when i think relationally i think existentially it's true in the end it is about being a human being what's your place on this in this earth you know what do you represent what do you want to do what you want to leave behind who are you not just what do you do and how do you perform but who are you and that who are you is always a combination of how you see yourself and how others see you how much you are aware of yourself and how you impact others and how much you realize what others are doing to you you know the story of a relationship it's not just the story you tell yourself because the story you tell yourself is influenced by the character that you have become in other people's stories you know one of the ways i've one day i threw out that line and it became a real kind of guide guide for me i said to somebody in a session i said you know you have been recruited for a play in this relationship that you never auditioned for and here you are suddenly representing for your partner all those characteristics which you don't even recognize yourself but this is what happens in a relationship you enter somebody else's story somebody else's theater and you become a character in their plot and let alone did you know they know that you even applied to be that character so the story is never just created by one person it's a co-creation the way i speak is influenced by the way you listen the way i see myself is influenced by the way you see me people tend to think a human being is a person and they have a fantastic sentence for it which is that's just the way you are that's who he is that's who she is she's that kind of a person and i always say with you she's that kind of a person but we are not the same person with others we are not just one person we may have core characteristics but we are shaped by the relationship in which we are we make the relationship and the relationship makes us and the relationship is the dynamic between you and me it's the space in between it's not who i am and who you are it's what we do to each other that draws from you certain things and that draws from me certain things and that's the definition of a relationship it's the space in between it's a very different way of thinking about it than the two people coming together no it's what is it that they create together and what is it that they bring out in each other you know these days that we ask ourselves questions also you know am i happy am i fulfilled you know do i love my job you know there's always that feeling that there could be something better out there and that i think is inherently problematic when it comes to a long-term relationship so the history of marriage or intimate adult relationships in a nutshell is this there is a massive difference there is a massive difference because the expectations of our adult intimacies are unprecedented we used to marry for survival for the basic needs of the maslow ladder for refuge for economic support for family children companionship then we brought love to marriage and then we wanted in marriage also to experience a feeling of belonging and a feeling of connection and intimacy and then we made marriage or adult relationships an identity economy i want to become the best version of myself that's a completely different set of expectations and the way eli finkel writes in his book is that the good relationships of today are probably much better than the good relationships of the past but there are very few of those people who managed to climb mount olympus and have an amazing view the view is fantastic but the air is also thinner and no but not everybody gets up there now what also changed is that relationships used to be part of our communal living and when you lived in a community you had a few basic needs that were supposed to be met by your partner but the rest of your needs were met by your siblings of which you had many and by your community and by your religious institutions and by and by your your extended family all of that today our need for belonging our need for connection our need for specialness our need for intimacy sexuality you name it has been put onto one person and today we ask one person in the west to give us what once an entire village used to provide and that is a tall order for a party of two this is the rise of expectations that has taken place and you know sex used to be for production you needed many children now we have about two or three at best in the west and that means that sexuality is for connection for pleasure for intimacy that is a completely rewrite we used to marry in our late teens today we marry in our late 20s early 30s that is a completely different story when you already arrive quite ready made and what you want is for somebody to recognize how hard you've worked at making yourself and vice versa we used to never have divorce it was married till you die now it's married till love dies these are major transformations to the way we live our adult relationships and in addition we live in a world in which happiness used to belong to the heavens and then we brought happiness down to earth and first it was a possibility and now it's a mandate you must be happy what's wrong with you that you're not happy what are you doing wrong because if you did it right you would be happy and that is all the pressure that people feel that is around them when they look at their relationship and when they look at the happy people on instagram you know part of what i do is say to people there is not a one-size-fits-all let me show you what marriages look like or adult relationships from all backgrounds from all orientations so that you stop feeling that there is this one model and if you didn't succeed at that well you failed that you can actually reinvent your relationship that the story is not over start writing differently your partner says a and you've been answering b for the last nine years well try say something different and see what happens now the story begins to change and let me show you how you could actually change the story because when you change the story you change the experience thank you for everything you've done over your entire career the way you're bringing awareness to such fundamentally important issues for us to thrive as human beings are there two or three top tips you would leave my listeners with if you want to change the other change yourself you can wait for other people to change for a long time but you can at any moment decide that you're going to do something different and when you change the story their story changes as well it really is a dynamic interplay that's one number two it's really important that you be able to sometimes simply say can i listen i think i just need the best way to talk at this moment is to listen and you don't have to agree with anything you just want to give the other person's point of view space and validity there is never just one experience in a relationship there are multiple points of view coexisting at the same time it's the beauty of relationship and it's the challenge of a relationship so that's the second one the third one don't ever leave play pleasure joy fun for the end they are incredibly important experiences of life in the midst of crisis i think it's one of the most important lessons i learned from my own parents who spent years in the war and then years as refugees and who basically explained to me we didn't stop loving we didn't stop laughing because it was fundamental to our humanity in the midst of degradation it's not true that you need to only stay serious and be efficient machines in order to get through things you want to stay connected to nature to beauty to joy to laughter and especially to sensuality really hope you enjoyed that conversation please do think about one thing that you can take and apply into your life inspiration is not enough you need to take action if you did enjoy that please do press subscribe hit that notification bell and why not check out this conversation that i picked out that acts as the perfect follow-up

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 97,852

Keywords: Esther Perel, Esther Perel relationships, Esther Perel relationship advice, couples therapy, marriage therapy, marriage counseling, what destroys relationships, pitfalls of relationships, relationship problems, relationship mistakes, relationships goals, Dr Chatterjee, Feel Better Live More, feel better live more podcast

Id: 76_svwCtZTk

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 12 2021