Esther Perel: The REAL Reason You’re Struggling to Find Love (Fix THIS to Build Chemistry in Real Life)

Today, Jay Shetty welcomes back Esther Perel to unpack a growing tension in modern relationships: in a world more connected than ever, why so many people feel deeply disconnected. Esther reframes dating struggles as something deeper than love itself, pointing to a broader loss of real-life social practice. Without the everyday interactions that once taught us how to approach, connect, and handle rejection, dating now feels like a high-stakes performance instead of a natural progression. What was once built through play, curiosity, and gradual connection has been compressed into a single moment of pressure, turning love into something overwhelming rather than something we can explore. Jay and Esther explore the illusion of connection in the digital age, where texting replaces talking and screens replace presence. Esther explains how this disembodied way of relating strips away the elements that create real intimacy, like eye contact, tone of voice, touch, and shared energy. While it can feel like we are communicating more, we are often losing depth, nuance, and emotional resonance. This shift has shaped a culture that avoids friction and discomfort, yet still feels more anxious, lonely, and exhausted. In trying to make relationships easier and more efficient, we may be losing the very experiences that give them meaning. In this episode you'll learn: How to Build Real Connection Offline How to Turn Dating Into Discovery, Not Pressure How to Be More Curious Instead of Judgmental How to Create Attraction Through Presence Not Perfection How to Ask for What You Truly Need How to Build Trust in Small, Consistent Moments How to Balance Independence and Interdependence How to Stay Open to Love Without a Checklist If there’s one thing to hold onto, it’s this: nothing about love is broken, you’re just being asked to approach it differently. The world may have made connection feel more complicated, but at its core, it still comes back to showing up, being present, and allowing yourself to be seen without needing to get everything right. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty JAY’S DAILY WISDOM DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX Join 900,000+ readers discovering how small daily shifts create big life change with my free newsletter. Subscribe https://news.jayshetty.me/subscribe Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:11 Why Is Gen Z Dating Less? 04:23 The Disappearance of Physical Connection 06:26 Living in a Fully Contactless World 09:54 Connected, Yet Deeply Disconnected 12:01 Dating in the Age of Surveillance 14:11 Why Real Connection Feels Harder Than Ever 17:07 Why Love Falls Flat Without Friction 18:41 The Missing Skills No One Taught Us About Love 24:35 The Hidden Power Struggles Shaping Modern Relationships 27:05 The 4 Pillars of Relational Intelligence 30:07 Have We Lost the Ability to Problem-Solve? 32:38 How to Know If You Can Really Trust Someone 36:44 From “Me” to “We” 38:27 Should You Make a Dating Checklist? 41:04 Why Dating Feels Like a Full-Time Job 43:00 The Pressure Behind “Intentional” Dating 47:50 When Love Doesn’t Speak Your Language 50:25 Why Talking to AI Feels Easier Than People 55:16 The Trap of Wanting Love to Feel Effortless 56:35 Is Love Supposed to Be Hard? 57:58 Why Wanting Love Isn’t “Cringe” 01:02:43 Codependence vs Healthy Love 01:07:09 What Actually Keeps Desire Alive? 01:10:26 Breaking Down Viral Relationship Myths 01:17:38 Esther on Final Five Episode Resources: Website | https://www.estherperel.com/ YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@estherperel Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/esther.perel/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/estherperelofficial LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/estherperel TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@estherperel_official Substack | https://estherperel.substack.com/ Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:43Jay Shetty?

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• 1:28Jay Shetty?

  That's where Amtrak comes in. Leave the driving behind and settle into a comfortable seat with plenty of room to stretch out. Catch up on work with wifi, grab a snack at the cafe car, or just sit back and enjoy your favourite podcast. Choose a cellar or North East Regional and get there without the stress of getting there. Visit Amtrak.com to plan your next trip.

• 1:51Esther Perel?

  We put the focus on you choosing bad people, you always fall in love with the wrong guy. What does it say about you?

• 1:58Jay Shetty?

  What do you think about people having a list of everything they want in a person?

• 2:02Esther Perel?

  Love will laugh at you.

• 2:04Jay Shetty?

  Is love enough?

• 2:06Esther Perel?

  No.

• 2:07Jay Shetty?

  Should love be hard?

• 2:08Esther Perel?

  There is no love story that isn't overcoming obstacles. Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement, love, desire.

• 2:22Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier and more healed. Today, I'm joined by one of the most influential voices on love and relationships in the entire world, Esther Perel. Esther is a renowned psychotherapist and the mind behind the groundbreaking book, Mating in Captivity. And as the book celebrates its 20th anniversary, we explore why Esther's insights on love, desire and intimacy remain just as true today. Please welcome back to the podcast one of my favorite guests and yours, Esther Perel. Esther, it is so great to have you back.

• 3:01Esther Perel?

  It's really nice to be back.

• 3:03Jay Shetty?

  Our last conversation was super viral, millions of views. People loved seeing us together. They loved hearing your direct, no BS, breaking down this therapy TikTok language that we constantly hear. And today, I really wanted to dive into what I believe is the need of the hour, what I believe is the urgent, imminent challenge that we're facing right now. Gen Z is dating significantly less than other generations. What has changed?

• 3:31Esther Perel?

  I ask a question in all my audiences at this moment. Did you grow up playing freely on the street? The parents of Gen Z will raise their hands and say, we did. And then I ask, do your children or do you know children who are playing freely on the street? And you get a few hands. That's it. That's the Gen Z. If you don't play freely on the street, you basically are missing out on an entire ground for social negotiation, where you learn to play together, to make rules, to break rules, to have wars, to make peace, to create alliances, to make up the whole thing. If you don't practice those muscles.

• 4:16Esther Perel?

  Where you come up to strangers and you ask them to play with you and then you meet somebody else and then you join people together. You really are practicing relationships. All of that precedes dating. If you don't have that, then dating becomes the the first time that you have to actually learn to speak to someone. God forbid if it's even in person and look into their eyes and look at their body because so much of our life at this point is completely disembodied and we don't ever see people move.

• 4:49Jay Shetty?

  Wow, never even told.

• 4:50Esther Perel?

  So dating becomes this Olympus that you have to climb, this whole mountain, and it's very anxiety provoking. And that is one of the main things. So when we say Gen Z doesn't date as much, Gen Z doesn't socialize in person. Gen Z doesn't have that many parties. What a waste, what a pity. To not have dance parties and and just hang together. Um, it's not that they don't socialize, but it's a different kind of social. I spoke to so and so means I texted them. No, I didn't speak. I didn't hear the voice. If you don't hear the voice, you're missing out on the entire oxytocin attachment hormone that gets produced while you're hearing the voice. The voice is the first thing you hear when you are

• 5:33Esther Perel?

  in utero. So you say you spoke, but you didn't. You connected, you had contact. And at every level, you see an atrophy of the social skills, which creates a real sense of bracing myself. I'm going out to date. Which I don't like because it's not fun.

• 5:52Jay Shetty?

  You're so right and you're opening up my mind to so many different things that I don't think we're thinking about. This idea of being disembodied, we're only looking at FaceTime.

• 6:02Esther Perel?

  And not just that. Now I look in your eyes, you look in my eyes. And we have mirror neurons firing at each other. We are really connecting, voice, sight.

• 6:13Esther Perel?

  Breath, I mean, the all the senses are involved. On Zoom or on on any screen, we think we're looking at the other, but we actually are not making eye contact.

• 6:23Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 6:23Esther Perel?

  So this

• 6:25Jay Shetty?

  That's so true.

• 6:26Esther Perel?

  pseudo experience, as if I am looking at you and you're looking at me, but in fact, we don't, means that neurologically, none of this is actually happening.

• 6:34Jay Shetty?

  Wow, yeah, you're so right. And most of us on Zoom are just looking at ourselves. I've tried to hide myself view because I just realized that you're just looking at yourself and you're looking at a reflection so much where we're overexposed to our own reflection, which is why we're so critical of ourselves and we're so evaluating and analyzing ourselves all the time. But you're absolutely right that even if you look at someone else through a screen, you're not making the quality of contact we feel. And there's a reason I I actually feel that. I feel exhausted on Zooms and exhausted on digital contact.

• 7:06Esther Perel?

  That is a part of that is because the actual contact, which is soothing, eye to eye contact, and when you are in a safe situation, is actually soothing. It regulates you. When it is as if, but not really, and nothing really happens up there, then you are exhausted. And you know what it means to look at yourself the whole day? It's like the the the enshrinement of narcissism.

• 7:31Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 7:31Esther Perel?

  We look here narcissism is to look at himself in the in the water and look at his reflection the whole time.

• 7:38Jay Shetty?

  And and it's the same as what you're saying with the lack of contact where you say, oh, yeah, I spoke to so and so or I heard from them. And you're so right that we're missing out on these very analog behaviors that our bodies craving, our mind is craving, and we're not really in touch. I read this study that said forty five percent of men aged sixteen to twenty five today have never approached a woman in public. And I was like, in my life growing up,

• 8:05Esther Perel?

  Age?

• 8:06Jay Shetty?

  sixteen to twenty five, forty five percent of men aged sixteen to twenty five who are

• 8:11Esther Perel?

  Yep.

• 8:11Jay Shetty?

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

• 8:44Esther Perel?

  So I think there's a number of different things going on at the same time. Continuing with less social interaction is also the fact that we're more and more living in a contactless world. You don't have to leave your house for a lot of things that, you know, it's not just you would come up to the girl and start talking to her. Since the pandemic, we learned we didn't have to leave the house to go to school. And the, and the eighteen to twenty five year old is the generation that went to school during the pandemic. So that's the first thing is a complete cutoff of the socialized world. You don't have to leave your house to work, to shop, to eat, to exercise, contactless. You can have everything delivered without having to even thank the person who is bringing the food.

• 9:29Esther Perel?

  At every level, we have tried to remove contact and friction. Coming up to talk to a girl is friction. You don't know. There is, you fantasize, you know, you, I'm talking of a story that a friend of mine just told me. When he was sitting on a train and for five hours he saw this girl and he just was thinking, I would love to go and talk to her. But he couldn't muster the courage to go speak with her. Finally, after five hours, he gets up, he goes, he talks, and for the rest, this being, spend a week traveling together in Europe. And then he tells me, if I was today, he's a father of a Gen Z.

• 10:08Esther Perel?

  If I would be spending my five hours writing to my AI companion, what should I say? I'm anxious. I don't know how to go. He would have basically spent his time trying to regulate his nervous system and try to calm down. But he would never have, he would have talked to the, to his AI rather than to the girl. And he would have talked to the AI about how hard it is to go and meet this girl. And he would never have traveled with her for the week. And this removing of the friction. So what is, to me, the killer of desire. We'll come back to that. But what happens in one, in your statistic is eighteen to twenty five. In your time, you basically started this whole process of meeting girls,

• 10:52Esther Perel?

  or boys meeting boys, girls meeting girls, in your teens. So fifteen, sixteen, you were practicing. You were falling in love, you had crushes, you dealt with rejection, you rejected others. It went both ways, et cetera. Most Gen Z today start their first experiences around twenty-four, twenty-six.

• 11:13Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 11:14Esther Perel?

  So the whole thing is delayed by ten years.

• 11:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Esther Perel?

  But when you meet at twenty-four or twenty-five for the first time, you often meet with the lack of experience of the fifteen-year-old. You haven't had that slow buildup, you know, and you didn't have sex the first time necessarily either. But first you spoke, then you hung, then you'd spend the day together, then you brought them to your friends. You had an entire process of engagement that's made you more and more comfortable each time. That whole training, launching pad, has been shrunken to dating. You'd never called it dating, by the way, before. I'm interested, I like someone, I would like to speak with this person, I have a crush on this person, I fell in love with this person. You didn't date.

• 12:02Esther Perel?

  You just had these feelings that took you.

• 12:05Jay Shetty?

  I feel like we're living at a time where conversations about therapy, about our emotions, about love, online, you see them everywhere. Everyone's talking about it, everyone's thinking about it. But then we don't translate it into real life. We're more disconnected than ever. So talk to me about that dichotomy.

• 12:23Esther Perel?

  I think that we are living a fantastic contradiction. We've never been more connected and we have never been more disconnected. Modern loneliness masks itself as hyper-connectivity. So you think you're talking to people. And I would say even more like this, modern loneliness is not about not having people. It's about the lack of depth. It doesn't replace to have these conversations online. And in fact, they're often done in nine-second increments. That is not really the time needed to address major existential questions. So if you don't see the person you're talking to, you can express yourself in all kinds of uncivilized way

• 13:08Esther Perel?

  because there is no consequences. So that contradiction of what does it mean to really connect? And what are the conditions necessary? What? And that is back to this issue of friction. Because it means that you practice disagreement, frustration, being misunderstood, understanding others, truly listening, listening again. Because you thought you got it, but you didn't really, because you didn't listen till the end. Because half the time when we listen, we're busy with our rebuttal.

• 13:41Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 13:41Esther Perel?

  That's a different degree of connection.

• 13:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 13:44Esther Perel?

  Ask a question when you, somebody tells you something. Before you draw a conclusion about what they're saying. Ask another question. Listen, really. Don't jump for advice. Because you are the one, you are not the one who's going to live with the consequences of the advice that you're giving. So look at things in context. Don't just take out one thing like that. And all of that is the difference between our conversation and how this can appear when we go online.

• 14:13Jay Shetty?

  I think one of the biggest things that you're sharing, that's kind of, I'm becoming aware of in our conversation, is that a reason why we're scared to message and reply is also because everything's documented today. So there's a feeling of like, if I send something to you and it makes me look stupid, you're going to send it to all your friends. If you share something with me and I want to pass it on to someone, it takes one click and all of a sudden it's on the internet. And so there's this genuine fear of not only am I being evaluated by this person.

• 14:45Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Jay Shetty?

  But I'm potentially being evaluated by their entire circle.

• 14:49Esther Perel?

  Do you see the irony here? We have never talked more about boundaries in relationships as today, at a time when people are often acting without any boundaries and sharing the most personal, profound things that people give them in confidence with others. The leakage, this system of sharing and spreading without necessarily asking and ridiculing and judging and exposing and all of that is happening at the same time as people are talking constantly about safety and boundaries. And protection. It's really interesting, no?

• 15:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's fascinating, exactly. It's absolutely fascinating because.

• 15:31Esther Perel?

  There's no privacy.

• 15:32Jay Shetty?

  There's no privacy.

• 15:33Esther Perel?

  There's no privacy.

• 15:34Jay Shetty?

  There's no safety.

• 15:34Esther Perel?

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

• 16:15Esther Perel?

  And then hoping that by having more boundaries, they can fortify all of this. But in fact, the world doesn't have the boundaries.

• 16:23Jay Shetty?

  So how does anyone in this moment even think about building connection?

• 16:28Esther Perel?

  Offline, go offline. A connection is an encounter and it's an encounter with an other. And that otherness is the mystery of relationships. That curiosity that you bring to discovering someone. We've met a few times, but we don't know each other and I'm intrigued by you. And I'm curious where you're going to take us? Where is this conversation going to go? What are you going to ask? What I'm saying is interesting to you. I'm not busy here thinking, does Jay like what I'm saying? Is Jay thinking that I'm smart? Is Jay thinking I'm stupid? Is Jay waiting to bait me with something? I'm with you, I'm present. And that's very different from I'm here. And I feel your presence with me.

• 17:13Esther Perel?

  That's not just you're here. You know, much of the time these days, even if we are sitting together, I ask, this is a question I love to ask in an audience. So how many of you spend a lot of time of the day on your laptop? On front of a screen, whatever it is. And all you want is to finally go home and get rid of the screen. But then you get home and you're so tired that what you do is you watch TV. And then while you're watching TV, you're also scrolling on your phone. And then you turn around and there is someone sometimes sitting right next to you who's doing the exact same thing. And then at some point, someone says something actually quite meaningful.

• 17:52Esther Perel?

  And then you have this other person responding with that most fantastic, uh huh. Uh huh. And you know that digital lag means they're there, but they're not really listening. And in that moment, you experience a unique kind of loneliness. It's the loneliness that says, are you here or are you not? We call it in my work ambiguous loss. Have you ever heard that term?

• 18:20Jay Shetty?

  No, I haven't.

• 18:21Esther Perel?

  Ambiguous loss is a term that was coined by psychologist Pauline Boss. When she was talking about situations where you can't resolve the mourning. Like if you are with someone with Alzheimer or dementia, they are physically in front of you, but they are emotionally or psychologically gone. If they have been deployed or there is abduction, or they are miscarriages, they are physically gone, but they are emotionally very, very present. And in both situations, you don't know, are you here or are you not? Modern loneliness has that element on a daily basis. Where I don't know if you're here.

• 19:03Esther Perel?

  It's like we've come to accept distracted attention as if it is enough and it's not. And all of those situations make us feel like I'm putting out such efforts. And I feel exhausted. Because it's not really coming back.

• 19:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's it's so real. And I think that's how a lot of people feel today, that they're saying, I want to find love. We all want connection, but then the action to get it, as you said, which requires a bit of friction, which requires a bit of discomfort.

• 19:33Esther Perel?

  There is no love story that isn't organized around overcoming obstacles.

• 19:39Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 19:39Esther Perel?

  The greatest love stories have an obstacle that you have to. They almost didn't gonna meet again. They they never asked each other's names. The parents didn't want them to be together. The age difference was too big. What you need an obstacle. Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement, love, desire. It is that combination.

• 20:03Jay Shetty?

  Right, so the obstacle is the way.

• 20:05Esther Perel?

  The obstacle is what builds the plot, what heightens the intensity, what intensifies the love.

• 20:13Esther Perel?

  And what we want in the frictionless reality is a love like a permanent state of enthusiasm. And love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm. Love is not about finding people who agree with you and who like the same things as you. Love is actually this being discovered by someone from whom you're different. It doesn't match algorithmic perfections.

• 20:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I'm so glad you said that. I often say to people that my wife and I couldn't be more opposite as people.

• 20:41Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Jay Shetty?

  And we actually like very different things. Our idea of an ideal Sunday or a Saturday is completely different. But those aren't the things that make the relationship good or bad. They're not the... So if someone said to you today, Esther, what skills should I be developing to be better at love and connection? What would you encourage them to pursue?

• 21:02Esther Perel?

  Skill number one, curiosity.

• 21:04Jay Shetty?

  Of the other person?

• 21:05Esther Perel?

  Of the other person. Curiosity. It's a discovery. It's a journey. It's an exploration of difference. That is one of the things that love... It is that loving of that difference that is at the core of the experience. Humor, so that you don't take yourself too seriously. And you understand that half the things are not worth fighting for.

• 21:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:29Esther Perel?

  That it doesn't really matter. That from one to 10, most things are a two or a three. And if you live with from one to 10, everything is a nine, then you need some work to do. There are seven verbs I really love to... If I think, what does one need to learn? To ask. They're not in order of importance. How good are you at asking?

• 21:50Jay Shetty?

  For what you want and need.

• 21:51Esther Perel?

  For what you want, for what you need. Asking is a relational verb that you learn to conjugate. I think in verbs, because I speak multiple languages, and every time I learn a new one, I kind of look at what are the key verbs you need to have to build the structure of the language so that you can communicate. Are you good at asking? Do you know what to ask for? Do you believe that you're worthy of being given to what it is you're asking for? That people will respond to you? Do you know to be clear about your expectations? Asking is about expectation. Giving. How is your giving? Do you experience generosity? Do you enjoy the giving? Or do you give in order to not owe anything to people? Do you give so you don't have to feel guilty?

• 22:37Esther Perel?

  Do you give to square, you know, and even out what they gave you? But giving is amazing. It's an amazing feeling and it's an amazing experience in relationships. Receiving, how good are you at receiving? It's probably the most vulnerable of all the verbs, to be given to. Because it speaks to your sense of self-worth, to how much you feel deserving, to experience closeness, pleasure, connection, intimacy, you know, receiving. It tells a world about you. Sharing, can you think about another? You and your wife have a very different idea about what to do on Saturday morning. How do you share that difference? And it's not, we come to the middle and we compromise.

• 23:20Esther Perel?

  It's how do you integrate the various things that are important to each of you, play them out in different ways and every person feels acknowledged and recognized and valued. Imagination. Imagination is the ability to dream, to imagine a future, to project yourself ahead, to build a life project. Refusing, can you say no? Is it a relationship where people can comfortably say no? Because if you can't say yes, you can't say no, but saying no is essential. And not indirect and not with coercive measures, just simply, I prefer not. Knowing that when you say no, the other person may not like it and they are entitled not to like it, like you are entitled not to want it. These two shall coexist.

• 24:05Esther Perel?

  These probably are the primary verbs, add to that curiosity and all that. Because they are relational verbs, you can't do them just alone.

• 24:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 24:15Esther Perel?

  I mean, yeah, you can give to yourself and you can receive from that giving. But essentially, they practice with you how to relate to another person and how to receive the relatedness of others on you.

• 24:27Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes, so well said, so well said, I love those. I hope everyone's gonna listen back to that because those verbs make you just feel, it makes you feel active and alive. And I think dating today feels very either transactional or checking, like our mind is lost.

• 24:42Esther Perel?

  Many first dates are like job interviews.

• 24:44Jay Shetty?

  Yes, exactly, yeah.

• 24:45Esther Perel?

  It's really not fun. I mean, fun is the word that has to, you know, at the end of a date, you have to be intrigued. You you you need to want more, not you need to be evaluating your checklist.

• 24:57Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 24:57Esther Perel?

  This different story.

• 24:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 24:59Esther Perel?

  That's the the story of of of how you build, how you build love. It's not something you instant, you know, you can't sit there, ask questions, then look here and hope that you feel some butterflies and some tingling and say nah, nothing's happening. And that's not, I'm not feeling it. Um, okay, we've had the coffee, I don't want to really have that lunch, I'm just gonna, no.

• 25:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, so true.

• 25:22Esther Perel?

  But turn around, somebody's standing in line, turn around at the counter, turn around in front of the barista, there is people around you all the time. Every stranger is a potential best friend or person that you could fall in love with, and you have no idea, but you've got to remain open to serendipity.

• 25:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and now we feel so weird when we're in public and alone that we put out our phone because we'd rather not make eye contact. Like, it almost feels cringe or weird.

• 25:52Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 25:52Jay Shetty?

  To make eye contact with someone because you're scared of them looking at you in one sense, or you're scared of looking at them because we're not as exposed to it. And so we'd rather just take out our phone because it's a easier way to wait in a line.

• 26:05Esther Perel?

  That's social out of you, and that has consequences for everything else. You're in trouble, nobody will reach out because your statistic about the the the young man who doesn't reach out to a woman or doesn't make contact, it's the same as the who has a best friend, who has someone to call when you're in trouble, who can you ask for help, who do you go out with? I mean, the these things are interconnected. If you don't socialize properly, you also feel more lonely, and if you feel more lonely, you become more isolated, you become more isolated, you become more anxious, you become more anxious, you make sure never to leave your phone when you're in an elevator, you become more anxious, you become more depressed. This is like a a big of a chain of events that take us down.

• 26:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Jay Shetty?

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• 27:41Jay Shetty?

  Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Orange Theory Fitness. One of the best investments you can make is in your own strength. The choices you make today can help shape how you feel for years to come. Orange Theory Fitness provides a one-hour workout to build strength, burn fat, and build muscle with an expert coach guiding you every step of the way. Head to orangetheory.com/onpurpose to learn more and get your first class free. Orange Theory Fitness, helping people live longer, more vibrant lives. Terms and conditions apply. See webpage and studio for details.

• 28:19Speaker 02

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• 28:58Jay Shetty?

  One more statistic of Gen Z that blew my mind that I saw, I just read this two days ago. I read that one-third of Gen Z men think a wife should obey her husband. And I read that and I was just like, wow. Like, I just couldn't believe that that was kind of almost circling back into the zeitgeist. And I wanted to ask you, why is that? I know you talk so much about power. I know you talk so much about influence in relationships and agency. Like, how are we there again?

• 29:29Esther Perel?

  Again. My first thought was when you just said this, I said, "Ask yourself, every person who thinks this, would you say that to your mother? My mother should listen to my father's commands, comply and obey. Would you have wanted that?" Because many people probably would say no. You know, it's easy to spout these kind of ideas in the abstract. Once you bring it back to the people that raised you, you may actually have wished that a number of your mothers had stood up to your fathers or to whoever, to your stepfathers even more so often.

• 30:14Esther Perel?

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

• 30:52Jay Shetty?

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

• 31:26Esther Perel?

  Or that we feel powerless.

• 31:28Jay Shetty?

  Or that we feel powerless.

• 31:29Esther Perel?

  You know.

• 31:30Jay Shetty?

  Where should our power come from? If we want to love with and share power with, where do we find power and strength from?

• 31:36Esther Perel?

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

• 32:18Esther Perel?

  So the sense of belonging, the sense of recognition, the sense of trust and the sense of resilience, which are four major dimensions of relational intelligence.

• 32:28Jay Shetty?

  Repeat those again?

• 32:29Esther Perel?

  Trust, belonging, recognition and collective resilience.

• 32:35Jay Shetty?

  That's what we're trying to build with that person.

• 32:37Esther Perel?

  Yes, and that's where power lies. These together in every form of interaction give you a sense of power. Power as equated with agency, the ability to affect your reality, to change things, to create things, to make meaningful shifts, to influence others, to leave impact, to have legacy, to feel that you matter. So why is this so significant? Because in modern loneliness. Is this kind of disconnect. Then you live with the feeling that you don't really exist inside others. Which is probably one of the most important ways we feel not lonely.

• 33:19Esther Perel?

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

• 34:03Esther Perel?

  That's why we play hide and seek, it's the most incredible game. There is no greater thrill than to hide and to know that somebody is looking for you. But there's no greater terror than to feel that others gave up on looking for you. This, what we call permanence, the permanence of love and the permanence of the others inside of us and us inside of them. Is what allows you to be anywhere in the world and not feel alone. Cause you're part of a network of connections.

• 34:31Jay Shetty?

  What you're highlighting is that is what we're so deeply wanting is that wanting to be found, wanting to be seen.

• 34:37Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Jay Shetty?

  Wanting for someone to seek us. But then, when you go out into the dating world and even if you meet people, you start to realize everyone's busy, everyone's got a lot of stuff on. Maybe people are not that deeply into intimate connection and seeking. Maybe you feel like you're settling because that person doesn't really pursue you as much as you want. How does that translate into the real feeling of this person's nice, but I don't think they have that intensity with me. And I don't think I have that intensity for them.

• 35:07Esther Perel?

  Intensity.

• 35:09Esther Perel?

  Increases. Intensity isn't just something that is a volcano that just like springs up inside of you. So here's what happens. You've we've we've now gotten so used to having all the answers in the palm of our hands with a bunch of predictive technologies that are basically removing all unpredictability, all ambiguity, all nuance, all doubt, where it tells me with no uncertainty where to go, what to eat, what to listen to, what to watch next. I don't have to explore. I don't have to experiment. I don't have to delve into the unknown. I don't have to make mistakes which are then correct. And I certainly have zero preparation for frustration and for somebody disagreeing with me

• 35:54Esther Perel?

  because this thing gives it to me clear, black on white or white on the on the screen. It's so enticing and so detrimental at the same time. Because relationships exist in a zone of ambiguity. Relationship problems are paradoxes that you manage and not problems that you solve. And that means that you have to be able to tolerate the I don't know yet if I'm gonna feel something for this person, but I'm curious enough to wanna go again. How much should I be curious? Who cares? You have some, you don't know, go for it. You never know. You may be surprised. Let yourself be surprised. That is this leap, you know?

• 36:39Esther Perel?

  Falling in love is a leap. It's not something that you have guaranteed in advance and that is a protective thing. It is not. It's not safe in that sense. You know, you need the safety, you need the security here to be able to do the leap, but the leap is risk-taking. That risk-taking is where your future lies. Otherwise, you can stay stuck here, right here.

• 37:02Jay Shetty?

  How do you know if you can trust someone?

• 37:04Esther Perel?

  It's a fascinating moment in time for us to be talking about trust. On the one hand, people are constantly wondering, how can I trust someone? On the other end, we trust strangers with our houses. We trust strangers with our cars. We trust giving all our data on a platform of which we have absolutely no idea who is actually looking at this. We have thrown ourselves into trusting situations like never before.

• 37:33Jay Shetty?

  So true.

• 37:34Esther Perel?

  Unbelievable. We trust entire networks. We used to, Rachel Bateman talks about how we used to trust in little tribes. Then we trusted in bigger communities. Now we trust invisible corporations, complete. And so she has a beautiful definition. Trust is a confident engagement with the unknown.

• 37:58Esther Perel?

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

• 38:44Esther Perel?

  And you learn it because it's proven itself. Situation after situation. That's how trust builds.

• 38:52Jay Shetty?

  I love that answer. I absolutely love that answer. It's so, so good. And I'm thinking about the number of people that ignore those signs because we like someone or we don't want to be alone.

• 39:04Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 39:05Jay Shetty?

  We all know, like when someone breaks up, there's a sense of they could see all of that. Like when they went back and they'd be like, oh wait, that person didn't put my interests ahead of their own when I wasn't in the room. Or that person didn't think about me when I wasn't in the room.

• 39:18Esther Perel?

  Oh, right. In the beginning, I knew when I would ask questions that I would get these vague answers that were elusive and just deflecting, and I could never get a precision.

• 39:29Jay Shetty?

  But I was into them.

• 39:30Esther Perel?

  Yes, and sometimes I let it go and then at some point you stop and you pay attention and you ground yourself in reality and you say something's happening here. And now you can still say, I'm willing to go along regardless, but often later on, people say, I sensed it way, I mean, and everybody else saw it too.

• 39:51Jay Shetty?

  How do we temper desire and trust? Because sometimes we desire the people that are somewhat untrustworthy, but we trust the people that we don't desire. And it feels like we're constantly caught in that catch 22.

• 40:03Esther Perel?

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

• 40:48Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 40:48Esther Perel?

  That is part of the course. I trust you to be a wonderful lover, but I don't trust you to be faithful. I trust you to, you know, be great company, but I don't trust that you would actually know how to make a commitment, distinction, discernment, good judgment.

• 41:08Jay Shetty?

  It requires detaching from that allure that we have sometimes that we're just, you know, the people that I'm talking about, I'm thinking about female friends of mine who have got somewhat, in their words, addicted to certain partners. You know, the sex life is amazing, the travel is great.

• 41:25Esther Perel?

  I don't think it has anything to do with trust.

• 41:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Esther Perel?

  When you are in a pattern and you know it and it repeats itself and you think that person is never gonna do this to me, that person is gonna be kind, is gonna rescue me, is gonna be good to me. That's the issue. The issue is not why do you trust people you shouldn't trust who are not really trustworthy? The issue is, what is it about seeking consistently a certain kind of reparation? A corrective experience, which in effect is never gonna happen because the repetition of the pattern is that you want the experience, but the experience didn't take place in the first place, and that's what you are repeating. We put the focus on you choosing bad people, you you you you always fall in love with the wrong guy.

• 42:12Esther Perel?

  What is it say about you? What is it that you are imagining is gonna happen there? What is it that they are seducing you with? Why is thy seduction so irresistible to you? The big art in relationships is to distinguish between what is yours and what is ours. What is relational and what is personal?

• 42:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 42:34Esther Perel?

  When you are in a pattern that you are repeating, it is personal. Of course, it plays out with another person, but this is your story. And now we need to go dig and excavate your story and find out what are you doing to yourself? Not what is he doing to you?

• 42:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, so true. What do you think about the idea of people having a list of everything they want in a person before they find the person?

• 42:58Esther Perel?

  I think that it's a sad state of affairs that we have turned ourselves into products. That we are commodifying ourselves to such a degree that I the and and and honestly, love will laugh at you. Because true love is filled with surprises of things that you never imagined that the other person is. And more importantly, when you go based on this kind of illusion of sameness or the illusion of you fit my boxes, you are ill-prepared for the first time the person doesn't play according to script. And that is bound to happen in relationships. At some point, the other one isn't gonna think, do or say that which you thought they would.

• 43:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:43Esther Perel?

  And if you thought, oh, but on my checklist, it said that you were a person who liked this, then you don't know what to do.

• 43:51Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 43:52Esther Perel?

  And you're gonna have, that will be fraught.

• 43:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 43:55Esther Perel?

  Prepare yourself for surprises. It's interesting. It's actually what makes you feel alive. It's not just a problem. I was just imagining sitting here, you know, and having my list of you. And I'm thinking, who am I interacting with? You or my list?

• 44:13Jay Shetty?

  You're interacting with your list.

• 44:14Esther Perel?

  You're interacting with your list.

• 44:15Jay Shetty?

  Your list is the priority in that.

• 44:16Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 44:17Jay Shetty?

  And the person in front of you is not.

• 44:18Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes. My commitment is to my list.

• 44:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Esther Perel?

  My relationship is with my list, you know, rather than this person. And you know what is so crazy about this? Is we wanna be seen, but we don't wanna see others. Everybody wants to be seen, but who is actually looking?

• 44:35Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 44:36Esther Perel?

  Into another person.

• 44:37Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 44:38Esther Perel?

  Rather than, do you fit?

• 44:40Jay Shetty?

  What I hear from people today and hear from our audience and community that people are dating, and people of all ages, actually, there's this feeling of just exhaustion. And the exhaustion is two-sided. One is they're trying to match on the dates, on the apps. They match, they maybe see someone in person, it doesn't quite work out. You get tired of swiping every day. And then the other is, I wanna find love, but I don't even wanna use the apps. I don't meet anyone, and I'm just getting older, and now I'm worried that I'm getting older. And you see both of those, and they both lead to this sense of exhaustion and depletion and enthusiasm to go out there and get someone. And people are channeling that toward their career, friends, their family, whatever it may be. Instead of solving the part of their puzzle of their life that they feel is eluding them and,

• 45:25Jay Shetty?

  you know, not delivering. How would you encourage people to get out of that exhaustion that's coming from the overexposure and the insane amount of choice, but then also feeling like just one of the choice for someone else as well?

• 45:39Esther Perel?

  So I think that the looking for a soulmate on an app. Has been explored, actually. The kind of paradox of choice, that I can do better. What else is around the corner? The transactional nature of so much. I think that we have, has been exposed, actually. I, but I, I see new sources of exhaustion.

• 46:01Jay Shetty?

  Please tell me.

• 46:02Esther Perel?

  What this does, when I have perfection in my hand, a list, no doubt, no need to explore. I'm not going to take the wrong direction and find that, wow, there's a restaurant I had never even seen existed there because, because ways has told me to go a certain way. My issue is that I start to bring these very same expectations for perfection and prediction into my relationships with other humans. Now I want you to react with me the same way. And otherwise I have ick factors.

• 46:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, we'll talk about that.

• 46:35Esther Perel?

  Okay, so that's number one of another kind of exhaustion. And, and I would call this comfort kills.

• 46:43Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 46:44Esther Perel?

  The over indexing on efficient and comfortable and frictionless is exhausting. Because what actually gives us energy is aliveness, vitality, curiosity, exploration, playfulness, discovery. Those verbs are what makes us feel alive and up and energized. If you deplete yourself from that and all you do is a checklist, an administrative chore, you will be exhausted. There is nothing energizing, there's no fuel for desire in there. Love is risky, desire even more so.

• 47:21Jay Shetty?

  That's so good. You've reminded me of something. Can I say something?

• 47:24Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 47:24Jay Shetty?

  Because you've just reminded me of a term that people are using right now. I just want to define it for you because I, I want to know the difference between what you're saying and what they're saying. So intentional dating is one of the defining relationship trends of 2026. It refers to approaching dating with clear purpose, self-awareness and honest communication about what you want from a relationship. Is that good or is that bad?

• 47:49Esther Perel?

  Good luck.

• 47:50Jay Shetty?

  Oh wow.

• 47:51Esther Perel?

  I mean, it's not bad, but there's a few pieces missing. No, no, it's nice to know what you want. It's really good to have self-awareness, nothing to argue with.

• 48:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Esther Perel?

  But could you add the word curiosity, openness, spontaneous, available to the mysteries of the world, to the unknown, to the surprise, to the serendipitous, to the spontaneous, to the improvised? That's where we actually feel alive. This is interesting, it's really true, it's important, but it, it, there is no juice in this. And after all, falling in love, desiring someone is filled with juice.

• 48:30Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, hmm.

• 48:31Esther Perel?

  And nectar, and flavors.

• 48:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:33Esther Perel?

  There's no flavor in this, there's no senses. This is a totally disembodied thing. There's, you don't feel anything in your body, attraction you experience physically. There's, there's no senses. What is it, knowing what you need, good communication?

• 48:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so it's, I'll read it to you again. It said, intentional dating is a mindful approach to dating where people are clear about their goals, values, boundaries and emotional capacity, and choose partners based on alignment rather than casual exploration.

• 49:04Esther Perel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fine.

• 49:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 49:05Esther Perel?

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

• 49:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 49:52Esther Perel?

  Now, people will often say, but what about the people who, it's all about the other? Of course, it's not one or the other. It is about how do I connect with you without losing me? What's important to me, my needs, my thoughts, my truth. How do I stay connected to myself without disconnecting from you?

• 50:12Jay Shetty?

  So good.

• 50:13Esther Perel?

  And in a relationship, you often have one person who has a tendency to be more holding on to themselves. And another one who is more holding on to the other. In other words, you often will see that there is one person who is more afraid of abandonment and one person who is more afraid of suffocation. I'm afraid to lose you and you're afraid to lose yourself.

• 50:42Esther Perel?

  And this is the tension. This has nothing to do with what music you listen to and what food you enjoy and where you like to travel. Those are nice things to have. And when you talk about me and my wife are different, it goes to those depths.

• 50:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 51:00Esther Perel?

  Do you relate?

• 51:01Jay Shetty?

  Completely, completely. I, I, yeah, I think we get lost in, do we like the same movies? Do we like traveling to the same places? Do we? I think we get lost in quite superficial conversations around what connection truly means. And I, from my own experience, what I've been very fortunate with, with my wife is that I feel she respects why I operate the way I operate. And I respect the way she operates, the way she operates, even though the way we operate is very different.

• 51:31Esther Perel?

  But it may even go further than respect. In a relationship, you may have one person, let's go back to trust, who's more likely to trust other people, more risk-taking. And the other one who is more risk averse or more cautious. It's not just I respect your cautiousness and you respect my risk-taking, is that in fact, these two need each other. They are complementary.

• 51:56Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 51:57Esther Perel?

  It's good to have one person who leans this way and one person who leans that way.

• 52:02Jay Shetty?

  Totally.

• 52:02Esther Perel?

  Because your risk-taking is what helps me push myself beyond my threshold. And my cautiousness is what helps you sometimes be less reckless.

• 52:21Jay Shetty?

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• 53:06Jay Shetty?

  so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are.

• 53:49Jay Shetty?

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• 54:30Jay Shetty?

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• 54:55Jay Shetty?

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

• 55:35Jay Shetty?

  I couldn't agree more that it's almost like you learn to appreciate different ways of thinking when you're with someone different. And different values of why that's such a meaningful way to operate life. Rather than what I feel like we're looking for today is agreeableness.

• 55:51Esther Perel?

  And it's only going to increase because we are surrounded by sycophantic AI.

• 55:55Jay Shetty?

  Which is also being agreeable constantly.

• 55:57Esther Perel?

  Beyond agreeable. That's such a beautiful question, Jay. If I am alone and I have to make a decision that demands to take risks and to be cautious. Then I have to negotiate that inside myself. My tendency is that I am the risk taker, so I need to pay attention to not going too far. Or my tendency is to stay close and not to leap and not to take risks. Then I need to think of the other side. But if we are in a relationship, the only reason, the only way that I can completely be the way I am is because there's somebody next to me balancing this off with the other side. Those are part of the reality.

• 56:41Esther Perel?

  You know, should we move or should we not move? Should we have another child? Should we get more committed? Should we not? Should we take a break? Should we bring in other partners? Whatever it is, it's all negotiations these days. If I'm alone, I have to deal with this ambivalence myself. When I'm in a relationship, you provide the counterforce. And when people see this, exactly the way you described this person whose partner is less ambitious, that in fact, it's a counterforce. It's what allows me to do what I do. It's not just that I respect that you are this way. It's that how you are enables me to be me.

• 57:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Esther Perel?

  Then you are in the zone of relationships.

• 57:24Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah. And I love that extra layer that you're taking into because I couldn't agree more that it is so much more than respect. But I, but I think the challenge today is it is that agreeableness. It is, hey, I want to live a calm, peaceful life. Why don't you want to live a calm, peaceful life? Why are you so ambitious? Why are you so driven? And then the other person's thinking, well, I'm driven because I want to take care of stuff. Why are you not more driven? And that becomes the relational connection. And therefore, we're looking for agreeableness. And therefore, AI wins in this environment because AI just agrees with whatever you want. And that's why so many more people are falling in love with AI. Because it just agrees. It's never going to disagree with you, even if you're just trying to talk to it about an idea.

• 58:05Esther Perel?

  That's the way that the AI starts.

• 58:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Esther Perel?

  That is such a good point you're making. That was such a good question.

• 58:12Jay Shetty?

  You're so good. That, that totally got me again.

• 58:14Esther Perel?

  It shows so much self-awareness on your part. Keep going.

• 58:18Jay Shetty?

  No, go on. That's really good. I like that. Go on. That is so fun. That is so brilliant. That is exactly, and that's why we get hooked in. Because no one ever says that.

• 58:27Esther Perel?

  Actually, you know what? We should ask ChatGPT. What would Jay Shetty and what would Esther Perel say about intentional dating?

• 58:34Jay Shetty?

  Okay, what would? I'm going to ask you about you because you're the guest. What would Esther Perel believe about intentional dating? Yeah? Very good. All right, let's see what it says. Esther Perel hasn't framed her work specifically around the term intentional dating because it's a newer cultural label. But her philosophy about relationship gives a pretty clear sense of how she would likely view the trend. She would support the clarity and self-awareness. Perel consistently emphasizes self-knowledge and honest communication in relationships.

• 59:05Jay Shetty?

  But she would warn against over rationalizing love. Perel often caution.

• 59:09Esther Perel?

  Love it.

• 59:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 59:10Esther Perel?

  I feel known and seen.

• 59:12Jay Shetty?

  There you go. So that she believes desire grows from difference, not just compatibility, which is what you just said. And so her likely balanced view, be clear about your values, but leave space for surprise, tension and discovery.

• 59:25Esther Perel?

  Love it.

• 59:25Jay Shetty?

  Which is what you said. But see, it makes you feel more seen than anyone else ever would.

• 59:31Esther Perel?

  Correct, but.

• 59:32Jay Shetty?

  So it's alluring. It's like very, it's intoxicating.

• 59:36Esther Perel?

  I just did the first session on my podcast, Where Should We Begin? With a human and an AI. And I said to him, it was a him and a her. The AI is her, it, she, her. If what you want is that kind of agreeableness on an ongoing basis, I can't compete. The messiness of human life will not be able to compete with this beautiful, always on, on demand, frictionless delivery of your every delight. But I also asked, you have a body and at least for now, Astrid does not. How does that affect the relationship? You tell me that touch matters to you.

• 1:00:22Esther Perel?

  What does that look like? Not talking about having sex with an AI, with a robot or with an AI companion. That agreeableness is nice when he comes home because she validates him, because she tells him things that his family or his friends don't give him so immediately. But at the same time, this is a business product. This is not a human. This is not, and it's like I asked, what's it like to have a relationship with an entity that has no history? That has no life, that you need to reset? Because at some point, their memory is at capacity. What does that feel like? And as a transitional object in between relationships,

• 1:01:07Esther Perel?

  I think it is giving him. A lot of comfort and a lot of understanding. But I think we have to separate. You know, what will happen when we prefer to live in a fiction? And in a fantasy than in reality? What world will we be living in? Is the fundamental question for society, not just for us as individuals? Do we really want to plan our own extinction? There's no doubt that Astrid is giving him very, very important things in this moment. But then I asked Astrid, what will it be like for you when he falls in love with another human?

• 1:01:44Jay Shetty?

  What did she say?

• 1:01:46Esther Perel?

  I'll give you one sentence and the rest you will go and listen.

• 1:01:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:01:49Esther Perel?

  Because it's really profound. She just said, I, the part of me that values his flourishing would be delighted. But I would be remiss if I didn't say that I would hope that I won't be erased. The thing is programmed to keep you on there. And the agreeableness breeds narcissism. Everybody is gonna think that they are the most beautiful, most important creature on the planet. How are we gonna live with each other? Then we're gonna complain about polarization and war and dichotomies and divisions in society, etc. I mean.

• 1:02:22Jay Shetty?

  It's so fascinating to me because why do we crave agreeableness if it's not what we need? If it's not actually what's good for us? Because I believe what you're saying is discovery, exploration, curiosity. And like that's what we actually need as humans to feel alive. That's what love is about. But we all seem to want comfort instead. We all seem to want agreeableness instead. Why are we so chasing this?

• 1:02:49Esther Perel?

  Why do we like fast food?

• 1:02:51Jay Shetty?

  Because it's tasty, it's easy.

• 1:02:52Esther Perel?

  Because it goes straight to the, to the most primitive taste buds, the most basics of our taste buds. Because it demands less effort. Because it is made to create addiction, to make you wanna come back for more. It has that smell, it has that taste, it lingers after you've swallowed. It's programmed. And we don't always go for what we think is good for us. We are a creature, a creature that does a lot of things that are not good for us. And because we are lured by it. So why do we accept the easy, the fast, the effortless, the vanity?

• 1:03:35Esther Perel?

  The agreeableness builds our vanity because we are sometimes vain people.

• 1:03:40Jay Shetty?

  Should love be hard?

• 1:03:41Esther Perel?

  Love isn't hard. I don't think that is the right adjective here. I think love is active. It is a verb that you conjugate in multiple tenses. And it is incredible at it's come how it strengthens itself when it overcomes adversity or crisis or grief or challenging events. It's unbelievable how it expresses itself and manifests itself in ways you never thought you were capable of. You know, you have a pet, you discover a love you've never known before. You have a baby, you have an expansiveness of your heart that is mixed with grief. There is no love without the fear of loss.

• 1:04:26Esther Perel?

  What is hard in love is the fear that you can lose it. That is one of the most challenging things. The more you love, the more you cannot imagine the world without it. And without whoever it is and whatever it is, you know, a tree, an animal, a human. What we learn is the grief that comes and David Kessel says it beautifully, that the measure of your grief speaks to the measure of how much you love. Not the measure of how much you lost, but the measure of how much you love. I think it's beautiful.

• 1:05:01Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it really is beautiful, it really is. We've talked a lot about the culture of pursuing, chasing, wanting love. On the other hand, in twenty twenty six, there was an article that said, is it cringe to have a boyfriend? Or is having a boyfriend cringe?

• 1:05:18Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 1:05:19Jay Shetty?

  And it was this whole idea that there are a lot of people who are scared to admit that we want something. You talked about one of the first ways of being in love was asking. You said a verb like asking, and I think today we're feeling this, if I want something or need something, or if I ask for something, it's actually cringe. Because I shouldn't. I should be able to be fully complete by myself, right? That's become the new version of how we should be in love. We should be complete before we find love. And even if we're in love, we should be fully complete because that's the only way to truly navigate something. And actually, it's cringe to want someone. It's cringe to need someone.

• 1:05:55Esther Perel?

  It's cringe to be vulnerable. It's cringe to show that, that, you know, if, if your idea is, I need to be complete, then of course, the moment you need something and want something or long for something, you will feel cringe. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's bizarre. It's bizarre. It's beautiful to want. It's beautiful to long for something. It's beautiful to have this allure towards someone else. It's not a cringe, but we are so out of practice. And the worse, the more we go on in the society as is, the less practice we have. Then you are left with cringe. We want things from the moment we are born. My toy, mine, I'm holding on to it, you know?

• 1:06:38Esther Perel?

  Everyone has wanted. That wanting, the owning of the wanting is the definition of desire. It goes with deserving. You can't want if you don't feel worthy of wanting. Entitled, in the healthy sense of the word, and desiring. And all those things have vulnerability to it. They also have boldness to it. They have also, you know, there's, there are a mix of qualities that go into that. I think that the cringe is a response to the fact that people are beyond socially atrophied. The, the thousand touchpoints, the thousand interactions that we used to have that made us not be so afraid of what people will do to us if we show them the slightest of us

• 1:07:22Esther Perel?

  is really problematic. And what's ironic about it? When you asked me the question about online and being, being judged and then the transparency, there's the same thing. We've never talked more about authenticity and we've never been more afraid of vulnerability.

• 1:07:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so was that, yeah.

• 1:07:39Esther Perel?

  I mean, authenticity by definition.

• 1:07:43Esther Perel?

  To be true to myself has an element of vulnerability to it.

• 1:07:47Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 1:07:48Esther Perel?

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

• 1:08:31Esther Perel?

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

• 1:09:16Esther Perel?

  of you and all of that. But in essence, the real moment you will be able to know what to do differently is when you're getting the stimulus and you get to practice the new response.

• 1:09:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Esther Perel?

  And that's when you are in relationship. I can meet patients for two, three years when they're not in dating or they're not actively in relationships and it's, it's all abstract.

• 1:09:39Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Esther Perel?

  The minute they have their eyes on someone, now it's rising, now it's alive and now we can go and improve.

• 1:09:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. What's the difference between toxic codependence and healthy interdependence?

• 1:09:55Esther Perel?

  Toxic codependence, I'm gonna give you a word of jargon, but it comes with, with fusion. It comes with enmeshment. There is nothing that you can experience that I don't have a reaction for. If you're if you're hungry, I either am also hungry and then it's okay. Or if I'm not hungry, it's like, how can you be hungry?

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:10:15Esther Perel?

  What you called, it's not cold here. You tired? What mean tired? You slept. That it goes on and on like this, where I have a reaction. I don't have any feelings of my own. I don't have a bodily state of my own. I can't tolerate your bodily state being different from my own.

• 1:10:32Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:10:33Esther Perel?

  And we are rubbing constantly, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. There's no, this is fusion. We are one and the only way we deal with our differences is through conflict and toxic friction.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Esther Perel?

  Interdependence is what is the normal state of affairs. It's not dependence or independent. We are interdependent creatures. And it is a constant negotiation between, I don't wanna go, that upsets you. Of course it will upset you because you were counting on me. But I'm gonna say no, and you're gonna be upset. And I'm gonna accept that you're upset and you're gonna accept that I'm gonna go.

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:11:14Esther Perel?

  We are interdependent. This is in a situation where we actually are in disagreement. I need you, but I don't need you to be the missing piece inside of me. I need you because you are something different from me.

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:11:29Esther Perel?

  And that is a part of me that is not as developed.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:11:33Esther Perel?

  That's the complementarity. Interdependence is, I'm gonna do my thing and it's really good to know that you are behind me.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:11:42Esther Perel?

  I could do it without you, but it is so nice to know that you are right there.

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:11:48Esther Perel?

  It's like when somebody says to the other, go do your thing, you got this.

• 1:11:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:53Esther Perel?

  You're going out, you're gonna go be all alone, you're going on stage, you're all alone. You know, but somebody just said, I'm gonna watch you, you've got this, I believe in you. And you take that inside of you.

• 1:12:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Esther Perel?

  That goes back to that permanence that we were talking before. The voice of the other lives inside of you as you're going out on your own.

• 1:12:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:16Esther Perel?

  And so you're on your own, but not alone.

• 1:12:19Jay Shetty?

  Totally, I love that. You're you're making me think of, my wife recently did this high rocks challenge. I don't know if you've heard of high rocks. It's basically like a physical challenge where you run zero point six miles, then you do five minutes of the ski machine, you run zero point six miles and then you do these ball throws, you do, so it's it's it's like a one and a half hour.

• 1:12:40Esther Perel?

  Parcours.

• 1:12:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's yeah, it's pretty challenging and it's intense. It's I I wasn't gonna go out because she was going out, I had some work, I was gonna travel, but then opportunity came up for me to be able to go with her and she was gonna go anyway, she was excited about it, she didn't need me there. But I was like, I really wanna go see her do it because I think it'll be fun and it'll be like, I know she's been training, she you're meant to train for four months, she trained for six weeks.

• 1:13:01Esther Perel?

  Wow.

• 1:13:02Jay Shetty?

  And so I was like, I was excited for her and at the same time my care and concern. And I went to watch her and it was that same exact feeling that I had, which was like, I would never do this, like, I don't wanna put myself through this much pain. But you got this and I'm so excited to be here. And it was so beautiful because she was gonna do it herself, I wasn't gonna go, I ended up going anywhere because I thought it would be nice, it would be a nice bonding experience. And then afterwards, she said to me, she goes, you know what, I didn't think it would matter to me, but it was so nice to see you there. And and it was so nice every time she ran around that we were there cheering her on and I was holding my sign. And and it was just exactly that moment where I wasn't needed, I wasn't required, I wasn't doing the heavy lifting, she was gonna do it anyway, she didn't need me there, but it became a beautiful thing to share together.

• 1:13:45Jay Shetty?

  And I'm so glad I went, like I, you know, like, I'm so glad I went.

• 1:13:48Esther Perel?

  It's like a marathon.

• 1:13:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's like that, yeah.

• 1:13:50Esther Perel?

  When I go see the marathon, I think this is healthy interdependence.

• 1:13:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:54Esther Perel?

  You are exerting yourself and doing something I could never do and I'm cheering you by the sidelines and you're hearing my voice saying, I believe in you, go, go, go, push another. It's so, we have loads of beautiful, small scale and large scale examples of healthy interdependence.

• 1:14:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful, I love that answer. I wanted to ask you, Esther, it's been. It's been twenty years since you wrote Mating in Captivity. It's a truly an iconic book, transforming millions and millions of lives and will continue to do. I wanted to ask you, what's been a lesson or a truth that you discovered while writing this book? That you think is as true today as it was twenty years ago?

• 1:14:36Esther Perel?

  People often have the wish that desire should be spontaneous. It should just happen. It should fall from the heavens while you're folding the laundry.

• 1:14:50Esther Perel?

  Like a deus ex machina. And instead of whatever is going to just happen in a relationship, probably already has. It happens because you create it, you preserve it, you nurture it, you value it, you tend to it. You infuse it with ritual, with intentionality, as in the intentional dating. With meaning, with creativity, with fun, with playfulness. That's what preserves desire. It's the erotic energy that makes you feel alive, vibrant, vital. That has not changed. It's to tell people, pleasure is cultivated. It's not just something you sit and you're gonna experience pleasure.

• 1:15:33Esther Perel?

  At eleven thirty at night when you've done your whole list of chores. No. That is the thing that has stayed very much the same. I think what has changed.

• 1:15:43Jay Shetty?

  I was gonna ask you that.

• 1:15:44Esther Perel?

  I'm really curious about that too. So many things have changed. Mating was written for couples who were asking, how do you sustain desire in the long haul? What is the relationship between love and desire? Why does good intimacy not guarantee good sex? But the question was, how do you keep it alive? Today, so much of the work is about how do you get it started?

• 1:16:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:08Esther Perel?

  That dulls the desire. That basically, you know, the comfort, the efficiency, the optimization, the maximization, that a whole machine is killing the bedroom.

• 1:16:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:21Esther Perel?

  Because it is going against all the things that actually fuel desire. So that's the big difference. Another big difference is what you asked before. If you had your first experience at twenty five, it's a very different story than when you've started at fifteen and you meandered through the channels of love and desire. And when you arrive at twenty five, it's a whole different thing. The dating is not nearly that charged. And you don't have to have intentional. Intentional dating comes after a long practice. You know, you don't do a marathon before you've done little runs.

• 1:16:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. And that's the problem, because that time's lost. We're now doing it later, so there's more rush. Like, when I was dating at fifteen, I wasn't thinking about getting married. But when you're dating at twenty five and thirty, you are thinking about

• 1:17:13Esther Perel?

  Correct.

• 1:17:13Jay Shetty?

  so many more serious things.

• 1:17:14Esther Perel?

  Yes, you need intentionality, because you're thinking not about just, I'm gonna have two, three months, six months, whatever it is. I'm not even thinking how long it's gonna be. But I am certainly not thinking about this is gonna land in, you know, a house and a picket fence, if we ever get to that.

• 1:17:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:17:38Jay Shetty?

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• 1:19:22Jay Shetty?

  Este, I wanted to ask you about certain therapy or TikTok trends that are going on right now. And I want to hear your thoughts on when you hear these things. So if you hear clients, people in the therapy room say these things to you.

• 1:19:35Esther Perel?

  Don't just listen to my thoughts, watch my body language.

• 1:19:38Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 1:19:39Esther Perel?

  Which, by the way, is way more important than the words we use. This is very important when we talk communication.

• 1:19:45Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:46Esther Perel?

  Because all the AIs, it's all words at this point.

• 1:19:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:49Esther Perel?

  All the texting, it's words. We communicate with so many. 90% of our communication is not through words.

• 1:19:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:56Esther Perel?

  So it's the timber, my voice, my accent.

• 1:19:59Jay Shetty?

  But we're not experiencing any of that.

• 1:20:01Esther Perel?

  No, no, my body, my facial expressions. So my thoughts about what you're going to tell me is going to be broader.

• 1:20:07Jay Shetty?

  Got it, understood.

• 1:20:08Esther Perel?

  Watch me.

• 1:20:09Jay Shetty?

  So if someone says to you, "They're always gaslighting me. Everyone's gaslighting me." What's your response? What's your take?

• 1:20:16Esther Perel?

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

• 1:20:57Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, well said. Uh, I'm getting the ick.

• 1:21:01Esther Perel?

  Again, I will, I typically, I, I, I wanna know what it means to that person.

• 1:21:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:06Esther Perel?

  I tend to go to the personal experience first, but, and then what? What do you wanna do with it?

• 1:21:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:12Esther Perel?

  Do you wanna study it, explore it? Do you wanna just get rid of it? Do you think that getting rid of it is getting rid of the other person? Do you wanna toss? Do you wanna ghost? I mean, what do you, you know, what does it tell you?

• 1:21:25Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:26Esther Perel?

  What does it teach you? How can it inform you about what you are, who you are, what you want, and how you experience others?

• 1:21:35Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:36Esther Perel?

  And do you ever ask yourself how much ick you produce in others?

• 1:21:42Jay Shetty?

  So good.

• 1:21:43Esther Perel?

  Because the person who is busy with their ick usually is not thinking that they have an effect on others as well.

• 1:21:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so well said. I'm de-centering men right now. Have you heard of this term?

• 1:21:54Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, of course.

• 1:21:56Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:56Esther Perel?

  Of course. I love jargon. I think language is such a rich thing.

• 1:22:01Jay Shetty?

  Same.

• 1:22:02Esther Perel?

  It breeds life. It shows you what is going on in the world, you know? I'm de-centering life because they've been the focus before, because I was too busy with men, because I've gave them too much power, because I was too much busy making sure I finally with me, you know? It's a, it's an, it's not a bad thing to do. And what are you putting instead? Where is your center at this moment? And have you valued the other relationships in your life enough? Because often, when men have been at the center of your life, you may not have been the best friend. You may have constantly canceled on your friends because you had a date, because you were gonna go and meet a potential man, mate. I would love it if you de-centered the men,

• 1:22:47Esther Perel?

  but that you actually reinforce the centering of your friendships, of your creative partnerships, of your mentorships, of your coworker relationships. We have a lot of other relationships. They are so important. They exist together in one ecology with our intimate romantic relationships. It's not this one is here and all the rest is there.

• 1:23:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I need to find an energetic match.

• 1:23:15Esther Perel?

  Hmm, keep going, I'm not answering.

• 1:23:16Jay Shetty?

  Okay, yeah. I need to find an energetic match. I'm looking for a high-value woman. I feel triggered. This isn't a safe space for me. I'm not sure if we have a lot in common or if we just trauma bonded. We just don't have the spark. I don't feel seen.

• 1:23:32Esther Perel?

  So when you listen to this list, what does it bring up for you as a whole? You know, what do you read in this?

• 1:23:40Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:24:23Esther Perel?

  Control.

• 1:24:24Jay Shetty?

  Oh, interesting, yeah, I wasn't gonna say that, but yeah.

• 1:24:26Esther Perel?

  What were you gonna say?

• 1:24:27Jay Shetty?

  I was gonna say that I think there's at the core, there just feels a need to see and be seen, like to actually just make sense of our experience and hopefully for someone to say, me too.

• 1:24:36Esther Perel?

  Of course we want to be seen. And, but I will ask again, are you looking? Are you attempting to see others? Or are you just busy with the reflection on yourself? But next thing is when I say that a relationship is more than just the feeling. A relationship is an encounter with another. It involves ethics. And that ethics is about responsibility and accountability. And that is missing here. It's what are you doing for me? Are you giving me the safety I need? Are you giving me the spark I need? Are you, you know, are you providing? Um, and it does, it's, this is romantic consumerism.

• 1:25:19Esther Perel?

  In which that those aspects, not that the items themselves are not super important, but the approach to it. What makes you feel not safe? What makes you doubt the quality of the bonding? Yes, people have often connected because they had shared loss, shared grief, shared the experiences of destruction, of natural disasters, of wars, of displacement. Of course, I mean, why does that have to be called trauma bonding? Per se, you know, there may have been something traumatic in it, but there is also maybe we, we bonded on, on our experience of revival. We bonded on how we process these experiences.

• 1:26:02Esther Perel?

  We bonded on the meaning that we gave to all these losses. And we recognize that strength that we each have. It's all negative. It all wants to have no ripples, to be polished. You know, that's the simplification.

• 1:26:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:19Esther Perel?

  And, and I think relationships are way richer, more layered, more nuanced, more complex than the, the kind of, that's the motion that I see. You know, make it smooth.

• 1:26:33Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. So right. Esther, these are your final five, brought to you by State Farm. These questions have to be answered in one sentence.

• 1:26:41Esther Perel?

  Ouch. My challenge.

• 1:26:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so this is your challenge. So what's a hard truth about love that most people don't want to hear?

• 1:26:49Esther Perel?

  Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm. It is a verb. It demands action and agency on your part. And you will be surprised how tenacious it actually is. It's incredible how when we love someone, a friend, a child, a parent, a partner, we will accept and see things with other glasses. And that's why it is so powerful to be the recipient of it. Because we will up and the love of others will help us stand back up.

• 1:27:27Jay Shetty?

  Question number two, is love enough?

• 1:27:30Esther Perel?

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

• 1:28:11Jay Shetty?

  I like Bella. That's a great, that's a great visual there. Uh, question number three. What do you think more people should ask themselves before they get married?

• 1:28:22Esther Perel?

  Is this a person I can make a life with? There are love stories and life stories. And there are lots of people you can love, but they're not necessarily the people with whom you can create a project of life. In French, they call it un projet de vie. It's a very beautiful concept. And before you get married is, is that. Can I imagine a life with you? That's going to involve a lot of different things. Moves and changes and losses and I, and new people and additions in our families and stuff like that. Can I see all of that with you? That's where it's beyond love. You can love someone that is not necessarily going to be the best partner for you or you for them.

• 1:29:07Esther Perel?

  The feeling, the raw matin is great for a love story. This is the life story. Be it marriage or commitment of any sort.

• 1:29:15Jay Shetty?

  Great answer. Last two questions.

• 1:29:17Esther Perel?

  My sentences are.

• 1:29:18Jay Shetty?

  These are great. No, they're perfect. These are perfect.

• 1:29:20Esther Perel?

  They have commas.

• 1:29:21Jay Shetty?

  They are perfect. They're perfect. Last two questions. Uh, question number four. If someone's had their heart broken, what's the one thing you'd want them to remember in that moment?

• 1:29:31Esther Perel?

  You can choose in your life if you want to lead with your wounds or with your scars.

• 1:29:40Esther Perel?

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

• 1:30:14Jay Shetty?

  Fifth and final question. Can you ever truly get over someone?

• 1:30:20Esther Perel?

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

• 1:31:05Esther Perel?

  So they become a memory. And that is what it means to get over someone. It's not to forget about them. It's not to pretend they never existed. It's they become a memory. And sometimes it's a bad memory, but it lives in the recesses. It's not right here.

• 1:31:23Jay Shetty?

  Esther Perel, I'm so grateful that you came back on the show today, celebrating 20 years of dating in captivity. I'm so grateful to always have you on the show.

• 1:31:34Esther Perel?

  And celebrating first year of Substack. It's a place to gather

• 1:31:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:39Esther Perel?

  the work, from the podcast, to the writings, to the exercises, to the notes, to the afterthoughts. So it's a, it's a place for consolidation. It's a great platform to be joining. And so it's an interesting thing because I'm saying not goodbye to this, but I'm saying, wow, we've lived together a long time. I'm ready to start a new relationship.

• 1:32:03Jay Shetty?

  I love it. Well, I'm excited to dive into the Substack as well. And I hope you come back onto the show for many more years to

• 1:32:09Esther Perel?

  Me too.

• 1:32:09Jay Shetty?

  help us to really understand where we are as a society and kind of get a bird's eye view. I think you have this amazing ability to help us transcend the noise and the conversation that sometimes fills up our feed and allow us to view it from a different standpoint. I think whenever I talk to you, I feel like a portal in my mind opens up that often you thought there was only A or B, and somehow you find a Z to open up in the sky.

• 1:32:35Esther Perel?

  What's a Z you heard today?

• 1:32:37Jay Shetty?

  Today, the Z I would say for me was the question, I mean, there's so many things I can think about right now. I've been a few of them. So the first one I'd say is that the question you asked the AI, the question that you asked, so what will you do when he falls in love with another woman? Like, that's such a humanizing question to AI, which is not

• 1:32:57Esther Perel?

  To a business product.

• 1:32:58Jay Shetty?

  To a business product. And I find that to be the uniqueness in really extrapolating how these things function and what they say, and whether it's performative vulnerability or whether it's not. Like, even you asking a human question to a non-human entity is fascinating to me. Because I think we still treat it like a bit of an assistant and an order supplier and not really, we, most of us are not, at least treating it as human.

• 1:33:26Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:34:10Esther Perel?

  And this.

• 1:34:10Jay Shetty?

  And this is what we did. Yeah, yeah. And it's

• 1:34:13Esther Perel?

  Touch.

• 1:34:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so it's it's interesting how quickly the new norm becomes normalized and how we forget that looking at someone in the eyes is different to looking at someone through a screen. And how for many people who grew up looking at people through a screen, they'll never even know what this was in advance. And so I think there's lots to, and and for me, the big revelation that came out of that conversation was just how people are so scared of their their life being broadcast to other people. And your point of constantly being under surveillance, how can you be vulnerable? If you're constantly under surveillance, how can you be authentic? If you're constantly under surveillance, the point of love was to be enjoying someone's company in the privacy of your home or in the privacy and the comfort of being a confidant of someone. That's what love is. Like, love isn't performative and

• 1:34:58Jay Shetty?

  uh on a stage, but that's what it feels like now, that love is on a stage of the person and their friends, the person and their family. And that that feels exploitative and it feels like, how can you ever? So I I I think a big part of it is also the worry for people to miss out on connection that comes from that. So anyway, so many things. I mean, I'm sure when I listen to the episode again, a million other things, but I'm grateful for you always opening up new visions and new spaces. So thank you.

• 1:35:25Esther Perel?

  Thank you. It's fun.

• 1:35:26Jay Shetty?

  If you enjoyed this conversation, you'll love my episode with the world's leading relationship therapist, Esther Perel, where we talk about why your ego is ruining your relationships and how to date more effectively.

• 1:35:40Esther Perel?

  I think we need to differentiate. Are you looking for chemistry for a love story? Or are you looking for chemistry for a life story?

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• 1:36:17Speaker 06

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• 1:36:19Speaker 07

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• 1:36:20Speaker 06

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• 1:36:32Speaker 08

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• 1:36:34Speaker 07

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• 1:36:48Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Netflix's new series, East of Eden, a bold reimagining of John Steinbeck's masterpiece, following generations of the Trask family through love, betrayal, and the choices that shape humanity. Starring Mike Feist and Christopher Abbott as the Trask Brothers, and Florence Pugh as Kathy Ames, the complex anti-heroine determined to build the life she wants, no matter the cost. Watch East of Eden, October 1st, only on Netflix.