The Future of Love: Esther Perel

[Music] today probably in the West it's the first time that the preservation of the survival of the family depends pretty much entirely on the quality of the connection between the couple that's it and so this relationship issue this relationship world that we are living in is experiencing expectations that are at an all-time high and I assume that we are all here together this evening and I'm going to have a little bit of talking with you and then we're going to have a real conversation all together because we would like to find ways to have our relationships be more thriving more meaningful more satisfying more fulfilling because we probably can agree that it ultimately it is the quality of our relationships that determines the quality of our lives many of us may have stellar resumes but that doesn't mean that we would have stellar eulogies it's a very interesting distinction that David Brooks gave me but it really speaks to how are we going about to nurture and to cultivate our relationships and I thought since we're going to talk about the future of love and about the paradox of love and desire that this was a very inspiring little paragraph from Octavio Paz from a book called the double flame the flame is the most subtle part of fire moving upwards and raising itself above in the shape of a pyramid the original primordial fire of eroticism is sexuality it raises the red flame of eroticism which in turn raises and feeds another flame tremulous and blue it is the flame of love and eroticism the double flame of life and I've been searching for a long time about how we go about Fanning this double flame so let me ask you just so we have a quick sense how many of you are currently in a relationship and how many of you would like to be in a relationship and how many of you would like to be out of the relationship you're in at least on occasion honest and let me ask you if you are in your 20s raise your hand if you are in your 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s fantastic 80s anybody this is to say the beauty of this subject is that it only ends when something happened right there at the end of the Mike I was saying I think I may need another battery by the way I was saying that the beauty of this topic is that as a as a concern as a pursuit it only ends when we end meaning there is no age for it except that often what age and time will bring us is more maturity and hopefully a better experience of ourselves and maybe a different concept of self-esteem which is our ability to see ourselves as flawed individuals and still hold ourselves in high regard it's not mine it's from a very dear colleague very real but I think it summarizes it beautifully love and desire they relate and they also conflict and herein lies the mystery of eroticism you know relationships are pretty much rapidly changing and the expectations that we bring to our relationships are at an all-time high the reason I talk about the couple is not because we are all necessarily in long-term relationships but we have all been in relationships of some form of another one two three short long married not married I'm going to use sometimes the word couple because I'm it's a certain unit that I'm emphasizing but not because I'm interested in the status of your life at this moment what's interesting for me about the couple is that it is probably the unit that has transformed the most in a very short amount of time forever when we lived in the small villages and in the communities you know we basically lived communally and we knew who we were and who our identity was and we knew where we belonged and we knew what was expected of us and we had a plenty of certainty and very little freedom and we moved to the cities and as we arrived into the cities we got to be a lot more free and also a lot more alone and as we became a lot more alone we didn't have that many people around us all the time in the relationship the romantic relationship became the harbor where we were going to vest many of our most important human needs and now I was going to cultivate with you you need a connection and intensity a meaning that I could not necessarily get from my whole village and in this connection who I was going to be able to transcend my existential aloneness and in this new life that we began to have we had a lot more options we still have a lot more options a lot more freedom and a lot more uncertainty and a lot more self-doubt and all those things that used to be clear about who is in charge and about who's the case of the children and who takes care of the cows and who gets to deal with the money and who gets to demand for sex and all of those things everything today is one big freaking negotiation everything you know it's tiresome its enormous ly freeing and it's also very tiresome because it makes for a lot of arguments in which people think that they right when in fact they have no clue because there is no right because it's the first time that we even have the freedom to negotiate any of it so who has an answer and then a number of major other shifts have taken place in a very short amount of time sex for most of history when it came to committed relationships was primarily for reproduction and you needed to have 10 children if you wanted to have eight cuz - we're not gonna make it so it made for sex but who knows if it was Pleasant or connected or satisfying who cares and it was primarily a woman's marital duty and Duty got replaced with desire and desire became an owning of the wanting desire became an expression of a sovereign self and all of that could only happen with one of the greatest revolutions called the democratization of contraception which allowed women to go to work and which allowed us for the first time to separate sex from reproduction which we now have were separated reproduction from sex in which we are now separating gender from Anatomy and all these categories have made it so that for so long sexuality was primarily from the realm of biology he was a part of your condition just something that is part of who we are but today sexuality is not just a part of our biology it's a part of our identity and it's something that I define that I give meaning to sexuality has become a property of the self that is part of our sense of self definition that's why a lot of the things that are happening are so crucial and not only did the meaning of sex change but the whole meaning of committed relationship or what traditionally has been marriage which was primarily an economic institution we have transformed it into a romantic arrangement we brought love into marriage we brought sex to love we brought the connection between sexual satisfaction and marital happiness all these units that have never really been connected like that and we also brought happiness down from the heavens it used to be for the afterlife now you know now we actually think that we deserve to be happy in our long-term relationships and the long-term keeps getting longer it's a long haul you know I want with the same person everything that I wanted in traditional relationship I wanted commitment and family life and social status and economic support but I also want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot and for the first time we want to reconcile in our relationships two fundamental sets of human needs our need for security and our need for adventure I need for stability and our need for change I need for all the anchoring experiences of our life the reliability the predictability the roots but also I want with the same person to have novelty and surprise and mystery and danger and risk and unknown and discovery and exploration and I want one thing between six and eight and I want the other one between eight and ten just a shift in narrative you know and we really think that this stuff can be solved with Victoria's Secrets and as you know there is no victor secret yet so we also know where the responsibility lies you know we've never tried to really experience these two fundamental sets of human needs which really spring from different sources and pull us in different directions and try to reconcile them into one relationship which is why I always ask myself why does good sex so often fade even in couples who continue to love each other as much as ever and why does good intimacy not guarantee good sex and why is the forbidden so erotic and why do children come you know maybe differently why the sex makes babies and then babies spell erotic disasters in couples and can we want what we already have which is probably the most fundamental question around desire and when you love how do you feel and when you desire how is it different because when we love we want to know the partner we want to be known we want to minimize the distance we want to close the gap we want to neutralize the tension but when we desire we often want a bridge and somebody that we can go visit on the other side we had this whole exercise today about I'm most drawn to my partner when because I've been talking about this since last night this is just so we've been on a long conversation and what was fencing fantastic was that you know all the first answers I am most drawn to my partner when I see him or her in his or her element passionate about something they do competent at what they're doing doing something that they really like basically in a state of self sufficiency where they are wrapped into themselves and I can look at this person who is otherwise already so familiar and so known and look at them once again a somewhat elusive and somewhat mysterious and with still something to discover about them and that curiosity that lives in that space between me and the other that is the erotic alone and everyone gets that distinction that there is a certain kind of unknown tension that we need to be able to cultivate in our midst but we don't like the idea because we also want to feel that we are in very known and safe territory for some of us having the unknown next to us is really an opportunity for more discovery and more exploration and for some of us it makes us intensely anxious and each of us by the way on this continuum between security and adventure come out of our childhood with one of two stronger needs some of us will have a greater need for security and for protection and for grounding and for predictability because we grew up in chaotic unpredictable environments and we never knew what to expect and some of us will come out of our childhood and want more space and more freedom and more time alone and the beauty of coupling is that we tend to find somebody else who inhabits the part of us that we would like more off but we just as well leave to the other to take care of they understood that I will find a person who has the other side because I'm drawn to it but since you do it so much better than me keep on doing that way I can I can pretend I won't different and continue to be the same you know monogamy used to be one person for life today monogamy is one person at a time and people go around telling you that they are monogamous in all their relationships plural and you try telling that to my grandmother you know people used to marry and they had sex for the first time and today people marry and they stop having sex with others marriage used to be for life till death do us apart and today pretty much II still love dies and we no longer just divorced because we are unhappy but we can divorce because we could be happier and all those are fundamental changes in the realm of our relationships and our pursuits of what it takes to have a thriving relationship we used to be unfaithful because relationships or marriages were not meant to bring us passion and love and affection and connection today we stray because our relationships have failed to deliver the passion and the love and the affection that they promised infidelity used to be primarily an economic threat today becomes a crisis of identity and the shattering of the grand ambition of love monogamy by the way had nothing to do with love it was primarily an imposition on women men have always been able to walk around much more freely because the consequences were much less dire so this has never been an equal gender proposition and still 9 countries where women can be killed just for looking in the wrong direction today monogamy is a conviction and it is an expression of our it is really the sacred cow of the romantic ideal but exclusivity means something very different when you meet somebody and it's your first partner in life versus when you meet somebody and you're finally going to delete your apps in all the other thousand people that could give you a real case of FOMO it's a different landscape and on top of it one of the main things people ask me all the time is how do you know when you have found the one how many of you have asked yourself that question have you found the one right and so I'm thinking you know this is a very interesting answer for me there is no the one there is haha on that one I can actually kind of answer very clearly and and by the way I just say this that means that's what I think but that doesn't mean I'm right you understand there is no the one there is a one you pick and when you pick a partner you pick a story and as I have sometimes added and sometimes you will be recruited for a play that you didn't audition for but there is a person and with that person you create a story because our relationships are our stories and hopefully we get to write often and more importantly we need to edit well and that means editing ourselves as well so I'm gonna play you another clip of the orchestra the podcast that you're listening to was for me an attempt to kind of say here is distinct our relationships and what's happening today is that fake news is not just in politics it's also on social media and we are in this kind of situation where people are curating and presenting these filtered stories and we all know that it's not true but we just don't get a chance to talk truth enough we also seem to be able to uproot ourselves faster than we can repot a plant and many of us have a thousand virtual friends and no one to ask when we need to feed our cats so we are made more isolated you used to know everything that used to happen to the couples in the village because you could hear every fight and every frog through the walls but today your partner your friends can come and tell you that they are separating and you didn't even see it coming you know when I'm King about and so I thought I'm gonna create a virtual village with a podcast where people get to listen to what happens with the neighbors and when they listen really deeply they will actually realize that they're often standing in front of their own mirror but we are going to listen to each other again and get a realistic sense of what actually we are all grappling with and how much of these shared experiences we don't get to really talk about so that everybody has to go at it alone and wonder do other people deal with this too are we the only ones so Orchestra this is I will tell you afterwards I don't even think you need to know more about them see you too don't have a problem loving each other you know you have this elephant that's been between the two of you for a long time with a complete over focus on your performance on the erectile difficulties you know and all these ugly words that are completely shaming and emasculating and you know the word emasculating does not exist in the feminine that's a plague for men so change the language because it is crippling and it's as if you don't have a whole body that's we make love with the whole body and a lot of other parts of us not just with our genitals if you stay focused on those damn genitals not much is going to happen simply because it's reductionistic and rather boring and plus you can't rely on them but you can rely on your hand you can rely on you on your smell you can rely on your skin you can rely on your hair you can rely on your voice you can rely on your smile on your eyes my god there's a lot of instruments in this Orchestra how many of you would say that it's easy for you to talk about your sexual needs or feelings preferences how many of you would love for it to be easier yes okay and how many of you would say that you had appropriate sex education mister this is incredible thing you know in Belgium we start sex education in kindergarten it's we do it one way in Flemish Belgium where I'm from not in the francophone part and we a different system but basically what we do is we do one week a year we call it the week of love and it goes from 4 from 5 to 8 and 8 to 11 and 11 to 14 and 14 to 18 and it becomes an integrated system of Education in which we talk about relationships one of the greatest differences between this model versus the model in the US is that in America sex is the risk factor in one of in some of the other European countries sex is the normal thing being irresponsible is the risk factor once you have that as the norm then you can actually teach people how to have good judgment and how to experience pleasure and connection and know how not to focus on an education that is either focused either on plumbing or on dangers or on disease around dysfunctions and then if we get that in place and we actually let people do these classes together not separate then we will have very different conversations about consent later on it's a long line so if I ask you what are some of the things that are most difficult to talk about here is a society that on the one hand uses with sex and kind of combines excessive practices with repressive tactics back and forth back and forth people talk about sex all the time just not with the person they're having sex with you know but P but everyone seems to want to experience it with a certain level of satisfaction even when people complain about the listlessness of their sex lives there's some time we want more sex but they always want better sex and the better that I hear them talking about is a sense of aliveness a sense of vibrancy a sense of vitality a sense of playfulness a sense of renewal a sense of connection that which gives meaning to sex ie the erotic not the act but the enchantment not the positions but the energy the encounter and yet it seems so difficult for us to actually be able to talk about it without either feeling shame or guilt or discomfort or embarrassment or fear of judgment or disgust or a lot of things like that so let's talk together when I think about the future of love I think about how do we distribute ice some of these conversations where we can actually with each other with ourselves have an honest exploration of where we are at and what we would want the majority of the time we do what we should and what we think is appropriate but that doesn't mean that we do what we really like and it's worse for women in that domain because women know what turns them on but women have always chosen what will make them feel safe instead of what turns them on because that's what they had to do and for the rest we don't really know what they want because they've never been asked too much of that question when I think about the future of love I think about what it's going to be the influence of the digital on our relationships what does it mean when they just sold six point three million VR you know what does it mean when half of Americans say that they would be perfectly happy to have sex with a robot do you know what what is happening when we are becoming less and less attuned to each other you know how are we going to experience the 3d experiences and at the same time I think also about the fact that we are for the first time renegotiating all kinds of boundaries around monogamy and around the meaning of monogamy so that it doesn't just get defined by sexual exclusivity that is a real new frontier then I think also about the opportunity that comes at this particular moment in terms of renegotiating some of the oldest power exchange systems whereby men always been able to leverage social power in order to gain sexual favors and women have had to use their youth and their beauty in order to have access to social power that would otherwise be denied to them and this oldest exchange this is the oldest trade show is now for the first time being reckoned with and it's going to be fantastic if we do it well [Applause] the lives of women will not change until the men come along and women have had fifty years of doing this of being able to rethink their role at work and at home and it needs to give we need to have the same opportunity for men to also rethink what will be the new definition for masculinity how are we going to deal with the definitional void of manhood so that it doesn't just stay in some old fixed code and all of this is going to be part of the future of love and it is actually already part of your relationship so when you think about what are some of the main questions challenges that you bring to this conversation and what are some of the main resources that you bring to this conversations that's what I would like us to talk about okay let's go talk to me right there all the way there and you know how it works if you really want to ask something but don't there you can always say that you have a friend and you can always say I know someone you know it just takes the first one to get going go ahead yes okay is it on thank you hi my name is Tai ease I'm just wondering if in your work you have come across the role of biology and all of this and how both through nutrition and lifestyle practices the influence on that on couples either getting along or not getting along does that make sense yes I think yes I'm gonna hear a few and then I'm gonna yes keep talking [Music] my name is Kristen and when I met my husband we were very sexually active and very attracted to each other and then when I became a mother I felt very different around him and that now I'm a mother we shouldn't be having the same sexual experiences that we've been having and it was life-changing for me and it's really affected our relationship so how do you regain that intimacy that you had prior to children that was so connected and still feel like a mother and normal and but everyone perceives that you should great question right next to you can I ask how many of you this is a question that is relevant to you sex and Parenthood sex and the transition to motherhood okay yeah let's go next to you yes so I find that through most of my relationships people are drawn to me because of my free spirit and adventurous and then it's like oh I love your free spirit let me cage it all for myself and as much as like I'm conscious of myself and the people I'm with blah blah blah I have a friend who's cheated on every long relationship that they've ever been in [Laughter] [Applause] [Music] so how do you balance out that wanting to be with this person or have this feeling for the rest of your life it's not always about the person right it's like that feeling and you know the desire to maybe there's all especially in the Bay Area open relationship and all these different pieces but I also find myself like that primal like security you know how do I feel safe in in this and also have the free spirit that wants to be caged see what I'm saying that wants to be caged or that has but that doesn't want to be key the free spirit that people are drawn to yeah and then it's like I love your free spirit let me cage it and keep it all for myself yes get it thank you good yes yeah mine's a quick one but it's about all the time you spend working with people and then there's emotional connection which then breaks down what's at home meaning meaning that you give the best of yourself at work and you bring the leftovers home and then there is an emotional connection because of the project at work and all the sudden that seems more fulfilling and feel feeding more needs and home is letting you down right no new home is not letting you down you're letting home down it's a different order yes they're two here right here hi I'm Cassie and I wanted to say thank you for talking about how women have been doing this for 50 years and men need to catch up I think you and a few others talk about this and a societal point of view could you help us understand on the personal those of us who are dating those of us are in really in ships who are on the day-to-day how can women help men catch up men catch up how can we start to do this on the personal okay one morning then we'll do another batch I am Ella I want to ask in today's day and age where porn and tinder are so accessible when does it become so minor or small that it's almost not like infidelity like does looking at porn count as cheating or yeah yep good okay listen people these are very beautiful questions every one of them we could just you know go on a real journey with this because many of these questions and not always just simple simple problems that have an answer in a solution sometimes they are paradoxes that you manage and sometimes they are interconnected with a lot of other things so let me just say very briefly the one about the role of biology of you know I don't talk much about biology because it's not the area I focus on but that doesn't mean that I'm not fully aware of it all the time I think Justin yesterday was talking in you know about the breakdown of nature and nurture you know they interact all the time do I think that when people don't eat well they have a different metabolism a different physiology a different mood a different regulation yes does that influence their relationship in some cases a lot and in others not at all the people that I see that are in a real rut do I think that if they ate healthier they would have a better relationship not sure they have a lot more to do than that but do I think that if they ate better that meant that they also began to think a little bit more in a self-aware way about what they do and how they treat themselves and that that would have a connection therefore to how they are in the relationship of course but it's not the food it's the attention that they're paying to what they're stuffing in themselves do you understand the distinction you know on the on sexuality and Parenthood look it's a very interesting thing right why is it that that for so many couples marital satisfaction plummets after the arrival of the first child or relational satisfaction straight gay olds as a matter really on that one and and I think that one of the things that starts to happen is that when you look at this little relationship here 18 centimeters right this adore engaged licking the neighboring the tickling you know this is pretty much what you used to do in the beginning with your partner this is a totally erotic connection doesn't mean sex it just means it's pleasurable it's sensual it's erotic it's it's soft it's tender at all of that and sometimes who may think when you say at the end of day I have nothing left to give and I want to say to you that maybe what would be a more correct sentence is at the end of the day there is nothing more I need capiche [Music] you know because you're satiated and because it takes a deliberate effort to actually create that boundary the silky skin of the baby is unsurpassed you have to literally tell it to yourself however soft and adorable it is if I want to maintain a relationship with my partner I'm gonna really have to redirect my gaze to my partner male or female partner and it is a deliberate thing and in order to make that Norfolk doable what often works well at that transition point is to have one person every relationship will have a frontline parent the frontline parent is the parent is not just a parent who's more involved it's also the parent who more easily hears the cries at night it's the first parent who has a different sensory threshold it's the parent who more easily can drop what they're doing in order to take care of the kid they have a different sense of boundary the other one is much more able to read the paper and not hear a thing this is a cliche but you are it's a and that frontline parent often needs help to be able to be taken out of the situation of the full Parenthood so that you can remember and he can help you if it's oh he retrieved the woman from behind the mother and that means that you have one means you have one person who is thinking about the kiddos and you have another person who is thinking about what we're going to do when we are without the kiddos 1 make sure the kiddos are fine and the other one makes sure that the couple maintains themselves and to have that dual relationship it's a real distribution of roles for those first three years three years for each so you can add up you know till the youngest history is really the idea here then next when your partner come and says come and spend some time with me you're not going to say how can you think about that look how much I still have to organize you know it's like the biggest slob suddenly starts to organize every little place of Playmobil you know because it organizes you and then you have to ask yourself is it okay to attend to myself because if you're going to be sexual or sensual it means you're going to at some point focus in you and that focusing on you today seems to be quite difficult for mothers who want to be 24/7 attentive to their Smurf's mothers and fathers it doesn't matter parents I'm talking about you know and so then you start to feel guilty you know and here is the thing on the long list of what you kids needs you should make sure that having sex or a sexual connection of some sort an erotic connection I'm talking about I don't care how often you make love that's not the point but to have a connection with your partner should feature as one of the main things on the list of what your kids need because otherwise sooner or later they won't be a family if you don't want to do it for you do it for your kids this mag needs a new battery because I'm going in and out I don't know who takes care of that but - okay hello - good does that begin to address what you're talking about you know it the notion that you know I'm gonna give it to you in a different version if I think about when disco is going to link actually or but the thing about the men where's the woman with the men there you you know here's the thing if I think about what are two major erotic blocks and when I say men and women I mean that doesn't always have to be in the body of a man or of a woman just broaden the categories okay but what I know is that if I work with straight couples I can see it really easily the straight men will often tell me nothing turns me on more than to see her turned on you know it you've heard it or said it all right I have yet to hear a woman say that to me it's irrelevant what happens to him or to the other person is irrelevant it's what happens to her that matters now I've tried to understand that for a long time this is an obvious thing but it wasn't so easy to make sense of this like why not you know and then I began there's a fantastic sex researcher Martha mayanna who helped me understand a lot of things when he says or when one says nothing turns me on more than to see my partner turned on it is really one of the most powerful statements against the predatory fear if you are into it then I know that I'm not hurting you if you are into it then I know that you are enjoying it and that I am not in an act of violence but in an act of delight and the only thing I have to know that it isn't violence but it isn't but it is actual delight as in not just consent but more than that is by the virtue of your response to me and by the way to the woman of porn this is one of the great things you get on porn all the time you get a person who's always into it she's never tired she never has a headache she never says not tonight she's into it so much so that she does it doesn't have to worry about hurting her and her fragility and her brittleness that's part of the part she plays so the fear of the predator and this is a very important thing because so much emphasis at this point is on the inherent aggression in their sexuality and the predatory Ness of male sexuality I think the vast majority of men are not predators the vast majority of men are afraid of being creditors and that's why they need a willing partner but what is the thing for women she doesn't say what turns me on is to see him or her turned on because that's not gonna do much if she's not into it she's not into it the shop is closed but what she does nothing to be on more than to be the turn-on and in order to be the turn-on I need to feel legitimately allowed to focus on myself and in order to focus on myself I have to be free of the burden of caretaking and the burden of caretaking is the big block for women and that's what you get when you start to be from the carefree woman who suddenly has a child and now thinks that you are in a function of caretaking all the time rather than giving care to yourself and that's the transition in order to be sexual again it has nothing to do with your sexuality or your hormones or any of this and why do I say that because I've studied for the last nine years unfaithful women and one of the most important things they experience in their affairs is that for once they're doing it something that is just for themselves and they're taking care of nobody but of course they don't sometimes know how to do it in the context of their own family so they have to go outside I see you are in tears but would you let me know why okay thank you I will come down at a minute you know so the thing about the men for me I think the thing that stands in the way at this moment that I hear from a lot of women is I shouldn't have to explain I'm tired of explaining timed of helping them understand the whole thing and you know I when I think about norms that change because this is a normative enormity change right there's two instant examples that come up to me of how things were done the first is the gay movement do you know the gay movement the demonstrations on the street we're never just gay people alone it was everybody it's actually one of the first things I did when I came to the US and he was gay pride day and I remember just like the thing you went and you didn't think you mattered you know he just was solid areas of people who needed a fundamental change of Rights I cannot imagine the gay movement with people who were just among themselves and that was the strength this idea that now it's women who need to talk and men should just be quiet to me completely off but that means that I think that women will need to you know if we want to use the jargon of women need to find their voice and their power and all of that fine but men need to be able to also speak but from a different place under patriarchy you can either be powerful or connected but not both wholeness means that everybody gets to be and powerful and connected that's what you strive for so your greatest asset is to tell somebody you know what's the life of men like at this moment what's this confusion what's this silence what's this notion that every second man who goes around saying you know I have a sexual past too and God knows what I may have done that today under a different scrutiny with different norms is no longer acceptable when etc etc and I think that those conversations in the intimate realm just with friends first with people that you are more comfortable you not on a date necessarily but in the that doesn't mean that I don't think that they are fascinating conversations on the date factually but my my point is there's so much to learn I spend time doing conversations with men only non-stop I spend conversations with women only and I'm thinking for God's sakes why would it be like if everybody just got to hear what what is being said in the other room you know so to me this is the opportunity is there lots of things that a lot of experiences I was in a company two days ago and it's a tech company so at some point one of the men starts to talk about this was the whole men only men and basically when you are in a tech company of that high level a lot of demand that are there are the guys who ate lunch alone they are the boys used to eat lunch alone you understand they were not your popular types necessarily they were the ones that sat often in their room and took the computers apart and they were bullied and then he starts to talk one guy so out of the blue starts to talk about being bullied and then I just said seventy men in the room may I ask how many of you have been bullied and two-thirds of the men stood up now bullied means humiliation and your mediation is the bane for men so so many untold stories at this moment and such fantastic opportunity that need to be done not on social media and not by trolls but by people just when they meet and they talk and they just have conversations about life and about where you've been and how you grew up and what's been your relational histories and all of that and to do it in a comfortable way it's not a you know a hushed conversation on the porn question and the tinder and the cheating look the definition of infidelity keeps on expanding at this moment you know is being on porn is it porn just with a webcam is it tinder is it being still on tinder when you're already three months into it and secretly staying active on your dating apps is it reconnecting with your ex on Facebook is it going to a massage with happy endings you know it's and the truth is the definition at this point is in the hands of the people who are in a relationship together it's a whole subjective thing okay so that is really where this is at is but what is for some people it is an integrated experience there is no for other people and by the way ponies never I've never seen it be a source of any infidelity among gay men this is a straight concern yeah I mean I've yet to hear a straight guy say you know you are attracted to people that don't like me and I'm don't look alike and I don't have that age and I can't compete with that person and that's a whole narrative that you hear in heterosexual couples around porn quite a bit you know but what is interesting is to always to ask the question why would somebody go online when I have another person in the room next to them that's an interesting question and so I think that it that the interesting piece for me around porn is that it actually is a place where men can go and deal with their most fundamental sexual vulnerabilities what do I mean by that you are never rejected in porn that's the number one thing you are never rejected and rejection and the humiliation that comes with rejection is one central concern for the initiator which in most societies has always been put on men the second thing is that you never have to worry about performance and competence in porn either you do what you want and you never have to worry if you come too fast or too late or to this or to that you are free from the anxiety of performance that's the second most important sexual vulnerability for men and the third one is she always screams and comes and says more and more and more me too so you don't have to worry about if she isn't liking it and if you are with somebody without knowing what they're going through once you understand what is the dialogue between a person besides that it's exciting and arousing that's there too but the most important thing is what is the sexual dialogue that is happening between a person and a person for whom porn becomes a primary conduit around sexuality it is not about being tropone and not profound issues just to understand what's the dialogue what's the relationship and once you put it in the context of insecurity or vulnerability then you have a much better way of understand what is the lure and the attraction to it and by the way to the question about the men one other thing that is really clear to me because there's been such a focus at this point about the powerful men you know in the harassment of powerful men powerful men don't harass powerful men seduce it's insecure man that harass and assault let's not mix the metaphors alright how are we doing we have time shall we continue all right talk to me yes plenty plenty of people who has a mic yes so I have recently gone through some major internal changes in my life and for my wife who's a very loving partner it seems like there's a new person in the room and we are trying to navigate around that both of us I'm kind of living feeling like a pretty new person in my skin and she's now married to somebody else than she married but you're going to just tell the story and livered essential piece so I can't something major has happened to me and I'm totally transformed what and what am I supposed to talk about and so I think she doesn't quite feel safe I think she doesn't quite feel safe because there's a new person in the room yeah I get it I get it but seriously you're giving it to me what is new I mean what is the question the question is how do we navigate around but I don't know what you're navigating except that you are different that's where navigating well if you're gonna give me vague I'm gonna give you reg back okay so I think it's hard for us to get into a sexual rhythm now I think I think things are different and she's looking at me like a different person because I appear to be she's sitting next to you my no I know is that would you care to fill in the gap this is like a Swiss cheese Oh God um I don't know what's in his head but my yeah where should we begin my guess would be is that happy how do we start again in the framework of what is you know 12 years of having this relationship and kind of reexpress texplor what's going on and be safe in that no you won't be safe you will be taking risks and as you take risks then you may feel more safe if you just wait to feel safe like that and then hope that it's going to launch you it's not generally the way it works you are not in a safe moment in your relationship don't pretend if it's new if it's different if you've changed something or broken something or whatever you're doing then it's a moment of it's a moment of risk-taking and you don't do it because you think somebody as Sasha said a beautiful line today she said are you willing to risk your life in order to feel alive or are you willing to risk your life in order to have a life together so that's your thing but if you're gonna do the you first approve ooh very polite if I see youthful do this and not stumble too much I can do it too no you know this is a thing a decision that you make with yourself each of you with yourself very privately and then you just show up you know I there's a line that I once gave at the end of the of the talk to TED talk but it's a line that I had actually used for my own marriage you know where I said today most of us in the West are gonna have two or three relationships marriages not marriages you know and some of us are going to do it with the same person so your first relationship is over now the question is do you want another one with each other and if you do plunge and don't do small steps don't do small steps you know and on occasions just say I'm scared shitless this is this there's unmoored this is totally not the way we've been who are you who am i and that's that's the beginning of this now I have no idea what actually made this change but that's how I would probably I think I know but I'm not gonna say it yes there and there and there and there yeah no you need to go ahead my focus is on your theory about the orchestra of erotic yes my relationship is monogamous and it's successful and he's seven thousand miles away and he's in the Middle East so there's a cultural difference but what I've noticed is that we have to be really attuned to what you're talking about beyond the sexual connection of voice vision the audible and I'm not talking just about you know sexting or phone sex just hearing people's voices hearing my lover's voice and the way he talks to me and how he chooses his words in writing and the focus is so beyond just the sexual genitalia because we only see each other every couple of months but we talked every day and this has been a gift for me because I think about the relationships most of the people in this room with their lovers right next to them that don't pay attention to these things or don't enhance that aspect of your body and how you can give your pleasure and receive pleasure from these senses that are blend your genitals when when at South by Southwest I played a clip from the podcast and I blindfolded 2500 people because I wanted them to listen because when you can't talk watch and be on your screen or check the room of the whole thing and when one of the senses is taken away you put another focus on the other senses and so what you're saying is depending on the context of your relationship yours being long distance but that's just one example it has given you the opportunity of paying attention in a way that you would otherwise not pay attention and that's very beautiful yes yeah where's that mic thank you my name is Ron one of my favorite parts of your work is your willingness to listen to men's part of the story and I think one of the biggest challenges I and probably many other men face at this day and age is the lack of a clear role model for men we are expected to be you know very career-driven but at the same time home by five and excited about changing diapers we are experiment have to be excited we are expected to be horny but faithful we are expected to be so many confusing ideas were and at the end of the day it's unclear how we really should behave can we compliment a woman or is that a form of harassment can we you know can we talk about our feelings or that too effeminate if anything can we talk about our feelings or is it what too effeminate to a mask it too feminine in a way and frankly more importantly it appears that what we're expected to be at this day and age is a more feminine version of ourselves and my give it to him he's talking for a lot of people what's your name [Music] Rami Tommy and so just my question to you is how do we find a new role model at this day and age thank you you know three years ago people asked me what was gonna be my next subject and I said men long before any of this happened and people said nobody will be interested seriously and I said I'm telling you it's the next thing coming it's the next thing that has to come I don't have a real answer I raised two boys I've been thinking about this for a long time I raised them cross-culturally so I also think of it interculturally you know and all of that I think that I so basically first of all I have no answer like that what I do know is that many boys most boys are raised by fathers and mothers or caregivers and these caregivers basically are the conduit for a lot of the messaging that goes into those boys what I know is that we touch our boys less than our daughters starting at the age of four what I know is that we overestimate their physical abilities when they were sometimes don't have any because we want to see them as more masculine meaning that whatever we do to our boys in the way that we want to raise them is often what's going to turn them out later to be the kind of man that we don't want to be with what I know is that we often help boys to disconnect from their feelings and from their need from others that we want them to be achievement oriented performance oriented fearless competitive needless play through the pain and move on and that that is called male code I think that is toxic masculinity the rest is just addendum and that but it's very difficult to change just like that because many people who raise those boys are anxious because we have a way of thinking that you are born a woman but you become a man and masculinity has to constantly prove itself to be a real man but to be a real man that is not the same kind of real men as the fathers were so I start to think about another normative shift that happened recently and I think how did that one happen corporal punishment fifty years ago it was a norm how many of you were regularly slapped as a part of discipline Wow Wow how many of you still do this as a part of normal discipline how many of you have done it on occasion and regret it afterwards right you know this is a normative change 50 years and it went without blaming and naming it went because something shifted that said children will not be stronger when you hit them this notion that a good smack makes character may not be so true that being caring and being nurturing to them is actually better maybe not too far as where you've taken it now but certainly better than it was and I think you know how would we redefine masculinity the way we redefine children that's the exercise I do when I try to think how does one make this thing happen you know I also think that for the men to do this whole process women have to become a lot more honest with themselves because the truth is that we want sometimes to see that soft vulnerable blahblahblah but at the same time it's very scary because we are always afraid that if a man gets softer is going to turn into jello there is a profound distrust that he too can be soft without necessarily falling apart that you know there is a notion that it's easy the tough or on the other side of the continuum and that is a fear that women experience visibly men weigh often and don't always admit it Who am I going to rely on I need you to be my rock and rocks break they don't bend and then come back so it's a very interdependent process I'm very happy you asked the question I would like every talk where I'm at for ten guys to get up and ask those questions because I think that to make the questions go underground and just avoid the whole thing is a disaster well that's what I have to say about this people we have two minutes so whoever is gonna get that last question think very well huh did I forget about did I forget about you which one was you add the free spirit yes thank you oh I think that no you know what it's AG actually I'm gonna put the free spirit but I'm gonna now put it in the context of the question that was just asked right because it's really what's what is scary what is scary when people are not behaving according to gender normative expectations basically and according not necessarily always gender specific but just according to script by definition he has two questions why do you find yourself with people who first are drawn to it and then actually want to domesticate you which is by the way the story that women have done with men a long time you find yourself the wild cowboy and then you domesticate him and you think you're so special for having done so right I am the one who took this Romer this loner does whatever it is you know and brought him you know same thing on the other side right the second thing is the friend that has cheated in every relationship the more interested in that one you know because the questions that you ask yourself then is why is freedom always on the outside what is it that you do that makes you mate in captivity how do you lock yourself up you know how do you start to experience a sense of deadness on the inside and aliveness on the outside how you start to feel that your relationship when you're on the inside you're doing what the other person wants you to do and when you're on the outside that's when you finally can attend to yourself why is it that when you are finally in connection you experience it as a loss of self why do you find yourself in a dynamic with people men or women in which one of you starts to be afraid of abandonment and losing the other and the other one starts to be afraid of suffocation and losing themselves you understood that dance and you find yourself continuously in that dance play generally on the side of I am the one afraid to lose myself and the other person if that person wants to you know restrain you then they're afraid of losing you and that's the theme of the dance that I'm hearing you described yeah so people I met Esther Perel calm that's where you find me this conversation continues it's just one evening right here but you take it with you and hopefully when you leave here you can say what's one thing that stood out for me and and talk about that do yourself the favor especially those who came as a couple not to go into your cars and then start talking about who's picking up Jimmy tomorrow morning you know it's such a tempting thing to be in this to think and then to go back and to fall right back into the more narrow range of conversations scape them if you came with friends take the opportunity use me to say to lady with the accent she said all these things what do you think you know it's a it's called a transitional object you know use me as the transitional object and then have the conversations take the opportunity this is just your primer then you go and you cook after you leave I'm just chopping the stuff up with you giving you the themes the names and then you go and you go delve into this then it becomes interesting then you take your Diaries then you write and then you say where have I been vis-a-vis and then you right version 1 which is the semi truth and then you write version 2 which become a little closer to the truth then you throw those two things in the garbage can and then if you have somebody that you need to actually write to that's the one you're going to send handwritten is better seriously handwritten matters because the emotions come through the arm like that and if I can leave you with that then these conversations start to scale and then we start to improve the world of relationships and then we will all participate in the idea that the quality of our relationships is what determines the quality of our lives thank you so much [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: scienceandnonduality

Views: 252,840

Rating: 4.8691416 out of 5

Keywords: Esther Perel, science and nonduality, Radiant Intimacy, relationship, sexuality, eroticism, love, romance, dating, masculinity, pornography

Id: tzqo44VobzA

Length: 74min 19sec (4459 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2018