Sex, Love, Polyamory, Marriage, and More | Esther Perel | The Tim Ferriss Show

optimal room like this altitude like a non flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking so now I'm supposed to flip now I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton this podcast is brought to you by 4 Sigma tech I reached out to these Finnish folks young entrepreneurs very talented after a Acrobat introduced me to one of their products which is mushroom coffee this specific one includes chaga and lion's mane and nut my socks off I highly recommend if you try it you start with half a packet it's very strong and lights you up like a Christmas tree in the best way possible people are always asking me what I use for cognitive enhancement and for right now this is the answer I try to force this on all of my houseguests it is a hell of a thing if I have employees or people come over who are working on projects with me I always try to feed it to them because I'm going to get the limitless effect it gets a lot more out of them the first time I mentioned this product and for sig Matic on the podcast their products sold out in less than a week so you may want to check them out soon if you're listening to this and the coffee tastes like coffee it takes just seconds to prepare with hot water and oddly enough only includes 40 milligrams of caffeine so it has less than half of what you would get in a regular cup of coffee I don't get any jitters as reflux or any stomach burn any of that it's very unusual and very very cool so if you don't like caffeine they also offer very strong but caffeine free mushroom elixirs which I will sometimes have in the evening I find chaga specifically to be very very grounding and earthy so that is another option and I have a cupboard full of their products at the moment which is right around the corner of my kitchen you can try something you can try a sample pack which is great also right now by going to four sig Matic calm forward slash Tim that's four sig Matic fo you are SI g ma TI c calm forward slash Tim and use the code Tim I am to get 20% off of your first order and they're not that expensive anyway if you are in the experimental mindset I do not think you'll be disappointed so try them this episode is brought to you by audible which I've used for many many years I absolutely love audiobooks and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time when I travel I'm on the road all the time and audible allows me to consume many more books than I possibly could otherwise I have two audio books to recommend right off the bat the first is perhaps my favorite audio book of all time and it's the only audio book I've wanted to listen to twice in a row the graveyard book by Neil Gaiman it's amazing and you will thank me there are a few different versions I like the version that Neal narrates himself one of the most soothing voices of all time the second book is vagabonding by Rolf Potts P o T TS which had a huge impact on my life and form the basis for a lot of what would later become the 4-hour workweek so go to audible.com for word slash Tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many many other options that could be books magazines and much more as a listener of the Tim Ferriss show you can also access a free 30-day trial just go to audible.com forward slash to him you can't make more time but you can make the most of it so turn your travel or your commute into something more with a free trial at audible.com forward slash Tim to start now and get your free 30-day trial hello ladies and germs this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show my dog Molly is staring me directly in the face from about three feet away but that is not relevant to this particular introduction the Tim Ferriss show what is it well my job is every episode to deconstruct world-class performers people who are the best at what they do to give you tactics routines habits etc that you can apply immediately in tests in your own lives this particular episode has been requested and requested and requested people ask me Tim why are you talking about relationships when are you going to talk about relationships why are you so private why are you dodging the questions will no longer folks I am going to speak with Esther Perel I wanted to speak with this particular psychotherapist for many years and for good reason she has been called the most important game-changer in sexuality and relational health since dr. Ruth by the New York Times who featured her in a cover story her TED talks one of which she actually basically winged off-the-cuff which is amazing to me her talks on maintaining desire and rethinking infidelity of more than 17 million views she's tested and been exposed to everything imaginable in 34 years of running her private therapy practice in New York City in this episode we explore everything imaginable we talk about her life story how to find and convince mentors who can change your life for instance what she's learned from Holocaust survivors but then we get into what she's very much known for we discussed topics like polyamory and all of its close cousins is there such a thing as too much honesty in relationships we answer or attempt to answer questions like can we want what we already have why do happy people cheat and much much more she has many many case studies because she's been practicing this in the real world and messy reality for so long a little bit of background on Esther who have had a chance to spend time with in person now and is just more impressive the more time I spend with her she's the author of the international bestseller mating in captivity many of you have heard of this it's been translated in 26 languages she is fluent in nine of them I've heard her in person do this in a crowded room going from person to person in different languages it blows my mind has a language nut this Belgian native now brings her multicultural pulse to a new book the state of affairs and subtitle rethinking infidelity which is out October 2017 through HarperCollins right now though well you can check out of hers and you should check out is a brand new audible original audio series where should we begin and she's co-creating this and hosting it with audible and this looks at specific couples and walks you through their issues and how she would recommend they address them so check that out where should we begin you can say hello to her on the socials at Facebook for instance comm /s thoreau lper al but I the blast with this it's going to expose my my sensitive vulnerable underbelly for those people who have been asking for all this relationship stuff so feel free to ridicule me on the Internet usually don't even have to ask that just comes with this job that I've created for myself so without further ado please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Esther Perel Esther welcome to the show thank you hello I am thrilled to finally have connected with you and you have one of the hottest possible areas of expertise imaginable and there's so many questions that I would like to ask and so many questions that my fans would like to ask but I thought we could start with a bit of background again if you could tell us just a bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like I think that'd be good is context to get us started so I grew up in Antwerp in Belgium mostly enter with the Flemish part of Belgium and I was there till I finished high school I grew up with I have a big brother who's 12 years older than me so I was the young girl and my parents who were actually Polish refugees who came to Belgium after the war from Belgium I moved to Jerusalem and I studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and I lived there for almost six years and then I came to Cambridge Massachusetts to finish my master's degree and and I really thought I was coming for one year to America but that one year became two years in Cambridge and then after that I came to New York and I thought I would do that for one year because I wanted to have the New York experience and I never used my return ticket Here I am you're still having the New York experience I'm still having the New York difference exactly so to you as I understand it grew up among Holocaust survivors and and I would love to hear you elaborate on that experience and what it was like what you what you learned from it and and then we can talk about I'd like to talk about Jerusalem but look I am am very interested as many people are in the history of the Holocaust but even more than that the personal lived experience the lived experience and there's a book called if this is a man and there's another book called the truce both are written by primo levy which was recommended to me by the illusionist David Blaine who actually has primo Levy's inmate number or prisoner number tattooed on his forearm and it was one of the most impactful books I would say I've read in the last 10 years but I have no direct experience with Holocaust survivors what was that what was that like and what did you learn hmm so interesting that we're starting from there so I think that if this was a man bike simulator is one of the most powerful books one ought to read I think it's a it's a unique a unique Testament so it's very simple there were 60,000 Jews in Belgium before the war the vast majority of them were decimated throughout the war in camps and so after the war a group of Eastern European Jews basically came to Belgium for all kinds of means that's kind of where they arrived and my parents who were both the sole survivors of their entire family which means 200 people lost I guess on every side they were both the youngest in their families my mother was in the camps from 18 to 22 and my father from 25 to 30 one actually because the war started very early for them so they they they came you know with nothing to buy to be there for three months they were illegal refugees no they were legal refugees for three months were meant to continue from there to other countries where they had been given refugee status but they didn't they chose not to leave and so they stayed for another five years as as a legal refugees in Belgium which is very settling for me right now with what's going on in our country here and I'm born later so when I am born in 15 years they already found a way to legalize themselves to become a Belgian citizens and and I grew up in a different environment but I am growing up in a community of 20,000 Jews that are all Holocaust survivors that's basically all we knew in the Jewish community of course there was the larger version community around and you know you saw numbers you asked why don't we have grandparents you asked what are these numbers you you you know it was kind of Indian it came with mothers milk is the best way I could say it it was so ever-present we spoke Yiddish German Polish French and Flemish in my home depending on the subject matter we changed and depending on who was speaking to whom the language change but they were they were five vibrant interchangeable languages going on the whole time and if you can imagine that the language is a door to a world then you can imagine how many words were coexisting at the same time that had thing to do with each other actually I grew up above the store in a because most of the Jews of Antwerp were actually our in the diamond business my family was among the 2% that were not and so they had clothing stores and I grew up in the neighborhood where they were - Jewish families so it's like the belly store with the foreigner in the neighborhood you know and you know who they are the two foreigners and they have an accent and they look different and the whole thing and I lived above the store and in this very popular neighborhood lower middle class neighborhood and where we spoke actually not even just Flemish but we spoke dialect Flemish from the street like from the hood the equivalent of the hoods basically and I would straddle back and forth you know one of the ways I can describe it is my father when he turned 50 had two birthday parties one birthday party was for his Jewish survivor friends that took place in addition in Polish and with a lot of vodka one birthday party was with his Flemish friends and that was in dialect and with a lot of beer and by the code by the drinks you knew exactly which world you were traveling in and how how you had to behave and how much you could show that side of you versus the other side of you and you know and there was a sense I think maybe more than anything when you grow up in that kind of a community you you grow up with the notion of impermanence that what is today could disappear any moment I think that's probably one of the strongest experiences you don't ever think that there is a notion of you know what is now will be there tomorrow you'd never know and so you learn to adapt to that notion of impermanence of insecurity if you want and in my parents were where both Yvonne you know they loved life they didn't survive for nothing they were going to enjoy at best and as I have often said they understood the erotic as an antidote to death I think they knew how to keep themselves alive and and then enjoy they were not everybody was like that you had very different kind of moods they were storytellers so people would come from everywhere and they would tell about their life and their experiences and they were good storytellers which means that they knew how to screen out and to could make you laugh and they didn't make you completely tense when you would listen and everybody wanted to know their stories they were amazing amazing amazing stories of survival of of subversion of you know my dad was illiterate he spoke five languages but he was basically literate and he was a grand grand human being you know who had done a lot and had saved quantities of people because yeah we'd say maybe the best the strongest value in that kin in that community another strong is been one of the very strong values one was definitely decency you know how you behave towards your fellow other people and the other one was how would you say that in English to manage street smart to be street smart you know to know to survive basically to find your way out of situations and to be able to to survive survival was the central organizing experience of all these people and then the second experience was revival and I have so many different directions that I would love to take this so I'll try to do it one is time dialect Flemish from the hood could you give us any example of what Street Flemish sounds like or their manikin I think that is it cos in advance with Bella it's also what did you just say yes dude do you want me to say this in an twin Antrim dialect how would you say how are you in like what's up in Provence so their wartime who fought it oh boy yes I'll save my embarrassing rehearsal for when we meet in person like in Adela moment in time claps clapping and I Kanaka Kalamazoo v telomere mechanics are talking entangles accusation ah I think you might have just insulted my ancestors but I'm not sure what just happened I said I said I could say all of this in Antwerp dialect but in order to be sure we all understand it I'm going to tell my stories in English that is a fantastic idea so thank you for that I love languages so I just wanted to hear something that I had never heard before you mentioned that your parents were sole survivors in their families if I heard you correctly when you look at your parents and I don't know if it was simply because of their age or or other factors but when you look at your parents so that that would be the primary focus but at end at other sole survivors what did they credit the survival to oh that is a great question I did go to I did get to ask them these questions so my mother she first spent one year in the woods at 18 running from farm to farm hiding in the woods of Poland and then she was so terrified that she actually surrendered by herself to a camp to a labor camp to a man's camp because she thought if I am in a camp at least then probably will put me in the kitchens or in the laundry and I could at least wake up every morning in the same place my mother ended up going to nine different labor camps now labor camps were generally next door to the concentration camps and as long as you could work you were in the labor camp and if you were not selected that morning for transport then you could continue work but the distinction is often a very narrow distinction and my father was in 14 camps and my mother definitely so the rest of their families was either gassed in kubinka or in Auschwitz basically his family now it's her family in Treblinka and my mother would say it was a combination of premonitions dreams she was very very superstitious and she really believed her dreams that we tell her tomorrow don't go there tomorrow be a little bit late there tomorrow make sure to have an extra layer of loose paper on your feet because it's going to be really really cold she had all these premonitions dreams of her father talking to her and things like that and she will always say chance came first my father too I think ultimately both of them said chance came first and then there was what you did with the chance that was given to you right and so there is always a mixture between choice and coincidence choice and chance and my mother said she always made sure that she was clean that she was groomed that she was mending her socks that she maintained her humanity that she didn't allow herself to become dehumanized and degraded the way that she was being treated by the Nazis and my father my father when we went to visit our Suites actually ended up telling me a story of a dutch convoy that arrived of women and he somehow picked a woman out of the crowd and he decided that he would help this woman and basically the next day they were shaven and so he couldn't even recognize her so he asked a capo who is the other woman that he had meant noticed the day before and they began some correspondence which I have no idea how he wrote because he couldn't write and I never bothered asking him who wrote for you but he fell in love with his woman and he just decided that there were certain things that that the Germans can take away from him and that had to do with feelings and we'd love in the most dire of circumstances and then he basically developed this black market in one of the camps where he was with his best friend where they were for almost a year and a half where he ended up feeding 60 young men who would otherwise not have had enough to eat and therefore to work and therefore to survive and he ended up feeding the Nazis too so when he got caught with those letters one of the Germans basically sent him back to factories and said you're not staying in here you can factories mentioned you have one week to live basically and but he had been feeding the German guys so well that the guy said I eat better when you work in the kitchens and he'd put him back in the kitchen and so he always said it was a combination of chance and ingenuity street-smart what he would call and and doing for others doing for others gave you a purpose to stay alive and to wake up in the morning and if you look at then the survivors whether by chance first like you mentioned choice some combination of those factors and others you mentioned survival and revival when you look at the survivors who ended up being able to revive themselves and to and who did not so the third reason my mother always said is that she always thought that they wanted her to stay alive because if the others were not going to make it they needed to be at least someone from the family and she always thought that she would somehow be reunited with somebody so she maintained this very deep connection inside of her that they were waiting for her somewhere then they realized that there was nobody so I you know it's an interesting question that I organized in my mind like this and I organized it when I was actually writing mating my first book mating in captivity I at the time I had a conversation with my husband and who was working with survivors of torture and political violence and I would ask him when do you know that people come back like what did it mean to come back right come back from from different war zones to come back from having been kidnapped to come back from solitary confinement and and and and what does it mean to come back to life and then as we were talking you know it became very clear that when you reconnect with life not just when you are surviving but when and living it means that you once again able to take risks able to brought out to go into the world able to play because you cannot play if you are in a constant state of vigilance and guardedness and able to trust and then I thought to myself oh my god this is so much what I saw in ant world you know I remember since my entire classroom were children of similar family that they were always two groups of families in my community and then I decided that I would call this there was one group that did not die and one group that came back to life and did not die you could feel it when you went to their houses you know they often had plastics over the couches and the the curtains were pulled down there was more bit it was just you know you you're not dead but you're not celebrating your life you certainly are not enjoying because if you enjoyed and you are not being careful and you have guilt you often have survival guilt why am I here and none of the others made it and you are weighted down and the world is a dangerous place and you are not to trust anyone outside the family and all of that and then I thought there is those who came back to life and that's that's what led me actually to really want to explore what is a roti season what is this antidote that how in the face of adversity do you continue to imagine yourself you know rising above it connected to joy to love to pleasure to beauty to adventure to mystery to all of that and and that those people you know it was very interesting you had people who came together because they were the survivors of this camp and the survivors of that camp and then you had people who came together for this kind of holiday or that kind of celebration and they never discussed their experiences it was all implicit but they were together and they they were charging ahead of life you know the first thing they did when they would come out of the camps by the way to have a child because I'm alone you're alone I have nothing you have nothing let's get married and let's have children because if we have a child and we that we are still human we are able to procreate and we create legacy and they didn't kill everything off and so my parents you know they planted trees in all kinds of places in the world they put claxon in the memory of all the other people of their families my mother at one point we see $10,000 in the years in 99 she received $10,000 from one of the factories of slave labor and their neck decades later and she took the $10,000 and she went and planted an entire forest that had just burned and she replanted a forest because it was like firming life you know and affirming an aliveness with a sense of defiance you didn't you know it didn't all die inside and I think it's that energy that life force that really I think defines and this is true for my community but I would apply this to any large scale trauma that communities experience I don't think it's unique I agree and I don't know why I want to ask you this question right now but you mentioned trust as one of the elements one of the ingredients in the group that was revived that was living and not just having avoided death do you think that and these are not mutually exclusive but distrust come first and then vulnerability or does vulnerability come first and that's how you develop trust that depends on your theory of trust this is the big debate on trust theorists you know Rachel Botsman will tell you that Trust is an active engagement with the unknown and and therefore you you know so that's one direction and the other direction is that it is the actual experience of vulnerability that allows you to then trust and it goes in both directions it really I don't think there is a definitive answer for that and maybe it's not an either/or but it's a both hands and right you know for some people it's like do you need to know in order to taste or do you want to taste first and then be told when it was definitely depends on what type of cuisine or what type of chef but I understand we really need to be able to trust in order to get off from your lap and to run into the world and to be come in to explore and discover and play and be gone in their own space and at the same time it is the act of doing all of that and coming back to base and sitting themselves rubbing themselves back on your lap that reinforces the trust I actually tend to think more in dialectic terms in both hands rather than either/or but I think it's a fantastic question the question of trust you know do does the act of trusting release the option the possibilities to experience the vulnerability or is the vulnerability of the unknown that that you actually engage with ultimately what builds the trust right this is something I've been thinking quite a lot about but I want to also ask you about impermanence and I've tried to focus much more in a sense on things that are impermanent in my life in the last year year and a half and in part that was a result of a conversation I had on this podcast with BJ Miller who is a a hospice care physician so he's helped more than a thousand people to die great guy he lives here dead together yeah yes so fantastic guy I was actually so I went to Princeton undergraduate and he was one of the warning stories because he lost three of his limbs in an electrocution accident a few years before I went to school there I asked him what the most what purchase of less than a hundred dollars had most positively impacted his life in the last six months a year whatever he could pull from memory and he and he mentioned a bottle of wine and it wasn't an expensive bottle of wine and the reason he mentioned it was and I'm going to paraphrase here but he said it was the fact that it went away and the how that encouraged you to enjoy something that you knew wasn't permanent and so I've thought about that a lot since and how to not see ur things being impermanent but really use it as a source of of leverage to maximally enjoy those things while you can and I'm curious how your parents ability to savor impermanence impacted you or your behaviors or your routines or anything if it did I don't know oh I would say in two ways first of all I'm rather voracious in dealing it's a you know if there's one more experience I can have one more thing I can discover one more place I can travel to one more conversation that could be interesting I am quite voracious I not because in because I'm insatiable but because I just because a part of me always says who knows what will be tomorrow right you know I don't live with that there is always a tomorrow I will I live with who knows if there will be a tomorrow and that's very simple and then the other thing I would say that that maybe something that's not always that so so known about me but you know I I also live in a bit of a what we call in my jargon a counter phobic way which means I act as if I'm fearless but I'm actually petrified with dread ok please Allah please elaborate counter phobic act as if I'm fearless counter phobic means like I act like nothing's like it doesn't not nothing but like there's a lot of things I do that could be very scary sometimes to other people anyway and I and I leave it as if I have no fear you know even today I was I was driving down on my bike and and I was thinking like last week it was filled with snow here why am I always just pushing the edge and seeing if I can get away with it and and you know the truth is I got on my bike in the snow and and I realized there was no way I was going to be able to do this and I put the bike back but I was thinking how many times I do things thinking not things going to happen and at the same time as I do it I think at some point something bad is going to happen it's the bow it's that what that means like I live I you would think that and I wouldn't do it if I think something bad can happen it would stop me but no I do it and at the same time I think something bad is going to happen every day I think something bad is going to happen do you do you wish that we're different or do you think that helps you in some well god I wish it was different I mean yes I'm sure it pushes me and stuff but but there must be a way to live without that constant fear like that I know it prepares me very well for the for the modern times we live in I can tolerate a lot of uncertainty you know and the political climate weary and all of that but you know to be in Antwerp there was another car that drove on the main drag you know driving into people you know it's like that's not a surprise to me where I expected that's what I mean it's like I live with that expectation it's just a matter of when not a matter of if but I think it creates a level of anxiety that I don't wish on anybody no I don't think it's a it's normal I actually don't think I think it's normal given the history I come from I don't think it's a good way to live let's let's talk about this antidote that you mentioned earlier so the erotic is an antidote to death but actually I'm going to interrupt myself and before we get there how old were you when you went to Jerusalem eighteen eighteen and why did you go to Jerusalem was that your choice someone else's suggestion why did that happen so before I went to Jerusalem I actually came to the states and I hitchhiked across the country for seven weeks in 1976 calculate sorceress ID you know but in the Bicentennial and at a time you could still hitchhike very freely and I had one of the most formative experiences of my life because I saw America like I don't think I would ever see it again since I had zero reference I had no judgment and I just was welcoming of anybody who was willing to pick me up and take me in I really saw the country in and out in you isn't that I don't think I wish my kids could have an experience like this but I don't know that this is happening these days and then I went to Jerusalem because I didn't want to study in Belgium I didn't like the university system in Belgium why not why not because we have a system where you have to study a curriculum that is prepared by the teacher and you have to regurgitate it and studied rather by heart and I thought it was a 19th century system it really was not at all you know a useful way of learning and I had done that already for 12 years before you know I studied Latin I studied great five six hours a week I mean I have the whole classic education humanistic education and I told you whose name was mysterious mystical beautiful complex you know in in the middle of these hot beds of all religions and we were going to Israel a lot with my family so that that was not it's not like it was a place I didn't know and I thought it was the one place that I could leave to study abroad with my parents blessing so it was very very easy it's like for them that you know you didn't come to study in America at that time or and I had a choice between I was I was very passionate about theater and and my mother said if you want to do theater you stay in Belgium and if you want to travel then you have to go to university I want you to have a structure and I thought if it's University Hebrew University is a great university the city is magnificent and at the time it was really a spectacular place and it was much more open than it is now and and I thought what an adventure I mean I didn't need much explanation at that time it made it didn't make sense and it made perfect sense did you have any if you look back at your time in Belgium and Jerusalem were there any particular mentors who leap out at you if you had to give give them credit for helping steer your life in the direction that it's gone or help you to make any very important decisions is there anyone who really jumps out of you besides your besides your parents yeah yeah so it's interesting you're asking me today because I am going to Washington tomorrow to a big psychotherapy conference called the psychotherapy symposium and I am doing an homage to my mentor but the mentor from America who is 95 and I have been asked to be one of three people to be the person to thank him so I'm in the midst of this experience right now in order to say to one of the most influential teachers of my life I would say in Jerusalem we could also talk about that 95 year old mentor that's totally fine as well or both both that yeah I mean it's an interesting question I am the product of mentorship this is this is true throughout from Hebrew University to Cambridge Massachusetts to studying with salvador minuchin that's the name of this mentor I have been mentored pretty much too but even in my adolescent to my theater teacher and dance teacher I tried mainly because my parents could always help me with any of these things they had zero reference to the world I lived in I solved teachers I thought mentors I thought people who could help me integrate in belgian life who could help me you know trust believe in myself as well you know guide me my brother was definitely one of them and we were you know who was in every book I read was recommended by him but I am totally the product of mentorship and it's like I sought them out then one after the other I this meant that I'm going to be commemorating tomorrow either life but salvador minuchin who is one of the fathers of the field of systemic family therapy how do you spell Salvador's last name me newton mi nu see I CH I n got it the Newton Union I mean you know you're anointed when you have studied with him it's like it's it's like studying with Freud a century later and I knocked at his door I arrived to New York I was here I knew I have been here to be in New York I knocked at his door and I said can I come and observe he looked at me like who are you and that's the story I'm going to tell two more like at the time you could still knock at somebody's door and say I want to learn from you you inspire me and then you let me stay there 10 weeks and then after 10 weeks she said that's it that's about as much as one can learn from I'm observing that you can go now and I said no no no no no I have to you know please please let me stay that's Canada England I always said like I enter through the window you know so I actually want to start to interrupt but I want to dig a little deeper on that because I am constantly asked by well I'm asked to mentor which usually means unpaid consultant for life said I don't often say yes to that but the question of how should I approach mentors or how should I seek people out like Salvador and someone along the lines of your story a little bit different but I remember a professor who had a profound impact on the edge Chou who is at Princeton and was a very eclectic character is it was similar in his appeal to me as Richard Fineman because they were so they're so diverse in their interest so he was a competitive figure skater had taken several companies public was the first I believe the first computer science professor at Stanford because the person was supposed to teach it didn't show up and then the administration asked if anyone would volunteer and he did I was a congressman for a few terms and I really wanted to be in this class but I came back from overseas and I was late to apply to this class which had become very very popular called high technology partnership and so I so I went to the first class and I peeled him and I said I'll sit on the floor I'll clean the erasers I'll do whatever is necessary can I just sit in on a few classes so is it was somewhat similar approach but when people ask you and I'm sure they do how should I seek out mentors how should I approach people I want to learn from what what advice would you give them and maybe any specifics from what you've done in the past did you just knock on door of his classroom or was it his office his classroom I mean I I I could I said I'm in New York and uh and so-and-so suggested that I could meet with you I would love to learn with you I had nothing no credentials I had no reason to be there could I see no because I get my foot in the door and I'd like you I would have done exactly what you did I would have said I'll do anything I'll bring you coffee every morning Jen I just be here because I just needed my foot in the door and then I told you know then I can start thinking and now what I and I admire the people who do that with me I have to say when they come and they fly and they write and they say you I've been reading you I've been you know and then they show me not just I'd like you all right all right I'd marry you but also they say a few things that let me know that they get what I'm talking about so I also feel deeply understood and then I feel like oh man I was there I was the 21 year old you know and I had no papers I had no visa I mean I was I came here with love and fresh water really and that's what I mean street smile it's like you know refugee go for it knock at the doors and and if they say no come back again if you have to third time if you don't act crazy they really understand that you are deeply motivated and that and and if you do it with somebody who did it do that if you don't that crazy is a really important bolded part of that sentence expiry have to be really you know you you're not a cuckoo you're not like just some loose screw but you really show that you I see you and I want you to reject me or I want to learn from your trajectory after ten weeks when you said you're out and I said please please she said you can be a fly on the wall and I said fine how do you fly in the world you will I will melt in the wall no no let me be as invisible as can be and then one day there was a couple that was their family and it was actually a Holocaust survivor family working with the with the therapist behind a one-way mirror that's how we were learning at a time and then somehow suddenly he looks at me and he says you there in the back don't you know something about this and I said he said what would you do I thought you know and then I like spouted something out and then he says that's an interesting thought go tell them and he literally sent me to the other side of the station and and I thought oh ha no longer invisible I exist and that was the beginning then I worked with him for the next four years that's amazing so spies the word in Yiddish oh yes hutzpah yes good healthy creative imaginative food spa yeah need more more foot spa I'm not saying it correctly unless what is it perfectly less less mishegoss right as you know I think that Mentors I agree that sometimes it's kind of a consultant dig for life but sometimes it's just you must have had authors of books or musicians those that you read when you were young that kind of really shaped you and it's a very strange thing when suddenly you become a shaping force in someone else's lives so some reason you speak to them and I am always curious why me like what is it that I say because other people talk about some of these things that touches you that you would want to come here from faraway countries just to meet with me and another patient now go and have a cup of coffee with these people or you know that's why I have responded more than once just by the way they write the letter it's all in how they that male to me that can't expect you know there's no logic are there any key ingredients that you can think of I'll share from my side as well so one of the things that and I mean we both get I'm sure a lot more inbound than we could possibly ever respond to but one of the things that I would say certainly there's a there's it can't be ten pages long but that's obvious I would say that very often people think that it is a form of optimism that will be rewarded if if they end with and I look forward to your favorable response or how about next Tuesday and I'm not personally someone who generally responds to that very well I'm more likely to respond if they close with something like I completely understand if I never hear from you because you must have an incredible amount of inbound requests like this but if you've read this far thank you at least for reading this far and it's it's it lets me off the hook counter-intuitively maybe that makes it more likely that I'll respond because I perceive they have some empathy or ability to understand the situation that I'm in so that would be one in contributing ingredient for me and then the other I remember I ended up hiring someone years ago to work on help me work on the 4-hour body in and some other projects because he heard me talking about things that I needed or read about certain projects I was going to be working on he said oh I just went ahead and did ABCD and here's the work you don't have to respond I just thought this would be helpful and I was like well okay that's very proactive what about yourself yes it's a combination I mean what you just described I mean it's a combination between boldness and humility right you know the boldness is I'm going to do this I've been reading you have been listening to you something in the way you say it strikes it right for me but I don't expect it I totally know what I'm asking you and it would mean an enormous amount I have no reason to do this but if you were to do this it could change my life it would mean so much and it's it's not so much that I can say no yes it's that they really understand the vulnerability of the request you feel that they they are prepared for you to say no and they are so if they were to hear yes it would mean so much and I have been there I remembered you know I've been that person so it's a it's you can't write to me as if you already know everything but at the same time you have to be bold enough to want to say what do I have to lose what do I have to do and then this is and then I have never written something like this I and then I would probably say one thing for me that makes a difference is if they just say you know I've always wanted to be a therapist to work with sexuality and couples know but if they see in the way if they reflect back something about me in which I recognize myself and it's a mirror that I like to look in at then I feel like they know what they really get what I'm about and what I'm talking they're not just projecting onto me you know and then that helps then I feel also really understood it's a variation of what you're described in terms of the empathy setting is similar it's a different wording for something that's not that's quite similar to what you described that sounds similar so I promise to get back to this and I know people are going to want to dig into this will continue to bounce all over the place but you mentioned the the erotic as an antidote to death what is errata sysm and can you explain what you mean by it being an antidote to death yes yes animals have sex and we have the erotic and the erotic is sexuality that is transformed by our human imagination the erotic is the meaning that you attribute to sexuality it's the poetics of sex it's not nature instinct primary force it's everything that gives it a meaning and in a context it's everything that turns sex not into an act but into a place you go not just something you do but a place that you go and that place that you go is a place where you connect with vibrancy with aliveness with renewal with lifeforce with vitality with mystery and that's why it becomes an antidote that that's why people often talk about it in spiritual terms in religious terms it has a transcending quality to it it's really the more mystical meaning of the word erotic you know it was Zohar life force it's really modernity that narrowed the meaning of a eroticism to something that is more blatantly sexual rather than lifeforce but that life force you know often expressed through the sex takes on a whole other dimension so for me to understand that I wasn't just working on sexuality because I'm not interested in what people do the act the you know you can do sex and feel nothing women have done sex and sell dead for centuries you know it's really that other side of it and that you don't have to do much of anything your own imagination you know we are the only ones who can have sex for hours you know blissful section and a wonderful connection and orgasms and all the legs and never touch anybody just because we can imagine it and that imagination is ability to transport ourselves outside of this moment that we are in into something completely different that is the erotic alone and I am very interested in that because because I work with people who come and complain about the loss of desire and the loss of that energy and they want to reconnect with that force and they don't know why they lose it and they confuse it with arousal and it has not much to do with that and you know when people complain about the listlessness of their sex lives they sometimes make them want more sex but they always want better and that better but when you run and analyze it with them it's about that life force that vitality and vibrancy that Miss three that imaginative play that curiosity curiosity is an essential ingredient of the erotic and that's what they want to reconnect with and so then that metaphor that I talked before about not dead versus alive survival versus revival that you know you can survive and have sex and have children but you may feel dead whereas you can can have an expense in which you feel utterly alive and you in your 80s and you do whatever 80 people year old people do it doesn't really matter because because the force transcends the act and that's for me the interest of working on a rhotacism by work with people who want to feel alive if you say look at your group of patients and you then look at a subset who are what they would consider happily married in the sense or happily in a committed relationship maybe committed is too low to determine they're happily in relationship and they don't want to leave that relationship there are many incredible elements of that yet they've they've hit that point which many people have hit certainly I've hit before I am very good I'll to make this personal so I'm very good at monogamy I can do it very very good at it but after say a year a year and a half I have to where I feel like I have to suffocate a part of myself that were subjugates my sex drive so that I don't wander and that ends up affecting sex with my primary partner with my partner in this case so if you have if you're talking to these people and they and they hit a point where they feel sex drive decrease or listlessness what do you view as the ethical options that are on the table to address that okay but they're like four sub sub sub topics yes no exactly there's there's there's there's a lot a lot of that that was probably a far too complex a question but I suppose making it personal is leading me to do that no no I know it's you know so you know making in captivity for me well really a conversation on that very question that you just asked right people would come to me and they would say we love each other very much we have no sex or we love each other very much where is the desire or you know which was very different from the traditional model that you would normally learn in school which was of course if there is no sex people mustn't love each other because when one needs automatically to the other and therefore sexual problems are always the consequence of relationship problems and you should fix the relationship and the sex will automatically follow that was the premise and I decided to question that premise because it didn't really work like that in my office I saw people who got along much better and it still didn't change anything for the desire and so I began to ask what is the relationship between love and desire yeah so that's the first one is what what does that mean this is desire fade to the grave you know is the degradation of desire inevitable and what does it mean and how does one rekindle it and can one we can delete and can you want what you already have which is the fundamental question of desire and then there is the second part to what you're asking which is the question of monogamy you know and when you say I can do monogamy very well for a year then you are defining monogamy by one criteria only at least in the way I've understood you where you speak is that you're defining monogamy as a sexual exclusivity sure in this particular case that's that's what that means but that's one definition of monogamy because you know monogamy is a term that has continuously evolved in its meaning right I mean for most of history monogamy was one person for life at this point monogamy is one person at a time that's right Rick and everybody goes around saying I'm monogamous in all my relationships well that doesn't mean I had like an orgy in it every five minutes there is one person I didn't know I know I'm kidding but we have a model of sequential analysis right now plus we don't arrive we don't we don't arrive monogamous to our relationships we've had previous ones so I this point where does monogamy exist in reality but not in your history and not in your fantasies so that's another consideration and then there is you know maybe if we stopped just looking at monogamy from the exclusivity model because the exclusivity model is an economics model monogamy generally while history has been an imposition on women it has not necessarily been a requirement for men in fact men practically had a license not to be and they have had all kinds of theories to justify why they shouldn't have to be because we needed to know about paternity and about patrimony and lineage so monogamy had nothing to do with love it had everything to do with an economic system that word has transformed since romanticism so much that at this point I think that the conversation about monogamy should probably be less a conversation about sex and sexual boundaries and sexual exclusivity and more about the multiplicity of relationship configurations in which monogamy may be more emotionally determined rather than just sexually determined like gay couples have done forever I think we need to loosen up the term not totally trash it or not totally bind it but certainly untie it you know loosen it up and redefine it now within that it's a choice monogamy it's significant you choose to practice when you keep it in the definition you want and then the question is what do people do with their thwarted desires with their other attractions definitely they have them they can acknowledge them they can have a relationship in which they negotiate with each other what to do with these other desires they can hopefully not always interpret them as you're not enough which is the most powerful reaction that people have today to this to that term and the majority of people have practiced proclaimed monogamy and clandestine adultery I mean that been the dominant model sure you know the question is simply do people want to have a [ __ ] with themselves that is private and secretive or do people want to incorporate this as part of the conversation of couple making at this point we're not meant to have desire for one person for life for 60 years that is not how we were conceived by the way we ever conceived of having 60 year relationships with the same person either for that matter so we are left with a host of new questions about the nature of erotic desire they are given first of all that for until very recently we didn't have sex in relationships just because because of a desire we had it for procreation and generally for women it was a marriage of Duty so sex that is rooted in freewill for pleasure and connections just because we want it and with you and hopefully at the same time and so forth is a very new model and we are all grappling with it everybody is wondering you know what do you do with the lots of desire how important is sex anyway can the relationship sustain without sex can the relationship sustain with sex with others while having a relationship what are the boundaries I mean this is the conversation of modern loves is one of them anyway there's a few but this is one of the dominant conversation of modern love so I don't know if I've answered you but I hope I've kind of highlighted some of the flash points no you have and I think we can I mean we've we've got the time so we're going to keep going I have so you mentioned and I think this is a very important observation that you know adultery used to threaten economic stability now it threatens moreso emotional stability although in some senses certainly if you're within the legal construct of marriage there can be economic ramifications certainly and I'm going to bring it bring it home to San Francisco for a second so I live in San Francisco that's home base and I've tried different relationship configurations in the past I'm not married I don't have kids and I've had some some wonderful relationships I'd say for the last 10 to 15 years I've done a better job of setting my own boundaries understanding other people's boundaries making sure that all those are very explicit so that whatever agreement we have at the very least that the agreement is is clear so I've had some really good relationships what I've seen in the last say let's call it five years it certainly existed for longer than that but whether it's books like more than two or opening up or or others there is a trend at least in the Bay Area for people to try what they would consider monogamous or polyamorous relationships and I have just in the cohort that I've observed and there are a lot in the Bay Area the always honest all the time radical candor approach seems to implode with pretty spectacular fireworks on a regular basis so the question I want to pose is is there such a thing as too much honesty and how do you think about that when you are advising how do you think about it whether yourself or in your own relationships or how do you advise your clients when they're grappling with this you know should we because for instance I'll give you and for you out there who are sensitive earmuffs cover your ears but there are people have here who I can have a high tolerance for say what they would call compersion for people who are who don't know that word that is thanks way it's been explained to me getting gratification or pleasure from someone else's pleasure so if your partner's having sex with someone else you derive a certain amount of pleasure from that so I know couples who have tried this because they've been told it's a more highly evolved approach and so they'll sit down to dinner and the let's just say in a heteronormative relationship the male will say so what was it like having so-and-so inside you yesterday and they'll try to have that conversation and everything blows apart at the axles and it just doesn't work there's some people for whom it works very well but how much honesty is too much on see is there such thing is too much honesty are there other parameters that you've seen work for people yes yes but you see I think that you want there to different cultural systems here so when it comes to the polyamorous model in San Francisco it is you know it is a bit of a growing movement in the hot beds of startup cultures like like Silicon Valley because it's people who choose a lifestyle that has to do with an entrepreneurial mindset that aspires to greater freedom of choice to authenticity and flexibility and and so there's a kind of a marriage between the community let live there and the appeal of of a more polyamorous life but for me the question of honesty is actually much broader than it extends way beyond and I think clearly in the United States and America prides itself on being a pragmatic culture and as a pragmatic culture it likes unvarnished directness and it has all kinds of expressions for conflating honesty with factual truth say it as it is don't beat around the bush get to the point I mean there are so many expressions in this culture that favor explicit statement versus more opaque communication you know that that conflate the concept of the moral cure of honesty has to do with truth-telling and transparency that's the definition there are many cultures in which honesty means something very different honesty is not about you know laying it all out there it's actually about living thinking about what the consequences will be for the other person to live with the truth it's not a confessional model it's not rooted in Protestantism and so so honesty is not about I have to tell you everything I feel or everything I've done it's about what will it be like for you want to live with the consequences of knowing and so you don't say certain things because you want to say face the other person or because you you you just don't see the point of it because there's almost something slightly almost aggressive about it a little bit you know it's like what am I supposed to do with all of this now right now you feel better you're unloaded what about me chanting and I think it's very cultural from for me suddenly coming from from Europe we don't necessarily think that that's saying everything and putting it all out there and and through telling and transparency are the only markers of importance I think we we think that sometimes keeping things to yourself is just as important not not everything must be said and here this notion else that connects with that is also that intimacy is about saying everything it's kind of wholesale sharing you know and if you don't say everything then you must be keeping a secret because the opposite of transparency is secrecy and there is a complete loss of privacy and this is true in the intimate realm of relationships that it is true in many other sectors of our society privacy is at risk and so people respond either with the with the other extremes yes I do think that they can be too much sharing it's not too much honesty but it is too much sharing and the sharing is problematic when you think that that's the definition of honesty so this is a really important without clear what I just it was clear no what's clear and I think the the honesty it is does honesty or 100% sharing always equal caring for the other person or fostering intimacy I think is an interesting question and yeah also is no the answer is no yeah sometimes of course it is but it's not a given it's not a dogma you know I think that actually holding back I think making space for the other person I think dealing with your own feelings I think this idea that because I love you I should be able to tell you everything and if you don't tell me everything you know then maybe you're not close and this telling as being Vicar as becoming almost like a bit of a I deserve to know what are you thinking what are you feeling why don't you want to tell me like no those are invitations those are not right right no they have a right to enter another person you invited in and the for those people listening who want to have a very illuminating but entertaining read short read on this type of question and radical honesty there's a great article I think it's called I think you're fat by AJ Jacobs at Esquire who is hilarious and a good friend so you should read that but I want to bring up an anecdote and get your advice on or how you would hear how you would advise someone so I remember having lunch with close friend of mine not two years ago I would say and he he had a friend approached him who had cheated on his wife he had had an affair and he was grappling with whether to tell his wife or not and my friend my friend's advice was he said no that is your burden to carry and you carry that with you it's not fair to inflict that on her because you want to make yourself feel better after a very very long conversation that was his conclusion and so I'm curious to know in a say patient setting if you have someone male or female because certainly women cheat and I've been cheated on before I mean it happens certainly when someone is grappling with whether to tell their partner or not how do you walk them through that decision what is it that you want to tell your partner do you want what is it that you wanted to you want to tell that you fell in love with someone else you want to tell that you realized in having a fling with someone else how much you loved her or him you realized that you have been lying to yourself all these years you realize that it's time to get back into gear because you've become lazy and complacent you realize that you have been keeping all kinds of sexual secrets that have nothing to do with non-monogamy but more with your history what is it you want to tell you part you want to tell that you you know that's the first thing and and do you want to tell something about what happened to you in the meeting with the other persons do you want to tell what that meeting with the other person made you think about your life do you want you know we're not just talking about a series of facts we're talking about the meaning and the motives of the transgression so that's the first thing I ask what is the meanings and the motives why did you do this how did this happen to you where you're looking for it did you choose it did you just stumble into it did you resist it did you not resist it did you hope it would not you know are you living with conflict I what is the guilt that you're feeling what is the gift is the gift that you realize that you don't have desire for your partner it's begins that you realize that your partner must have been really terribly frustrated because you've been a terrible lover to your partner what is it and so after before I ever wouldn't I don't have to tell people do or don't tell or don't tell I have I helped people figure out what it is that they would tell why would they want to tell it and what do they think will happen to the other person when they tell it to them I think the notion that sometimes not to tell is kinder than to tell the way that your friend did is also one of the many options it's not the only one but it is definitely in the repertoire that sometimes you tell to for your own conscience and then the other person can churn the whole night you know so there is the positives and you know the the liabilities and the positives of telling and then there is the liabilities and the positive of not telling what do you think your partner would want to know that's the other thing and when you want to tell do you ask yourselves do you think your partner would want to know are you speaking because of your thoughts today about the other person or are you thinking of speaking because of how you feel about yourself you know there's a full spectrum of dishonesty right there simple omissions there's partial truths there's white lies is blatant office creations and there's mental hijacking I mean you know the secrecy can be a cruel and secrecy can be benevolent you know and sometimes you lie to protect yourself and sometimes you lie in order to protect your partner and then there is the ironic role reversal in which sometimes you realize that you've been lying to yourself and it was you that you were deceiving and it's all of that that you want to unpack all those twists and tangles of lines before you send people out because you can never take anything back right you know and the next thing that's going to happen you're going to say I slept with someone and then they want to know how was it and then they want to know did you fall in love with that person and then they want to know maybe they don't want to know so slow down mm-hmm sit with this ponder it figure out what this was about for you if it really meant nothing what does that mean when you say it meant nothing you mean to say there's not supposed to threaten the future of your relationship this is not a person with whom you want to live but even something that is meant to mean nothing has psychological valence you know people there's a lot of effort goes into making something not mean anything paradoxically for sure so you know sit with that and I will sit with you for whatever time it takes till we figure this out and then maybe we'll write a letter you're not just going to go there and sit you can write a letter and you're first going to hand write that letter and you're going to get your first version out which you probably won't send in which you just cleanse you so you do your own conscience cleaning and the next letter will be the one in which you're left thinking about you and more thinking about your partner and your relationship that's the steps now that's that's very smart the next question I want to ask which is actually from the audience do you think it's possible for a partner in a non monogamous marriage could be relationship to get over the fear of being left by opening that door I think this is very very this is a very common question because maybe one person is more enthusiastic or feels the need for some form of non-monogamy meaning sexual monogamy than the other or they're both open to it but they haven't experimented or experienced this for an extended period of time or maybe they have and they've been burned it do you think it's possible for someone to get over that fear of being left by opening that door and what are some of these strategies or coping mechanisms if so but what if I told you that the person who experiences that fear more openly and is able to say for me this triggers the fear of losing you all together is actually experiencing a lesser fear than the one who is wanting to have other partners could you say that again please yes see couples have a setup right in a setup every couple has a setup maybe it's an organization right in every couple you will often find one person who is more in touch with the fear of losing the other and one person who is more in touch with the fear of losing themselves one person more in touch with the fear of abandonment and one person more in touch with the fear of suffocation and that tells you which is the one that is more interested sometimes in experiencing open boundaries and non-monogamy or non exclusiveness anyway but the person who wants the open relationship presents as the one who doesn't have the fear of abandonment I see yourself but that doesn't mean that their strategy isn't in fact one that is meant to address an even bigger fear of abandonment that the other it's just that in this relationship the other one is the one who gets to fill the quota okay - yes sure okay the understand couples have complementary systems so I don't at face value we believe that the one who said I'm afraid to lose you is the only one with that fear I believe we all have it but I believe that the one who expresses it in the couple isn't always the one for whom it is actually the most intense sure that no I agree with that its secrets of a lot of relationships no I I agree you understand the person who gets to voice it it's actually sometimes only voicing a fear that the other one doesn't even voice oh no I agree I agree okay well that said I think it really depends it depends I would not have a set answer for this there are plenty of people who had first felt very scared and then have learned to trust differently and have learned to understand that their partner really comes back to them and in fact the more they feel free the more they want to come back to them and they really have learned to trust that and then there are others for whom it's excruciating it just feels either a replay from childhood either a sense that they are not enough because they have really the notion that you would need more than me and that I can't fill all your needs it's very very painful to them and they bought into that that idea and with very powerfully sometimes there is the sense that you know you allow yourself something that I don't why can't you stop yourself there are other things that I don't get and I don't go and get them elsewhere compromise should be a part of what both of us do in the name of our relationship I've seen it go both ways I've seen people for whom it really became a way to live that they never knew existed and I've seen people for whom this is just not the way they want to live they don't want that fear they don't want to remember every time their parents for now that they didn't know if they were coming back they don't want that notion of what if you will fall in love somewhere else which of course in and of itself would happen no matter what that threat is always there that reality is part of any couple but somehow I don't want to have to know it with such vividness or because I feel that there is something lacking in me or I feel my own insecurities and therefore every time you go my insecurities get awakened it's a complex system I would just say that it generally works better when both people are from the same tribe when both people have that same curiosity when both people experience the the fluidity as something that is additive and not something that's an actually tick then it becomes an enhancing experience rather than a dreadful experience each time it so it's very complicated when one person says to the other I really want this and the other one says this is hell for me I can't live with this it's it's and and there's very little flexibility sometimes in that system because both people feel it very intensely and more than one relationship has had to end on that basis so what I'd like to ask following up on that because I think this question is and I'm going to stop hedging all my comments obviously everybody listening this there are million different ways to organize relationship and a million different sort of combinatorial approaches to it right whether it's homosexual heterosexual you know sexual I have no idea you're right there are a million different ways to go about it so I'm just going to assume for the sake of simplicity that a lot of people are in a no sexual relationships this question is very common I think from women who are so the eight you have a male in a in a relationship who wants more sexual variety and the woman in many cases not all cases is is it least around San Francisco potentially open to that but doesn't have the same sexual drive necessarily as the male so the male is going to exercise that option more than she will and that leads to or contributes to perhaps fostering some degree of insecurity you know if he's going to be seeing X number of other people and I am not seeing Y number equivalent of people then the likelihood of him disappearing is is higher and the MER I was told once by someone they said well no one can take the you're meant to be with now the way that the content context in which that was provided was to underscore the fact that like you said whether you're you're married not married in a relationship have an explicit agreement or not the potential in the risk for digression or meeting someone else is always there but I guess the the fuel on the fire here is that when you explicitly give someone the option the fear is that it's more likely to happen and that's just more of an observation the the I wanted to mention two things that I've been very curious about recently that's that seem at least in the group that I've observed to work pretty well even though I think they are at least one of them is viewed as pretty unfashionable and so I wanted to get your take on it so the first one is an arrangement and this I've only heard once but I thought it was very clever actually no not once twice was an older gentleman he's in his sixties and married for I want to say 20 plus years has a number of kids I was asking him about his marriage and he said well we have an open relationship okay when we're having some wine tell me more so we continue talking he said the way I asked him how do you prevent it from causing problems and he said well every relationship has problems so it's not like one is immune and one is not but his wife gives him a report card every quarter so every three months he gets a report card it was one to ten scale in four categories lover husband provider father and he's allowed to have a low score in any one of those as long as his average is high enough so they agreed on what his average had to be so he might say the overseas for a period of time on business trips and he might also sleep with other women so he's going to get a low lover score a high provider score and then the other two are sort of up for up for debate but I found that very I found that appealing maybe just because I like measuring things as a way of course correcting and keeping things in check the second which which I particularly like your thoughts on all we can go anywhere with this is that looking at maybe a contrast to the tell me everything I'll tell you everything breed of polyamorous relationships where radical honesty is an underlying tenet I've run into more than a few people who effectively have a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy and I it pains not to pain me to say it but I suspect I'll get a decent amount of backlash from my audience it seems to work pretty well in the sense that more than a few couples have said look that whole polyamorous tell everything and I know those are not mutually dependent is not for us but as long as you're safe as long as you don't embarrass me then you can do what you want and the policy is Don't Ask Don't Tell I that seems very old-fashioned I mean maybe the fact that it's a two-way street makes it less old-fashioned but what are your what are your thoughts on that because it seems to me just intuitively to be and maybe it's a highly dependent the person but to be less prone to kind of supernova destruction versus the radical honesty peace for most people do you have any thoughts that's a mouthful I know but I'm thinking about a lot of this stuff for a long time so I think that I would start and I would say that trust loyalty and attachment come in many forms and when you describe this example and you like it because of its measurements I would say I like it because of its creativity because there's thoughtfulness because there is a shared complicity because it seems to have worked because there's imaginative 'no sand resourcefulness in it and because I think that couples often lack a lot of that every other system gets innovators and gets new ideas and put into it all the time and it is extraordinary how much relationships enter into a certain mode and then stay in it for decades right so anything where I see couples coming up with their own imaginative solutions to various situations and then be flexible about it and review it and change it to me is great that's it and I think that unfortunately coupledom does not benefit from the same innovative spirit that every other company in entrepreneurial has space these days gets to benefit there isn't one model fits all and a certain couple may have lived for a while in a monogamous arrangement and exclusive arrangements but then decided at some point because of all kinds of issues having to do with age with illness with with with success would you name it with children living with with a new awakening with lots of weight you name it you name it there's lots of triggers that make so many people want to change their relational arrangement and I think that if people are going to stay together a long time they need that ability to review their relational arrangements and to negotiate it and then to try something and then to see if it works into tree I mean I can't enough emphasize my desire for flexibility to become part also of coupledom so that it doesn't just be it enters a groove it goes until it can't and then it just kind of ends there well it needs to be something a little bit more Riaan reaching there so the first thing I think for some people Don't Ask Don't Tell works extremely well it gives them enough privacy it makes them both know that there is still the primary loyalty and commitment there is an implicit sense of knowing where one can go how far one can go etcetera etcetera and they need to be ample continuous investment and reassurance and building into the relationship itself the point is not that you should have you know the leftovers at home and everything else that is meaningful and exciting and and and and interesting and engaging elsewhere by definition you still want to be able to put some you know loves in your own fire for other people transparency and radical honesty has become an ideology the problem is ideologies generally are rigid well you know they don't lend themselves to being adaptive and fluid to to what's in front of you it becomes a matter of principle rather than a matter of what makes sense I still I may be a little bit you know of the school student make sense just does it work I don't care if it's true or if it's right does it work is it decent is it caring it is warm you know it has it been adapted it does it fit both people those are the criterias you go back and forth like a lightest Copic not just like two ideas you know for many people the notion of radical honesty transparency truth-telling authenticity those have become the values of the economy of today and so is it in the economy of the home we want experience you know we want purposeful transformative you know experiences we want them at home we want them at work everywhere for other people home is a different thing and in home it meant to satisfy other needs etc etc and there is a segmentation that is accepted we have these kind of things we share other things with other people and to me it's really a matter of does it fit this particular couple does it work for them or is there one person who is quietly hurting over a long time and kind of giving in but there's a power dynamic because the word we haven't used is that in all these negotiation there is an element of power you know there is power when you bring in other people there is power when you feel that the other person can leave you there is power when you have faced with the Verte of a person who is constraining you there is a dynamic of power in all of these issues and the question is is there an equity in the decision-making do broad people feel that they have equal power in their ability to to say what works for them in this instance that you describe what's beautiful is you feel like you know whatever he does she gets to evaluate him and so the evaluation is power it's a story worth you know in the good sense of the word I use the word power and and so they are calibrating power you know you get to do things but I don't want to have to suffer because of it I want to know that I still get to primary goods I want to know that I come first you know and so you're now you want to go play go play but don't play on my behalf and don't play on my account I don't want a devaluation of our assets because you are incurring other revenues somewhere else you know and they play with this and so for this couple to me you know I'm playing by I'm putting my script on to it but I when I listen to the description I'm looking at what is the power distribution because the power is the sovereignty the power is the is the dignity of this otherwise you know all these things become not power but power maneuvers and that's a whole other thing and that has nothing to do with just sex alone you know this should take place you know all every relationship is a power dynamic I think that that has to be laid out first inside of that we can come up with so many different arrangements that people will live for a while and then switch that I I want to just say that when I would say that to the to the to the polyamory people as well I mean it's like you know there is a beautiful proliferation of non-monogamy thinking that is taking place okay and they're very different from the feel of pioneers of the 60s and the 70s and and but then of course you know many of those people are the children of the divorce and the disillusioned and they're not rebelling against commitment per se but they're looking for me more realistic ways to make their vows last and they've concluded that that includes other lovers and and I think that the form takes you know can vary enormously you can have occasional hall passes you can have swingers who play with others you can have established threesomes foursomes complex polyamorous networks all of these things have one purpose to reconfigure love and family life which we have done from time immemorial right now it's in your comment on power reminded me is it gives Oscar Wilde said everything in the world is about sex except sex sex is about our champion so we spent so much time with people grappling with these issues what was the research process for your new book and you that is I mean really and fresh on the mind I would think at this point for you what was the drive behind why do another book and what was the research process like huh so you know mating in captivity looked at the dilemmas of desire inside the relationships and the state of affairs which is my new book looks at what happens when desire goes looking elsewhere and I had gone to 20 countries on book tour for mating and in many places the only chapter people wanted to talk about was the shadow of the third the chapter on monogamy which was only one chapter in that whole book and I thought there's no way that I can do a thorough study of desire without looking at desire that goes wondering you know what is warming desire like what is the power of transgression why the forbidden so erotic and what is this thing called adultery which has been historically condemned and universally practiced you know and 50 like and and so I took me a while this is ten years since I wrote mating in captivity and not I take a long time to think and I only write if I feel I have something to say and something to say means that I want to change the conversation on the subject and I want to just add one or two thoughts I want to really frame the conversation I want to take something and and make a cultural shift around it so for the past six years about I began to travel the globe and have conversations about the subject of infidelity transgression twists love affairs [ __ ] buddies betrayal drama lying deception cheating gas lighting from both sides okay what is that what is gas lighting I've heard this expression point I don't know what it is if when I say I know you are seeing somebody else I know I know it I feel it or I've even and you say no you're crazy this is because of what your father did to you you don't have annoyed and you'd literally destroy the coherence of my reality got it okay it's when you're accused of something you turn it around and then to the fracture but you also literally begin to make me feel like I have no longer a grasp on reality I say god it's a real mental torture you know it's not that you're denying is that you're also saying is what's wrong with me that I'm thinking this and then you basically make me doubt myself and you make me doubt that I actually that when I think the tea is hot it's actually hot you know I no longer know to trust the word that I live in my perceptions my thoughts my feelings and that becomes an internal breakdown it drives people crazy it's really cool actually so very common but it's a cruel thing to do and I saw you know I'm 34 years a couples therapist I have a fascination for couples I work in seven languages I can take them from all over the world and and I began to only see couples who have been affected by infidelity in one variation or another I also did a TED talk in Passau which has you know seven and a half million people in a year or two and I thought okay I've got 1,500 letters I thought my god I'm walking confessional the world is pouring their secrets onto me on this subject anyway and let me try to think it through let me really delve into this and look at it from a systemic point of view meaning if I ask an audience you know have you have you had any experience with affairs or infidelity you know nobody's going to lift their hand nobody is going to say I cheated or I've been cheated on so easily but if I ask same audience have you been affected by infidelity in your life I probably get 90% of the singers up it's an amazing thing as the child or as the friend of as the boss of as the lover as the other woman as the partner as the person who went out you name it and now it becomes really a collective experience so I wanted to look at it from all angles and I see couples to three hours at a time and I delve into the labyrinth of passion all of it you know from both from all sides and then I collected all the data I wrote I transcribed hundreds of hours of sessions I transcribed all the letters and I began to gather and then decide what are the main assumptions at this point about this subject how does our culture think about this because no matter by the way infidelity happens in polyamorous couples too you know the fact that you get an open license doesn't prevent people from climbing the fence something about transgression is deeply human and you've also observed the definition of cheating continues to expand right where you have sexting texting dating apps watching porn I mean the the wall is getting the inside of the walls getting a yes narrower and narrower in some respects also absolutely the definition is elastic it's unbelievable what people today how many more ways that we we define something as being outside of the of the boundaries and we consider them in Fidelity's and you know it is one of the experiences that encompasses the entire human drama everything jealousy hurt betrayal pain lust love passion all of it it's like every opera there's a reason no and and it is a one of the most complex human experiences to really delve into but it is it is like endlessly fascinating and so I wanted to rethink infidelity what does it mean today why does it happen in any kind of relationship what does it mean to know that that your partner never really belongs to you they're only on loan and with an option to renew or not so I related to that I get asked about marriage and kids a lot even though I feel very unqualified the comment on either but what is the argument for marriage these days because I have trouble coming up with one the argument that comes to mind because the legal construct the financial consequences the difficulty in the sort of unraveling if you want to change direction or a new chapter means a new partner whatever it might be there there are a lot of consequences now the argument the only argument that I come up with for it is related to loss aversion where maybe if you really want to make a strong committed effort to maintain a relationship for a long period of time that if you have something to lose if you don't enforce that that in this case takes the form of a legal construct that you're you're not going to put in the requisite efforts okay but it just seems to me there's so much downside that prevents flexibility how do you how do you think about that or is there an argument for the legal construct of marriage because I have more and more difficulty as I see friends marriages imploding exploiting good people often faithful people it gets harder and harder for me yeah but Americans love to marry well once or twice three friends you know part of the way that I began the project of writing about infidelity came out of the the Lewinsky Clinton scandal because I was very intrigued why was this country so tolerant about multiple divorces and so intransigent about the slightest transgression right right sure no you know no matter how much sex becomes open they remain intransigent about the subject of infidelity and the rest of the world by the way that is more family oriented has always opted the other way around you will affect the family you know and you don't divorce so baby I why Americans love to marry I have never fully understood I mean I had my thoughts but it's not like I have a definitive answer to that I think there is a two questions there is why do people could do you know why why is a deep meaningful connection with another human being with whom you weave a story you know along the stages of life that is one thing does it need to take place within the construct of marriage is a very different thing agrees so you know in Europe we marry much less but we have families and and we try to create families with what modernity has given us which is a rather nuclear model of family which is a very difficult model for family and in a terrible model for couples we were not meant to be two adults with four or two or three or four children all alone in cities I mean none of it is is the way we were meant to do it and so it's extremely taxing on the couple and at the same time the only reason families today survive is if the couple is doing relatively well right that's the only thing keeping families together so we're facing a very interesting thing at the same time if Apple sold your product that fails 50% of the time would you buy it again I don't have a plan much for her well if you think that that's a guarantee think again because at this point it is really not doing that well in terms of guaranteeing new things at but I think they're very few rituals at this moment you know with the loss of traditional religion they're very few which was there very few structures very few institutions to which we can adhere and and I can see that in that sense they had the importance of marriage as as a ritual that is rooted in a tradition and that comes with a code of conduct with an official norm to it and so that's where I place marriage I don't think of it in legal terms at all I think of it very much in terms of its cultural meaning it's there very few you know it's like a spine there very few things people can hang themselves on these days you know everything is about the self the and the burdens of the cells are very heavy at this moment so marriage has become that that that that that institution that still tells you how how to go about doing these things in life to me the very interesting thing when you ask about why marry I think about the gay marriage gay marriage really was one of the ways to try to understand what does it mean to legalize to give rights to queer families to to allow people to to adhere to a norm when there are so few norms at this moment everything has been re-evaluated and redefined and I think people are sometimes very desperate for norms structures where our pillars architecture you know everything else is fluid fluid fluid you know but we all need solid as well as we need fluid and marriage has remained one of the last solid constructs even though it fractures way too fast and way too often can you do it without marriage completely I think that you know but for some reason people feel that commitment without the structure isn't but rest in the same way you know the marriage is the buttress to it's the fulcrum and I don't know if relationships actually that would be an interesting thing to look at numbers do relationships that are not held together by the contract of marriage do they dissolve anymore in Europe than they do here I'm not sure you know it's fifty two percent or forty eight at this point maybe to come down a bit on first marriage but the fascinating data is not first marriage it's 65 percent divorce rate on second marriages 65 percent yeah that is a much more interesting data yeah why yeah why why do you find it interesting because it touches on something else that I think is much more interesting as a family as a couple therapist is that okay let's assume the second time it's easier you've done it the first time you may not have the young children it's a data but to me the more interesting thing is that the first time you still actually adhere to the model you know I think that often the divorces are the true idealists they believe in the model they just chose the wrong person and they do better next time the second time they begin to think that maybe it's not all about the other person and that maybe it's time to take some responsibility for themselves everybody at some point has some relationship things to work out and the only question is with whom who are you going to do it with but it would seem that at some point you should also ask wait a second if if the if the people are coming out of the same factory meaning the structure that has a 50 percent failure rate perhaps you did the structure should also be a comparable under consideration I would think absolutely but that's coupledom that's not that's not just marriage as my sure identify dress no I think that to me I'm really fascinated by how creative you know having just written a book about infidelity I can tell you if people took you know 1% of the creativity that they put in their affairs and brought it to their marriages or to go you know it's astounding it's the same people change context and they suddenly are filled with imagination and attention and focus and generosity and kindness and desires like you know so it's not marriage per se as coupledom and for some reasons the expectations of coupledom and never have been higher but what people invest in it hasn't really measured up between the best of themselves not to their partner they bring the best of themselves at work to their friends to their colleagues to their to their hobbies their children for that matter much more not to their partner and that is a much more interesting thing to me than marriage per se it's like I don't ask so much why do people marry I ask more why do people so often bring the leftovers to their partner while at the same time wanting their relationships to be so glorious something doesn't click what do you think the answer is you know it's like when people say my father is my best friend and I'm sometimes especially in my office I have to say do you treat your best friend like this ha ha ha ha because what kind of BS is this I mean no no that's not how you know would you say this to somebody else could you imagine being that critical with your friends what is the idea this is where marriage comes in it's because you really think that because you married the other person is just going to be there and take it vice versa this is in both directions right like that that there is something about the seal at underneath that has locked this that allows people to then behave sub car right and maybe there was more of a fear that of losing it because your friends won't take it certainly your boss won't take it your colleagues won't take it you behave that way I'd work you out but at home you think you can do these things you can treat people really poorly you can put them down you can disqualify them you cannot listen to them you can shout you can kick you can neglect them you can be indifferent I mean my god there is so many ways to not behave well at home and and then call them you know it's like to me this is what I call people that make people accountable it's like excuse me excuse me you can't trap another person this is like you know marital sadism so you have we get our four hours and you have a number of different venues and vehicles through which you're exploring these topics the book is one of course and what did you say the title of new book one more time please so the book is the state of affairs rethinking infidelity so I suspect that will be as your talks and previous work has been very very popular and topical and yes I would say this I would say why do people cheat why do happy people cheat is infidelity always a deal breaker why do we think that men need variety and our board and whereas we think that women are hungry for intimacy and lonely why do we have such complete different ideas about why men and women cheat what do we do with jealousy can love ever be plural its possessiveness and arcane vestige of patriarchy or is it intrinsic to love tell these questions that I'm taking on and you're also going to be exploring that in your own program on an audible channel soon as I understand it yeah and yeah if you wouldn't mind describing that a little bit yes I'm very excited about I mean it's really different ways of exploring you know the book the state of affairs is not really a book about infidelity it's really a book about what do we learn from infidelity about the human heart and the human condition so I use that lens to enter into excavate you know many many subjects and I wanted to also have you know the opportunity of letting people come into my office and actually in those conversations that I have with couples because most of the time we have no idea what happens in a couple you know couples are isolated islands sometimes the women may talk to somebody and the men talk to very few and so we have no idea what's in the antechamber you know of the couple na so I did a series with audible and we're going to do a second one already that of ten couples therapy sessions covering a range of subjects where you think you are actually entering into the intimacy of these other relationships and you very quickly realize that you're actually looking inside in you're looking at your own mirror and you're looking at yourself and and you start to talk with the persons the people of your life your partners or others about where you are in relation to these questions so then there are stories of infidelity and stories of sexuality and stories of raising children and stories of of infertility and stories of unemployment and and it's a it's a very very poignant experience because it's intimate in your ear you don't see them but you hear them 10 couples who have volunteered to come and have a session with me like I do generally in my office it's exactly what I would normally do but this time recorded and told as to as stories to share and stories to invest ourselves in what is the name of the series where should we begin where should we begin that's what everything is I did where should we begin so there only and for people listening in the show notes I will have links to everything that I can get links to that we've discussed podcast comes out May 18 and at first it will be inaudible and on Amazon Prime and then the book comes out in September we'll be in stores October 10 and then the podcast will also be released on iTunes and so it will be released at the same time as the book comes out so I have just a few more questions I want to let you get back to your day but but just as we wrap up a few quick questions one is what books besides your own have you gifted the most to other people or the book after the gifted the most is Viktor Frankl the search for meaning hmm very since I'm 16 as a fantastic book and what about reread the most yourself what book have you reread or books anything that any books that come to mind you've reread I recently reread the art of loving by Erich Fromm I reread the erotic mind by Jack Morin I reread oh I reread for this book I reread Madame Bovary which was very disappointing how I'll tell you what I reread that I loved because one of my kids was reading it in school Crime and Punishment now you can have reread the Russians that that we just I don't they are timeless and if you had a billboard this is a metaphoric question but if you had a huge billboard where you could put a short message on it non-commercial but a short message up could be one word could be a sentence could be whatever to get out to millions of people what would you put on that billboard or what might you put on that billboard there's always more you can do for another do something for the you know just don't have your day without having done something for someone that you don't know for that matter not just for the ones that are in your little circle and a billboard it would say do do your part I love it and any any parting comments requests of the audience could be the same thing they just said but are any any parting thoughts questions or suggestions for people who are listening any any ask of the audience you know the reason I see do you part is because so much of the culture we live in is about doing things for ourselves enhancing ourselves pushing ourselves being more successful being more healthy you know and it is the most powerful antidepressants I know yet you do something on the depression front as well and I I think that the curse of today's isolation there's a lot of other things we have gained but we have lost something and isolation and this connection is really is a curse it's a curse of modern life and I think that there is no more powerful antidepressant and no nothing that will give us more meaning in life than to know that we matter for others and that means to do for others which is a little bit what couples therapy is about you know most of the time people come together sappy they don't come in order to say I came to check myself out they usually come to be an expert on the other and they say fix it do something you know or I came to drop off you know so I'm all the time thinking you know and what are you doing take responsibility you know it's freedom responsibility and for the rest it's like if any of you are inspired by what I say join me on all the platforms where you can find me so easily and and there's nothing I think I value more than to be in conversation like I've so enjoyed our conversation you and I and to talk about these things it's it's part of everybody's life all the time love sex trust loyalty commitment what else is there you know absolutely a where is the best place on social media for people to say hello to you if they wanted to say hello so any any one preferred place I would see my fanpage on Facebook probably but I am on Twitter and I'm an Instagram and I'm on YouTube I'm doing this whole beautiful series actually of videos that I'm putting up on YouTube on relational intelligence that I think kind of a snapshots of what I I when I say in short what I often say long I'll tell you what I want is we we have often these days try to simplify things and I think what I try to do is create a conversation and on relationships and love and all of that I'd work as well as at home both levels of relationships in business in companies etc that embraces complexity that's multicultural and that's inclusive and I think that the more people join this the more I will you will help me do my piece of social change mm-hmm so everybody definitely say hello to Esther Esther Perel on Facebook Instagram Esther Perel official YouTube / l Esther switch now put all of these in the show notes Esther thank you so much for taking the time this is a real joy and a tremendous tremendously stimulating and thought-provoking you have a lot - a lot to think on so I appreciate you sharing your expertise and your experiences with us thank you so treat thanks a lot and to everybody listening you can find links to everything that has been mentioned the the books the podcast everything imaginable in the show notes as usual with every other episode you can just go to tim dot blog forward slash podcast and until next time thank you for listening hey guys this is Tim again just a few more things before you take off number one this is five bullet Friday do you want to get a short email from me would you enjoy getting a short email for me every Friday is that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend and 500 Friday is a very short where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week that could include favorite new albums that I've discovered it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird [ __ ] that I've somehow dug up in the the world of the esoteric as I do it could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends for instance and it's very short it's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend so if you want to receive that check it out just go to 4-hour workweek dot-com that's 4-hour workweek com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one and if you 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Channel: Tim Ferriss

Views: 104,769

Keywords: Esther Perel, Esther Perel Interview, tim ferriss, 4 hour workweek, 4 hour body, 4 hour chef, forbes, timothy ferriss, entrepreneur, author, writer, best-seller, public speaker, angel investor, ferriss, twitter, Facebook, stumbleUpon, evernote, uber, tim ferriss blog, timothy ferriss speaker, Tim Ferriss Podcast, The, Tim, Ferriss, Show, The Random Show

Id: Hu-sCM0eXaw

Length: 124min 11sec (7451 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2017