Esther Perel: How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm your huberman and i'm a professor neurobiology and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine. My guess today is extra parole.

Extra parole is a psychotherapist in one of the world's foremost experts on romantic relationships. She's also the author of best selling books such as made in captivity in the state of affairs. Today's discussion focuses on what that means to be in a truly functional romantic relationship.

We discuss this from the standpoint of identity, that is, how people both try to hold onto n eval their identities within a relationship, and how a truly functional romantic relationship indeed evolves over time. From a standpoint of curiosity, adventure, but also one in which people need to hold on to certain components of themselves. We explore what conflict in relationships looks like and the dynamics that underlie those conflicts.

So focusing less on specific scenarios, but rather the dynamics that exist in conflicts, in romantic relationship, across all different situations and different combinations of people. And of course, we also talk about what healthy conflict resolution looks like, what a truly effective apology looks and sounds like. And we explore the erotic aspects of relationships, comparing and contrasting, for instance, love and desire, how sometimes those things run in parallel, in the same direction, how sometimes those run in opposite directions, and how people can explore their own notions, their own models of love and desire in order to have more effective romantic relationships.

By the end of today's episode, you will learn from the world's foremost expert on romantic relationships, how to find, build and revive romantic relationships that feel most satisfying to all partners involved. I'm also pleased to announce the extraordinary just released a new course on intimacy. You can find a link to that course in the shown o captions, as well as links to her books, her podcast and other resources about romantic relationships.

Before you begin, i'd like emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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Thank you. So pleasure to be here.

There are so many questions and curiosities and puzzles and chAllenges around the topic of romantic relationships. But what I really want to know is, to what extent is the decision to even think about being in a relationship of the romantic type, a extension of our identity? Or is IT really a willingness to potentially embrace a new identity? And I asked somewhat abstract question for a very specific reason, and the reason is the following.

I think everyone who has been in a romantic relationship, or even who just wants one, is familiar with the kind of yearning or interest or curiosity, and then also with the fact that, just like the development of our physical body, IT has an arc across the lifespan, that a relationship has a sort of developmental ark. There's the first meeting, the first week, the first month that set up. And so much of what i've seen in your work and in the discussion about relationships in the public sphere seems to be trying to understand how we change in terms of what we want and what we ask for, what we feel willing to ask for, that a across this art of the relationship. But what I want to know is, is the decision to enter a romantic relationship, a willingness, consciously .

unconscious.

to actually change who we are? In other words, are we entering a relationship to just be ourselves and find someone we go locking key? Or are we really saying, hey, even whether not we realized if we are pursuing a relationship, but we really basically saying, i'm willing to become a different person by virtue of being in a relationship.

I think IT is both completely both. We meet another in order to find ourselves, and we meet an other and want to be surprised by the sales. We have a known I think that all of us come into this world with a fundamental sets of dull needs.

We need security, and we need freedom and adventure. And we need, together, this, and we need separate. So in the relationship, you come in order to create that identification, but also that differentiation. It's it's it's a dialectic all the time. But what's interesting is, even if I choose you, because you represent sometimes the parts of me that are more chAllenging, or that I disavow, or that I prefer to outsor, so I don't have to be too vulnerable about them.

What draws me to you in the beginning, because IT is different, that I think may expand me and make me change, is also the very thing that becomes the source of conflict later, because we wanted change, but up to a point, not too much in other new terms. So we won't change, but we sometimes are afraid of change. And so we let the other person represent the part of us that would want to change, but then we disconnect from IT.

So you can you become the representative of, I am drawn to the fact that you are stable ground, structured, solid, reliable on time. You name IT. I know that this is something that I would like to be more off, and just a very simple example, but then I start to think of U.

S. Rigid because I get a little more than what I bargain for. And now I would start to argue with your rigidity, and my desire to actually become more structured and solid and on punctual and reliable has somehow disappeared.

So if I understand correctly, we seek out others in order to try and initiate the process of change that we want. But then when we hit the friction point, meaning the point where IT chAllenges where we are, that's right. Then there's A A form of recent to a frustration offensiveness, pensive.

You know what IT is? Every system struggles, stability and change. And then grapples for homes, stasis.

Every relationship goes to that. Every, every, every system in nature goes to that. But the same thing is, too, inside an individual, we want change and we need stability. And then distant sometimes are compensating each other, and they are complimentary and at times the bird heads.

So a very practical question yeah .

then what are the necessary .

but not sufficient elements that somebody should have in themselves before they go seeking a romantic relationship meaning um what is necessary in order to be able to embark on the process with any chance of success um barring you know extreme pathology right um assuming that both people entering the relationship have the best of intentions to make the relationship work in quotes is IT both a sense of one's own identity as well as what specifically they would like to change or is IT some other you know, conStellation of factors.

different ways to answer this? You know, I think sometimes people say, I, I, I am a be with you because you help me become the best version of myself. So is that version, you know, who is IT that I want to see that I you will help me become when you talk about these romantic relationships. First of all, I think is there's a different answer. If we're talking about corner stone relationships or cap stone relationships, do you know the .

concept cornerstone .

relationship is is when we used to meet in our early twenties, and together we build the foundation of our relationship. We grew together. We saved our first money together.

We got our first places together. It's IT was very much foundational. Capstone is the foundation has already been establish because we are tend to meet at this point ten, twelve later.

So during those twelve years, i've already actually worked, so to speak, on my identity. I have defined myself, my values, my aspect rations, my construct, how I want to see my life. And when I meet you, you are confirmation for all of this, your confirmation of whatever already built.

And I am putting you and me as the capstone which we put on top of what we've already created. You and me, you've on the same thing. So I am looking for someone who recognizes my identity, not for someone who helps me developed my identity from much you earlier age.

So there's a developmental art that changes demanded. I said he's both. But the priority of if it's the building of identity or the expansion of the identity, what you could change first if you meet somebody when you're Young and if you meet somebody when you in your thirties.

what happens when people are mismatched in terms of age?

I mean, there is a big age differences a lot of the time. And in a relationships you have often a major um age difference that means something else, but IT creates differentiation. In straight relationships you often have men, whoever, a lot more, a lot older than the women, a very much rooted in evolutionary biology, I think, and fertile. But um and now we have more and more a new phenomenon of older women with Younger men, but that's actually been very rare in most cultures.

So that's shifting now towards more more often people are observing older women with Younger men.

You know, when you have four movies at this moment that are talking about this and you begin to see the the present of of a new cultural phenomenon, I don't I think the fact that IT appears in the arts and in the culture usually announced, I wouldn't make IT yet a phenomenon. But you asked me a question before about what are the things people need.

I mean, you know, when you embark any relationship, it's it's it's a again, it's it's I tend to think as both end on a lot of things. I come to you with a certain self awareness. How much self awareness more there is the Better. And that's self awareness.

I think as is best translate in the sense of I you know, I think a good vow to say at the time of your wedding is i'll fuck up on a regular basis and on occasion, knowledge IT means that self awareness comes with self knowledge about your limitations. You read your ability to take responsibility for IT without blame and shame and and basically accountability. I think accountability is an enormous component of relationship.

It's it's, it's okay. We all two things, you know, we all have our wounds in our frustrations and our expectations and our unexpressed needs in our unfulfilled longing. Ings at ta, but it's a good thing to know IT and to admit IT and to not pretend that it's not me, but it's you.

You know, I often say that couple therapy. I am a practicing couple therapist for almost forty years, and couples often come to therapy thinking that you're a drop off center, you know, they come to deliver their problem, and their problem is their partner, and you're gonna fix that. And they are gonna help because their expert on what's wrong with the partner. And it's an amazing thing how people have tremendous insight on all the shortcomings of the other person and do not see themselves as part of the system. A relationship is a breeding living system of interdependent parts.

Do you think that perhaps one reason why people who are in these corner stone relationships, a whom i've known many, even family members of mine, met in university, met their significant other and then had their first jobs moved in the other, all the things you described that there's this they grow up together.

yeah.

And I think IT probably happens at a stage of life when there's still a lot more neuroplasticity, Frankly. I mean, everything I know about north plasticity is that IT exists across the lifespan, but that IT tapers is off significantly in one's late twenty, and you fortunately is still available. But the notion of being set in our ways as a neuroplasticity phenomenon, right.

the closing of the free .

from record pretty much.

pretty exactly .

takes a lot more to open that plasticity later than IT does earlier, certainly. And yet it's inversely related to the self awareness, right? I mean, the Younger we are, the less self aware we are about our patterns because just have less data over time.

So I could see how to be more difficult for somebody in their twenties to say, he, listen, I I think I have a good many virtues, but I have this severe issue with something, or this particularly frustrates me. Here's my laundry list of issues right where somebody in their forties or fifties um or older, if pressed, could probably make that list if they were really being honest with themselves. So IT seems like a good point. So IT seems that um there maybe there's a sweet spot, but um that these earlier relationships, i've i've always been impressed by them and kind of romanticize them in my mind because that wasn't the trajectory that .

I but they have a chAllenge. See, when you grow up together, you often put a lot of energy into the building of the unit. And that unit then is supposed to become your base, your scuffles, ding, from which two individuals can begin to grow and to define themselves when you meet later. You are already two individuals that have defined themselves who now have to find a way to create the energy to come together. So it's a different movement, a different choreography.

I think that the chAllenge for Young couples today who meet early in cup in college and have known often only themselves and a few people in their teenagers is, are or none is what happens when, when, when they begin to change individually? Can the relationship expand enough to Brown the envelope, to let these two people, you know, emerge individually or IT? Is the jacket too tight? Is the best too tight? And often that IT IT becomes a good of a crisis is because they grew.

They grew together by by hino on the basis of this together ness um and sometimes they can and sometimes you just feels like this is that in order to become adults, IT may need to happen with a different partner. And that's why I always said, I think this moment we have to a tree relationships or marriages in our adult life in the west, and some of us will do IT with the same person, but the relationship has to change. It's like the person change is the relationship, but the relationship makes room for the person to change. This is dynamic.

if that just feels like such a true statement to me, because in my professional life, as a development or neurobiologist, there's a saying, people always think of development and an, but all of life is one big development of correct? And the great psychologist ericson spoke about the different sort of chAllenges that people face from birth all the way until death, which, you know, novaes. Hopefully we will extend in to people's eighties, nineties or even beyond.

Well, he's last stage is the generative stage is actually an amazing, I mean, he's the the most articulate ration of stages of life. I if people haven't .

seen those stages, will put a link to them in the shower or captions. But the ideas that you're basic grappling with some basic struggle that you either retinal illar, you don't at every stage. So you could imagine that, let's say, these three marriages let's imagine a couple that meets in their twenties and does three marriages which implies a couple divorces in between maybe not legal divorces um across their life span.

They really are according to the eric in theory development or any neurobiological examination of brain development, different people in their twenty years versus forties versus sixty, seventy, eighty. So this notion of three different marriages to me seems um botox gc and very grounded in what we know about the biology of the the brain and the self. So a good .

metaphor is rooted in science and yet it's .

also kind of a radical idea when one hears IT for the first time, IT framed in the context of with the same person that sounds kind of lovely and romantic. okay? They need, it's lovely.

They have their first marriage. Then there is some chAllenge they overcome. They do a second marriage and some chAllenge and a third marriage and maybe there's even grand shoulder, you imagine, maybe be a great grange. There's all this kind of romantic notions built up around IT. But then there's also the reality that for many people, more than half, there's a fracture of the first marriage, and that they either remain single or marry again. And so what do you think dictates whether not a person can go through these series of evolutions and actually find and create love again and again and again, either with the same person or with someone knew, or in some cases, I guess, three different partners. I mean, what what is the sort of requirement is IT a willingness to accept this model and understand that who they are fifty is going to be very different than who they are in their twenties?

You know, a good question is a question that has many answers. There's different ways to answer this. Um I think that more than thinking about IT as they were able able to overcome crisis, it's really the ability to redefine oneself.

And to redefine the relationship, it's much more creative than problem solving. You can overcome a crisis and put IT aside. And still the same. This is much more of of a general experience.

At a creative experience is that you actually become a different unit, the power dynamic is different, the introd pendents is different, the, the erotic charge is different, the, the, the, the connection to the outside world is different. It's, it's really it's, it's, it's enlivening the know. I think everybody understands the difference between relationship that is not dead and a relationship that is alive.

I I am not there to help people survive. I my work is good, is is about more than that. It's about helping people to feel alive and the redefinition of having the same relationship with the same person IT has to be alive, not just not that.

And if sometimes that alive means we creating a new, you know, going to a new person, a new country, a new city and new social circle and new profession, and knew a lot of things that we today have access to, to change things that people did once, you know, when I ask the audience, if your grandparents grew up in the same neighborhood or in the same town and worked in the same company, I mean, most people raise their hands. And then I go down the generations. And then now it's like, how many, how many of you have had three jobs in the last five years? So this notion that we can create new things for ourselves is actually one of the greatest things that has happened in the realm, relationships.

We can have kids much later. We can join somebody who has already had those children. We can marry in our sixties for the first time.

We can live in a, in a trip. treason. We can. There's a plasticity, if you want to use the word that you is, that to the world of relationship today, that is extremely rich and expensive, but demands a set of skills to negotiate, to understand the uncertainty that comes from having to make so many decisions at the time with, in the best, none of us made decisions about most of these things. They were handed down to us.

So that level of freedom is ugly, rich, but comes sweet, a tremendous amount of anxiety and man's maturity. And sometimes couples have become so entrance and so locked in their story and confusing their story with the truth and feeling that they are living next to someone who has a completely different version of the story that they cannot talk to. Like there is no greater larisa's sometimes than a couple that once agreed on. Another thing that you just think this, there's no way change can enter this system.

So when I hear your answer um what comes to mind is that again, as a neurobiologist, I think the brain, the human brain, has an amazing capacity to focus on past, present or future. And sometimes two of those three things kind of hard to think about all three at once.

But IT sounds to me as if one of the more functional attributes that somebody can have, if they want to navigate relationship in a healthy way, is to be able to, at least temporarily, discard with ones story about one's past and even their past identity. And the word that was coming up over and over again, in my mind, as you answered, was this word you used earlier, which was curiosity. And i'm wondering if what you're referring to is a curiosity on the part of, hopefully, both people in the relationship as to what the relationship could become and who oneself could become.

And my definition of curiosity is an interest finding out, but without an emotional attachment to what the outcome is. This is what we train scientists to do. You want to get the answers, but you can't get emotionally attached to the answer being a or b. That's anti curiosity. Real, genuine curiosity is about the process, the verb action, of wanting to figure out something, but not being attached to a particular outcome. And as you are describing, to functional trajectory of relationship, I was thinking, okay, so if one could approach relationship with a willingness to discard kind of stories about one's past, and maybe even a sense of ones identity of past, be willing to let go that a little bit. And just be curious about, like where could this go if I let the relationship guide my evolution of identity a bit? And that takes some, as you say, some some boldness because if it's kind of scary, right, if you not knowing who you one is going to become, if they let the other person, you know, maybe lead for a while or or if they were to lead for a while, these these sorts of dynamics that you're referring to.

I think you almost articulated one of the most important pieces of my work. Um I mean curiosity is one of the top words for me um because IT stands in a position to reactivity. Reactivity reinforces the cycle.

IT just creates narrow reputation, rapid in you know cycles of escalators. IT did usually involves defense and attack and blame eta curiosity is an active engagement with the unknown. And I like when you say without the attachment to the outcome of the emotional investment, I think that's absolutely accurate.

And um much of what I do is try to have people switch from reactive to curious, but that curiosity means that they are willing to enter empathetic and respectfully into the realm of another person whose narrative is completely different. I'm very investing in familiar with the neurosciences and the whole work on the grain in relationships, but I am very interest in narrative because I believe that the story shapes the experience. And when people hold on to the story and they don't think it's the story, they think it's fact, this is what happened last night.

I'll tell you what you did. I'll tell you what happened. You know, that's not the case, you know, and they don't see this as a subjective rendering is totally valid, but is valid as your experience.

And much of couple's conversations is surdo factual talk. But he is actually subjective. Once you get that, you can become curious. Once you are curious, you open up. But IT is very chAllenging when people are hurt, wounded, defensive.

The holding time to invite that curiosity is, is what's happening in their bodies is about shut down and defense and self protection. And you want, i'm doing this physically to you because you, this is where the brain and the neurobiology in that moment is going against what actually is in their best interest, psychologically and existence. Ally, i'd like to .

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The stress responses about solving for the feeling now IT has no sense about or IT doesn't allow us a window into the cognition or emotions that are related to what could be, even though we desperately want out of there and there's all sorts of evolutionary reasons why this would be the case course but I feel like a statement that you made um which is that a curiosity and are willing to discard with one's own narratives and in particular what you said about the that people perceive their own experiences as fact when in actuality it's it's just two different stories neither person is correct or one person you know but people have these stories which are almost confabulation at some point but they feel so true to all of us when we experience them. I also feel like that's a lot of what's happening in culture at large people, diametrically opposed camps, really believe that the same thing is a reflection of two completely different series of facts. And and IT seems almost unsolvable at the level of cultures is just too many people. But at the level of two individuals, I feel like I ought to be tractable.

You know, I have gone to a lot of meetings in the last year on issues of at, on, on society levels. And and I often think like, what is the psychologist or a couple service is doing in those meetings? What I am invited here.

And I think, you know what, you actually have a lot of experience with polarization, sitting for a long time with couples who once actually thought in the presence of the other. I discover myself, no, you know, can be so at odds. They're sitting in the same room.

They are listening to the same session. They have a complete different interpretation of what I said and what I meant. And they live.

And you wonder, did IT happen in the same room? And the same thing is about what they described about the night before. And if you didn't see them together and you saw them each alone, you would be completely mistaken because it's like swiss cheese. Everything that one has left out is where the other one starts. So we learn a lot from doing couples work around the process of polarization of, around the process of intractable conflict, around the the sense that you are my enemy and and there is nothing in what you say that I can recognize or be impacted towards or or understanding.

I think on the society level the people who have studied tractable conflict um basically have a method and of how you bring two opposing party's factions, uh, tribe, do you know who have been in conflict and at warf a long time and how do you bring them together there? Is this actually a matter and process is not written stone. But you know, you certainly don't start by talking about the things that drive you completely apart and unable to talk to each other.

You start by finding some elements of your shared humanity in the company, that is the, the, the space we we talk about in a couple. It's an incredible thing how you people can literally think that the other person wants their demise. You live day in, day out with someone who you have, who you really think wants to hurt you, is your enemy.

And sometimes they are the evil. You know, these people who have don't have good intentions. But in many situations, it's it's it's also a projection.

It's also experiences that you've had in the past. And this is where what's interesting is that the narrative, the conscious narrative, lives here. And what you call the brain that can only locate itself in three tempo, and the brain and the psychology are in a different time. Implicit memory is completely influencing explicit narrative.

Yeah, people are incredibly prone to confabulation based on these unconscious things going on in IT.

It's kind of a scary if I feel IT. This is what's happening. And because we are creatures of meaning, we need to recognize those things and we need coherence in our narratives.

And that coherence is why they should difficult for when when you work with people who are all, what is that that they are holding on to mean. You know, one of the classic example is some, you know, someone says, i'm really sorry, I didn't mean to and the other one says, that's not the case. You know, like if someone tells you I didn't mean to hurt you, you would think that someone would say, that's reassuring.

I like to hear that. I hope that's true, makes me feel a lot Better rather than proving to you that that's not true. You wanted to step on my toes. You you intentionally put those heals on, or those shoes are, you know, those fister to to to to step on me.

And that could hearts of maintaining the idea that if I feel that you hurt me, you must have been wanting to hurt me rather than, you know, I can be hurt. And that doesn't mean you intentionally we're trying to do anything. It's as if I need to justify my being hurt by the by the intention of what you did and to just make sure sometimes that's the case. There's not that there are not people who intentionally wanted hurt some people. But at other times when i'm highlighting, is that the coherence to make sense of why I am feeling this way, the minds that I also define what you are trying to do to me.

I mean, and in reality, most people are terrible at understanding how they themselves feel, let alone someone else's intentions. I mean, if somebody apologizes and says, listen, i'm truly sorry, I screw up and the other person says, I don't believe you, I think what they are really saying, you can tell me i'm wrong, is I don't feel Better as a consequence of your .

apology because your apology I screw wed up is incomplete. Most of the time people say that I made a mistake. I'm sorry, but IT doesn't acknowledge what the other person felt in response .

to what we did so that the apology includes that I I really messed up IT makes total sense that you would be upset. We had an agreement that we would meet at seven, and I didn't get home until nine, and I didn't notify you until eight. I would be upset too.

That's totally justified. That's socks. That's got a really suck. At that point, if the other person still feels like it's still frustrating, presumably it's because either this is a pattern. So this doesn't this one apology doesn't incapable ate all the other side of literary of other things that relate to this, a feeling on scene or unappreciated or know there is often a lot more behind the event, right or yet could be a pattern of apologies that don't equate to change. There could be a pattern of an apology that um doesn't incapable ate all the other things that weren't voice because sometimes people won't voice their grievances because they for whatever reason but there's a lot of present that's built up, right? So in that moment when somebody tells another that they are um not convinced, emotionally convinced, what what are the tools that you give each in order to be able to navigate .

that sticking point? I think apologies and an amazing topic in the real relationship is a huge peace. Apology, forgiveness, ownership responsibility accounted that whole range of things. I think if you give that apology many times somebody and and it's not yet you doing this every tuesday, the person will probably just say, thank you.

If you have someone who can't receive an apology, and the apology is since ere that's the first for most thing that accompanies an apology, then you begin to ask, why is this person struggling to receive this? Because IT is the thing that you should be getting. And then you start to ask yourself, is IT because if I accept your apology, it's as if I agree that what you did wasn't so bad.

IT is reliable. And in order to really make clear that grievance is big, I cannot receive your apology. That's one of the dynamics that often occurs in that moment. And and so you ask sometimes, you know, you sit and you see, you see somebody who pretends to, sam, sorry.

You see somebody who just as a command, and what's the big, big deal? And then you see people who really are in are since here, and then you watch what's happening to the other person. Are they relieved and the suspicious? Are they feeling like they would they would deserve a certain element of their identity if they don't hold down to this?

Um is IT as if they are sing you you know you can get away with IT you know it's not as bad because accepting the apologies is too minimize the issue and then you switch to burn on the other side. You know in in judaism you apologize three times and if after the third time, and you've done a real reckoning, apology, if at the three time the other person does not accepted, the burden passes over to the other person. interesting.

This is my money. This, and I think it's an incredibly interesting idea that at some point the person has media mends when they have and when you cannot receive IT, then no, the burden passes on you. I'm just going to however .

there first second because I agree that apology is such an interesting and important concept. And you mentioned that accepting somebody y's apology at an emotional level, not just saying thank you, I accept your apology, but really internalizing that and allowing space for IT to shift your experience of the the thing that hurt.

And by the way, accepting apology doesn't yet mean that you forgive. Forgive is your freedom. You decide at what point you do IT and you may do IT alone.

It's not always A A diag experience. Apologies is a diag experience. But forgiveness is freedom.

Appreciate that distinction. Um now that you given that, I mean, I appreciate you giving that distinction, I did not make that .

I love this topic because it's so it's really so many things happen underneath you know there are issues of shame around apology. What's the difference between shame and responsibility? What is the capacity of a person to have real distress rather than apathy? Distress, a real empathy rather than emphatic distress. So it's important into a lot of things. You know, there are people who can never apologize.

zero, because to do so would what for them?

shame. I think a leader without pieces around shame. It's not because self steam, as as my frenchy real says, is your ability to see yourself as a flood individual and still hold yourself in high regard. When you admit you floor IT means that something wrong with you, then it's very hard to say, i'm sorry, this is the essence how do you see yourself as imperfect flaws, but you still respect yourself when you hold yourself in high regard? If you can do those two things, you can apologize very easily.

Buying that so much of being an adult again in quote.

yes, yes, you involves the.

Two things. One is we're taught to really trust our own experience to some extent to stand our ground when we know a is true and b is false. But then also part of being an adult is admitting when we're wrong and and there's no rule book, no real time rule book for that, especially given that people have different versions of the same thing often. But IT seems to me that one of the .

great chAllenges in .

not just in romantic relationship, but in relationships of all kinds, is to really be able to slow down and enter the state of mind and body that allows us to do the kind of processing you're talking about. So at a very practical level, i'm curious, let's say a couple comes into your office and they're dealing with um either a single hurt or a littering of hurt or or something like that.

Do you may believe it's important for them to shift out of their emotional state to be able to process differently? Do you have them at the beginning of a session? Do you have them do a couple the breath together?

Do you have them recall a time when they felt particularly bonded? Is there an effort to shift their traumatic state in order to bring their mind to a place of more curiosity? Or is going straight to the issue often the best way in .

first of what I liked, that we that seem see me going from apology to config IT makes total sense. I I spent the last year creating a whole course on conflict. And how do you turn conflict into connection? What is good conflict? You know, I think conflict is inherent to relationships.

And then what are problematic ways to deal with conflict? yes. And some level, you there is very little you can hear if you are in a state of hyper sal, if you are in a position of self protection.

I mean, all these stressful places, all these critism levels going up, it's are are not gonna help you, but at the same time, you can't in the moment that someone is uh, completely agitated, talked with them about trusting, just say the psychology is not corresponding. So it's a it's a real dance. I don't do the breath often, sometimes I actually don't do anything all the time.

I I am working like a tailor I do fitting, amending the rich ness of therapies is is its art on some level? Let me be um but sometimes I just say I think you need to stand up and move and just listen to what your partner her to say, but don't sit. Sometimes I say don't look at each other.

Sometimes I say turn to each other. Some things are Better done face to face and some things are Better done side by side. You know parallel play fishing. There's a lot of like you know driving may be parent ever had a kid in the bag knows this. You you have both.

You have moments when you need to be able to look into each other and then moments when you just need to do IT is something about the side by side. Then it's also the limits of words. When is IT important to talk? And when you know, we are talking because we are homocide.

But in fact, if we wear animals, we would be just making noises. We're not really making sense. So stop talking.

So what I try very hard to do is to not let people show the worst side of themselves. They can do that at home. They don't need to command shame themselves in my office.

And I do know that certain situations will draw the very start of people, but that doesn't mean that that's who they are and that's one of the victims as a therapist is to to not fall for that or just because if you met these people alone, they would be charming. And if you had met them maybe two years before, they would have been charming too. So something's happening between them that is making them act and react from places of deepest and fear and attack and all of that and aggression.

And sometimes I sit them alone. I don't think that you are capable of having this conversation at this moment because you're not willing to take any responsibility when you're sitting next to your partner. You're in a blame fist.

I am not gonna do that. So i'm gonna k with your loan and i'm gonna prepare you to come to your part with at least one or two things that you can own. What am I doing to contribute to dismiss? Or what am I doing to things Better?

I like to start the session by asking, what did you in fine dealing with a rony conflict, low intensity warfare or bigger? Depends what kind? Didn't know this different kinds of time. But I like to ask, what have you done this week to make things Better?

What great question.

What have you done to make your partner feel that they matter? Rather than what happened this week. You know, I kind of have a sense.

Please do not tell me the last unravelling. You know, I got IT IT goes from one from zero to sixty, no time and none of this. I I don't need the details of the story. I need to know what you're doing to each other, what feelings you're instigating each other. I don't need the plot I did. But you know, his only three dancers, this fight, you know, aiming at each other, we drawing from each other, or one person, we drawing in one person pursuing this is a three types of major career grapes of conflict, or quite silence, or one goes after the other, who is closing the doors. And they follow them through the house, which is following them to a lot of other things.

And from that place on you decide, okay, who is doing what to home, who is feeling what at the hands of home, how what is influencing this you know um this person is once again feeling that when this one then talk to them they were being given the silent treatment that they used to feel when they grow up and um and then and the the this feeling of neglect and dismissal is just crushing them because they suddenly feel like they're been rejected completely and this one is feeling like they once again being attacked and invaded by the other person who keeps following them and wants to talk when they have again and is remembering when they were living in the place where they grow up where they couldn't wait for to get out because they were feeling completely flooded and overwhelmed by the ship show of their house. And these two stories are now dictating what's happening between these two people. These two people are no longer adults in the room.

Their Young ourselves have completely taken over. There are big delays, completely flooded. And then and then IT matter IT depends sometimes because i'm a little bit narrative driven, I may make the mistake to actually go to the story when, in fact, these two people will do put some.

At times I sit for ten minutes quiet. I say, we're gonna just wait for for our systems to regulate that, cause even I get agitated. It's not like that doesn't absorb don't absorb bit.

I say I think we need some sitting here. Sometimes I put music, I love music, so I put music, you know um I just say I don't think a single word is gonna help here. And sometimes I setting, we should stop the session.

I mean, IT depends if you think there's something that can be gained if you start to feel like it's just gonna IT worse. And sometimes I in the middle the session may see wednesday last time you made him a patee. And the fact that you can still make a cup of tea to someone who you would like to strangle, it's really special.

It's amazing how we can inhabit to completely contradictory feelings at the same time. I can't stand you get the help out of here, and I can't imagine my life without you. Two things who exists, love and head side by side.

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I think is what is IT.

So as a biologist, when we teach biology, the good biologists who good teachers, we emphasize names only because people you didn't know them, this is called that. This is called that. But it's all about verbs. It's all about processes and dynamics and what you just described as the three verb states of conflict, I think i've never heard articulated that way so you described um if I understand correctly, one person pursuing another, no purse pursue and and .

those are escalates OK two error was .

pointing at one and not in a good .

way no not in conflict. It's usually know that a good way, you know and you there are there is a whole interpretation of an attachment style that underlies wiped to people in the situation of threat. Go on the attack.

You have two people fighting. You have two people flighting fleeing, and you have one person who flees and one person who fights. That's another language for pursue, pursue distance CER, distance CER, pursuit distance CER.

And in each of those cases, IT seems that the first step to getting to a more functional dynamic, to try and sort this out, whatever the conflict is, is to somehow change one's mindset from talking about the story of what LED there, or stories of what LED there, to really starting to pass the feeling states of ourselves, and hopefully empathy for the feeling state of the other.

It's feeling states and physiological states. It's two different things. The physiology is more primitive, more basic. It's physiology. Sensus feelings, thoughts is the way I would you know, but because we are said, you know, because we are you homeless people, and we think we really just think about coherence and thinking that what we say is meaning is extremely powerful to the point sometimes of illusions. You know, because I have to believe this, because there would be too much distant if what I feel and what I think and what therefore happened, didn't all have a coherence to themselves. And you know, sometimes when you sit in the room can see they never said that.

It's almost like a psychosis of sorts. I'm not calling .

either persons psychotic is because it's a disconnection from reality. I would say it's such a, uh, uh uh an inhabiting of an internal reality that IT is disconnected from the possibility. And this is where curiosity comes in.

It's the possibility that what you are experiencing is completely real in its experience, but that doesn't mean IT is factual or IT is real in reality, you know and to when i'm hurt and when I am thinking that you want to harm me. It's very difficult for me in that moment to be willing to be emphatic towards you and there are relationships where this is the truth. I want to constantly come back to that because not everything is imagined you know but there are many other relationships where um why would why you know why would he want? Maybe he stepped away because he just thought that whatever was gonna come out of his mouth he would regret IT is not because he doesn't care about to infect is the opposite. And he knows what he can sometimes say he did, he doesn't matter, but not because he wanted to just throw you to the woods.

It's almost like we lose our theory of mind, our ability to place our ourselves in the mind of another in in a healthy way when we're in these stress states. I'm curious as funny .

you call IT stressed IT, because stressed to me is so physiological that he doesn't include the national component. I mean, there needs to be a word for stress that involves the emotional reality, and that emotional reality that now maybe somewhat imagined. And this is what it's complicated.

What's once true right now is an internal truth. Once was what really happened. And that's why we imagine, and this is how we interpret the dynamic, is very point to add that.

So the the past was really there was someone in the best who actually did this to me. But when you do this, I think of them, I bring those two things together. I I collapse the best and present. And that's why i'm convinced this is what you're doing to me too. And so how do you take somebody out of their physical and mental and emotional task to be grounding themselves into the present so that they can consider that this person that is next to them is not doing to them what once was done to them?

right? And my mind immediately goes to what you just described as a shift from focusing mainly on the past and how it's making us feeling in the present to how we're feeling in the present, acknowledging and understanding something did happen in that was real, as you said. And yet, with this curious eye told the future of what could not fall.

that's probably the harder noted a couple of therapy. I mean, I do individual work too, but if we talk relational therapy, this is one of those markets because people are not aware that they are in their past. They are convinced that this is in the present.

It's a collapse of time zones. And reality is what makes so rich, it's what makes us so able to be creative and artful. But it's what sometimes makes IT very chAllenging for us, especially in romantic relationships.

Because you ask at first, to begin with, romantic relationships have a lot of what we say here is to for friendships and work relationships. But there is only two relationships that mire each other. It's the one we had with our first caretakers, with their parents, and the ones we have with our romantic partners.

People can sit in the office until you, I don't have this with anybody else. And it's true often you believe in because nobody gets us close to you and nobody illicit knew the kinds of early earnings and and and and emotional needs than a romantic partner. And that is very interesting.

I don't know if it's a bugger a feature, as the engineers say, but IT is remarkable to me that the very same neural machinery that forms the underpinning of infant primary can taker relationship is repurposed for romantic relationship.

I mean, I marvel at that, right? I mean, the brain doesn't have like, oh, here's your developmental wiring circuits and then guess what, you get to hit out a lesson and you go through puberty and then you get this new circuit for forming to attaching the brain. Imaging shows us that it's refurbishment.

It's it's like if you ve got a two plus two equals four algorithm in that certain, let's call that securely attached although I realized that language is not sufficient, but for just purposes of discussion, okay, well then great. Then you get healthy romantic attachments as adults or you you as an adult. And perhaps you can navigate in and out of things that are unhealthy more quickly. However, if you ve got a two plus two equals five algorithm wired into that circuit, well then you're forever looking for something that won't. That is essentially diffunce tional.

That's a simplest and more about this. We purposing interest.

yeah. So, um beautiful work by alan shore and other this is work I know you're familiar with has shown that you know you image the brain of infant and typically its mother, but we've done other caretakers as well and you see this incredible mirrors of sure right brain, left brain activity, more dopo energies or such a gic activity.

Basically the the takeaway is that you see a lot of hearing what's going on in the mother is going on in the child and vice versa. And it's there's a lot of reciprocity ity, but sometimes in unhealthy caretaker infant relationships, the so called that you know anxious attached, associated or you know avoid in type scenarios that A B CD baby type thing people can look that up. They they like we can provide a link.

You see a mismatch in the newer chemistry in the activation of these brain areas, in other words, that the brain circuitry for attachment is is set up so that, you know, anxious states are evoked when calm states should have been, have you been Better parenting? Okay, yes. But then you take those.

You essentially run the same sorts of studies on romantically attached Young adults or older adults. And what you see is the same sets of neurons, the same circuits. I mean, this is remarkable.

Nowhere else to my awareness, nowhere else in the nervous system do we refer pose neural circuit tree from early in life, you know, IT, as if there's a neural circuit for sensing thirst and drinking early life, and then later it's used for sensing. Had a navigator city. okay.

Now though, there are two very desperate things, but this is, this is like outrageous, right? And so I say it's either a feature, a bug, we don't know, but this is the way IT is right. I would say .

I wasn't consulted in the evolutionary logic of that.

I'd like to think in a kind of romantic way that some of our most important work in our lifetime is to try and resolve these developmental misween ings that are the consequence of twelve caretaker infant relationship. And you can't blame the infant. Now does that mean we blame our parents to the point of asterism? The more one would hope not.

Maybe in some cases, that's unnecessary. But I think I like to think that what we've served over the last ten, twenty, thirty years, in no small part, seriously, thanks to your work, reflects an evolution of how we are thinking about attachment, that we are actually getting Better at understanding the self. And there's something about the human brain that wants to understand itself very different.

So I like to think that .

in one hundred years, not only will there be more models of relationship as functional, healthy relationships, but there will also be a deeper understanding of what this whole thing of love and attachment really is. And the parallel uses one of biology. We understand so much more about brain function now than we did just ten years ago.

Addiction, for instance, you know, not just A A condition of failure, willows, but this understand about dopamine, you know, and other molecules. I think we now look at A A fitial addict hero very differently. They're caught in a neurochemical algorithm that is not serving them well.

IT doesn't remove their responsibility, but there comes a point where they can't recover themselves and they need certain supports. And those supports are starting to emerge now. So my hope is that this is built into our our evolution as some sort of vector toward progress.

You know, it's .

interesting .

because some mothers of corporal work therapy, we'll see you have recreated with each other patterns of your early life in order to be able to track reputation .

compulsion. You get the same thing over and over again or knows i've had that and some wonderful partners. And by the way, as I say that i'm also taking fifty percent of responsibility, so it's or one hundred percent of responsibility for the choice as they say.

You didn't have six hard relationships. You had one hard relationship six times, right? I think paul count, he says, is that way, but that, yes, that the repetition compulsion is a unconscious attempt to resolve the core conflict that arose during early attachment. Do you subscribed to that view?

I think it's a very useful idea. You know, I was thinking at one point said sometimes when when when I listen to you and you know there is an exactly in the things that you describe, often rooted in science and research, couples therapy or section therapy relationship thinking if you don't have an exact answer um it's.

First, fully, you don't have an exact answer, because modern relationships are more complex than ever, and I don't think any relationship expert at this point can have answers. You have inviting, you have ways of thinking that are useful. And here is the question, is this true for me, is answered by to the people, does IT resonate for them if they buy IT? Then it's true.

It's a framework I can underlies this tabb lue in multiple ways. If this is one that resonate for you, this is what we're gonna go with. And that's what makes IT true. This is a very interesting thing, is multiple, I mean, to me is interesting because there is a whole movement within the world of psychotherapy and psychology that wants to actually become much more Normalized with protocols. And the same thing for everyone. I think that much of what at least relationship therapy which is really the world in that I practice in is is existent al and its meaning making and there's a lot of ways to do that. So um if this interpretations works for you, be my guest but that's not because IT is more true than another is the one that was useful for you and that makes you much more humble.

I love that answer.

It's a little bit like when you raise kids, you know you think that used to think that all these things I had done with my first one, you know, is because I had such good ideas that I had a second one, and none of these things worked with them because he was a different person. You, so I realized that the first one IT worked because there was a fit between my method and the person. And this is the important therapies that is an issue of that. Fit is what you're looking for.

We hear a lot these days about the different attachment styles or languages of love. The love of languages, you know, people will say, I know, emphasize, know a gifts feel very rewarding a acts of, uh what is the words of affirmation um you know on structure, time or at a where people will, I think nowaday if they look into IT a little bit there um realized that they are either you know more avoid or more ancient. These things can shift.

I mean, I think it's wonderful that the people are thinking about these things in the same way that I think it's wonderful that people understand that there's a molecule called doping. I can do certain things, serotonin, certain things. But i'm curious as to whether not you feel that the the naming of things and the assignment of oneself to a category can sometimes be limiting in terms of one's ability to really embrace this curiosity and you also use the word invitation and you you are describing a couples therapy and healthy relationship is a bit more of an art form than a reductiones protocol oriented science, which I love. Because to me, you know, despite being a scientist, that some of the great mystery of life, and certainly of romantic relationship, is when you find yourself in happy places that you didn't anticipate finding yourself, or in a place of forgiveness and close friendship, when at one point you can recall being less, you said like you just this person like embodies the worst things in your mind. So I think I wonder if the .

process is that you .

found useful in your clinical work is IT possible to formalize those in a way that people can start to adopt to them? In other words, do you think that we can learn, navigate relationship in more healthy ways, not just by thing i'm anxiously attach or avoiding or security attach them, looking for someone that has that, or my love language is this, and I love to do that. And so therefore perfect and locking heat. I think people are starting to think about relationship in a more new once in a sophisticated way. And yet also what i'm hearing is it's a lot more dynamic than that and that some of those categorization that we assign ourselves can really perhaps be limiting to what .

could be to great question. But I have a moment now as they have in the session with you where I have like five things are arriving here in front of my great. And i'm thinking, which one am I gonna? I'm gonna enter.

I'm gonna try start. We just the actual question, but then I approve. Ly is an opportunity to sell little bit about how I approach distinct. I think some naming is very useful. IT frames IT IT gives IT a foundation, something to hold on to.

Language matters if we would not be having a conversation without having a shared language at this moment, but we think that you and I are using the same words and may have very different meanings attached to IT. So that's the richness of the time of the process. Is, what do you mean when you say invitation curiosity? You know, conflict is a when I, for example, when I do the work on conflict, I I did provide language.

For example, one of the things that happens in conflict is we have confirmation bias. That's a cognitive framework that is often present in situations of emotional conflict. Of conflict, which involves with something an emotional dimension could be political, too.

Confirmation rise means that I am looking for evidence that reinforces my beliefs, and I disregard any evidence that contradicts. Now this happens between two people. This happens between two to parties.

This is that a very important naming. You know, it's interesting. I ve noticed this, this, this, this. But all you mention is that OK cognitive vice, another cognitive bias that is very is is fundamental attribution error.

You know, we have this idea that I am complex and you are more simple if if, if i'm in a bad movies because there was traffic, you know the circumstances, this context, if you're in a bad moon, is because you are content to this person. That's just your personality, you know, will categorize and totalities the behavior of others, and will have lots of nuance and poetry for our own. That's a concept.

That concept is very useful. It's neutral. IT doesn't anybody? And he says, we all do this.

I like that kind of naming is very different from the kind of naming that pathologies as people, the kind of naming that and locks you into one identity. You know, you may have addiction, and addiction may be really important. They may have been, have destroyed your life.

But to just see you're an addict, i've seen. So I worked in an addiction. And for for two years, you know, people had a lot, there were a lot of all the things happening in these people's lives.

And to just focus on this, one thing is IT IT. IT reduces the person, but he also reduces your ability to do something with the person. IT narrow your lens.

So this always this question about how, why is the lens that you that you not get overwhelmed so you wanna make IT smaller, but not that small, that you that you're looking through a key home. A person is more complex than a key hole. You know, we don't just treat symptoms.

We we work with lives. That's the difference of for me anyway, in the work that that we do and that and then when you'd begin to think about lives, then you start to think about culture. What is happening in the world of relationships today is such an incredible thing that is going on.

And and if you don't put that in the broader context, i'm trained as a systemic clearance ted family typist, and that means that you're looking at the interaction of different systems. And I think that a lot of what happens is a hyper individualizing of these things. And the naming is useful when IT expands your understanding. The naming is not useful when IT locks you into a symptom and a reduction is ticking that that gives false certainty to profits.

I can agree more that that naming that expands one's understanding and maybe even lends itself to a hint of curiosity, stands a chance of of having some rehabilitating ality to IT. I feel that now is there's such an overuse of psychological terms like nas gas lighting therapy terms.

It's it's almost the way that if people were to talk about neurobiology as neurosurgeons ah i'm not a uo surgeon, but my friends who are and neurosurgery is like something people train for many, many, many years for just as being a clinical psychologist, people train for many years for and have a ton of in office experience, real world experience nowaday. The naming and the attachment of named to particular top control features of people out there seems to be largely for the purpose of um closing off possibility as opposed to increasing possibility. However, it's good because .

on the one hand, more than many other forms of medicine or health care or care psychotherapy synodical, but sydney security was always signified and still is in many parts of the world, is for the crazy it's for, it's for people, he said. There must be something fundamentally wrong. Did something that nobody went around talking about, the fact that they are therapy.

You went to see a therapist, you know, now you putting IT on your on your dating up, you know, it's a status symbol. So there is a distrmar sing that is very important, but there is also words that I weapon, zed, and they are not useful, and they and they are separating people. And we have enough separation at this moment in our societies in the west.

We don't need more efforts to pull people apart. We need efforts to bring back the collective, the community, the the shared experience because we are too far apart. And that's why I think that some naming is useful, and some naming is not always that useful.

A men to bringing people together more. I yeah such an important mission right now. I'd like to explore the possibility of something that i've heard, but I don't know if it's true that sex, which of course doesn't just include intercourse, but the things that lead into and out of sexual intercourse.

But that sex is a microcosm for the relationship at large meaning that the dynamics that show up intimate interactions are somehow reflective of a larger working out or or um dynamic uh in the relationship. To what extent do you think that's true? It's a concept that i've appear IT sounds interesting.

And uh any discussion about the extent you know get people's years break up because it's depending where you live in the world, it's either something that people talk about um casually, openly or with a lot of um you know electricity around IT. But I always like to say you know a bio just we can all agree on one thing, which is that we're all here because permet egg, if not in human, in condition and eventually in humans. So we're still at at that point in human evolution. So what are your views about intimacy and sex as a reflection of the relationship and hear what i'm thinking of again or these um when you described conflict, describe these three different positioning of errors towards one another separate from one another, one chasing the other is there a parallel a for healthy relationship that we can offer up? Yeah um before talking about this question where I sexes a microcode sm of the of the larger relationship, the health of the .

relationship so let me start like this. I mean have studied sexuality for quite a few decades now in relationships but I think maybe because of what you said around the word, love and desire are universal experiences, but the way that they are constructed are highly culturally in. And so the most are cake rooted.

Traditional aspects of a culture or a society are large around its beliefs and attitudes and behaviors towards sexuality and relationships, especially the sexuality of women. American elections, case in point. But the most radical progressive changes that take place in a society also occur around sexuality and relationships, sexuality of women in particular.

So sexuality is a window into a society. Sexuality is also a window into a relationship and into a person that invites deep listening. One of the big chAllenges is that modern sexuality has been mean.

Traditional sexuality was identified with procreation. Modern sexuality is identified with performance and outcome. Sex is something you do to which I say, let's drop the performance and outcome for a moment.

And let's think of IT as an experience. So now you you gonna start to see my, the choreography I draw when I think of sexuality is an experience. And I say, sexism, just something that you do.

Sex is the place you go. So my question to you is, where do you go in sex, inside yourself and with another or others? Do you go to seek deep spiritual union, a deep intimate connection, transcendence?

Do you go to a place for vne ability, a place to surrender, a place to be taken care of, a place to be safely powerful, a place to be naughty, a place to have just plain fun, a place to abdicate you, your responsibility, ie. S of good citizenship. Because sexual desire is quite politically incorrect.

Where do you go? insects? What parts yourself you try to connect with? What is that that you're expressing there? Sexuality is a coded language for our deepest emotional needs. Our wounds are fears, are aspirations, are are longs is that that is six is never just sixx, even when it's hit and run. And then IT becomes really interesting.

So one of the things that one of the assumptions that existed very much at the heart of my field and that I chAllenged the question, was that sexual problem, but by definition, the consequence of relationship problems. So you fix the relationship and the sex will follow. And I, somewhere with many colleagues, have helped a lot of relationships get a long Better, fight less, laugh more, enjoy each other, any change, nothing in the bedroom.

Because in fact, maybe sexuality is not a metafor of the relationship, maybe sexuality is a parallel narrative to the relationship. And that, in fact, when you change the sexuality in a couple, you change the whole relationship, but not necessarily in the other direction. So that opened up.

That was one of the foundational ideas for mating in captivity, my first book, because I have been trained to think like this. And and then I began to think, love and desire. They relate, but they also conflict.

They're not one in the same, and they don't need the same things. They don't thrive on the same elements. And modern relationships, romantic relationships have wanted to reconcile two fundamental sets of human needs into one relationship, that is, the grand experiment of modern love.

And am I correct and interpreting what you just said as that love and desire are fundamentally separate, that they can exist in parallel, but that any goal of society, much less a couple, to trying to unify those as one thing, is not going to succeed?

No, no, no, not at all. IT IT actually has been remarkably successful. The romantic idea is to natures, you know, many other philosophers and ideologies of the night end of the eighteen century have all gone. This one has .

survived many others. Maybe how many many I drop in a home where love, sex and romance were discussed in very, almost a theory? Al.

no, no, no. I think that it's, but IT isn't experiment. It's not something that we have tried throughout history, human history. So I think that if you ask an exercise I like to do, sometimes I see division peach in the business line, in the middle up from top to bottom. And on the top left, you write, when I think of love, I think of, then go to the other side. And when I think of sexuality, I think of, and then you go back and you say, and when I am loved, I feel, and when I am desired, I feel, when I wanted and when I love, I feel, and when I want or I desire, I feel. And when I think about the love between me and my partner, if there is a, and when I think about the sexuality between me and my partner, and then you let people free associate about this, and do there are words that you find back and forth, and then there are words who just never appear in the other column.

Do you recommend that couples exchange these time?

They do IT at the same time, then they read the outlaw in front of each other. I do is in groups, you know huge agencies as well. But but i'm asking people to see is when you look at what you responded in both categories, create a line between doors.

Two is IT a thick line. Like, what happens in love is completely separate for me, and what happens in desire? I need a completely different set of things.

I press myself differently. I, you interact differently, or is IT very much that when this exists, IT completely ignites. That they are interrelated, interdependent.

One feed on each other, one reinforces the other. They reserve degree of variety about that. For some people, love and desire are inseparable. And for some people, they are often retry irretrievable disconnected. And I think the model wants them to be really together and for a lot of people is exactly what they aspire to for other people is more chAllenging .

because somehow in them, there's a split between these two.

Some people are. Experience love in such a way that is sometimes because becomes chAllenging for them to make love to the person they love. What I mean by that is that love comes with a sense of responsibility, worry, care about the well being of the other person.

And some of us sometimes have learned to love in a way that comes with extra ry, extra responsibility, extra. And we wear the parents of our parents. We take care of our depressed parent. We take care of our alcoholic parent. We learn to love with the sense that is not free, that is not curious and playful, because curiosity cannot happen in a state of stress.

As you so well said, when we experience love with that extra sense of burden, IT is difficult to be with someone that you feel close to, and at the same time go inside yourself and completely chill and relax in pleasure lands. That's one of the scenes. There's many others, but this is one of the more common ones, Michael beaters work that makes IT difficult for some people to experience love and desire.

At the same time, the more they love, the more chAllenging the desire becomes for them. Because desire is, is to own the wanting. It's IT existing. You you can't make someone want. You can make someone have thanks, but you can never make them want.

What is your sovereign to your autonomy or freedom? And for some people that wanting cannot exist when they are with someone that they feel so responsible and worried and anxious about. And that's the attachment piece, not you're talking about. So this is how the attachment style often manifests in the way that you then organize your sexual self.

What percentage of infidelity do you think reflects somebodies inability to um integrate this love component from desire component um such that they find that they only a experience desire or strong desire outside their their a committed relationship now I wrote an entire .

book about in about infidelity as in what happens when desire goes. Looking elsewhere, I think that some people go outside for to as a response to a lot of discontents in the relationship, loneliness being the first one, neglect, indifference, conflict, rejection, sexual rejection in particular but some people go outside um and IT has very little to do with the relationship.

IT sometimes has to do with how they organize themselves in the relationship to the degree that in order to feel a certain freedom or ability to think about themselves, they go, they need to be outside. And I used to say I have seen a lot of infinite ity in happy relationships. It's not always a symptom of a flow relationship by no means.

And that in those situations, people tell me it's not that I want to find another person, it's that I wanted to find another self or to reconnect with lost parts of myself. And I don't see this to promote, to condone or anything. But I just listened across the globe one word it's not that I wanted to find another partner is that if I wanted to find something else inside of me, and I don't know how to do that in the relationship that I mean, and that's not because of the person I wait.

That's because of what I do to myself in the context of intimate connection. And the word that you hear all over the glow when people who you interview, people who are in affairs, is that they feel alive. It's kind of the erotic as an anti dou to deadness.

They feel that aliveness. And that doesn't mean this. They often that doesn't necessarily for of sex. It's about something aliveness. Is that theos not the sex.

And the erotic is the quality of live veness, viBrant y vitality, hopefulness, curiosity, imagination, playful ness is those elements that often people lose for a host of reasons, life, work, children, dying, parents, illness, economic hardship, you name IT, you know? And there is a sense that they need to go elsewhere to find that. And yet some people would say gulch justification.

And some people understand that at the heart of affairs there is betrayal and long endplay ity and lying and all of that. But there is also longing and loss. On an existential level, that's a very different length into that. So the people for whom that reconcile that you talk about is more chAllenging are often people who are often more likely to compete. Mentalist.

what you just said brings me back to this idea that we were expLoring at the very beginning of this conversation, that IT seems that so much of navigating relationship in healthy versus on healthy ways depends on this internal dynamic within ourselves of inability to be in close, intimate relationship with another, and yet hold on to enough of our own identity and evolved that identity within the relationship to.

That is the definition of inm, or a definition of, and that is probably the number one task of every relationship, romantic relationships is, how do I get close to you without losing me, and how do I hold on to me without losing you? Now, you know, I sit you in the beginning that we grow up, and we have both needs together, ness and separate.

And then we come out of our childhoods, and some of us need more space freedom, separate, and some of us need more protection, connection together. This, of course, we tend to meet somebody whose proclivities match or vulnerabilities. And so you find that in many relationships you have one person who is more afraid of losing the other, in one person who is more afraid of losing themselves, one person more afraid with the fear of abandonment, and one person more afraid with the furious fiction.

This is a recurrent dynamic that you see and does IT swap back and forth across couples, male, female, assuming, in that example, hero sexual relationship, but even homosexual relationships, you'll see IT switch back and forth. Or IT tends to be a pretty stable feature, meaning one person in the couple tends to be afraid of abandonment, the other person abandoned by the other, the other person more deeply afraid of abandonment of themselves.

IT IT doesn't switch back at fort IT, switches by relationship, but not within one relationship, you may have been a different in different rules with different partner.

So interesting, again, not because you weren't clear you are incredibly clearing conscious about this, but I think this is such an important concept. Maybe you'd repeat IT for us again just so that people can really drive into their consciousness and maybe asked themselves the question, are they more afraid of abandonment by the other, or abandonment .

of themselves? You know, one of the ways that you sometimes can see this is that i'm in the tour this week when woman stood up and basic said, I recently divorce, I would like to be able to enter a reality bin is the issue of trust or if the issue was, the betrayal was what's LED says, how do I how do I allow somebody to enter into my life without losing myself? So it's in the language, you know, it's one person.

But this could really, I think it's very point for me. Many of these things are not gender specific, no orientation, particular this, this is human. But then I answer the little bit with some of these and other things.

So then the next question is, how often do you not say what you really think because you want to please or you want to harmonize or you want to avoid conflict? How often did you then present the partner who actually stood for their ground? Because if you're free to lose yourself, you're often more than one for your ground.

You don't give in because you exit and if its rigid, you don't give in at all because you think that every time you even the language agreeing is giving in and giving in is a losing a part of myself. I mean, it's it's building. It's so you know, IT IT, IT IT starts here and IT continues all the way it's like. So you and it's a sequence of things you break apart in in small granular pieces.

How does IT play out for you when you lose yourself? What are the things you do not do that facilitate this dissolution? And to the other person who is when you're free tory, of losing the other and when you afraid of of losing yourself, like where's your rigidity? Where's your kind of totality thinking? Where is this and fly, lack of flexibility.

And that may manifesting, I don't travel to those places. You know, the sentence that indicates that we're dealing with this bigger issue is something sometimes very annoying. You know, I don't go to those kind of restaurants.

You know, why should I go to those kind of places? And you can have said, why is there are such intensity about the restaurant? What are you fighting against? And what are you fighting for? And why are you even fighting? We talking about going out supose dly supposed meant to be fun.

Now you start reminding, you know, what is this statement go connected to that we are going to have, you know, so now you have conflict meeting, identity meeting, connection to another person. This is when the the and any discuss work is fantastically engaging and exciting. It's like, sure, when you do scientific research, is that truth work that you see, this thing doesn't fit at all.

You know, why do you want me to wear blue shoes? Why do you make so too big dealer out of the blue shoes? What are blue shoes for you? Don't start talking about the shoes.

Please talk about, you know, boundaries. But boundaries today, a concept that has become so else, you know. So it's talk about how the preservation of the self now involves not wearing blue shoes. I mean, you get what I .

do and and I I my mind keeps flooding back to this parallel. Construction of these circuits were built in infancy and childhood and adolescence. And a what kind of flash to mind is when we are adolescence and teenagers, there's this fundamental question that we ask that rarely do we ask again later in life.

I, me, maybe people do. But the question is kind of, who am I? You know, teenagers try on a lot of different identities often. And how they dress, you know, is one of the ways in which they self identify that their music, I mean, the music we listen to, and teenagers and Young adults, it's forever stamped into us as like some core part of our identity, has an emotional weight. That music that we arrive to later doesn't unless IT resonates with that early music or recapitulates that rather.

So in my mind, i'm thinking, I wonder if these circuits that are struggling with holding on to self versus a kind of playful, curious exploration of new things, novelty, which is so fundamental to relationship and then not there. As we says, neurologists are are really antagonistic that they're really in a push pull. I mean, there are so many things that we're discussing to do that really feel as if these are um like circuits that can't be coache easily that they they are like what they we're in this internal grappling match and what keeps coming to mind.

But they also need each other, right?

They're like the right is like the front excel in the back x or vehicle like you can't exist without both you of something .

because you ask before that the thing about the sexuality. And and and I like the concept of erotic blue prints, which I work with a lot. And and I try to really kind of distill IT in in desire burner course that I am releasing that because I thought, how can people ask themselves a set of questions?

Like a lot of my work is about finding the good questions that will, you know, a good question like a oral right and the the the the line on top, which is the answer to your question, is tell me how you were loved and I will tell you how you make love. Not just how you love, but how you make love, meaning that your emotional history is inscribed in the physicality of sex, and it's all about what you ask me in the beginning. Identity and change onto oneself, connecting with the other.

Sexuality is the place where this occurs at the most fundamental level. It's to be inside oneself and inside the other at the same time, their universe, not their orifices. That is, what is the experience? A temporary onest stetten again opens up as two people.

So people who struggle with that emotionally, how do I stay, connect to me and then to you without this polarities experience that insects? And then you ask a set of questions, how did you learn to love and with home? Were you protected by those people but to care you? Or did you have to flee for protection? Did they take care of you? Did you take care of them? Did they hold you, rock you? Could you? Or did they harm you, violate you?

Oh, shake you was IT okay. To laugh and to cry was IT okay. To experience pleasure was IT safe. You know, a set of questions like that. And this is where people enter their erotic blueprint and get to see that their emotional chAllenges are directly. If you film them, if you watch them making love, you understand their emotional chAllenges, but then comes the next level. And if you then study their fantasy lives, then you understand the depth of their emotional needs, which are brought into their .

fascinating. You get IT, I get IT, I get IT. And IT makes me think that this earlier discussion we were having, you know, is sex of microcosm for the larger relationship.

IT sounds to me like the answer is yes, but especially the relationship to self. And especially what like. There's a lot of information in one's desire, template or blueprint about how one was cared for or not cared for.

Your sexual preferences, your sexual fantasies are a translation of your deepest emotional needs, not sexy emotions. You know, my mother used to say, tell me about your friends and i'll tell you who you are. And then I said, you tell me about you sexually, and I will know a heck of a lot about who you are, but you have to translate. Don't the problem of sexuality in modern society is the literary with which we approached, and in our pornographic society, ever more so to our .

determined right, can degree more? And I think that there also seems to be this attempt to directly translate from, well, if somebody had issues with their mother, then they're gonna have issues with women as an adult or state issues with they are father, they are going to have issues with men as an adult.

right?

But in reality, it's the algorithm. It's the algorithm. Um it's that these um algorithms that are laid down in our neural circuitry earlier, they don't care about a male female ness. I mean IT doesn't change whether our people are head or sexual homosexual that in to them I I believe I think these are Frankly biologically driven. But the idea is that our ways of being um don't translate directly that way, that these are deeper processes. So if one head issues, for instance, with their whose male and heterosexual but the issues with their father, they could have the same issues with women as an adult, right that I could translate that it's not always mapping male to male, fee male to female.

I have A, A, A segment of my broadcast, where should we begin that opens the tour. Well, basically, they talk about how they met, and then they are they fight about everything all the time, and they think they're fighting. This is the line of the show. They think they're fighting about the closet, the cat litter and the cat.

What I think they're fighting about is that when he says, why didn't you close the closet? He instantly thinks of his dad, who was this military guy who told him, you know, and he is basically in a fight saying to you in telling me what to do you in the boss of me, so he can never make a request for which he doesn't feel like she's controlling him. And he answers with this fight, and that throws her into the SHE grew up all alone, you know, to care of her two siblings.

Mother was gone, sea and SHE hoped her whole life we would finally meet a partner. And SHE wlink feel alone and there would be somebody to support her. And every time he says to her, you in the boss of me, don't tell me what to do.

SHE says, oh, i'm gonna alone for the rest of my life. Here I am in the worst place that I always wanted to avoid. This is what they're fighting about, but they're talking about, why did you leave the cat closet open?

Beautiful example. Beautiful example. IT cuts across our preconceived notions that if somebody had a good relationship with her mother, they will have good relationship with women and a good relationship with father.

With a little bit more subtitle and complicated new understand that I think the frameworks are useful, but the they are frameworks and the their models that help us to think and make sense of things. But it's a little bit like in science, you know, the truth of todays is the joke .

of tomorrow for that. But that one is going up on X. Repair work is something that is so fundamental to healthy relationship.

In next to what we discussed about apology.

what is your recommendation for how couples think about repair work? Let's assume that there together and there's some at least hint of a hope to recover the relationship, should repair work be framed as in a particular way to facilitate IT. You know, how does one begin? I mean that I can also been we've been doing about three today.

So I can imagine mistakes, misunderstandings and betrays, right? The mistakes, like I accidently step on somebody toes, there's misunderstandings to people, thought the same thing and they're outright by trails. And my understanding from your work is that you see many couples indeed helped many couples recover from all three of those categories to the point where they are quite satisfied with their relationship.

There's a sequence to this, and it's too intimate relationships. It's too in friendships and very interested in friendships these days. And in in friendship therapy.

I duco founders were, I mean, these other diets that am very interested in beyond the romantic unit. But you said something before that I thought actually may come back to when you said, you know, it's about acknowledging that you were wrong. Sometimes you may not have been wrong, but you were hurtful.

And rather than get all you know, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything IT doesn't matter what you did, even if you don't think IT was anything terrible, seem to have really upset your partner. Do you care about that? How do you want to just kind of stand? So I think the first piece in in repair work and and I think, by the way, that repair is not the end of the story. The revival is the .

end of the story .

of diode recovery, erratic in my sense of the, in my definition of the world. So that's when I say it's not enough to survive. It's am a child of survivors.

I wanted to see people who, how do they continue to live, not just how do they stay alive. And I think this is fundamental difference in our lives and in our relationships. It's a huge piece of it's really at the hard of my working of my life, you know.

So every thuma process, you know, of nations or of individuals demands the acknowledged of what happened. And that acknowledgement involves remorse and guilt for the hurt and the harm that IT caused. Even if you don't feel guilty for the act itself and you think the act is justified, the consequences of the act on the other person is where the guilt and the remorse must take place.

Without that, there is very little option for repair. If I, if I don't feel that you even know what you did to me, my, you, my dad, you my boss, you, my political enemy, I mean, that is, is really at rude. So after you do the remorse and the and the guilt, the next part is to be really careful that you don't sink into the self.

Now, I going back to relationships, into the shame. I'm such a terrible person. How could I do something like this? I, so I feel so bad about myself that I still can't feel bad about you.

Now that's notices. M, that's a different story. The point is not for you to still think that you are the center. You were at center when you heard, and now you at the center of the of the iron wood, it's really a process of reckoning with the other person. And it's slow, chAllenging for some of its immediate for others.

And then I think the next piece in a relationship is not just to a and to to to show you, remember, but it's actually to show that you value you the other person because hurting a person, especially when it's betrayal and careless, it's a devaluation of the other person. You didn't matter is that me mattered more than you for whatever the reasons IT was still selfish and I D valued you and to become the vigilant of a relationship is that you become the person who protects the relationship by showing that the other person really matters. And in detail, that sometimes means, you know, how are you today? Anything you want to talk about, you still think about IT.

You know, this is gonna. This is a big one to Carry everyday. Are you able to go to see this movie? Can we? You know, just without being so afraid that every time you ask, you're gonna get blamed again, or you're gonna feel so bad about yourself, it's a little bit step out of yourself and just reach out and just checking half the time when you say how you and you want to talk the presences.

No, I don't, but I just wanted to know that you are prepared to each case I need to set conditions, make me feel that you value me and our relationship, which you have just trashed. And and thirty is what I cho theoretic recovery. It's the it's the regeneration or the generation of new cells.

And you know, I need a new skin to come over the gap. That's the real, you know, repair is not yet healing. The healing is I know I heard myself somewhere is is here.

I can feel IT when I touch IT, but I don't feel IT the whole time. It's not front center every moment of my obsessive roommate. But when I touch IT, it's tender, it's wounded.

It's it's a place that I need to make sure not to hit again. I don't hurt me again and don't do this to me again. I I can't recover from that twice is very his dead vulval. And then he says he could do new things.

You know, erratic recovery is not about comfortable and familiar, and the return to the status school erotic recovery is about new, risky, curious, playful, unknown imagination outside of the comfort zone, so that we can see ourselves a noe as who we are and and who we are together. And I think that's where the revival takes place. It's hopeful, its possibility, its adventure. It's got that energy.

beautiful, aspirational and realistic. To this, a notion of not notion, forgive me, this act of truly getting outside of oneself to be present to the way the other person feels, irrespective of who is right or who is wrong if IT was understanding betrayal but especially in cases of betrayal the existing of, as you said, um either a stand of not wanting to look at IT for oneself or of self gulam both are self centered yes so really getting into real genuine care for, if not care, taking were the offer of care for the other person.

I hurt you that bad. You know, one of the victims, these people are often shocked at the heart of, I tell you wouldn't care what I told or I I didn't think about IT. I just didn't.

Because there is a association that takes place when you, when you take off. And so when people are faced with the, I heard, wound, suffering, collapse, fracture of the other person, they find IT very hard to tolerate. And this has to happen.

You have to be able to to know the consequences of your action if you want to, you know, freedom in the existence ally, start in terms, involve the ability to take responsibility for the the consequence of your actions. This is IT. I'll help you face that.

That doesn't mean that you become the worst creature on the planet, but you are you have to face that. And that is something very hard for us because sometimes we meant IT, sometimes we thought we deserve IT, and sometimes we didn't that. We didn't think that that was gonna be the case. And so IT sometimes easier to stand in front of someone else is anger than someone else is hurt.

absolutely. And what you're describing also, perhaps at least partially, explains why sometimes, not always, apologies are insufficient, necessary, but not sufficient because there are certain modes of apology that don't show us that the person is whose apologizing is really outside themselves. They're in their own guilt. They're their own shame and therefore they're not really present to how we feel.

There's a beautiful book by harriet learner about apology that I often recommend in these situations because he really analysis, if you ever do apology, you know, SHE SHE. This concept of sincerity, of the apology, that actually shows that I care about you, and not just about restoring my dignity and my pride and all of that, you know, the the the, the manuvers that are about self preservation versus the manual that are really about mysta of justice. Who is ready .

for relationship? And for people who are not in relationship, or who are, what sorts of questions should they be asking themselves? What what sorts of things should we all be doing?

You know, what's a question that I ask people often almost in the first session, knowing yourself as well as you do, what do you think makes IT hard to live with you?

Great question. My answer is far too long to give here. Everyone will be .

relieved that will give you some of the material about, you know, who nobody is ready as i'm prepared. I'm, i'm, i'm perfect. I'm fully baked.

I said to every person, everyone has relationship issues. They are gonna have to address at some point in their life. The only question is with home, not if, just with whom, whose the one that you're gonna do the work with. We all works in progress. We are notoriously imperfect, rather unpredictable, and many relationship problems are not problems that you solve their paradoxes that you have to learn to manage.

Well, I want to make clear that um before what I say next that if I had my way, we would continue this conversation for many hours, if not days. Perhaps there is an opportunity for that in the future. I was told um and not surprisingly, that you're in an tremendous demand.

You're on a life tour now. I can't wait to see this. It's all sold out. I'll have to wait like everyone else. But sounds like an incredible experience indeed. I know some people are spoken directly to them who attended one of your lives recently, and they sounds like A A completely immersive and experiences like no other so i'm very excited about that.

My only regret about your tories that we have to halt this conversation um in the next couple of minutes and and there are couple of things that I just want to reflect back to you um that are all from a place of real deep appreciation, first of all, for bringing forward what you've brought today. You're one of these exceedingly rare people with whom, when they speak like jim, just fall out of them and I know i'm not alone in this sentiment. I an just in today's conversation you've transformed the way that I think about relationship, self identity, neurobiology, love, sex h so many um key topics and in a much larger way um as you pointed out and I completely agree, the themes that you are talking about are not just fundamental for us to resolve as individuals. They are not just fundamental for us to resolve in couples or whatever relationship configuration people happen .

to be the social.

there are society that we can look at, anything in election, a two countries battling one another, political groups, whatever at every level. This this is what IT IT means to be human, built up from the same fundamental circuit, same fundamental dynamic. I really see you as not just a pioneer, but the pioneer of this parting of the whale.

From what has I think, until this pointing human history been a lot of descriptions of things, what's right, what's wrong, this in that, and some of that might be true, no one not qualified to know, but that you represent a real party of the veil into the next evolution of what that means for humans to interact in more healthy ways and with curiosity and sense of invitation, toward more love, connection and peace. So, you know, there are really aren't words to express how enthusiastic and appreciative I am of what you brought here today and what you're doing. And so I just want to say, you know, deep part felt thanks. And I know I speak for many, many people.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about romantic relationships with ester parole to find links to astor's new course on intimacy, as well as links to her books, her podcast and other resources. Please see the shown note captions. If you're learning from in or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe our youtube channel.

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I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book is entitled protocols and Operating manual for the human body.

This is a book that i've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than thirty years of research and experience, and that covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocols book dot com.

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