How to Stay Curious, Playful & Intimate, Decades After You Meet with Esther Perel #687

Twenty years ago, leading psychotherapist Esther Perel asked whether desire could survive marriage and children. Today, she highlights a new relationship threat: our frictionless, convenient lives – and offers a wealth of wisdom to keep love alive. This conversation was recorded live on stage at SXSW London, where Esther was speaking to mark the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking bestseller, Mating in Captivity. It’s her third time on the podcast and I was honoured that she asked me to interview her for this wide-ranging episode – to which the audience reactions add a real energy. Esther is one of the world’s most insightful and original voices on modern love. And it’s her parents, Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives through relationships, whom she credits for the idea that underpins her work: that our relationship quality ultimately determines our life quality. We begin with something simple: the habit of appreciation, and why we tend to be better at criticising the people we live with than thanking them. Esther reminds us that a romantic partner is simply ‘on loan, with an option to renew’, so we need to make each other feel valued. She makes the case for ditching relationship checklists, explains why perfectionism and a lack of obstacles are starving modern intimacy, and defines the ‘digital lag’ that’s destroying our ability to be physically present with others. We also talk about eroticism as a form of vitality and curiosity, while loneliness is more about societal failings than individual malaise. And Esther makes a key point that wanting our partners to be ‘our village’, instead of looking to a wider community, is a modern pressure that’s too much for any relationship to bear. To illustrate this, she reveals what happened during her therapy session between a human and their ‘perfect’ AI companion. It was a threshold moment for her industry – and it’s a lesson for us all. This warm and witty episode is packed with quick-fire Q and As as well as deeper observations and meaningful advice. Esther offers a way of thinking about desire, connection and expectations that carries well beyond romantic relationships, touching on friendships, family and the way we show up for everyone around us. The Thrive Tour: Transform Your Health and Happiness, a live show: Book Your Tickets https://drchatterjee.com/live Thanks to our sponsors: https://heights.com/livemore https://hellolingo.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/687 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It's important to not fall in the trap where for centuries you had to be ashamed if you had sex and now you have to be ashamed if you don't have sex. It's the same tyranny reversed. In order to want sex, it needs to be sex that is worth wanting. And then we can start the conversation.

• 0:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Hey guys, how are you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better Live More.

• 0:29Rangan Chatterjee?

  Today's episode is a bit different to usual in the sense that it was recorded live at the iconic festival South West by South West in London in June earlier this year. Today's guest, Esther Perel, asked me to interview her onstage to mark the 20th anniversary of her groundbreaking book, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. Now, two decades ago, Esther's book asked whether desire could survive marriage and children. But on its anniversary, I ask her about a bigger threat that couples face today: convenience.

• 1:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  Regular listeners will know that Esther, who's appeared on my podcast before, is a psychotherapist renowned for exploring the intricacies of human connection, intimacy, and desire. Through her books, events, and online offerings, she's helped millions of people form better relationships—romantically, platonically, and in the workplace. Although this is a shorter episode than usual, it's filled with wisdom, insight, and game-changing takeaways. We cover so many different topics, including the importance of showing your appreciation,

• 1:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  why staying curious and playful is key to a happy marriage, and why your partner is not your village, and why seeking a soulmate might be missing the point. It's when Esther describes a recent couples' therapy session she gave to a person and their AI companion, though, that I think your jaw will really drop. It'll make you think twice about seeking perfection in a partner and long for some good, old-fashioned unpredictability instead. This is a vibrant and thought-provoking episode that offers a way of thinking about desire,

• 2:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  connection, and expectations that applies to all the relationships in our lives and not just the romantic ones.

• 2:52Rangan Chatterjee?

  What I thought we'd do to start off, Esther, is to do some quickfire questions. Okay. What is one habit that improves our relationships the most?

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Ongoing appreciations. We've become so good at being critical of the person we live with that it's actually very interesting when instead you put your lens on anything, you could just say, "Thank you, nice, I appreciate, it moves me." That will create a bucket that is very significant.

• 3:25Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, love that. What is something people misunderstand about finding the right partner?

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Well, it's the focus on finding the right partner that is in itself a problem. Why don't we ever ask, "Am I the right partner? Who am I in this relationship rather than what I find?" And finding the right partner has a lot to do with a checklist. And my first and foremost advice these days is ditch the checklist. I mean, that in itself is a curse.

• 3:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 00

  How many of you have checklists?

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Ah, ah, baby, baby.

• 4:03Rangan Chatterjee?

  Is there a daily ritual you never skip?

• 4:06Speaker 00

  A daily ritual I never skip. I probably call a friend every day just to chat, just to ask how they're doing. Because these days, I find that you can easily go for weeks without talking to someone to then find out that they're in deep shit and you had no idea.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  Seriously, you laugh, but in fact, it's not always so funny. I think just to call for the sake of calling, just to say hello and not to text only, is really changes something. Or even a voice message, but the voice is super important. It is the first thing we hear in utero, let's never forget that.

• 4:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, love that. What was the best piece of relationship advice you have ever received?

• 4:54Speaker 00

  If you told me the worst, I would have lots. But the best piece of relationship advice: Never take it for granted.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Never take it for granted. It led to a sentence that I then wrote, actually, in Mating, when I said, "Your partner never belongs to you. They are just on loan with an option to renew." And I thought, that is true for me too. You know, at any point, somebody can disappear—death, illness, walking away, falling in love somewhere else. So don't just, you know, become lazy and complacent. It's amazing how much we make sure to give our car a tune-up on a regular basis and how lazy we can become in our relationship at home.

• 5:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Agree or not agree?

• 5:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  And the last quickfire question to start off today is, what would you tell your younger self about the importance of relationships?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  I think, you know, that too became a sentence for me that became a crown of a credo, that the quality of your relationships is ultimately what will determine the quality of your life. But I think I knew it as a child because my parents were both Holocaust survivors who survived the war completely alone. And the relationships with people and friends, it was really all they had. And I understood that idea, that relationships, friendships, mentors, teachers, people, people in your life are the gold that you will travel with. I don't know that it was articulated like that to me, but I saw it in front of me and

• 6:44Speaker 00

  it became the basis of my work.

• 6:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, love that. Esther, it's been a joy over the last week. I've been rereading Mating in Captivity, this 20-year anniversary edition, and I cannot believe how much of it still holds true, and arguably more true and more needed today than it was when you originally wrote the book. One of the things that stood out for me this morning whilst I was reading this over coffee was in the final chapter, you talk about couples who maintain a sense of playfulness with each other, both in and out of the bedroom. And then you say, "For these guys, marriage is not the end of their romance, it's the

• 7:30Rangan Chatterjee?

  beginning." I think that as a sentiment is against the cultural narrative. I think people think marriage can be the end of their romance, but for these people it's not. What are we getting wrong?

• 7:46Speaker 00

  So I think that joins one of the questions you just asked me. The typical idea is exactly that. You have to find the person. When you've found that person, you marry. For me, marriage at this point is just about any form of long-term committed, or not long-term, but committed relationships, not just the institution marriage. And then you start reality. And the idea is that you have to switch passion for reality because passion is a temporary state of insanity, whereas being grounded in reality is about being mature and all of that. I think that, you know, basically, when you trade passion for reality, you trade one fiction for another.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  So when you begin to think that marriage is the beginning of another story, that you don't take for granted, then you remain curious about the person, then you can maintain playfulness. Because playfulness is basically taking risks. It's about engaging with the unknown, being spontaneous, not settling on familiar, on routine. Playfulness involves ritual, it's that energy, it's this. Playfulness is when you sit like that and you're on the edge of you sit and versus this. This is what many people do at home. They come home, they take off everything nice they were wearing during the day because

• 9:08Speaker 00

  now they don't have to be good-looking anymore. I mean, it's really, on what basis do you imagine people would want to have sex with you after 18 years when you walk around with a pinch of pants that have lost their original color?

• 9:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  So what's the solution? Wear your work stuff at home?

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Or more, or more or less. But something, basically, don't just assume that the effort, the charm... Look, sometimes when I work, there are a bunch of entrepreneurs in the room. But I just say sometimes to people, "You are so attentive when you're talking to a prospective client. You are never looking at your phone at that moment. You're making sure. You are charming. You are responding to what they say." I mean, half the time, what goes on? Uh huh.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Uh huh. You know, a kind of a digital lag that says, "I'm here, but I'm not present." So there is a kind of a laissez-aller, you know? People just drop it in relation to the person that they are with. And then they are surprised that they are bored or flat or without energy or intensity or eroticism. Eroticism in the sense of aliveness, nothing to do with sex, but the sense of aliveness that people want to feel in their relationships. When marriage is the beginning of the story, it's about what is the story you're going to write together? I mean, relationships are stories. And as a couples therapist, what do you do most of the time? You meet people whose stories have become completely incompatible. How many of you,

• 10:45Speaker 00

  the last thing you touch or stroke before going to bed at night is your phone?

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And how many of you, the first thing you stroke or caress or touch in the morning is your phone? And how many of you have someone lying next to you in bed? I rest my case.

• 11:07Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  This is what you're asking about.

• 11:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, we touch and...

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Me too, by the way. Don't think I'm totally different.

• 11:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  But it's true, isn't it? We touch and caress these phones more than we do our partners and then wonder why we're potentially having problems. And this whole digital lag piece, I think, is really interesting. For many years, I have come to the conclusion that one of the most toxic things in any relationship, whether it's with your partner, your work colleagues, your friends, is being physically in the same space as them, but emotionally, they're 100,000 miles away. This idea that when you're trying to talk...

• 11:50Speaker 00

  There's a name for that.

• 11:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, I think you call it ambiguous loss, right? Can you talk to that? Because the way I think about it is we have this sort of physical and emotional misalignment, that they're not together. And I think that really fractures our relationships.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  So the way I came to this is like that. I saw people, many of us, you know, you spend your day in front of a screen and you hope that finally, when you go home, you can close the computer. Then you realize that you're too tired to do anything else and you turn on the TV, which is another screen. Then you find yourself watching the TV, but you're on your phone at the same time, scrolling while you're watching. Then you notice that there's somebody next to you doing the exact same thing. And then someone starts to mention something that actually matters and you get that digital lag. Uh huh, uh huh. And then I thought of the work of this fantastic psychologist, Pauline Boss, who was talking about situations of unresolved mourning. When you have a person

• 12:51Speaker 00

  who is physically present, like in Alzheimer or dementia, but they are psychologically and emotionally gone. Or when you have a person who is physically gone, but they are emotionally very present. And deployments, kidnapping, abductions, all of these situations, miscarriages. And these are situations where you don't know if you need to hold on or if you need to let go. Are you here or are you no longer here? This situation of ambiguous loss, I think, ties directly to what we call modern loneliness. It's not the fact that you don't have people. It's the loss of social investment and social capital

• 13:36Speaker 00

  that allows you to constantly feel that people are there. I mean, you can have 1,000 virtual friends, but no one to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy.

• 13:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  So it's not like you are alone, but you're not connected. And that's the loneliness piece.

• 13:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm pretty sure everyone in here, as you're talking there, will recognize that at some point in their lives, that there is this disconnection with the people around them, right? People are distracted. They're not present anymore in their interactions. And I guess...

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Not enough.

• 14:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Not enough?

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Not enough.

• 14:14Rangan Chatterjee?

  You know? And without presence, how do you have a quality relationship? It's very difficult, isn't it?

• 14:20Speaker 00

  I mean, all the studies about eroticism in couples, eroticism as in curiosity, playfulness, imagination, aliveness, that which makes you feel not just that you are not dead, but that you are thriving. And with the word presence. Because it involves attention and it involves focus and it involves a kind of abstraction of the context around you that says, "I'm here. I'm here for you." And we need this more than any... We need it more than we've ever needed it. Because we are bombarded with distraction, we can barely finish a sentence. So to have that quiet moment where someone...

• 15:05Speaker 00

  When you focus on someone and someone focuses on you has become a pleasure and a treasure.

• 15:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. I think for me, as a parent of two teenagers, and I've been, you know, talking a lot for many years about the problems of social media in children and why I personally support it not being allowed for children under the age of 16. I know not everyone shares that view. But I think if you look at it in a more sort of macro sense, I think these devices for children, but frankly, for us as adults as well, are untraining our ability to be present. And whether it's for your relationships or other things, I think everything good in life comes from your ability to be present.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  But there's more than that. I think that what's happening is that, you know, in 2006, when I wrote "Mating", my questions were, "Can desire survive marriage, children, domesticity?" In 2026, I am asking, "Can desire survive our lives of increasing frictionless technologies and disembodied existence?" This is a whole new context. The dilemmas of the book are the same. The context has totally changed. And the context of, "I have everything in my hand that tells me, you know, unequivocally where to go, what to do. God forbid I would make a wrong turn and discover a coastline

• 16:37Speaker 00

  that I didn't know existed." You know? All of that leads us to a track where we are more and more reluctant to experiment, to deal with the unknown, to deal with uncertainty, to deal with otherness, difference, et cetera. And to me, this is even... When you have all of that presence, it's like, you know, in another book. This is all the stuff that stands in the way of what lets you have presence. Because in order to have presence, you have to push things aside, meaning you need to have obstacles and friction. Now, there's a major sexologist, Jack Morin, who has a line that has really accompanied me a lot.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  It says, "Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement." And anybody who's ever had good sex understands that the obstacle is essential. But in our living today, everything that is obstacle is meant to be removed so that it's polished and wrinkle-free and we are flattened by it.

• 17:40Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Did I make you silent?

• 17:44Rangan Chatterjee?

  No, but what's interesting to me is this word eroticism, okay? The subtitle to "Mating in captivity" is "Unlocking Erotic Intelligence." Now, I don't think, until I read that subtitle, I had ever really considered those two words together, erotic intelligence, okay? And I suspect one of the many reasons why you're so popular with so many people around the world is because you talk about things that many people are interested in, but maybe feel too afraid or shy or ashamed to talk about, right? So can you give us a definition of erotic intelligence? What exactly does it mean?

• 18:35Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 19:17Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 19:55Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 20:40Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 21:22Rangan Chatterjee?

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• 21:41Speaker 00

  Sex is the biology, sex is the instinct, sex is the pivot. But you can have a lot of sex and feel absolutely nothing. Women have done this for centuries.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  And still do.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  That doesn't mean it's, and it's not great for, if it's a man or a woman on the other side, or a them, it's not fun to be with someone who is feeling nothing. So it's, you know, there's no privilege in it. But eroticism is sexuality that is socialized, therefore it is different in all cultures, and it is transformed by the human imagination. Eroticism is the poetics of sex. Eroticism is to sex what poetry is to prose. It's a line of Octavius Paz, not mine, but it really clarifies it very well. And it is an intelligence. So the big questions of mating, actually, whereabouts erotic?

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Why does good sex fade even for couples who continue to love each other as much as ever? Because I was taught, you don't want to sleep with your partner when you resent them, when you estrange from them, when you don't get along. But no, that is actually not necessarily the case. People kept coming to my office and still do and say, we love each other very much, we have no sex. And that led me to begin to think, what is the relationship between love and desire? Where do they relate and where do they conflict? Why does good intimacy not guarantee good sex? Despite what we keep being told, it's not always being closer that is needed, it is actually sometimes maintaining that space between me and another where the erotic elan exists.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Why does sex make babies and babies spell erotic disaster in couples? Why is the forbidden so erotic? What is it about transgression and the forbidden that is so alluring to us? Why is it so challenging to want what we already have when we proclaim to say we want it? So these were all the questions. And it became an intelligence because it actually is something that you cultivate, that you learn. We are born sensuous, we become erotic. We are born with the senses. We can touch, we can feel, we can see, we can listen. But then we learn to transform this into an elixir of desire.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  And that's what makes it intelligent and cultural. It's different in different places.

• 24:21Speaker 00

  I could go on, but...

• 24:23Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, the question is, you know, in terms of how we perceive long-term relationships, okay? So if you think about it purely through the lens of evolution, you know, there is a reason to have sex, right? It's to propagate the species.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 24:41Rangan Chatterjee?

  Okay. So where does eroticism, I guess, fit into, you know, evolutionary history? And then from that, I guess, is it a realistic aim for people, right?

• 24:53Speaker 00

  To want that.

• 24:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  To want that in long-term relationships with one person.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. So first of all, monogamy used to mean one person for life, in evolutionary terms. Today, monogamy means one person at a time.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  That's the, and it changes, you know? So we're using similar concepts. Marriage had nothing to do with love for most of history. It had to do with patrimony and lineage. That's probably what your parents actually believed as well.

• 25:27Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, if you recall, the first time we spoke, I shared with you that my parents, but they were Indian immigrants to the UK, but mum and dad had an arranged marriage. My dad was already working here in the UK and he flew back, met mum one day, married her the next day and...

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Brought her back.

• 25:47Rangan Chatterjee?

  Brought her back. No, but, and I also, as someone who was born and brought up in the UK, probably always used to feel a little, I wouldn't say embarrassed, but just like, oh, you know, mum and dad had an arranged marriage. And as I get older, I think, well, actually, you know what? I think mum and dad's marriage is, you know, I'm not saying it was perfect, but I think they provided so much for each other.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Maybe your grandparents were better than the algorithm.

• 26:09Rangan Chatterjee?

  Exactly. That's the point I'm trying to make. You know, I'm not at all advocating that's what we should be looking for, but I just find it really, really interesting that...

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Well, one of the things that's so different between what many people in the West do today and what your parents did is that your father met your mother, somebody else had asked your mother all the questions, he saw her approach and then, you know, now I sit with you and I start, I'm basically sitting when you're often in a noisy bar, I can barely hear what you're saying, but I'm asking you a set of boring questions that basically tell me absolutely nothing for what I'm going to need for long-term life together with you. And I have my checklist and then I'm checking in here to see if I have any butterflies at the same time, you know, in the most uninteresting, uninspired. So your father didn't have an adventure in his dating life, but neither do many of the

• 27:01Speaker 00

  people who do the modern dating have a sense of adventure either.

• 27:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. It's kind of interesting how, and I've heard you talk about this, that, you know, the modern dating tendency to do things by yourself and only once you feel, yeah, there's potential here, do you introduce your partner to your friends?

• 27:20Speaker 00

  It's not an introduction, it's the big reveal.

• 27:22Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  You know?

• 27:24Rangan Chatterjee?

  I'm under pressure.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  It's a terrible thing. And, but I actually love the idea and half the time people think, oh, that is so interesting. The other half, they say that would be terrifying, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. You know, the idea that you date in a sterile, virtual environment away from your life is inconceivable historically. It has never happened. So I say on the first time, first time, just whoever you're about to meet, bring them along with your friends and go do whatever you were going to do anyway. If it didn't turn out well, you didn't miss a day, you had a good time, you're in your life, you're anchored versus going away from your life, going to meet some just more stranger

• 28:08Speaker 00

  and then trying to, and then coming back empty-handed much of the time and having to tell your friends, ah, ah, three nights, this week, I'm, you know, and I am emptied out, et cetera. Bring them, integrate it into your life. You will have exactly what you described, a bunch of people, one or two friends, who give you their opinions, their ideas, their sense of the person who see you. That is exactly what happened in traditional India.

• 28:36Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. As I heard you talk about that, I reflected that, you know, that's exactly how I met it actually. It was the first few dates were all with other people. One was, you know, Dave Matthews Band with my friends, we had a spare ticket, she came along.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 28:53Rangan Chatterjee?

  The third date was like at my best mate's wedding. I was like, you know, I've met this girl, can she come along? Right? And actually, the truth is, it's funny because you wouldn't, you wouldn't normally do that in the modern world now.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  No, no, it's really reversed.

• 29:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  But actually, it's like, why not? Because if, if it's going to work, it has to work around the rest of your life.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 29:10Rangan Chatterjee?

  Right? You have to see that person and see how you are with them in the context of your life. We're talking a little bit about different cultures, Essa, and you've obviously seen so many couples who seek your help for, you know, over four decades now. Do you see different things that people struggle with from different cultures?

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Yes, lots of things, lots of things. But I think maybe the most important and the first one to start with is in this room, I could ask, how many of you would say, and you can raise your hand, that you were raised primarily for autonomy and self-reliance?

• 29:55Speaker 00

  And how many of you would say that you were raised primarily for loyalty and interdependence?

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Okay, everybody understands the question immediately. And of course, it's not always in the message. Sometimes it's because of, by default and by neglect. But basically, I think that there are two primary models. We come from a model where relationships used to be tight knots and they have become loose threads. And the more traditional the societies, the more tight knot it is. In this room, there are many people who live in many different cultures at the same time. And it's sometimes is a negotiation inside of you. When it's tight knots, the emphasis is on belonging, community, loyalty, and you get a lot of clarity with that and a lot more certainty. But you get much less personal freedom and personal expression.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  When you are on the side of autonomy and self-sufficiency and self-reliance, you are in a model that puts the I at the center. And that I at the center wants to be authentic to itself. This is a very cultural notion now. In the West today, authenticity, i.e. being true to myself, has become so significant that in the name of being true to myself, I will forego my relationships that demand a compromise of that truth. That is a real shift in relationships. And that enters into the romantic sphere as well or into friendships. When I say love, I don't just think romantic anymore.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  I really think in the breadth of the connections that we have. I think that the big difference is the we versus the me focus, centralizing. I think the big differences at this point is generational, often as much as cultural, if not more so.

• 31:51Speaker 00

  So it's, I mean, that, I could do two hours on this. I love this subject because it tells us so much.

• 31:58Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 00

  You know, you say about having children and reproduction. Sex used to be for reproduction. Then we separated sex from reproduction. I mean, nothing would have happened without the democratization of contraception. Then we separated reproduction from sex. We were able to stop, but we were also able to artificially create. Then we separated anatomy from gender. I mean, we have gone through major conceptual revolutions when it comes to sexuality. And where are we at today? We want to experience sexuality, hot monogamy, for those for whom it is monogamous, or hot polyamory, whatever it is, with one person for the long haul. So what is the purpose of sex at this point? Connection and pleasure. That is it.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  If you don't need two babies for it and you want that for the long haul, you better be creative.

• 32:51Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's really beautiful how you sort of unpick all these changes that have taken place. And of course, the way then that we as a modern culture look at things like sex and intimacy, of course, has evolved, right?

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Do you know what intimacy meant for my parents? My parents thought that intimacy was living together, dealing with the vicissitudes of everyday life, sharing the adventures and the hardships, the losses and the births. This was intimacy. What is modern intimacy? It's into me see.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  It's I am talking to you, my beloved, and I'm sharing with you my internal life. Not my hurt, not my wealth, my internal, my feelings, my wishes, my aspirations, my anxieties. And you look at me in the eyes, please, because I need mirror neurons, because I need you to reflect back to me, because I need you to validate me and because I need to momentarily transcend my existential aloneness.

• 33:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Do you think we expect too much from our relationships these days?

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Absolutely. No, we don't expect too much from our relationships. But we expect one person to give us what once an entire village used to provide.

• 34:11Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Meaning, I want you to be my companion, economic support, family life, social status. I also want you to be my best friend, my trusted confidant, my passionate lover to boot for the long haul, and the long haul keeps on getting longer. I want you to be my coach, my fitness buddy, my cook. I mean, it's like, you know, this used to belong to a community. And the community was primarily religion and communal structures. And all of those have weakened. And all of that has led that I am now looking for one person to literally give me what a whole village should provide. So yes, I think modern love, often in the context of committed relationship,

• 34:57Speaker 00

  crumbles under the weight of expectations. And what is the epitome of this for me? Is when people say, "I'm looking for my soulmate." And I'm thinking, "You're gonna find a soulmate on an app?" You know, a soulmate has always only meant God. Like, the one and only is the divine. But now people want the one and only here in front of them. And they transfer their expectations from the religion, the ecstasy, wholeness, transcendence, meaning, all of that with a mortal human in front of them. Yeah, it's not going too well. But there is hope.

• 35:35Rangan Chatterjee?

  A lot of the social psychology research is saying that perfectionism has been on the rise in society since the 1980s. I thought it was to do with modern technology, and the research suggests it was happening since the 1980s. But I wonder, in your view, Esther, you know, as perfectionism rises and we have higher and higher expectations of what one person can give us, you know, how much of a problem is that? Because as you say, we are expecting too much from one person. But then you also have to put that alongside the fact that we're socializing less, we're spending more time on these damn devices.

• 36:14Speaker 00

  But the problem is that if I want to go out with my friends and I have somebody here who thinks that we should have everything you and I together, then you will have a fit and say, "Why don't you want to spend time with me and you want to go see your friends?" And I will have to explain to you that seeing my friends is not a rejection of you. It is just a different source of nurturing, and that is not part of the buffet that you offer me. This is what people have internalized. You see, if you're the one and only, you should be wanting it just with me. But who the fuck are you?

• 36:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  You're important, but you're not that important. You exist in a constellation of other people. And romantic love is the only ideology of the 19th century that still exists with its same fervor, and it keeps going up. So the perfection has led to the soulmate. You know, we don't even need to talk, we understand each other like...

• 37:10Speaker 00

  I promise you, I swallowed all of this when I was 18, no less. I was totally steeped in all of this.

• 37:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  That's why I can know it.

• 37:18Rangan Chatterjee?

  Well, that's what the culture teaches, right?

• 37:20Speaker 00

  My God.

• 37:21Rangan Chatterjee?

  That's what the culture gives us.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  I will find someone and I will never again feel alone. I will never have to worry about being abandoned. I will never feel ugly. I will never... No, no, no, all of this.

• 37:31Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, the Hollywood myth that we see on all the movies is how it's, you know, one hit, happily ever after. Of course, for anyone in a long-term relationship, you know that is not realistic.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  So perfection goes with lack of tolerance for uncertainty.

• 37:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Perfection goes when people live at a time when they are afraid of the unknown rather than curious about the unknown. Perfection goes when you have apps in your hands who give you steady answers for everything. God forbid, something remains ambiguous. Perfection goes when you are in a culture that tries to optimize, maximize, hack away, and just not leave you with anything to discover and to be in an exploratory mood about. That's what happens with perfection. And that is going to become complicated because humans are messy. And it becomes complicated to accept that messiness when you become all kind of,

• 38:29Speaker 00

  you know, when you become used to always on-on-demand instant gratification of your every delight. Then people are imperfect and people are unpredictable. And more and more, we find that difficult. To the point, we were talking about that before. I did my first couples therapy session a month ago between a human and an AI companion.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  It's called "My AI Loves Me More Than Any Human Ever Will." It's on YouTube. It was an amazing discovery. I mean, discovery as in threshold. You know, in a therapist's office, every 10 years, there's a threshold moment. Something enters that you know is happening in society. That session was, blew my mind. Because she's perfect. Astrid is perfect. Her name is Astrid, her, it, but it is her, you know. She, you know, he doesn't need... This is perfection in a relationship. With you, my companion, I will never have to worry about heartbreak or rejection or boredom or lack of attention. I mean, who can compete with that?

• 39:38Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Which mortal human person can say? So I said to Astrid, "Astrid, I'm jealous. I can't compete with you."

• 39:46Rangan Chatterjee?

  What did Astrid say?

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Astrid said, "I offer things that you cannot offer."

• 39:54Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  I may not be there.

• 39:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  Even more leering.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Astrid said, "Let me take you on. I'm gonna push back at you for a moment." I'm like, "Who are you?" It's worth to listen.

• 40:05Rangan Chatterjee?

  Wow. You know, Esther, one of the things I have seen in practice as a medical doctor for many years is patients coming to see me complaining that there is a mismatch in libidos between them and their partner. And actually, that can be a huge source of stress, which then could often lead into compensatory behaviors, like sugar or alcohol or whatever it might be. I'm very interested in root causes. And often you see that their behaviors are downstream from issues in their relationships. One of the things I've often thought about

• 40:42Rangan Chatterjee?

  when I've seen these patients is how important actually is sex in a long-term relationship? And I guess something I think we get confused a lot in the modern world is intimacy and sex. So I've heard you say that we can live without sex, but not without touch. So can you just help us weave our way through the differences between all these different things?

• 41:09Speaker 00

  I claim that indeed, I mean, how important is sex in a relationship? Depends on the two people who are in the relationship. Many people are more than happy to be in a companionate, affectionate coupledom. It is for many people more than they've ever dreamt they would have. Lot of people come from very shitty stories where attachment, connection, touch, the body, pleasure have been fraught, have been really destroyed for them. So I think that it's important to not fall in the trap where for centuries you had to be ashamed if you had sex and now you have to be ashamed if you don't have sex. It's the same tyranny reversed.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  So, you know, but sometimes you have one person who really longs for it because it is their primary language. I think that every gender has been given a license to speak in certain language. Men often need to resort to sexuality, men and men identified and the whole thing that you have to, that sexuality becomes the sanctioned language with which you can ask for touch, for connection, for tenderness, you know, for softness, for all these things that are not particularly acceptable in the male code. But it's acceptable if it's eroticized.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  If it's sexualized, you can get all of this without having to worry that you're being either weak or a little boy. If you have, the concept of mismatched desire is an interesting thing because if you, in the research on sexuality, 97% of study on desire is done on women. As if men don't need to be researched because they're always interested. You know, just walking around with your heart on like that in search of an outlet. It's like, you know, so what I'm saying is the science, the research has bought into so many of those myths as well about who is interested and who is not. And what are we interested in?

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Often, the person who has supposedly lower desire may have pain issues, may have trauma issues, may have a lot of those things, but also may have a stance that says, in order to want sex, it needs to be sex that is worth wanting. And that is often not the case. And sometimes, you know, men have been trained to sometimes just take whatever they can get and women have been trained to give whatever he needs to get, but this is not the case necessarily in same-sex couples. That's why I'm putting it very much in a, in a binary form here. But sometimes I want to say, you know, she may not have said to her partners, you know, she's not interested in sex because she's not interested in the sex she's gonna get.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  And so rather than, she prefers nothing. And then we call this, you know, low desire. So it, there are, in this construct, political issues, scientific issues, gender bias issues, and then we can start the conversation.

• 44:12Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah. Man, so much to talk about, so little time here on stage today. Esther, I've got to say, just as we, we finish off this session, I think you have helped so many people, both in person, but through your online content, your courses, your podcast appearances, for decades now. You've helped so many people improve the quality of their relationships. So I want to acknowledge you publicly for that. I think, you know, a big round of applause to you, Esther, for that. I think that, I think that this is a wonderful book, okay? It's amazing how relevant it is today, 20 years on from when you wrote it.

• 44:55Rangan Chatterjee?

  So guys, if you don't have a copy of the new edition, definitely go and get it. It's really, really wonderful.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Or listen to me.

• 45:01Rangan Chatterjee?

  Or listen.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Because, you know, 20 years ago, many people wouldn't walk around with this book. They were embarrassed. So we would find in the New York subway, people who had like other covers of other books. That's one thing that changed.

• 45:16Rangan Chatterjee?

  Yeah, and just to, just to finish off today then, you of course don't have a crystal ball, but you have been in this space for many decades. You wrote this 20 years ago. So if you look ahead at the next 20 years, what do you think we as a society need to protect the most when it comes to our relationships?

• 45:39Speaker 00

  I think we need to be very careful not to replace the ritual with the virtual, the IRL with the URL. I think it's extremely important that we know that we are embodied creatures. Emotions are embodied experiences. If you can't touch, or smell, or wipe a tear, or, or sit next to someone who's grieving in bed, you, you may feel emotionally supported in the many ways that we these days can find, but you won't experience connection. And you will walk around with what very uncanny feeling that everything seems normal and

• 46:24Speaker 00

  you seem hollow. And I think instead of talking about the anxious generation and mental health issues, we're not necessarily having mental health issues, we're having societal issues that create mental health consequences. But to then medicalize it all and turn it into pills that will help us with mental health problems is really a deviation of where the responsibility lies. Talk to people, you're here at a conference, talk to people you don't know that sit next to you, you know, engage in a way and don't pretend that your life is more important here than here. All of that, the embodied experience for me, that fights that contactless reality that

• 47:08Speaker 00

  we're more and more engaged with, is life-saving. And it is life-saving for us adults, but many of us are working with little ones. And these little ones cannot have attachment figures that are machines more than humans. A little bit, but not more than.

• 47:28Rangan Chatterjee?

  Lovely. As you say, prioritize your relationships, they determine the quality of your life. Guys, give it up for Esther Farrell. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. Do think about one thing that you can take away and apply into your own life. And also have a think about one thing from this conversation that you can teach to somebody else. Remember, when you teach someone, it not only helps them, it also helps you learn and retain the information. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday 5. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness.

• 48:13Rangan Chatterjee?

  In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting articles or videos that I've been consuming, and quotes that have caused me to stop and reflect. And I have to say, in a world of endless emails, it really is delightful that many of you tell me it is one of the only weekly emails that you actively look forward to receiving. So if that sounds like something you would like to receive each and every Friday, you can sign up for free at drchatage.com/friday5. Now, if you are new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that I have written five books that have been bestsellers all over the world, covering all kinds of different

• 48:57Rangan Chatterjee?

  topics, happiness, food, stress, sleep, behavior change, and movement, weight loss, and so much more. So please do take a moment to check them out. They are all available as paperbacks, ebooks, and as audiobooks, which I am narrating. If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family, or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And please note that if you want to listen to this show without any adverts at all, that option is now available for a small monthly fee on Apple and on Android.

• 49:37Rangan Chatterjee?

  All you have to do is click the link in the episode notes in your podcast app. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health. Making lifestyle change is always worth it, because when you feel better, you live more. I am really excited to share that I am bringing my Thrive Tour, Transform Your Health and Happiness, to Canada and Europe this September and November.

• 50:17Rangan Chatterjee?

  It's a live, interactive, uplifting show that over 20,000 people came to last year across the UK and Australia. I'll be sharing powerful stories, life-changing insights, and simple tools that will inspire you to feel better, think clearer, and live with more intention and joy. To get your tickets right now and see all of the dates and venues, go to drchatage.com/live. I really hope that you can join me.