How to Resolve Conflict in Relationships: A Conversation with Esther Perel

[Music] this is open to debate I'm John Don Van hi everybody and as most of you know this program tends to focus on debatable topics that are usually of a quite weighty nature things like foreign policy and economics and cultural Trends and philosophical political disputes but that said we also have a soft spot for Valentine's Day one time we debated around the question are dating apps killing romance another time it was should we have sex with robots well that one was maybe more about artificial intelligence than about romance but you get the idea so Valentine's Day Has Come Around again and this time we're approaching it from a different angle instead of a debate I'm going to have a conversation with psychotherapist AER Perell host of the podcast where should we begin who has also made a name for herself globally really in offering thoughtful and thought-provoking insight and guidance around relationships especially of the one-on-one kind that have a sexual or erotic component involved she's even taking her insights on tour this spring and fall she's in cities across the United States where you can enjoy an evening with a St Perell well what does that have to do with what we do debating one word argument we present arguments lovers have arguments open to debate is about bringing people with opposing views into the same room figuratively at least sometimes literally and to explore their differences in a way that involves thoughtfulness and self-examination and mutual respect and above all listening listening to One Another these are the essence of good argument and even in our hyper divided times especially in these hyperd divided times we believe that good argument can actually cool the temperature and help us recognize that people who disagree with us are also part of that us that we don't have to hate each other just because we have opposing views and we know that you're here listening because you get that EST Perell who Zooms in on the person-to person level also makes the case for constructive conflict in fact she thinks it's critical to successful relationships she has a course called Turning conflict into connection so we wanted to learn more about what she means by constructive conflict and as the moderator of the debates that we do I wanted to see what Insight I could pick up for my role as the person in the middle when we have two sides going at each other and so with that as th perel thank you so much for joining us at open to debate welcome to the program thank you it's a pleasure to be here so I when you use the term turning conflict into connection I I think we're going to end up talking a lot about that so let's lay out what what it is you mean by that and um at a certain level it's clear that you're saying let's face conflict not let's not try to avoid it so first of all even in your introduction you know to the idea that um the use of argument not the use the situation of being in an argument is not in and of itself negative negative and that actually being able to manage conflict is essential to a healthy relational system social system political system is what you're saying I couldn't agree with it more and part of what I do is I I use the couple and it the way it handles conflict to extrapolate to larger groups and to the society at large primarily because the couple is a very interesting unit right it starts out the romantic couple it starts out getting along it starts out agreeing on a lot of things it starts out as a collaborative Cooperative system and when it turns on itself in and it becomes a distressed relationship it experiences negative conflict it experiences conflict that is no longer generative but that can be destructive and we can learn a ton from looking at what happens in couples people who once had great empathy for each other who now can't hear each other other at all and the principles from coup's work are applicable to many other situations of conflicts and to do that you need to understand one most important thing is that the form is more important than the content how conflict plays out how people shut down how they polarize how they use totalistic language how they kitchen Sy and put everything into one argument how they basically deny the validity of any other person all of that these principles and a few more are actually applicable for groups and even for people who do International conflict resolution that I just experienced this weekend I had my first conversation with a person who works with groups and a person who works internationally and we literally could see you know once you understand how what is conflict and how it plays out it kind of opens your Vista on multiple relational systems and which which makes it sound like all of this is just built into human nature that we are we in a fractal kind of way we can have these stresses as a one-on-one couple and in a much larger pull back the the the camera group against group Nation against Nation culture against culture there's a lot of it yes there's a lot to that let's talk about some of the things that you that you talked about um kitchen sinking what do you mean by that kitchen sinking is when you and I are supposed to be discussing something but in the course of that I start to bring back my entire memory bank every other situation and I start to add everything else that I'm upset about and everything else that I don't agree about with you and every other time that you grieved me and basically I put all the dirty dishes in the sink at the same time which means I can't wash any that's it you you're basically trying to score but you're not trying to resolve anything and you're certainly not protecting the relationship turning conflict into connection is basically being able to argue while preserving the relationship and that means maintaining a level of enlightened self-interest what do you mean by that it means that you don't say the things that you want to say just because they make you feel better or they get it off your chest you think what will this do to the relationship what will this do to our history to our connection to what we are meant to do together you have a higher purpose than just you a relationship is the space in between the two people it's not the two people in in the series of conversations that we've had on this program one of my favorites was with a writer named Monica Guzman who has published a book called I never thought of it that way and she makes the argument that one one sort of antidote to our ability to demonize one another and to caricaturize one another as enemies is curiosity that she uses the example of stress she had with her parents where she's um she's of the left and her parents um were uh people who voted for Donald Trump and she found this sort of not something that she found easy to accept until she she sat down with them and explored with them their reasons and she found that actually revealed that in significant ways they still shared a lot of values and that their non-overlap area was quite small does your work find the same thing absolutely so in a distressed relationship you tend to flatten the other person you make them onedimensional so they voted X and that means that this is why they are why and you don't look at the multiple connections between how they voted what they believe in what's important to them what has happened in their life Etc in a distressed relationship you tend to think that if you act meanly or not nice or whatever you have circumstances you know I'm in a bad mood it means that there was a lot of traffic something you know put this me in this bad mood but if you are in a bad mood if you are not nice if you are impolite if you are not civil it's because that's your character so curiosity as you describe is the dissolver of all these rigidities your your goal I think is reconciliation or or is it um I'll ask you actually it's not uhhuh no I think that the difference between constructive and destructive conflict and the opposite of conflict isn't empathy it's differentiation it's actually the ability to live with differences with multiplicities with plural truths it's what we see in the natural world that we as human beings struggle with so to differentiate is my ability to hold on to my own ideas beliefs practices while making being able to stay connected with you yeah so so that's very interesting to me because in our debate program by definition the The Debaters are in a somewhat competitive situation where they're not going to yield um to yield to the other side the sometimes that happens a little bit at the margins but for the most part they come away with each side having stated its positions explored the other side and and they walk away not in for the most part agreeing with one another there's a third party to our debates and that's the audience and it's the audience that I think that is informed by hearing the two sides of the arguments but what I wanted where I wanted to bring this back to you was saying you know in our world the two arguments still exist and still have standing can a couple fundamentally not agree on some important issues and yet still remain a couple and I think you're saying that actually yes they can that absolutely that that's the goal we all understand that you can like classical music and I don't exactly situation in my marriage actually okay then there is you know you may want children and I don't so there's a scale here what's very interesting is that in highly differentiated couples people can tolerate a very big dose of differences and they sometimes have a relationship with a small overlap they agree on a few fundamentals but they have a broad range of areas where they think differently act differently have different priorities and others want a lot of overlap they feel they need to agree on a lot of things to experience more Harmony it's less a matter of subjects you know there are plenty of people who voted differently their entire life but they shared many other things and they understood they see the world differently and they respected that what changes is if I experience your choice as a threat to me if that's really where it's at it's not in the nature of the difference itself it's in what it does to each other and some people find it very difficult I can have a person who says I can't imagine that I'm living with someone who likes Cruisers and that can create Mass because I need you to be more similar to me or to who I aspire to be and your preference I experience as taking something away from me you don't ask people what they're fighting about you're asking people what they're fighting for and you will see that most often people fight for three things they fight for power and control whose priorities matter most and who makes the decisions they fight for trust which is is care and closeness who's got my back and who can I rely on and they fight for respect and recognition who values me and where do I matter power trust and value is probably the majority of what people are actually having an argument about so so your your podcast where shall We Begin is really not like any other podcast in that you bring excerpts of actual therapy that you where you have worked with people so this is a clip of you working with a man and a woman who are having some challenges so let's take a listen to that what I want them to do is get a job and be functional and be independent and be interested in the world and curious and I know I what I want I know and you think he doesn't he does it's been such a long time if that was me if I didn't have a job I would freak out I would be up all night and I would get one in two weeks I don't understand the relaxed nature of things and but if you you steamroll him you're going to get the person who is all shriveled up next to you and you will think that it's because he is a shrivel up n poop and you will not notice that you're steamrolling at the same time the whole episode is so fascinating and that's what what you're doing in this podcast is just so fascinating and I have a bunch of questions first of all I want I want I want to thank you for for breathing new life into the word Nim poop which was beginning beginning to lose its currency um the the first the first reaction I have is you know what what's the ethical clearance on using the recordings of these sessions I mean how how did you work that out with with your patients they are not patients never were and never never will be there are thousands and thousands of applicants for every episode they apply with v they are screened by the producers and they know that they're coming in for a onetime Anonymous 3-hour therapeutic itic conversation okay that's a very very big clarification there is no ethical breach and no mixing of the metaphors when I say thousands I'm talking about there are currently 8,000 applicants it's you begin to get a good sense as to often we so there's an intake they write to us then the producer called them and it's a long intake that follows the model of what I would use if they were patients and we call them because because the story matters because we think there's something to learn for many others by listening to this situation and because I have a sense that in three hours I can do something so I don't take on a situation where I think it would be maybe even more damaging or certainly not useful because there's too much well be thank you for clarifying all of that about the process but what I found most interesting about that particular selection was that you then we hear hear you reflecting on the process of your involvement in the therapy session and as I'm listening to this again myself I realized that I was doing to her what I was telling her she was doing to him and that's when I knew I'm inducted in the system I'm talking to them with the same tone as they talk to each other this is where I felt that I had lost some of my therapeutic stance so why that's interesting to me is that in in our debates when we're on a live on a stage with people who are arguing with each other I my role is to listen exceedingly closely to each of them and to move them to exploring more deeply their points of conflict right but without getting involved myself in the sense where I don't enter the argument and that's a very very tricky maint or position to maintain um I work very hard at it and I think for the most part I I I will critique a debater not for the substance of their argument but for the fact that they're ignoring the point or that they've switched to another topic when we're trying to discuss A and B but it's um it's a very very delicate position and I heard you say in that one that you felt you lost the balance and I'm curious about that how you experienced that so I was trained by having my teachers and my colleagues watch me behind a oneway mirror I was trained by watching hours of myself on video so that I could see because it's so easy what you do is really a very incredible skill to not get sucked in you are listening to the process and the content so am I and here I noticed that in the process I began to scold her in the way that she was scolding him that's what we call to be inducted and it's very important to I mean I think it's a it's a it's a skill as a therapist to just say oh I didn't pick up on that I went too fast here I lost it there I what I said was important but the way I said it now what happened is that I wrote to them if you really want to know and I said I really want you to know I I I noticed in listening that I did this and this and this and I I think that that was not that didn't serve you very well and the answer I got was to the contrary actually you were the first one who told us things as they were and it was very helpful to actually have it be so direct now do I think it was a good way to do it no I still think I could have done it better but it was amazing that they just said what are you talking about this was actually exactly what we needed that's so interesting yeah it doesn't sound like it went off the rails in any way I I have seen debates not in my own involvement but debates go off the rails when the moderator thinking that debater a has said something so wrong that that the moderator will speak up and they go back and forth and it turns into a side debate which is wastes a lot of time and gives the impression of a lack of something that's important in the situation which is impartiality um but I wanted to ask you also about just the the nature of of your clientele overall and what differences are involved you mentioned culture being important in this is there something that you bring differently to a session with say a heterosexual couple and a same-sex couple or an Indian couple and an Irish couple the differences come into play in those things or is it you're saying yes right away I can see you noing yes yes I think um I think that there is a range across cultures of the the centrality of the individual first of all how important is the eye the self there are so versus how important is the collect itive is the group The Family the the harmoni relationship how much do people come with the notion of Free Will how much do people come with the notion of I deserve to be happy which is a rather Western concept what would you say John were you raised for loyalty and interdependence or would you say that you were raised more for autonomy and self-reliance I would I would mix the two the you put four adjectives in there and I think I would say loyalty and self-reliance and you put those on separate camps but I did I did find boxes on the list that I would check now of course if we had the time I would say tell me more so where was the self-reliance was it in the messaging or was it by the sheer circumstances in which you grew up and you had to learn to stand on your own two feet messaging for sure yeah I had a lot of support yeah what was the messaging around loyalty you know think about the effect of your behavior on others your family comes first you know what are the so this sets of values are very important and often very culturally reinforced and sometimes determined um I speak nine languages so I un I translate very much I get a sense you know what is the power Dynamic around gender around age around birth order you know these are very clear leges as well that people bring what you know to what extent are you allowed to say to what extent are you allowed to leave a relationship versus you have to make it work at all cost because that's the value that's the belief um so it it's endless you know children you know do they have a right to speak do you have a democratic system in the house does everybody's opinion matter or is there a much clearer sense vertical line of authority are you allowed to express emotions and which ones you know by is sadness permitted but not anger is anger permitted but not too much idleness because you have to be practical and busy all the time and productive so it it's a whole range of it's a big map the cultural map do you do research on the culture when you're meeting people from a culture that you I know nine languages covers a lot but but uh would would there be specific instances where you would go out and and read some books about the culture or talk to people who are in that culture really or talk to them or talk to other people or colleagues who are from that just to have a sense and are there practices are there rituals are there certain ways of understanding grief are there certain ways of understanding trauma are there ways to understand repair since we talking conflict we have to talk repair in your debates people don't need to repair that much afterwards they say goodbye and they go they each go home to their own places well what's interesting in some of our debates is afterwards after they're off the stage only after in front of the audience they'll say you know you actually made a really good point and I'm going to have to think about that in the future but the performance sort of undermines that so imagine that in a family or in a couple right when when you're fighting for your you know for your your point of view for your experience for the recognition of what you think really happened yesterday night or what your mother really meant or you know and to to be able to say I hear you that diffuses things so powerfully you know I made a mistake I know I I lost it and this is on me I mean these levels of accountability you have a good point I spoke too fast you know recognition of the other and recognition of oneself responsibility not shame responsibility go a long way in working with conflict so I want to talk in a couple of ways about going beyond the uh the binary of of a man and a woman in a romantic relationship to some some other kinds of relationships so same-sex couples I'd like to talk about whether anything's different in that regard within a singular singular culture or is it the same and um I'm also interested in not your work in non-romantic relationships um glad you mother to child for example so talk about those two for us so I think the big difference in working with same-sex couples is that the nor Norms that the legacies of of norms that one receives in a heterosexual context are lesser the scripts are not instantly available so on the one hand you lack the institutional messaging and on the other end you have the freedom of being able to create more of your own power distribution gender distribution you know levels of identification similarity you don't fall in the same same traps but fundamentally the different levels of distress or conflict in a relationship are not that far apart now when we talk about other pairs I love to work with friends I love to work with co-creators co-founders and family members all these relational systems and in part is because I think that we have entered a period of social atrophy partly reinforced through the pandemic more so reinforced to our contactless existence at this moment where we have less and less direct face-to-face interaction with other people would you say as we're doing now in other words we're not in the same city even right now correct and we think we have eye contact but we don't really but I ask an audience how many of you have grown up playing freely on the street and depending on the age a a very large number of people will say yes how many of you have kids and and do they now play freely on the street and a very small number of people will raise their hand and what I'm saying is it used to be that you grow up and you have a host of experiences of social negotiations you make rules you break rules you make alliances you break them you make new friends you you learn unprompted unchoreographed social negotiation that's gone you go to the store you don't have a cashier you go you have contactless existence and that creates a situation where you are less and less prepared for conflictual situations it's a much more of a frictionless On Demand app life which is wonderfully efficient but doesn't help you in relationships relationships have inconsistencies relationships have contradictions relationships rub you there's friction in relationship and you need the skills to do that we we've hosted a number of debates that are on the question of whether um I what I would say the thing you're talking about is the the interposition of technology in the communication process and just sort of the the the waterfall of data information voices opinions is is actually destructive of cohesion in the culture and a lot of Debaters have argued very strongly that it is I'm curious to know whether some of the stresses that we have explored in this area polarization left versus right Democrat versus Republican we've done debate in which people have made the argument that we're we're we're withdrawing even into our own cities into our own hamlets to get away from each other because of these political attitudes do you find that those dividing lines actually interfere with one-on-one relationships have you seen an uptick in couples or pairs of people having stress over the political stuff that's going on disagreement over immigration rights or abortion rights something like that one in four Americans at this moment is cut off from a family member that is huge and that often has to do with political views views around sexuality gender views around the big issues of our time yes you know I used to remember when somebody began to explore this with me a situation where we would fight in my house over Politics on Friday night as we were having dinner and we would scream it was like I was a 16-year-old fire and then at some point somebody would say the pastry is delicious and we all remembered we're at home in family and it's in family that you can scream like this and then the next day you still rely on those people as your family and you still want to help them and be there for them and them for you no matter what this is not happening at this moment there is cut offs there is a type of conflict avoidance there is a situ a sense that it's not safe for me and I shouldn't have to deal with this at this moment there are clusters of people who no longer interact with each other just because you are part of this group or part of that group um and I think that it really fractures the society and this is true inside families and this is true in larger groups and in society do you think that your course can help people address these kinds of differences yes there are principles when you look especially on the extreme end right so the course basically says what is conflict what is the difference between conflict that highlights the uniqueness of each the differences that we that we all need to have a diverse system versus destructive conflict that basically destroys the relationship what are they're not that different between two people and between two groups and if you look at a research on intractable conflict which has worked globally all over the world with political conflicts it highlights you know what makes for polarization I am right and you are wrong I am in touch with the essence and you are totally off track it's these positionings it's the contempt that people bring it's the competition that people bring it's the sense that you know if I recognize yours then I am basically denying mine it's the fundamental attribution error in which I you know you you're just onedimensional but I understand the multiplicity of things it's those elements that make the conflict intractable and every research says the same thing you start by basically talking it's two D there's two points of view you either talk by the one thing you actually have in common you both share about you both worry about your kids you both care about the neighborhood you care about the straight of the roads you you know that you care about the food desert there are things you both care about or the other point of view says don't go instantly for dialogue and this is true in couples too don't try instantly for people to have compassion and empathy and understanding let them argue and actually understand that this difference means that they care deeply about a few things and highlight don't rush for dialogue people are too angry to want to suddenly like each other and if that's true in couples that's true in neighborhoods too we are going to now bring in a few new voices to further the conversation first up I want to welcome kis Lopez who is a queer journalist and lifestyle editor at them them is K Nas lgbtq plus publication caspe thanks so much for joining us on open to debate and coming in with your question please yeah of course thanks so much for having me so Esther I would love to Circle back on the idea of relationship scripts just because I've been thinking a lot about this in the context of gender and relationship contuct so over my many years of covering section relationships I've often found that whether explicitly or implicitly the way we talk about conflict tends to Center two ideas one everyone is straight and two men and women because those are typically the genders spoken about in mainstream relationship advice are inherently different and therefore conflict is impacted by that so famously jenz is the queerest generation today with nearly 20% of us identifying as queer um and we're also credited for deconstructing and challenging our current Notions of gender and gender roles so I'm wondering if you think that the way we approach relationship conflict and how um how it may shift according to these Trends not just for queer folks right but also for people overall as people question their sexualities genders all of that and get further away from this idea that Men Are from Mars and Women Are from Venus you still remember that title so Chris I think that if I was to say something about gen Z and conflict maybe before looking at a quering and at the gender re redefinitions I would think that one of the first things that has changed the conflict is the digitalization of the life of genz and the social isolation and the fact that relationships are started and broken up with online without ever having to see the face of the person without ever having to see the emotional consequences of what you do um and I think that that to me is a source of information about how conflict is handled more than some of I don't know if more but it's the first thing that pops for me it's kind of how do you have difficult conversation that I don't know if I need a gender con construction for that of course people come with a different idea about what is aggressive you know what can be said what must be said what are the circumstances on which you can say certain things like safety is a major need and framework for relationships for Gen Z why is that so because we have lost the large Frameworks lost we also did away with some of them that needed to be done away with but basically we have lived for centuries with large scripts religion hierarchies gender construct that basically gave us very little freedom but they gave us a lot of clarity and people knew how to understand things at this moment I can create my own meaning out of everything but that means that I need to do this alone and the burdens on the self of G Z are way heavier to try to figure out what does this mean and how do I want to react in response to this because it's all on me so I have freedom but I don't have much certainty and I often have a lot of self-doubt and that is also what enters into conflict so that's a different way of answering your your question but I'm curious how you hear that I think that makes a lot of sense in terms of clarity and safety the kind of those two things at odds with each other thanks K very much for your question um next up I want to welcome Lauren vopel Lauren is a journalist who covers mental health and relationships so Lauren please come into open to debate thanks for joining us and uh the floor is yours hi as I it's good to be here um I you've touched on this um but I wanted to ask more directly about how Tech specifically smartphones have potentially made us a lot more black and white in our conflict specifically how being able to get immediate validation seemingly from our phones has maybe given us impractical expectations of human beings yeah so I wanted to ask about that so I think there's a few things happening at the at the same time on the one hand we are more socially isolated on the other end our expectations especially of romantic relationships are unprecedented and have skyrocketed um we don't just we don't just want economic support and companionship and family and a best friend and a confidant and a lover but we also want a person that becomes that helps us become the best version of ourselves and what also is happening is that we are basically told to our apps you know where to go how to get there what to listen to what to watch where to go to eat we are more and more in a frictionless situation that kind of is very polished and it makes it more difficult when we then suddenly find ourselves in interpersonal situations that are more conflictual you know people have rejected each other for centuries there's nothing new but ghosting is a different level I I to that point our our expectations of other people in Conflict too high and maybe our expectations of ourselves too low just cuz we can like get out of there real quick I think our expectations are not too high but they may be too high to put on one person we need community we need groups we need friends and we need different levels of friendship and different levels of acquaintances and different levels of associations and mentors and man you know we need a a host of people um what's really happening at this moment is that i' said that one in four people in the US is disconnected from a family member but among gen Z and the younger you go half the people don't have a best friend that is a very new social landscape EST you and I were both born in the 1950s so that puts you know that tells us where we are now in our in our life we do have clear memories of a world before the technology Lauren my question for you is do you have a sense of there having been a time before when things were working better did you experience that yourself or are you young enough that you didn't live in that time and you look at it with Nostalgia and regret well the best question to ask is how old were you in 20 8 I was B I was born in the the 80s so I am um an elder Millennial and I am in the interesting position of having seen having had both but having most of my sort of romantic relationships take place in the sort of technological space that we're talking in but also being able to see the difference in my parents and in my relationships throughout childhood too so it is a very interesting place to be so when you asked me Lauren about the lessening of personal accountability and responsibility I and I have a card game that's a game of stories and two of my favorite questions is who do I owe a phone call toh and I owe an apology to yeah and I think a lot of people in my generation immediately go to who owes me an apology and who owes me a phone call and don't take those other steps so I think that's a really great feedback but it's less technology or maybe not less but technology is one thing I think the level of individualism the level of you since you write about mental health it's the focus on self-care it's the focus on the self yes that has made it so that we are more easily it's saying who owes me versus who do I owe it's the same as when people say I want to find a partner who is this and this and this and I say to them which partner do you want to be Lauren thanks so much for joining us on open to debate really appreciate it thank you so much I really appreciate it my pleasure before we move on to our next question um I just just want to ask you about this card deag yes the game is called where should we begin a game of stories same name as the podcast because I wanted not just to have therapeutic interventions but playful fun interventions where people tell stories because stories are bridges for connection and they cultivate intimacy without having to sit in an office and and talk to a therapist about intimacy they just when you tell a story you reveal a ton but in a fun playful way so it's a box there are 200 cards in it and a die that gives you a set of different prompts for so that you never tell the story twice um you find it on my website you find it on Amazon everywhere you know you said in the beginning of the program the importance of curiosity in a debate I think the next thing I would say it's all in the quality of the question that's great ad DT shant is a reporter for CNBC ad thanks for joining us on open to debate hi of course thanks for having me me so my question is about you said that pairs are your favorite unit and you said a lot of conflict comes from us not being able to handle discomfort and handle differences uh between us and our partner so a little tangential but do you think that all this talk about non monogamy has to do with a couple's inability to not sit with discomfort in their own Union and even if that discomfort isn't huge yelling fights just maybe under stimulation I just feel like there has been a lot of focus on non- monogamous structures in relationships lately and I want to know why you think that might be so I think that the Quest for non- monogamy and polyamory at this moment is the recent one that starts in the 60s if you want to kind of follow a historical track it's it's part of a general social movement of dismantling restricting structures and the the power of disruption the power of thinking outside the box the power of renegotiating social systems and relationships is one of that so this is where non- monogamy really proliferates it puts the individual at the center and it says that self-fulfillment personal development is of importance mon non- monogamy and the people who live by it um have also actually embraced the ideas that it is good for the relationship it makes you less relying just on one person it's actually reinforcing the family so it's a very interesting um breaking the norm on the edge but with arguments from the conservatives at the same time it's it's it's very Progressive with but but explained with actually quite conservative arguments as well and the main argument is you know the importance of Mak of keeping a relationship fresh of understanding that our emotional needs don't necessarily match our erotic needs and that we need Community etc etc so all of this thinking goes inside non- monogamy more than just and I mean boredom may be there or Li you know having to face the limitation of having chosen one person and not another etc etc but there many many voices to the to the discourse about non- monogamy I don't think that it's just a conflict avoidant maneuver I think it's beyond that adid thank you for the thoughtful insight and thanks for joining us on open to debate and we have one more question and it comes from Monica Tes who is a senior reporter for huff post who writes about the workplace hi Monica thanks for joining us hi thanks for having me you talk a lot about our need for both stability and change a lot in your work to contradictory emotions and I think that's something a lot of us wrestle with at work um Studies have found that many of us are disengaged at work secretly wanting to be somewhere else and I wanted to ask what you would tell an employee who is wrestling with a big internal conflict of should I stay at my job or should I go and the next sentence would be I should stay because and I should go because I should stay because it's like stability and I should go because new change I think the first thing I do is I draw an echo map tell me about your life at this moment do you need stability do you need a steady income do you find that actually um this has given you a structure to your life that was really necessary if you've always done stability and not change I may think that maybe you should go on the change but if you've done change nonstop every six months and for the first time you've lasted 18 months somewhere then maybe we talk about the stability I basically don't answer the question with through the microscope of the qu with the question right in front of my nose because you can't see your finger when it's that close so you you move it back a little bit and you bring in the rest of the person's life are you taking care of people are you responsible for your siblings for your parents I basically won't answer but I will ask a lot of questions that will help you answer your question Monica thanks very much for your question we really appreciate it it's great question Sarah we only have a few minutes left but I've been wanting to ask you all along why this is your calling why this is your work where did where did it come from for you I have been interested in human beings and in the way that we relate in the way we um we help each other we rely on each other we betray each other we abandon each other all the beautiful things and the nasty things that people do to each other um I am interested in the connection between the micro and the macro because I don't know I maybe you know I often think that I am a child of Holocaust survivors of two parents who were the sole survivors of their entire families and um and who basically survived because they understood connection with other people what do you mean by that meaning that you maintain hope because you think you're going to be reunited with someone you maintain hope because there is a person next to you who is suffering more than you and you're trying to help them you maintain hope because when you give you are you have more for yourself because in the depth of connection giving and receiving meet you need to rebuild hope be after a world is destroyed and so you become interested in how nations are facing each other so I grew up in a very political house but in a house that also really looked at the fundamental values of humanity it's it relating in a relationship is one level relate in the bigger divides of today is finding a way to continue to humanize the others because that's what maintains a Humanity in yourself but you you could have you could have pursued the same kind of passions you know in law or medicine or as a writer or as an artist and I know that you in a way you're doing all of those things at the same time but you're ve very very highly specialized in Psychotherapy so what was the a what what opened the avenue to psychotherapy and understanding the mind in all of this for you I think it's as as often the case for many of us as as a teenager you start to read the books that are meant to help you understand yourself and you study psychology to understand you to understand you know I also knew I had a knack people would come to me very early on as kids I I I I I had an I liked to solve these types of problems I don't really do well reading legal documents but I do do very well reading people's personal histories we've hit time I just want to share because I've been wanting to do this also some of the questions that come from the card game just to give people an idea um I'm going to go through a list of what they would pull out of the box please talk about an experience that shape who I am that few people know about please talk about the last time I was ghosted talk about a risk I took that changed my life my closest encounter with death I need to fight harder for blank today I care lot less about blank my social media presence would lead you to believe what's your answer to that question a there my social media would lead you to believe that I actually spent a lot of time on social media but it's it's a public square that is very new to me and one that I I am learning when it is the proper place to speak and to speak about what I think it's actually a space that is often very challenging for topics that demand complexity that demand patience that demand listening more than 9 seconds you did I have to say you did all of those things in this conversation uh to to to our betterment I I want to thank you so much EST for taking part in this conversation with us on open to debate uh and to remind people that your course can be found at your website sell.com it's called Turning conflict into connection I also want to thank our questioners kis Lopez Lauren vopel adti chant and Monica Tes but one more time to you EST parel thank you so much for joining us thank you it's a pleasure and I want to thank everybody out there for listening to open to debate you know as a nonprofit that's working to combat extreme polarization through civil debate our work is made possible by listeners Like You by the Rosen CR foundation and by supporters of open to debate this show is generously funded by a gr from the Laura and Gary Lauder Venture philanthropy fund Robert Rosen crch is our chairman our CEO is CLA Connor leam that was our chief content officer this episode was produced by Alexis pangrazi and Marlet sual editorial and research by Gabriela Mayer and Andrew foot Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support M Shaw is director of audience development the open to debate team also includes gabrielan Chelly Rachel Kemp Linda Lee and David Shermer Damon Whitmore mixed this episode our theme music is by Alex Clement and I'm your host John Donan thank you so much for listening we will see you next time

Channel: Open to Debate

Views: 47,531

Keywords: Intelligence Squared, IQ2, IQ2US, Intelligence Squared U.S., debate, live debate, I2, nyc, politics, conservative, liberal, opentodebate, valentinesday, relationships

Id: 7TS11SEKdqI

Length: 49min 30sec (2970 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2024