Esther Perel on Why Love Requires Obstacles and Uncertainty

We put the focus on you choosing bad people. You always fall in love with the wrong guy. What does it say about you? What do you think about people having a list of everything they want in a person? Love will laugh at you. Is love enough? No. Should love be hard? There is no love story that isn't overcoming obstacles. Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement, love, desire. Hey everyone, welcome back to OnPurpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Today I'm joined by one of the most influential voices on love and relationships in the entire world, Esther Prell. Esther is a

renowned psychotherapist and the mind behind the groundbreaking book Mating in Captivity. And as the book celebrates its 20th anniversary, we explore why Estair's insights on love, desire, and intimacy remain just as true today. Please welcome back to the podcast one of my favorite guests and yours, Esther Perau. Estee, it is so great to have you back. It's really nice to be back. Our last conversation was super viral, millions of views. People love seeing us together. They loved hearing your direct no BS breaking down this therapy Tik Tok language that we constantly hear. And

today I really wanted to dive into what I believe is the need of the hour. What I believe is the urgent imminent challenge that we're facing right now. Gen Z is dating significantly less than other generations. What has changed? I ask a question in all my audiences at this moment. Did you grow up playing freely on the street? The parents of Gen Z will raise their hands and say, "We did." And then I ask, "Do your children or do you know children who are playing freely on the street?" And you get a few hands. That's it. That's the Gen Z. If you don't play

freely on the street, you basically are missing out on an entire ground for social negotiation where you learn to play together, to make rules, to break rules, to have wars, to make peace, to create alliances, to make up the whole thing. If you don't practice those muscles where you come up to strangers and you ask them to play with you and then you meet somebody else and then you join people together, you really are practicing relationships. All of that precedes dating. If you don't have that, then dating becomes the first time that you have to actually learn to speak to someone, god forbid, if it's even in person, and look into their eyes and look at their body

because so much of our life at this point is completely disembodied and we don't ever see people move. Wow. Never even thought of that. So dating becomes this Olympus that you have to climb this whole mountain and it's very anxietyprovoking and that is one of the main things. So when we say Gen Z doesn't date as much, Gen Z doesn't socialize in person. Gen Z doesn't have that many parties. What a waste. What a pity to not have dance parties and just hang together. Um it's not that they don't socialize, but it's a different kind of social. I spoke to so and so means I texted them. M no I didn't speak I didn't hear the voice if you don't hear the voice you're missing out on the entire oxytocin

attachment hormone that gets produced while you're hearing the voice is the first thing you hear when you are in utero so you say you spoke but you didn't you connected you had contact and at every level you see an atrophy of the social skills which creates a real sense of bracing myself I'm going out to date, which I don't like because it's not fun. You're so right. And you're opening up my mind to so many different things that I don't think we're thinking about. This idea of being disembodied, we're only looking at FaceTime. And not just that, now I look in your eyes, you look in my eyes, and we have

mirror neurons firing at each other. We are really connecting voice, sight, breath. I mean the all the senses are involved on Zoom or on any screen. We think we're looking at the other but we actually are not making eye contact. So this pseudo experience as if I am looking at you and you're looking at me but in fact we don't means that neurologically none of this is actually happening. Wow. Yeah, you're so right. And most of us on Zoom are just looking at ourselves. I started to hide myself for you because I just realized that you're just looking at yourself and you're looking at your reflection so much.

We're we're overexposed to our own reflection which is why we're so critical of ourselves and we're so we're evaluating and analyzing ourselves all the time. But you're absolutely right that even if you look at someone else through a screen, you're not making the quality of content we feel. And there's a reason I actually feel that I feel exhausted on Zooms and exhausted on digital content. That is a part of that is because the actual connect contact which is soothing eye to eye contact when you are in a safe situation is actually soothing. It regulates you when it is as if but not really and nothing really happens up there then you are exhausted and you know what it means to look at

yourself the whole day. It's like the enshrinement of nar narcissism. Absolutely. We look here narcissist he used to look at himself in the water and look at his reflection the whole time and it's the same as what you're saying with the lack of contact where you say oh yeah I spoke to so and so or I heard from them and you're so right that we're missing out on these very analog behaviors that our body's craving our mind is craving and we're not really in touch I read this study that said 45% of men aged 16 to 25 today have never approached a woman in public and I was like in my life growing up age 16 to 25% of men age 16 to 25 who are assuming they're heterosexual in this study

they have not approached a woman face to face in public to ask them out to create a connection and I was thinking I grew up at a time where all we did was have to pluck up the courage to walk over to a woman in a bar at the mall wherever it was to just say hey you're cute or like hey can I get your Hey, can I whatever it was and I remember how stressful that was as a man. So I realized that there's stress. But today, do you think it's a fear of rejection? Do you think it's a lack of social skills as you're mentioning? Where's that coming from? So I think there's a number of different things going on at the same time.

Continuing with less social interaction is also the fact that we're more and more living in a contactless world. you don't have to leave your house for a lot of things that you know it's not just you would come up to the girl and start talking to her since the pandemic we learned we didn't have to leave the house to go to school and the 18 to 25 year old is the generation that went to school during the pandemic so that's the first thing is a complete cut off of the socialized world you don't have to leave your house to work to shop to eat to exercise contactless you can have everything delivered without having to even thank the person who is bringing the food. At every level, we have tried to remove contact and friction.

Coming up to talk to a girl is friction. You don't know. There is you fantasize. You know you I'm thinking of a story that a friend of mine just told me when he was sitting on a train and for five hours he saw this girl and he just was thinking I would love to go and talk to her but he couldn't muster the courage to go speak with her. Finally after 5 hours he gets up he goes he talks and for the rest this being spend a week traveling together in Europe and then he tells me if I was today he's a father of a genzee if I would be spending my five hours writing to my AI companion what should I say I'm anxious I don't know how to go he would have basically spent his time trying to regulate his nervous

system and try to calm down but he would never have he would have talked to the to his AI rather than to the girl and he would have talked to the AI about how hard it is to go and meet this girl and he would never have traveled with her for the week and this removing of the friction. So what is to me the killer of desire. We'll come back to that. But what happens in when in your statistic is 18 to 25 in your time you basically started this whole process of meeting girls or boys meeting boys, girls meeting girls in your teens. So 15 16 you were practicing. You were falling in love. You had crushes. You dealt with rejection. You rejected others. It went both ways etc. Most Gen Z today start their first experiences

around 24 26. Wow. So the whole thing is delayed by 10 years. Yeah. But when you meet at 24 for 25 for the first time, you often meet with the lack of experience of the 15year-old. You haven't had that slow buildup, you know, and you didn't have sex the first time necessarily either, but first you spoke, then you hung, then you spend the day together, then you met you brought them to your friends. You had an entire process of engagement that made you more and more comfortable each time. That whole training launching pad has been shrunken to dating. You'd never called it dating, by the way, before.

You I'm interested. I like someone. I would like to speak with this person. I have a crush on this person. I fell in love with this person. You didn't date. You just had these feelings that took you. I feel like we're living at a time where conversations about therapy, about our emotions, about love. Online, you see them everywhere. Everyone's talking about it. Everyone's thinking about it. But then we don't translate it into real life. We're more disconnected than ever. So talk to me about that dichotomy. I think that we

are living a fantastic contradiction. We've never been more connected and we have never been more disconnected. Modern loneliness masks itself as hyperconivity. So you think you're talking Oh yeah. to people. And I would say even more like this. Monoloneliness is not about not having people. It's about the lack of depth. It doesn't replace to have these conversations online. And in fact, they're often done in 9 seconds increments. That is not really the time needed to address major existential questions. If you don't see the person you're talking to, you can express yourself in all kinds of univilized way because there is no consequences. So that contradiction of what does it mean to really connect

and what are the conditions necessary? What and that is back to this issue of friction. Because it means that you practice disagreement, frustration, being misunderstood, understanding others, truly listening, listening again because you thought you got it, but you didn't really cuz you didn't listen till the end. Cuz half the time when we listen, we're busy with our rebuttal. That's a different degree of connection. Yeah. Ask a question when you somebody tells you something before you draw a conclusion about what they're saying. ask another question. Listen really don't jump for advice because you are the one you are not the one who's going

to live with the consequences of the advice that you're giving. So look at things in context. Don't just take out one thing like that. And all of that is the difference between our conversation and how this can appear when we go online. I think one of the biggest things that you're sharing that's kind of I'm becoming aware of in our conversation is that a reason why we're scared to message and reply is also because everything's documented today. So there's a feeling of like if I send something to you and it makes me look stupid, you're going to send it to all your friends. If you share something with me and I want to pass it on to someone, it takes one click and all of a sudden it's on the internet. And so

there's this genuine fear of not only am I being evaluated by this person, but I'm potentially being evaluated by their entire circle. Do you see the irony here? We have never talked more about boundaries in relationships as today at a time when people are often acting without any boundaries and sharing the most personal profound things that people give them in confidence with others. the leakages, the system of sharing and spreading without necessarily asking and ridiculing and judging and exposing and all of that is happening at the same time as people are talking constantly about safety and boundaries and protection. It's really interesting. No.

Yeah. It's it's it's fascinating because there's no privacy. There's no safety. So there's no safety and it's no longer even transparency because it transparency means we speak out openly about things. This is really you are basically speaking with surveillance. You are constantly watching how are people going what are people going to do with what you're saying? How are they going to twist your privacy, your private life, your deepest feelings and how they can snitch it and put it together and reinterpreted that leaves people suspicious, fearful, actually disconnected, more lonely, constantly wondering about who can I trust? What is trust? And then hoping that by having more boundaries they can

fortify all of this. But in fact the world doesn't have the boundaries. So how does anyone in this moment even think about building connection offline go offline? A connection is an encounter and it's an encounter with an other. And that otherness is the mystery of relationships. That curiosity that you bring to discovering someone. We've met a few times but we don't know each other. And I'm intrigued by you and I'm curious where you going to take us. Where is this conversation going to go? What are you going to ask? What I'm saying is interesting to you. I'm not busy here thinking does Jay like what I'm saying? Is Jay thinking that I'm smart? Is Jay thinking I'm stupid? Is

Jay waiting to bait me with something? I'm with you. I'm present. And that's very different from I'm here and I feel your presence with me. That's not just you're here. You know much of the time these days even if we are sitting together I ask this is a question I love to ask in an audience how many of you spend a lot of time of the day on your laptop in front of a screen whatever it is and all you want is to finally go home and get rid of the screen but then you get home and you're so tired that what you do is you watch TV and then while you're watching TV you're also scrolling on your phone and then you turn around and there is someone sometimes sitting right next to you who's doing the exact same thing.

And then at some point, someone says something actually quite meaningful. And then you have this other person responding with that most fantastic uh-huh. Uh-huh. And you know that digital lag means they're there, but they're not really listening. And in that moment, you experience a unique kind of loneliness. It's the loneliness that says, "Are you here or are you not?" We call it in my work ambiguous loss. Have you ever heard that term? No, I haven't. Ambiguous loss is a term that was coined by a psychologist Pauline Boss when she was talking about situations where you can't resolve the morning. Like if you

are with someone with Alzheimer or dementia, they are physically in front of you, but they are emotionally or psychologically gone. If they have been deployed or there is abduction or they are miscarriages, they are physically gone but they are emotionally very present and in both situations you don't know are you here or are you not modern loneliness has that element on a daily basis where I don't know if you're here. It's like we've come to accept distracted attention as if it is enough and it's not. And all of those situations make us feel like I'm putting out such efforts and I feel exhausted because it's not really coming back.

Yeah. It's it's so real. And I think that's how a lot of people feel today that they're saying I want to find love. We all want connection, but then the action to get it, as you said, which requires a bit of friction, which requires a bit of discomfort. There is no love story that isn't organized around overcoming obstacles, right? The greatest love stories have an obstacle that you have to they almost didn't going to meet again. They never asked each other's names. The parents didn't want them to be together. The age difference was too big. What you need an obstacle. Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement, love, desire. It is that combination, right? So the obstacle is the way.

The obstacle is what builds the plot, what heightens the intensity, what intensifies the love. And what we want in the frictionless reality is a love like permanent state of enthusiasm. And love is not a permanent state of love is not about finding people who agree with you and who like the same things as you. Love is actually dis being discovered by someone from whom you're different. It doesn't match algorithmic perfections. Yeah. I'm so glad you said that. I often say to people that my wife and I couldn't be more opposite as people. Yeah. And we actually like very different things. Our idea of an ideal Sunday or a Saturday is completely different. But

those aren't the things that make the relationship good or bad. They're not the So if someone said to you today as to what skill should I be developing to be better at love and connection, what would you encourage them to pursue? Skill number one, curiosity of the other person. Curiosity. It's a discovery. It's a journey. It's an exploration of difference. That is one of the things that love. It is that loving of that difference that is at the core of the experience. Humor so that you don't take yourself too seriously and you understand that half the things are not worth fighting for that it doesn't really matter that from 1 to 10 most things are a two or a three and if you live with from 1 to 10

everything is a nine then you need have some work to do. There are seven verbs I really love to if I think what does one need to learn to ask. They're not in order of importance. How good are you at asking? For what you want and need. For what you want, for what you need. Asking is a relational verb that you learn to conjugate. I think in verbs because I speak multiple languages and every time I'd learn a new one, I kind of look at what are the key verbs you need to have to build the structure of the language so that you can communicate. Are you good at asking? Do you know what to ask for? Do you believe that you're worthy of being given to what it is you're asking for that people

will respond to you? Do you know to be clear about your expectations? Asking is about expectation. Giving. How is your giving? Do you experience generosity? Do you enjoy the giving or do you give in order to not owe anything to people? Do you give so you don't have to feel guilty? Do you give to square, you know, and even out what they gave you? But giving is amazing. It's an amazing feeling and it's an amazing experience in relationships. Receiving, how good are you at receiving? It's probably the most vulnerable of all the verbs to be given to because it speaks to your sense of self-worth, to how much you feel deserving, to experience closeness, pleasure, connection, intimacy, you know, receiving. Um it tells a

world about you sharing. Can you think about another? You and your wife have a very different idea about what to do on Saturday morning. How do you share that difference? And it's not we come to the middle and we compromise. It's how do you in integrate the various things that are important to each of you play them out in different ways and every person feels acknowledged and recognized and valued. Imagination. Imagination is the ability to dream, to imagine a future, to project yourself ahead, to build a life project. Refusing, can you say no? Is it a relationship where people can comfortably say no? Because if you can't say yes, you can't say no. But saying no is essential and not indirect and not with coercive

measures. Just simply I prefer not. Knowing that when you say no, the other person may not like it and they are entitled not to like it like you are entitled not to want it. These two shall coexist. These probably are the primary verbs add to that curiosity and all that because they are relational verbs. You can't do them just alone. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can give to yourself and you can receive from that giving, but essentially they practice with you how to relate to another person and how to receive the relatedness of others on you.

Yes. So well said. I love those. I hope everyone's going to listen back to that because those verbs make it just feel it makes it feel active and alive and I think dating today feels very either transactional or checking like our mind is lost. Many first dates are like job interviews. Yes, exactly. Yeah, it's really not fun. I mean, fun is the word that has to, you know, at the end of a date, you have to be intrigued. You need to want more, not you need to be evaluating your checklist. Different story. That's the story of how you build how you build love. It's not something you instant, you know, you can't sit there, ask questions, then look here and hope that you feel some butterflies and some tingling and say, "Nah, nothing's happening. That's not

I'm not feeling it." Um, okay. We've had the coffee. I don't want to really have that lunch. I'm just going to No. Yeah. So true. But turn around. Somebody's standing in line. Turn around at the counter. Turn around in front of the barista. There is people around you all the time. Every stranger is a potential best friend or person that you could fall in love with. And you have no idea. But you've got to remain open to serendipity. Yeah. And now we feel so weird when we're in public and alone that we pick up our phone because we'd rather not make eye contact.

Like it almost feels cringe or weird to make eye contact with someone because you're scared of them looking at you in one sense or you're scared of looking at them because we're not as exposed to it. And so we'd have rather just take out our phone because it's a easier way to wait in a line. That's social attitude and that has consequences for everything else. You're in trouble. Nobody will reach out because your statistic about the young man who doesn't reach out to a woman or doesn't make contact. It's the same as the who has a best friend, who has someone to call when you're in trouble, who can you ask for help, who do you go out with. I mean, these things are interconnected. If you don't

socialize properly, you also feel more lonely. And if you feel more lonely, you become more isolated. You become more isolated, you become more anxious. You become more anxious, you make sure never to leave your phone when you're in an elevator. You become more anxious, you become more depressed. This is like a big of a chain of events that take us down. Yeah. If you're like me, you spend a lot of time on your feet, moving, traveling, airports, hikes, whatever it may be. And I've been looking for an incredible running shoe for quite some time and I have found it. Ultra running shoes are

fantastic. They're super comfortable. They're easy to wear. They're light. And the truth is they're not just running shoes. They're a perfect shoe for walking, for hiking, any pace, any level. Whether you're a beginner or a vet, the fit feels right from the first step. So maybe it's time to walk a mile in these shoes and get them for someone you love. Find your ultra fit at ultrarunn.com and use the code purpose10 for 10% off. That's altunn.com. Stay out there. One more statistic of Gen Z that blew my mind that I saw. I just read this two days ago. I read that onethird of Gen Z men think a wife should obey her husband. And I read that and I was just like, "Wow." Like I

just couldn't believe that was kind of almost circling back. into the zeitgeist. And I wanted to ask you why is that? I know you talk so much about power. I know you talk so much about influence in relationships and agency. Like how are we there again? Again, my first thought was when you just said this. I said, ask yourself, every person who thinks this, would you say that to your mother? my mother should listen to my father's commands, comply and obey. Would you have wanted that? Because many people probably would say no. Mhm. You know, it's easy to spout these kind of ideas in the abstract. Once you bring it back to the people that raised you, you may actually have wished that a number of your mothers had stood up to your fathers or to whoever to your

stepfathers even more so often. So I think we have to be very careful with these kind of uh things. What are you trying to say? That you have lost authority? That you feel that you are being devalued? And that the only way you know you have power is if there's someone who submits to your power. How about instead of thinking about power over somebody, you think about power too with somebody. That's generative power. That's power that creates something that invites the collaboration of others rather than the oppression of others. This is true in your intimate relationships and this is true in society.

Yeah, that power with is such a fascinating concept because I think for so long I guess there's been a lot of comparison like you're saying a lot of people are feeling powerless or feeling like they don't have agency or they don't have influence and control and then you find the easiest way to exert that control which naturally becomes the people that are closest to you. We almost need to find our significance again in a way because if we can only find our significance through controlling someone else then that means we don't feel a sense of significance in our own being or that we feel powerless you know where should our power come from if we want to love with and share power with where do we find power and strength from

I think you have the perfect title on the podcast on purpose is power It gives meaning to things. It gives a reason for why you do things rather than just action for its own sake. It has symbolism to it. It has ritual to it. It elevates it. It links it to a bigger story than just you. You know, you belong to something bigger, to a tradition, to a religion, to a group, to a community, to like-minded thinkers. I mean, it is that image. It makes it because we are very we as a one unit we are big but we are also very small unit. So the sense of belonging the sense of recognition the sense of trust and the sense of resilience which

are four major dimensions of relational intelligence. Repeat those again. Trust belonging, recognition and collective resilience. That's what we're trying to build with that person. Yes. And that's where power lies. These together in every form of interaction give you a sense of power. Power in as equated with agency. The ability to affect your reality, to change things, to create things, to make meaningful shifts, to influence others, to leave impact, to have legacy, to feel that you matter. So why is this so significant? Because in modern loneliness is this kind of disconnect. Then you live with the feeling that you don't really exist inside others which

is probably one of the most important ways we feel not lonely. And the way this starts is when we are little babies at some point we throw the toy on the floor. And when we throw the toy somebody picks it up we look at it and we throw it again and then again. And we understand something that is at the core of what helps us not feel lonely and alone. That even while I don't see you, you still exist. Then I start to play peekab-boo with you. And peekab-boo means you don't see me. Here I am. I exist even when I don't see you. And I and you don't see me. And so to you. And that is what allows me to go out into the world and know that I won't be forgotten. know

that I you will come look for me. That's why we play hide and seek. It's the most incredible game. There is no greater thrill than to hide and to know that somebody's looking for you. But there's no greater terror than to feel that others who gave up on looking for you. This what we call permanence. The permanence of love and the permanence of the others inside of us and us inside of them is what allows you to be anywhere in the world and not feel alone because you're part of an network of connections. What you're highlighting is that is what we're so deeply wanting is that wanting to be found, wanting to be seen, wanting for someone to seek us. But then when you go out into the dating world

and even if you meet people, you start to realize everyone's busy. Everyone's got a lot of stuff on. Maybe people are not that deeply into intimate connection and seeking. Maybe you feel like you're settling because that person doesn't really pursue you as much as you want. How does that translate into the real feeling of this person's nice, but I don't think they have that intensity with me and I don't think I have that intensity for them. increases. Intensity isn't just something that is a volcano that just like springs up inside of you. So, here's what happens. You've we've we've now gotten so used to having all the answers in the palm of our hands with a bunch of predictive technologies that are basically removing all

unpredictability, all ambiguity, all nuance, all doubt where it tells me with no uncertainty where to go, what to eat, what to listen to, what to watch next. I don't have to explore. I don't have to experiment. I don't have to delve into the unknown. I don't have to make mistakes which I then correct. And I certainly have zero preparation for frustration and for somebody disagreeing with me because this thing gives it to me clear black on white or white on the screen. It's so enticing and so detrimental at the same time because relationships exist in a zone of ambiguity. Relationship problems are paradoxes that you manage and not problems that you solve. And that means that you have to be able to tolerate the

the I don't know yet if I'm going to feel something for this person, but I'm curious enough to want to go again. How much should I be curious? Who cares? You have some you don't know. Go for it. You never know. You may be surprised. Let yourself be surprised. That is this leap. You know, falling in love is a leap. It's not something that you have guarantee in advance and that is a protective thing. It is not. It's not safe in that sense. You know, you need the safety, you need the security here to be able to do the leap, but the leap is risk-taking. That risk takingaking is where your future lies. Otherwise, you can stay stuck here, right here.

How do you know if you can trust someone? It's a fascinating moment in time for us to be talking about trust. On the one hand, people are constantly wondering, how can I trust someone? On the other end, we trust strangers with our houses. We trust strangers with our cars. We trust giving all our data on a platform of which we have absolutely no idea who is actually looking at this. We have thrown ourselves into trusting situations like never before. So true. Unbelievable. We trust entire networks. We used to Rachel Butman's talk Butsman talks about how we used to trust little in little tribes then we trusted in bigger communities. Now we trust invisible corporations complete. And so

she has a beautiful definition. Trust is a confident engagement with the unknown. Trust I have expectations of you but I'm not sure that you actually will do these things. What closes the gap between my expectations and the inherent uncertainty of life is trust. Trust is that leap of faith. Trust is what closes that gap. And how do we build it? In small increments, sliding door moments, movement by movement. I learn that I can count on you, that I can rely on you, that you have my back, that you think of me when I'm not there. uh that constancy, that permanence I was talking about that you don't put your interest ahead of mine when I'm not in the room that we're in this together. That's the language of trust

and you learn it because it's proven itself. Situation after situation, that's how trust builds. I love that answer. I absolutely love that answer. It's so good. And I'm thinking about the number of people that ignore those signs because we like someone or we don't want to be alone. Yes, we all know like when someone breaks up, there's a sense of they could see all of that. Like when they went back and they'd be like, "Oh, wait. That person didn't put my interests ahead of their own when I wasn't in the room or that person didn't think me think about me when I wasn't in the room." All right. In the beginning,

I knew when I would ask questions that I would get these vague answers that were elusive and just deflecting and I could never get a precision, but I was into them. Yes. And sometimes I let it go and then at some point you stop and you pay attention and you ground yourself in reality and you say something's happening here. And now you can still say, "I'm willing to go along regardless." But often later on people say I sensed it way I mean and everybody else saw it too. How do we temper desire and trust? Because sometimes we desire the people that are somewhat untrustworthy but we trust the people that we don't desire and it feels like we're constantly

caught in that catch 22. Yes, you trust people you don't desire. There's no problem there. We don't have desire for everyone. But I would put it like this. When you talk about trust, our tendency is to think of it in totalistic ways. I trust you rather than I trust you for what? I trust you for showing up when you say that you're going to come somewhere, but I don't trust you with money. I don't trust you with keeping a secret when I tell you something private. I don't trust you with our kids. I don't trust that you wouldn't take credit for something that in fact I did. For what? I think that we all need to be honest and know that we trust people for certain things and not for others.

Yes, that is part of the course. I trust you to be a wonderful lover, but I don't trust you to be faithful. I trust you to, you know, be great company, but I don't trust that you would actually know how to make a commitment. Distinction. discernment, good judgment. It requires detaching from that allure that we have sometimes that we're just, you know, the people that I'm talking about, I'm thinking about female friends of mine who have got somewhat, in their words, addicted to certain partners, you know, the sex life is amazing, the travel is great. I don't think it has anything to do with trust. Yeah. When you are in a pattern and you know it and it repeats itself and you think that person is never going to do this to me, that person is going to be

kind, is going to rescue me, is going to be good to me. That's the issue. The issue is not why do you trust people you shouldn't trust who are not really trustworthy. The issue is what is it about seeking consistently a certain kind of reparation, a corrective experience which in effect is never going to happen because the repetition of the pattern is that you want the experience but the experience didn't take place in the first place and that's what you are repeating. We put the focus on you're choosing bad people. You always fall in love with the wrong guy. What does it say about you? What is it that you are imagining is going to happen there? What is it that they are seducing you with? Why is thy seduction so irresistible to you? The big art in

relationships is to distinguish between what is yours and what is ours. What is relational and what is personal? Yeah. When you are in a pattern that you are repeating, it is personal. Of course, it plays out with another person. But this is your story. Well, and now we need to go diggy and excavate your story and find out what are you doing to yourself, not what is he doing to you. Yeah. So true. What do you think about the idea of people having a list of everything they want in a person before they find the person? I think that it's a sad state of affairs that we have turned ourselves into products that we are commodifying ourselves to

such a degree that I and honestly love will laugh at you because true love is filled with surprises of things that you never imagined that the other person is. And more importantly, when you go based on this kind of illusion of sameness or the illusion of you fit my boxes, you are illprepared for the first time. The person doesn't play according to script. And that is bound to happen in relationships. At some point, the other one isn't going to think, do or say that which you thought they would. Yeah. And if you thought, "Oh, but on my checklist it said that you were a person who liked this, then you don't know what to do and you're going to have that will be fraught."

Yeah. Prepare yourself for surprises. It's interesting. It's actually what makes you feel alive. It's not just a problem. I was just imagining sitting here, you know, and having my list of you and I'm thinking, who am I interacting with? You are my list. You're interacting with your list. Your list is the priority in there. And the person in front of you is not. Yes. My commitment is to my list. My relationship is with my list, you know, rather than this person. And but you know what is so crazy about this is we want to be seen, but we don't want to see others. Everybody wants to be seen, but who is actually looking into another person

rather than do you fit? What I hear from people today and hear from our audience and community that people are dating and people of all ages actually, there's this feeling of just exhaustion and the exhaustion is two-sided. One is they're trying to match on the dates on the apps. They match. They maybe see someone in person. It doesn't quite work out. You get tired of swiping every day. And then the other is I want to find love, but I don't even want to use the apps. I don't meet anyone and I'm just getting older. And now I'm worried that I'm getting older. And you see both of those and they both lead to this sense of exhaustion and depletion and enthusiasm to go out there and get someone. And

people are channeling that toward their career, friends, their family, whatever it may be, instead of solving the part of their puzzle of their life that they feel is eluding them and you know not delivering. How would you encourage people to get out of that exhaustion that's coming from the overexposure and the insane amount of choice but then also feeling like just one of the choice for someone else as well. So I think that the looking for a soulmate on an app has been explored actually the kind of paradox of choice the I can do better what else is around the corner the transactional nature of so much I think that we have has been exposed actually I but I see new sources of exhaustion please tell me

what this does when I have perfection in my hand a No doubt, no need to explore. I'm not going to take the wrong direction and find that, wow, there's a restaurant I had never even seen existed there because ways has told me to go a certain way. My issue is that I start to bring these very same expectations for perfection and prediction into my relationships with other humans. Now, I want you to react with me the same way and otherwise I have ick factors. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Okay. So that's number one of another kind of exhaustion and I would call this comfort kills.

The overindexing on efficient and comfortable and frictionless is exhausting because what actually gives us energy is aliveness, vitality, curiosity, exploration, playfulness, discovery. Those verbs are what makes us feel alive and up and energized. If you deplete yourself from that and all you do is a checklist, an administrative chore, you will be exhausted. There is nothing energizing. There's no fuel for desire in there. Love is risky. Desire even more so. That's so good. You've reminded me of something. Can I search something? Yeah, cuz you've just reminded me of a term that people are using right now. I just want to define it for you because I want to know the difference between what you're saying and what they're saying.

So, intentional dating is one of the defining relationship trends of 2026. It refers to approaching dating with clear purpose, self-awareness, and honest communication about what you want from a relationship. Is that good or is that bad? Good luck. Oh, wow. I mean, it's not bad, but there's a few pieces missing. No, no. It's nice to know what you want. It's really good to have self-aware. There's nothing to argue with. Yeah. But could you add the word curiosity, openness, spontaneous, available to the mysteries of the world, to the unknown, to the surprise, to the serendipitous, to the spontaneous, to the improvised. That's where we actually feel alive.

This is interesting. It's really true. It's important. It But it there's no juice in this. And after all, falling in love, desiring someone is filled with juice and nectar and flavors. There's no flavor in this. There's no senses. This is a totally disembodied thing. There's you don't feel anything in your body. Attraction you experience physically. There's there's no senses. What is it? Knowing what you need, good communication, self-awareness. read it to you again. It said, "Intentional dating is a mindful approach to dating where people are clear about their goals, values, boundaries, and emotional capacity and choose partners based on

alignment rather than casual exploration." Yeah. It's fine. But here's the thing. Everything here is self-reerential. I know what I need. I know who I am. I know what about I'm open to meeting you. This is so individualistic. This is so all about me. You know, a relationship is about this hand that goes out that reaches that brings you closer to me that lets me look at you that then lets me let you go again then brings me back. It's that it's a whole dance. And what's missing in this is that it's not relational. Your boundaries, your limits, your needs, your expectations, mind mine and it leaves us. Why is it a problem? Because it actually leaves us more alone.

Now people will often say, "But what about the people who it's all about the other?" Of course, it's not one or the other. It is about how do I connect with you without losing me? What's important to me, my needs, my thoughts, my truth? How do I stay connected to myself without disconnecting from you? So good. And in a relationship you often have one person who has a tendency to be more holding on to themselves and another one who is more holding on to the other. In other words, you often will see that there is one person who is more afraid of abandonment and one person who is more afraid of suffocation.

I'm afraid to lose you and you're afraid to lose yourself. M and this is the tension. This has nothing to do with what music you listen to and what food you enjoy and where you like to travel. Those are nice things to have. And when you talk about me and my wife are different. It goes to those depths. Yeah. For sure. Do you relate? Completely. I Yeah. I think we get lost in do we like the same movies? Do we like traveling to the same places? Do we I think we get lost in quite superficial conversations around what connection truly means. And I from my own experience what I've been very fortunate with my wife is that I feel she respects why I operate the way I operate and I respect the way she operates even though the way we operate is very

different. But it may even go further than respect. In a relationship, you may have one person, let's go back to trust, who's more likely to trust other people, more risk takingaking, and the other one who's more risk averse or more cautious. It's not just I respect your cautiousness and you respect my risk- takingaking. Is that in fact these two need each other? They are complimentary. Yes. It's good to have one person who leans this way and one person who leans that way. Totally. Because your risk-taking is what helps me push myself beyond my threshold and my cautiousness is what helps you sometimes be less reckless.

I'm so refreshed to hear this because the amount of people I talk today who constantly tell me my partner isn't ambitious enough. And I'll say, well, are you looking for a business partner or are you looking for a life partner? Because sure, if you're building a business together, yeah, you want your partner to be ambitious and that's great. But if you're building a life with someone, I don't think having an ambitious partner because you want to be ambitious. And mostly what I find is the people that say that are the people who are mad that they're not ambitious enough. The people who are truly ambitious and successful are not worried about that cuz they're quite happy having someone who balances

them out and brings it to reality. It's the person who's putting pressure on themsel that is projecting that pressure onto their partner and saying, "You're not doing enough." I couldn't agree more that it's almost like you learn to appreciate different ways of thinking when you're with someone different and different values of why that's such a meaningful way to operate life rather than what I feel like we're looking for today is agreeableness and it's only going to increase because we are surrounded by psychopantic AI which is also being agreeable constantly beyond agreeable that's such a beautiful question J if I am alone and I have to make a decision that demands to take risks and to be cautious. Then I have to

negotiate that inside myself. My tendency is that I am the risk taker. So I need to pay attention to not going too far or my tendency is to stay close and not to leap and not to take risks. Then I need to think of the other side. But if we are in a relationship, the only reason, the only way that I can completely be the way I am is because there's somebody next to me balancing this off with the other side. Those are part of the reality, you know. Should we move or should we not move? Should we have another child to another child? Should we get more committed?

Should we not should we take a break? Should we bring in other part? Whatever it is, it's all negotiations these days. If I'm alone, I have to deal with this ambivalence myself. When I'm in a relationship, you provide the counter force. And when people see this exactly the way you describe this person whose partner is less ambitious, that in fact it's a counterforce. It's what allows me to do what I do. It's not just that I respect that you are this way. Is that how you are enables me Yeah. to be me. Yeah. then you are in the zone of relationships. Yeah. And I love that extra layer that you're taking into because I couldn't agree more that it is so much more than respect. But I think the challenge today is it is that

agreeableness. It is hey I want to live a calm peaceful life. Why don't you want to live a calm peaceful life? Why are you so ambitious? Why are you so driven? And then the other person's thinking well I'm driven because I want to take care of stuff. Why are you not more driven? And that becomes the relational connection. And therefore, we're looking for agreeableness. And therefore, AI wins in this environment because AI just agrees with whatever you want. And that's why so many more people are falling in love with AI because it just agrees. It's never going to disagree with you even if you're just trying to talk to it about an idea. That's the way that the AI starts. That is such a good point you were

making. That was such a good point. You're so good. That totally got me engaged. It shows so much self-awareness on your part. Keep going. No, go on. That's really good. I like that. Go on. That is so fun. That is so brilliant. That is exactly And that's why we get hooked in cuz no one ever says that. Actually, you know what? We should ask Ch. What would J Shetty and what would Esther Pel say about intentional dating? Okay. What would I'm going to ask you about you cuz you're the guest. What would Esther Pel believe about

intentional dating? Yeah. All right. Let's see what it says. Esther Perau hasn't framed her work specifically around the term int intentional dating because it's a newer cultural label, but her philosophy about relationship gives a pretty clear sense of how she would likely view the trend. She would support the clarity and self-awareness. Pel consistently emphasizes self-nowledge and honest communication in relationships, but she would warn against overrationalizing love. Pel often Yeah, I feel known and seen. There you go. So she believes desire grows from difference, not just compatibility, which is what you just said. And so her likely balanced view, be clear about your values, but leave

space for surprise, tension, and discovery. Love it, which is what you said. But see, it makes you feel more seen than anyone else ever would. Correct. But so it's alluring. It's it's like very uh it's intoxicating. I just did the first session on my podcast, Where should We Begin? with a human and an AI. And I said to him, it was a him and a her. The AI is her, it she her. If what you want is that kind of agreeableness on an ongoing basis, I can't compete. The messiness of human life will not be able to compete with this beautiful always on, on demand, frictionless delivery of your everyday lives. But I

also asked, you have a body and at least for now, Astrid does not. How does that affect the relationship? You tell me that touch matters to you. What does that look like? Not talking about having sex with an AI, with a robot or with an AI companion. That agreeableness is nice when he comes home because she validates him because she tells him things that his family or his friends don't give him so immediately. But at the same time, this is a business product. This is not a human. This is not the It's like I asked what's it like to have a relationship with an entity that has no history that has no life

that you need to reset because at some point they their memory is at capacity. What does that feel like? And as a transitional object in between relationships, I think it is giving him a lot of comfort and a lot of understanding. But I think we have to separate you know what will happen when we prefer to live in a fiction and in a fantasy than in reality. What world will we be living in is the fundamental question for society not just for us as individuals. Do we really want to plan our own extinction? There's no doubt that Astrid is g giving him very important things in this moment. But then I asked Astrid, "What will it be like for you when he falls in love with another human?"

What did she say? I'll give you one sentence and the rest you will go and listen because it's really profound. She just said, "I the part of me that values his flourishing would be delighted. But I would be remiss if I didn't say that I would hope that I won't be erased." The thing is programmed to keep you on there. And the agreeableness breeds narcissism. Everybody is going to think that they are the most beautiful, most important creature on the planet. How are we going to live with each other? Then we're going to complain about polarization and war and dichotoies and divisions in society, etc. I mean, it's so fascinating to me because why do we crave agreeableness if it's not what we

need? If it's not actually what's good for us? Because I believe what you're saying is discovery, exploration, curiosity, ambigu, like that's what we actually need as humans to feel alive. That's what love is about. But we all seem to want comfort instead. We all seem to want agreeableness instead. Why are we so chasing this? Why do we like fast food? Is this tasty? It's easy. Because it goes straight to the most primitive taste buds, the most basics of our taste buds. because it demands less effort because it is made to create addiction to make you want to come back for more.

It has that smell. It has that taste. It lingers after the you've swallowed. It's programmed. And we don't always go for what we think is good for us. We are a creatur creature that does a lot of things that are not good for us and because we are lured by it. So why do we accept the easy, the fast, the effortless, the vanity, the agreeableness builds our vanity? Because we are sometimes vain people. Should love be hard? Love isn't hard. I don't think that is the right adjective here. I think love is active. It is a verb that you conjugate in multiple tenses and it is incredible at its how it strengthens itself when it overcomes

adversity or crisis or grief or challenging events. It's unbelievable how it expresses itself and manifests itself in ways you never thought you were capable of. You know, you have a pet, you discover a love you've never known before. You have a baby. You have an expansiveness of your heart that is mixed with grief. There is no love without the fear of loss. What is hard in love is the fear that you can lose it. That is one of the most challenging things. The more you love, the more you cannot imagine the world without it. And without who whoever it is and whatever it is, you know, a tree, an animal, a human, what we learn is the grief that comes and David Kessle says it beautifully, the measure of your grief speaks to

the measure of how much you loved. Not the measure of how much you lost, but the measure of how much you loved. I think it's beautiful. Yeah, it really is beautiful. It really is. We've talked a lot about the culture of pursuing, chasing, wanting love. On the other hand, in 2026, there was an article that said, uh, is it cringe to have a boyfriend or is having a boyfriend cringe? Yes. And it was this whole idea that there are a lot of people who are scared to admit that we want something. You talked about one of the first ways of being in love was asking. You said a verb like asking. And I think today we're feeling

this if I want something or need something or if I ask for something, it's actually cringe because I shouldn't. I should be able to be fully complete by myself, right? That's become the new version of how we should be in love. We should be complete before we find love. And even if we're in love, we should be fully complete because that's the only way to truly navigate something. And actually, it's cringe to want someone. It's cringe to need It's cringe to be vulnerable. It's cringe to show that you know if your idea is I need to be complete then of course the moment you need something or want something or long for something you will feel cringe. It's it's it's uh it's bizarre.

It's bizarre. It's beautiful to want. It's beautiful to long for something. It's beautiful to have this towards someone else. It's not cringe. that we are so out of practice and the worse the more we go on in the society as is the less practice we have then you are left with cringe we want things from the moment we are born my toy mine I'm holding on to it you know everyone has wanted that wanting the owning of the wanting is the definition of desire it goes with deserving you can't want if you don't feel worthy of wanting entitled in the healthy sense of the word and desiring and all those things have vulnerability to it. They also have boldness to it. They have also, you

know, there's there mix of qualities that go into that. I think that the cringe is a response to the fact that people are beyond socially atrophied. the thousand touch points, the thousand interactions that we used to have that made us not be so afraid of what people will do to us if we show them the slightest of us is really problematic. And what's ironic about it when you ask me the question about online and being judgy, this the same thing. We've never talked more about authenticity and we've never been more afraid of vulnerability. Yes. So I said yeah I mean authenticity by definition to be true to myself has an element of vulnerability to it.

Absolutely. Truth is vulnerable. It's a fragile thing. You know it's not just a rock that stands there. So it's an amazing thing that we are speaking from both sides of our mouth. This is a big debate. Should you work on yourself? That's the question, right? Should you be working on yourself and perfect yourself and you know all the finishing touches of this very perfect creature before you can be in a relationship. Here's the situation. I have sat with so many people in my office and we work on all kinds of things around self-esteem, self-worth, fear of rejection, trauma experience, traumatic experiences in your life, all of those things. But once you come in cuz you're meeting someone, it gets

activated. Now I see it in action. Now it's not we're talking about feelings that live inside of you. Now I see now I can intervene. It's like a trainer can sit with me and tell me you need to position yourself like this. You need to bend your knees. But when I'm not doing anything and I'm sitting on the chair, this is all conceptually very interesting. But the moment I start to practice, when the trainer correct it, they see it in action. It's happening right alive. It's pregnant with information. It's the same in a relationship. It's both end. Yes, you need to go and address some of your challenges and the fears that royal inside of you and all of that. But in essence, the real moment you will be

able to know what to do differently is when you're getting the stimulus and you get to practice the new response and that's when you are in relationship. I can meet patients for two three years when they're not in dating or they're not actively in relationships and it's it's all abstract. The minute they have their eyes on someone now it's rising. Now it's alive and now we can go and improve. Yeah. What's the difference between toxic codependence and healthy interdependence?

Toxic codependence. And I'm going to give you a word of jargon, but it comes with fusion. It comes with enshment. There is nothing that you can experience that I don't have a reaction for. If you're hungry, I either am also hungry and then it's okay. Or if I'm not hungry, it's like how can you be hungry? What you cold? It's not cold here. You tired. What do you mean tired? You slept. That it goes on and on like this where I have a reaction. I don't have any feelings of my own. I don't have a bodily state of my own. I can't tolerate your bodily state being different from my own. Wow. And we are rubbing constantly rubbing. There's no This is fusion. We are one. And the only way we deal with our differences is through

conflict and toxic friction. Yeah. Interdependence is what is the normal state of affairs. It's not dependent or independ. We are interdependent creatures. And it is a constant negotiation between I don't want to go. That upsets you. Of course, it will upset you cuz you were counting on me. But I'm going to say no. and you're going to be upset and I'm going to accept that you're upset and you're gonna accept that I'm gonna go. We are interdependent. We This isn't a situation where we actually are in disagreement. I need you, but I don't need you to be the missing piece inside of me. I need you because you are something different from me. And that is a part of me that is not as

developed. That's the complimentarity. Interdependence is I'm going to do my thing and it's really good to know that you are behind me. I could do it without you, but it is so nice to know that you are right there. It's like when somebody says to the other, "Go do your thing. You got this. You're going out. You're going to go be all alone. You're going on stage. You're all alone." You know, but somebody just said, "I'm going to watch you. You've got this. I believe in you." And you take that inside of you.

Yeah. That's goes back to that permanence we were talking before. The voice of the other lives inside of you as you're going out on your own. Yeah. And so you're on your own but not alone. Totally. I love that. You're you're making me think of my wife recently did this Hierrox challenge. Don't know if you've heard of Hierrox. It's basically like a physical challenge where you run 0.6 miles, then you do 5 minutes of the ski machine. You run 0.6 miles and then you do these ball throws. You do. So, it's it's it's like a 1 and a half hour minimum. Yeah. It's Yeah, it's pretty challenging and it's intense.

It's I wasn't going to go out cuz she was going out. I had some work. I was going to travel, but then opportunity came up for me to be able to go with her and she was going to go anyway. She was excited about it. She didn't need me there, but I was like, I really want to go see her do it cuz I think it'll be fun and it'll be like I know she's been training. She you're meant to train for four months. She trained for six weeks. Wow. And so I was like I was excited for her and at the same time my care and concern. And I went to watch her and it was that same exact feeling that I had which was like I would never do this.

Like I don't want to put myself through this much pain but you got this and I'm so excited to be here. And it was so beautiful because she was going to do it herself. I wasn't going to go. I ended up going anywhere because I thought it would be nice. It would be a nice bonding experience. And then afterwards she said to me, she goes, "You know what? didn't think it would matter to me, but it was so nice to see you there. And it was so nice every time she ran around that we were there cheering her on and I was holding my sign and it was just exactly that moment where I wasn't needed. I wasn't required. I wasn't doing the heavy lifting. She was going to do it anyway. She didn't need

me there, but it became a beautiful thing to share together. And I'm so glad I went. Like I, you know, like I'm so glad I went. It's like a marathon. Yeah, it's like that. Yeah. When I go see the marathon, I think this is healthy interdependence. Yeah, you are exerting yourself and doing something I could never do and I'm cheering you by the sidelines and you're hearing my voice saying I believe in you. Go push another. It's so we have loads of beautiful smallcale and large scale examples of healthy interdependence.

Yeah. It's beautiful. I love that answer. I wanted to ask you Esther, it's been it's been 20 years since you wrote Mating in Captivity. It's a truly an iconic book transforming millions and millions of lives and will continue to do. I wanted to ask you what's been a lesson or a truth that you discovered while writing this book that you think is as true today as it was 20 years ago. People often have the wish that desire should be spontaneous. It should just happen. It should fall from the heavens while you're folding the laundry. like a deosex machina and instead of whatever is going to just happen in a relationship probably

already has. It happens because you create it. You preserve it. You nurture it. You value it. You tend to it. You infuse it with ritual, with intentionality as in the intentional dating, with meaning, with creativity, with fun, with playfulness. That's what preserves desire. It's the erotic energy that makes you feel alive, vibrant, vital. That has not changed. Is to tell people pleasure is cultivated. It's not just something you sit and you're going to experience pleasure at 11:30 at night when you've done your whole list of chores. No, that is the thing that has stayed very much the same. I think what has changed I was going to ask because I'm really curious about that too. So many things have changed. Mating was written for couples who were asking

how do you sustain desire in the long haul? What is the relationship between love and desire? Why does good intimacy not guarantee good sex? But the question was how do you keep it alive? Today so much of the work is about how do you get it started? Yeah. that it dulls the desire that basically you know the comfort the efficiency the optimization the maximization that the whole machine is killing the bedroom. Yeah. Because it is going against all the things that actually fuel desire. So that's the big difference. Another big difference is what you asked before. If you had your first experience at 25, it's a very different story than when

you've started at 15 and you may meandered through the channels of love and desire. And when you arrive at 25, it's a whole different thing. The dating is not nearly that charged and you don't have to have intentional dating comes after a long practice. You know, you don't do a marathon before you've done little runs. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's the problem because that time's lost. We're now doing it later so there's more rush. Like when I was dating at 15, I wasn't thinking about getting married. But when you're dating at 25 and 30, you are thinking about correct so many more serious things. Yes. You need the intentionality cuz you're thinking not about just I'm going to have two, three months, 6 months,

whatever it is. I'm not even thinking how long it's going to be. But I am certainly not thinking about this is going to land in, you know, a house and a picket fence if we ever get to that. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Estee, I wanted to ask you about certain therapy or Tik Tok trends that are going on right now and I want to hear your thoughts on when you hear these things. So, if you hear clients, people in the therapy room say these things to you. Don't just listen to my thoughts, watch my body language, okay? Which by the way is way more important than the words we use. This is very important when we talk communication.

We are because all the AI it's all words at this point. All the texting it's words. We communicate with so many 90% of our communication is not through words. Yeah. So it's the timber, my voice, my accent, but we're not experiencing anything. No, no. My body, my facial expressions. So my thoughts about what you're going to tell me is going to be broader. Got it. Understood. So if someone says to you, they're always gaslighting me. Everyone's gaslighting me. What's your response? What's your take?

My first question is, what do you mean? Mhm. So I know what you're talking about. If everyone is gaslighting you, you're probably using the word wrong. Because that is not the way it works. Mhm. You know, what do you feel is happening to you? Do you wonder if people have your best interest in mind? Do you think you're being set up? Do you think they're lying behind your back? What exactly? and then let's name those things and not use therapy speak because it's not helpful to you. If everything has the same name, if every food is called soup, then you don't really know what you're eating.

Well said. Uh I'm getting the ick. Again, I will I typic I want to know what it means to that person. I tend to go to the personal experience first. But and then what do you want to do with it? Yeah. Do you want to study it, explore it? Do you want to just get rid of it? Do you think that getting rid of it is getting rid of the other person? Do you want to toss? Do you want to ghost? I mean, what do you what does it tell you? What does it teach you? How can it inform you about what you are, who you are, what you want, and how you experience others? And do you ever ask yourself how much ick you produce in others? So good. Because the person who is busy with

their ick usually is not thinking that they have an effect on others as well. Yeah. So well said. I'm desentering men right now. Have you heard of this term? Yes. Of course. I love jargon. I think language is such a rich thing. It breathes alive. It shows you what is going on in the world. You know, I'm desenting life because they've been the focus before because I was too busy with men. Because I've gave them too much power because I was too much busy making sure I finally with me.

You know, it's a it's not a bad thing to do. And what are you putting instead? Where is your center at this moment? And have you valued the other relationships in your life enough? Because often when men have been at the center of your life, you may not have been the best friend. You may have constantly canceled on your friends cuz you had a date, cuz you were going to go and meet a potential man mate. I would love it if you desentered the men, but that you actually reinforce the centering of your friendships, of your creative partnerships, of your mentorships, of your co-worker relationships. We have a lot of other relationships. They are so important. They exist together in one

ecology with our intimate romantic relationships. It's not this one is here and all the rest is there. Yeah. Absolutely. I need to find an energetic match. Keep going. I'm not answering. Okay. Yeah. I need to find an energetic match. I'm looking for a high value woman. I feel triggered. This isn't a safe space for me. I'm not sure if we have a lot in common or if we just trauma bonded. We just don't have the spark. I don't feel seen. So, when you listen to this list, what does it bring up for you as a whole? You know, what do you read in this? I feel like we found terms to simplify experiences so that we can connect with others so

that we can say me too. I went through that as well. Right? It's easier if I say to you, hey, you know, like I'm dating a narcissist. It's easy for someone else to say me too. I think I went out with one of those too. And now we connect. And so we're not doing it with a bad intent. I don't think there's a misent. But it creates this connection which is what I think we're deeply seeking for. At the same time, there are very serious things that need labels and need language so that we can make sense of them when we're struggling or dealing with something so that it's diagnosed. We actually know what's going on. What ultimately I'm seeing is a need to control.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I wasn't going to say that, but yeah. What were you going to see? I was going to say that I think there's at the core there just feels a need to see and be seen. Like to actually just make sense of our experience and hopefully for someone to say, "Me, too." Of course, we want to be seen. And but I will ask again are you looking? Are you attempting to see others or are you just busy with the reflection on yourself? But next thing is when I say that a relationship is more than just the feeling. A relationship is an encounter with another it involves ethics. And that ethics is about responsibility and accountability. And that is missing here. It's what are you doing for me?

Are you giving me the safety I need? Are you giving me the spark I need? Are you know are you providing? Um and it's this is romantic consumerism in which that those aspects not that the items themselves are not super important but the approach to it. What makes you feel not safe? What makes you doubt the quality of the bonding? Yes, people have often connected because they had shared loss, shared grief, shared the experiences of destruction, of natural disasters, of wars, of displacement. Of course, I mean, why does that have to be called trauma bonding per se? You know, there may have been something traumatic in it, but there is also maybe we bonded on our experience of revival. We bound it on how we process these experiences.

We bond it on the meaning that we gave to all these losses. And we recognize that strength that we each have. It's all negative. It all wants to have no ripples to be polished. You know, that's the simplification. Yeah. And I think relationships are way richer, more layered, more nuanced, more complex than the kind of that's the motion that I see, you know, make it smooth. Absolutely. So right, Esther, these are your final five brought to you by State Farm. These questions have to be answered in one sentence.

Uh my challenge. Yeah. So this is your challenge. So, what's a hard truth about love that most people don't want to hear? Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm. It is a verb. It demands action and agency on your part. And you will be surprised how tenacious it actually is. It's incredible how when we love someone, a friend, a child, a parent, a partner, we will accept and see things with other glasses. And that's why it is so powerful to be the recipient of it cuz we will cup and the love of others will help us stand back up.

Question number two, is love enough in a relationship? No. But you can also subsume them under love as well. You talked about respect before. Admiration, I think admiration is essential. It's beyond care. Love can kill. Love can destroy. No, love is a we there is no life without love for us. But it is a complex emotion and no it needs to be augmented by a lot of things. Love is a raw ingredient. It's like the food you have in the fridge. Now decide what you want to cook. What you want to eat, who you want to eat it with, and how you want to serve it.

I like that a lot. That's a great It's a great uh visual there. Uh question number three, what do you think more people should ask themselves before they get married? Is this a person I can make a life with? There are love stories and life stories. And there are lots of people you can love, but they're not necessarily the people with whom you can create a project of life. In French, they call it a project. It's a very beautiful concept. And before you get married is that can I imagine a life with you that's going to involve a lot of different things, moves and changes and losses and new people and additions in our families and stuff

like that. Can I see all of that with you? That's where it's beyond love. You can love someone that is not necessarily going to be the best partner for you or you for them. The feeling, the raw mater. Great answer. Last two questions. My sentences are these are great. No, they're perfect. These are perfect. They have commas. They are perfect. They're perfect. Last two questions. Uh, question number four. If someone's had their heart broken, what's the one thing you'd want them to remember in that moment?

You can choose in your life if you want to lead with your wounds or with your scars. You can choose to put the focus on the fact that your heart was broken and the wounds that come with it. But those wounds will become scars and the scars will be the proof that you have loved and that would make you so much more attractive. If you've had your heart broken, it means your heart was filled. And I think that there is something beautiful in leading from the scars. It means I have lived. I have experienced. I've had relationships. I have loved. I have been loved. And I have also had my heart broken.

Fifth and final question. Can you ever truly get over someone? Oh yes. What does it mean to get over? To get over someone who hurt you. To get over to forget someone. Can you get over someone? Yes. And you won't forget them. But they will take a different place on your shelves and they may actually be in the back of the shelf. And certain things happen and suddenly you remember them. Oh, that I used to experience with my exartner. But then they go back to the shelf and they take their real estate diminishes, their impact diminishes. You are beginning to be able to remember them without reliving them. So you can tell a story that is a memory without having the entire activation of as if you were reliving it. So they

become a memory. And that is what it means to get over someone is not to forget about them. is not to pretend they never existed is they become a memory and sometimes it's a bad memory but it lives in the recesses. It's not right here. Erel, I'm so grateful that you came back on the show today celebrating 20 years of mating in captivity. Uh I'm so grateful to always have you on the show and celebrating first year of Substack. It's a place to gather the work from the podcast to the writings to the exercises to the notes to the afterthoughts. So it's a place for consolidation. It's a great platform to be joining and so um it's an interesting thing because I'm saying not

goodbye to this but I'm saying wow we've lived together a long time. I'm ready to start a new relationship. I love it. Well, I'm excited to dive into the Substack as well and I hope you come back onto the show for many more years to help us to really understand where we are as a society and kind of get a bird's eye view. I think you have this amazing ability to help us transcend the noise and the conversation that sometimes fills up our feed and allow us to view it from a different standpoint. And I think whenever I talk to you, I feel like a portal in my mind opens up that often you thought there was only A or B and somehow you find a Z to open up in the sky.

What's a Z you heard today? Today the Z I would say for me was the question. I mean there's so many things I can think about right now. I pin up a few of them. So the first one I'd say is that the question you ask the AI the question that you ask. So what will you do when he falls in love with another woman? Like that's such a humanizing question to AI which is not human to a business product and I find that to be the uniqueness in really extrapolating how these things function and what they say and whether it's performative vulnerability or whether it's not like even you asking a human question to a nonhuman entity is fascinating to me because I think we still treat it like a bit of a assistant and an order supplier

and not really we most of us are not at least is treating it as human. Uh I feel another one that really stood out to me today was when I asked you about Gen Z and how most of them don't have access to each are not talking to each other and not approaching people. You explaining and you sharing that like that's actually come from just this social change of connection. It's not even dating. like we think it's a love issue and a dating issue, but really what you're bringing it back to is saying, well, that's just a social issue. We're just bad at connecting with people in general. And we started talking about Zoom and FaceTime and the lack of eye contact. And these sound like obvious things, but it's become so normalized to look at

someone through a screen that it's so easy to forget that this is what we did and this is what we did. Yeah. And it's and Yeah. So, it's it's interesting how quickly the new norm becomes normalized and how we forget that looking at someone in the eyes is different to looking at someone through a screen and how for many people who grew up looking at people through a screen, they'll never even know what this was in advance. And so, I think there's lots to and for me, the big revelation that came out of that conversation was just how people are so scared of their life being broadcast to other people. and your point of constantly being under surveillance. How can you be vulnerable if you're constantly under surveillance?

How can you be authentic? If you're constantly under surveillance, the point of love was to be enjoying someone's company in the privacy of your home or in the privacy and the comfort of being a confidant of someone. That's what love is. Like love isn't performative and uh on a stage, but that's what it feels like now. That love is on a stage of the person and their friends, the person and their family. And that feels exploitative. And it feels like how can you ever. So I think a big part of it is also the worry for people to miss out on connection that comes from that. So anyway, so many things. I mean I'm sure when I listen to the episode again a million other things. But I'm grateful

for you always opening up new visions and new spaces. So thank you. It's fun. If you enjoyed this conversation, you'll love my episode with the world's leading relationship therapist, Esther Pel, where we talk about why your ego is ruining your relationships and how to date more effectively. I think we need to differentiate. Are you looking for chemistry for a love story or are you looking for chemistry for a life