285 Esther Perel on Sexual Desire and Successful Relationships in the Modern World

"Monogamy is the new frontier." - Esther Perel If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/285 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 285 with Esther Perel.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this episode of the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest. Her name is Esther Perel. And for all of you having questions or challenges, or any thoughts about relationships, or if you've ever had a challenge or concern about relationships in the past, in the present, or for your future, this is the episode for you. Now Esther Perel is a Belgian psychotherapist, notable for exploring the tension between the need for security and the need for freedom in human relationships. She's promoted the concept of erotic intelligence in a bestselling book, Mating in Captivity:

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, which was published in 2006 and has since been translated in 24 languages. She has given two TED Talks, which have received more than 8 million views. I heard her speak recently and it blew the audience away. This one is very powerful. Make sure to check out the full show notes and share this with your friends right now. LewisHowes.com/285. Share this on Facebook and Twitter right now while you're listening to it. Some of the core things you're going to take away from this is what the core reasons are that end relationships,

• 1:50Lewis Howes?

  what the ideal relationship in the modern world is, why people often treat their partner worse than anyone else, the impact our partners have on our relationship skills, this is a huge thing, the relationship between emotional risk and desire, and so much more. If you have ever been challenged in a relationship or have fears or concerns about relationships, I'm telling you, this is your episode and you're going to want to make sure to share this. Full video interview and show notes back at LewisHowes.com/285. Without further ado. Let me introduce you to the one, the only Esther Perel.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. I'm very excited about our guest today. Thank you so much for being here, Esther Perel.

• 2:45Esther Perel?

  It's a pleasure.

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  You've got an amazing book called Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. And so make sure everyone go and check out this book. We'll have it linked up at the end of the show notes as well. I became aware of you before Summit Series. I remember hearing about this book and who you were, but I never really dove into your work until Summit Series happened, which is a conference for essentially inspiring entrepreneurs and people looking to take over the world in their own industry.

• 3:12Esther Perel?

  I call it the mixture of Ted, Davos, and Burning Man.

• 3:15Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Yes, exactly. That type of people, that type of crowd. And you spoke, you were supposed to speak at like a little tiny restaurant on this cruise ship. And I remember going to this and like just the line outside, we couldn't even get in. So I remember experiencing that, being like, oh, I hope she, you know, talks again. And then you talked like four more times. And so I showed up early for like one of the few ones after that. And it took like an hour for you to start because there was like thousands of people out waiting to try to get in this one session. And so I said, okay, there's something here. This conversation about relationships, sex, desire, love, intimacy,

• 3:52Lewis Howes?

  erotic intelligence, what you call, and there's something here that we're struggling with in our society today. And especially with driven, passionate entrepreneurs who are always up to the next big thing, a next shiny object. And so I'm glad that you were able to come in here and be in the studio in LA and thank you for being here. And, and the first question I want to ask before we actually get into all of these juicy relationship questions is, who was the most influential person growing up for you in your childhood? And what was the thing that influenced you about them?

• 4:25Esther Perel?

  Oh, the most. I never have one for these kinds of questions.

• 4:30Lewis Howes?

  Well, what's one that maybe comes to mind? Someone who was really influential and a lesson they taught you?

• 4:34Esther Perel?

  Okay, I will start with the most close person. I would say my father.

• 4:41Esther Perel?

  Why? My father was illiterate.

• 4:44Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 4:45Esther Perel?

  My father and my mother, actually, both of them came to Belgium by chance after each of them being four and five years in concentration camps in Poland. They both were the sole survivors of their entire family. They came with absolutely nothing. They were illegal refugees for five years before they even became legalized. And my father always was a person who said, "It doesn't matter how brilliant they are or how rich they are. What matters the most is how decent they are." And when you are in a concentration camp, you get to see the limits of a person's humanity and the stretch and the outreach of a person's humanity and their decency. And for some reason, that always stayed with me, meaning, don't get impressed

• 5:31Esther Perel?

  by all the appearances and by how everything looks. Look at the person. And then he said, "And a friend is the person who will always do more for themselves as they will, for the other, sorry, as they will do for themselves. That's your friend." And check people out on that basis. And he had never read a book. He couldn't read and write pretty much. He read the newspaper. He spoke five languages, but poorly. And he was a grand human being, and I often, often think of him in relation to that, especially when I come into the entrepreneurial world, which is often a world of inflated selves.

• 6:06Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, yeah. Now, what was your, what would you say is your biggest fear growing up? Did you have a big fear or insecurity that was a challenge for you?

• 6:14Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 6:16Esther Perel?

  I grew up in the Flemish part of Belgium. And on one hand, I had nothing to fear on the external level. But I think that the history of my parents was such that I always lived with the feeling that everything can disappear from one minute to the next. I had no sense that what we have is here to stay. I have never thought in terms of permanence. I happened to be born in Belgium by the fluke of our fatality. I don't really belong to a place. And for a long time, I felt very uprooted by that.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 6:53Esther Perel?

  Now, I think it actually became also a resource for me in my life. But at the time, that sense that, you know, you cannot, you cannot count on anything to be there tomorrow just because it's there today.

• 7:04Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay.

• 7:05Esther Perel?

  That sense of fragility and impermanence and the dread. It wasn't fear, it was dread.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  Do you still have that dread today?

• 7:13Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, I do, I do. It's not a visible dread and, but yes, I have free-floating anxiety. That I can't always pinpoint on certain things. But I live with the sense that, you know, actually, when everything goes really well.

• 7:32Lewis Howes?

  That's what you're afraid the most?

• 7:33Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 7:34Lewis Howes?

  Because it can all be taken away the next day, right?

• 7:35Esther Perel?

  And I of course never think that if I go to the doctor, I'm gonna come out with a small boo-boo. I think that the day I have something, since I've always been really blessedly healthy, that the day I get something, it will be a big boo-boo. I mean, I have a bit of catastrophic thinking.

• 7:49Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 7:50Esther Perel?

  Even though I act completely counter-phobic. I act like I have no fears.

• 7:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Esther Perel?

  But inside, there is that little voice that just...

• 7:59Lewis Howes?

  So how do you, how does that work for you? How does that support you in your day-to-day work and your relationships by having that dread sense, that feeling? Does it work for you or not?

• 8:08Esther Perel?

  You know, it changed over time. I think with age, you used to, you, you take your strengths and your weaknesses and you tweak them, you know, back and forth. But um, I think that it has always made me, um, well, I'll tell you the first thing. Because I, uh, because of the history of my parents, because I in any way was kind of a miracle child. Uh, my brother too, because we were symbols of revival and because it proved to our parents that they still were human in a way, that they could still bring people into the world. I always had a clear sense that my life was not going to be small.

• 8:46Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 8:46Esther Perel?

  My life has to be big. Big doesn't mean successful and money. Big meant meaningful, rich, layered, you know.

• 8:54Lewis Howes?

  It's not necessarily well-known or famous, but feeling

• 8:58Esther Perel?

  Full.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  Full.

• 8:58Esther Perel?

  Full.

• 8:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, not dead.

• 9:00Esther Perel?

  Not dead. I mean, there's a reason I write about eroticism, right?

• 9:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 9:04Esther Perel?

  And that sense that I was not going to be mediocre. You know, I'm, I'm not content with just the average of something, that it has to be not the best. It has to be the right one for me at that moment, that maybe the beautiful spot or the, the right friend to be with or, or the right act to take in relation to somebody or to some cause. But that sense that my life has to be big.

• 9:29Lewis Howes?

  I like it.

• 9:30Esther Perel?

  You know, has been with me since I was.

• 9:32Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, okay. So, so tell me why you wrote this book and why you got into, I guess, this topic in general? What made you want to start this process?

• 9:40Esther Perel?

  You know, the funny thing is, it's a fluke, actually. I never wrote about sexuality until about ten, twelve years ago. I did write about relationships, plenty.

• 9:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:49Esther Perel?

  Um, for the past thirty years, I've been a couples therapist and a relationship expert. Um, I work with companies, I work, um, with families and couples on modern relationships. And that always involved looking at how does cultural change affect relationships? Migration, education, technology, individualism, consumer society? How do all these things, the shift from communism to democracy? How do big cultural changes affect relationships? Always been doing that. Sex was a kind of a side subject. And then I was basically a little bit looking for a new topic. And and I got inspired by the Clinton scandal, basically.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  When was that?

• 10:34Esther Perel?

  That was in the late nineties.

• 10:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:37Esther Perel?

  But it moved all the way into the beginning two thousand. I don't remember the exact year, but the Clinton Lewinsky scandal for me from a cultural point of view was very interesting. Why was the United States so tolerant about multiple divorces? And so intransigent about infidelity?

• 10:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 10:56Esther Perel?

  The rest of the world, and I just spoke to four thousand people in Mexico a couple of months ago. And it was so important to watch this difference. It was the complete contrast to the state.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 11:06Esther Perel?

  Has always opted the other way around. You preserve the family at all costs, thanks to women. And you make compromises and tolerance for infidelity.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 11:18Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 11:19Lewis Howes?

  All over the world?

• 11:19Esther Perel?

  All over the world.

• 11:20Lewis Howes?

  Especially in Europe, it's like every married man seems to have like a mistress.

• 11:23Esther Perel?

  No, let's be very clear. Americans don't cheat one iota less than the French.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  Say it again?

• 11:28Esther Perel?

  Americans do not cheat one iota less than the French. They just feel more guilty about it.

• 11:33Lewis Howes?

  Right, the French are just, it's just well known, it's just part of life, right?

• 11:37Esther Perel?

  It's not part of life, it is changing a great deal. And it's clear that most of the time throughout history, there has been a complete double standard when it comes to infidelity. It's a privilege for men. It's almost a sanctioned license with all kinds of theories, evolutionary and biological theories that justify their need to roam. And it's been way too dangerous for women. But that doesn't mean that, you know, you give the woman a car and then you'll see what she will really do.

• 12:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:07Esther Perel?

  You know, if you don't trap her into the house.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  Right. Right, exactly.

• 12:12Esther Perel?

  It's adultery has always existed. But what was interesting for me was how how people would scream at it here, make it a matter of national political agenda and not blink an eye at multiple divorces, which create the dissolution of the entire family system. Why is that so much preferable to the other? That was the original question. And then I began to think a little bit more about, okay, that leads me to think about Americans and sex. There's something really interesting about this country in relation to sexuality. That fascinates me. I've been working here for almost thirty years at the time. And why is it that in the US, sex is the risk factor? And in Europe, being irresponsible is the risk factor.

• 12:57Esther Perel?

  Sex is a natural part of human development.

• 13:00Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean by irresponsible?

• 13:03Esther Perel?

  Not being protective.

• 13:04Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 13:04Esther Perel?

  Not being respectful.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 13:06Esther Perel?

  Uh, not being consensual.

• 13:09Lewis Howes?

  But actually, the act of doing it with someone else is...

• 13:12Esther Perel?

  It's part of normal life.

• 13:13Lewis Howes?

  It's part of life, yeah.

• 13:13Esther Perel?

  We have comprehensive sex education from age four. Why is it that here you have no public health policy on adolescent sexuality? Why is it that despite that, no campaigns and abstinence campaigns? Americans have earlier onset of sexual activity than the most liberal Dutch? More STDs and more teen pregnancies than thirty-five developing countries combined?

• 13:38Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? Because we're not educated early on?

• 13:40Esther Perel?

  Yes, because there is an enormous, uh, taboo on sex education with the kind of sense that if you educate people, they're going to be promiscuous. Rather than the understanding that it is actually the repression and the puritanism that will unleash a kind of sexuality that is often about smut and titillation. So, I had, I basically wrote a little article in a trade magazine, not even in the general, uh... Then it got taken into the broad, uh, press and, uh, and it led to this book, which is translated in twenty-six languages. And, uh, and hence I became, uh... Now, suddenly, I didn't just look at relationships and culture,

• 14:25Esther Perel?

  but I look at the triangle, sexuality, relationships and culture, using sexuality to analyze societal changes, cultural changes, families, relationships, and the individual self.

• 14:37Lewis Howes?

  What are the core, uh, reasons or the core things you see over and over that, uh, either end or make a relationship challenging to be in the longer end? What are the, what are the ones that, what are the challenges that come up over and over that you see?

• 14:52Esther Perel?

  So there's always three questions, right? What's a thriving relationship?

• 14:55Lewis Howes?

  A thriving one?

• 14:56Esther Perel?

  Yeah. What can go wrong?

• 14:57Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 14:58Esther Perel?

  And how do you fix it?

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 15:00Esther Perel?

  So you started with the middle question. What goes wrong?

• 15:05Esther Perel?

  I think there's a number of things in a relationship that that that become the the kind of cornerstones of the demise, okay? And I'm not gonna list them in order, but they all are part of each other.

• 15:19Esther Perel?

  Indifference and contempt and neglect and violence are probably the four most important.

• 15:27Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 15:28Esther Perel?

  I'm not talking about big violence. Microaggressions are plenty. Indifference. When you start to feel like the other person fundamentally is not really caring about you anymore, or you don't care about them. What they feel, what they think, who they are, what they're about.

• 15:42Lewis Howes?

  You just don't care. You've lost interest.

• 15:44Esther Perel?

  But it's more than losing of interest. It's also when you are indifferent, you degrade the other person. They're less important to you. They don't matter. And ultimately, what we feel in relationships is that we matter. That is the essential reason for connecting to people, is that we are creatures of meaning. I matter to you. I'm someone. You care about me. You want my you want my well-being. You're proud of me. You you want good for me. You're benevolent. All of that. When you are indifferent, that whole thing goes. And then you start to this that coldness that creeps in, that sense of estrangement, that complete disconnect. That. The second one is neglect. Neglect, when people just basically take each other for granted.

• 16:27Esther Perel?

  You know, they take more care of their car than of their partner.

• 16:30Lewis Howes?

  Or their dog.

• 16:31Esther Perel?

  Or their dog, anybody, anything, their yard, anything, anything gets attendance.

• 16:35Lewis Howes?

  Their business.

• 16:36Esther Perel?

  Their business for sure. Their business for sure, you know, everything gets priority, everything gets reviewed, evaluated, attended to, 360s, you name it, you know, new input. You, my god, it's like people have this idea that they put it all in when they were dating, and then once they seal the knot, it's like as if they tied the knot, it's like now they don't have to do squat anymore. And they go into this kind of complete sense of complacency and laziness. It's an amazing thing. They think this thing is just gonna live on its own.

• 17:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:08Esther Perel?

  Like a cactus.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:10Esther Perel?

  Violence. Violence, the abuse, the level of of disrespect. I mean, most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship degrades. Because you can't get away with it. Because you can't get away with it. Because if you talk like this at work, you're gone. Because if you talk like this with the police, you're gone. Because if you talk like this on the street, you're being punched. But with your partner, you have that sense that they're gonna be there anyway. They're just gonna take it because it's family. And family is this kind of, this thing that doesn't dissolve so easily. So you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone and a dismissal. That is phenomenal.

• 17:51Esther Perel?

  So that kind of violence, I'm not talking physical violence and all the other big, big things.

• 17:56Lewis Howes?

  You're talking about aggression or resentment or?

• 17:58Esther Perel?

  All of that, all of that, you know.

• 18:00Lewis Howes?

  Passive aggressiveness, all those things, yeah.

• 18:02Esther Perel?

  All of that. And then, and then contempt, I think, is the top one. Contempt is the killer of them all. Because in, in the contempt, there is a real, there's the degradation of the relationship. It's that, that complete, this, you're nothing, you're nothing. I can kill you with that one gaze, that one eyebrow that goes up, that, you know, the, who do you think you are? What are, and that's it, you're done, you're done.

• 18:29Lewis Howes?

  So how do we even get to this place of these, these places?

• 18:31Esther Perel?

  After having been so in love and so romantic, right?

• 18:34Lewis Howes?

  Is desire reflect that? Or if we're not desiring the person anymore, then we start to feel one of those categories? Or does that not play into?

• 18:42Esther Perel?

  Look, the truth is this, there's only two relationships that resemble each other. The one you have with your parents or the people who raise you. And the one you have with the people you fall in love with. People can sit in my office all the time and say, I have this with no one else. I don't have this with anybody at work. Nobody among my friends ever thinks like that. You're the only one who speaks like this or thinks this about me or with whom I do this. No, you're the only one and now we go back in history. And I'm sorry to be the psychologist, but that's really. It is the place where we often learned about closeness, trust, loyalty, commitment, sharing.

• 19:25Esther Perel?

  Taking, receiving, asking, all these essential verbs of relationships. We learned that at home.

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  We also learned jealousy and all these other things.

• 19:33Esther Perel?

  Possessiveness, vengeance, you name them. The beauty and the not beauty.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we saw it all as children, right? We saw the fights, we saw the love, we saw the, you know.

• 19:41Esther Perel?

  We saw the coolness.

• 19:42Lewis Howes?

  The lack of intimacy, the intimacy, yes.

• 19:44Esther Perel?

  And we bring that with us and we often promise ourselves, I'll never be this one. I'll never be this way, I'll never talk like this. I'll, you know, and we find ourselves often much closer to the apple.

• 19:57Lewis Howes?

  And then resenting ourselves.

• 19:59Esther Perel?

  Apple to the tree.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  We resent ourselves, we're like, how did we do that? Well, why did we get to this place?

• 20:02Esther Perel?

  And then we feel ashamed about it. And since we don't like to feel ashamed about it, we hide it. And one of the way we hide it is we blame the partner. That's just one of the ways, it's a lot. We are very resourcefully not owning our shit.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly, exactly. Wow, okay. Um, and where does sex play in all this and desire?

• 20:23Esther Perel?

  So, I mean, the, one of the fascinating things for me in, in looking at sexuality is that it's probably one of the dimensions of relationship that has changed the most in a very, very short amount of time. For most of history and in still the majority of the world. Sex is for procreation. Sex is a marital duty on the part of the woman. Nobody cares particularly if she likes it and how she feels and if she wants it. And, um, and men have the privilege to go and find sex elsewhere. In a very short amount of time, we're talking sixty years. We have contraception, which is the liberation of women for the first time

• 21:03Esther Perel?

  to free sex from reproduction, from mortality, from death in pregnancy and in childbirth, sorry. All of that. And for the first time sexuality moves from just biology and a condition to a part of our identity and a lifestyle.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  In sixty years.

• 21:18Esther Perel?

  In sixty years. The women's movement, which goes after the abuses of power. The gay movement, which introduces the concept of identity to sexuality. The fact that sex is for connection and pleasure. The fact that for the first time we have sex before marriage. And many times, a lot. We used to marry and have sex for the first time. Now we marry and we stop having sex with others. Okay, monogamy used to be one person for life. Now, monogamy is one person at a time. And people go around telling you, I'm monogamous in all my relationships. And it makes perfect sense to them. Okay?

• 21:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 21:55Esther Perel?

  All of that, in a very short amount of time. The fact that I choose you to marry or to live together, doesn't matter, commitment, because I'm attracted to you, because you give me butterflies in my stomach. And the fact that I think that if I don't have these butterflies anymore, maybe I don't love you anymore. And the fact that sexuality in long-term relationships is rooted in wanting only, desire. I feel like it. I want to. Not I have to. Not we want many kids. After two kids, the only reason to continue doing it with you is because we feel like it.

• 22:31Lewis Howes?

  Right, it's fun, it's pleasurable, yeah.

• 22:32Esther Perel?

  And hopefully, it's pleasurable, we connect, it feels good, it rounds up the

• 22:36Lewis Howes?

  deepens our relationships, yeah.

• 22:37Esther Perel?

  The whole thing. That's it. And hopefully, it's at the same time and for each other. Because plenty of desire continues, but it's not always at home.

• 22:45Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 22:47Esther Perel?

  So this is an amazing revolution. Sex that is rooted-

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  It's confusing all of us.

• 22:52Esther Perel?

  And how do we sustain it? So that's why I became fascinated in the nature of erotic desire and how do we sustain desire? Because it is the first time ever that we have a grand experiment of the humankind, where we want sex with one person in the long haul, that is fun and connected and intimate and playful, and we live twice as long. Go figure!

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly. For sixty years, you're gonna be with them, or whatever it is, yeah.

• 23:19Esther Perel?

  It's an amazing ideal.

• 23:20Lewis Howes?

  So how do we navigate this? If we're gonna choose one partner and be with them until, you know, we're both gone, how do we navigate the challenge of keeping the desire continuously?

• 23:34Esther Perel?

  I think the first

• 23:34Lewis Howes?

  Both men and women, because the woman probably sees other men who are attracted to her and you know vice versa. So it's like, how do both parties do this?

• 23:41Esther Perel?

  Look, we know that women get bored with monogamy much sooner than men.

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Is this a fact or is this a?

• 23:48Esther Perel?

  That's research.

• 23:49Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 23:49Esther Perel?

  That's not just fact, that's, that is, men's desire in long-term relationship goes down gradually. He actually is much more able to remain interested. And maybe just because he's interested in the experience itself and he has a partner there. Women's desire post-marriage

• 24:04Lewis Howes?

  Really? Wow.

• 24:06Esther Perel?

  And it's always been translated as, well, that's because women care less about sex. Rather than, it's because women care less about the sex that they can have in their committed relationships, which is often not interesting enough for them.

• 24:20Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 24:21Esther Perel?

  And it often has to do with the fact that the story, the character, the plot is not, is not seductive. The romance, which is an essential ingredient of turn-on for the woman, often disappears in the long-term relationship. It's like, people look at each other at the end of the day and you wanna fool around? You wanna do it? You're up for it tonight? Now, this is really not, this is not very much of a turn-on for most women. And the idea that foreplay often starts at the end of the previous orgasm, you know, and not five minutes before the real thing.

• 24:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:52Esther Perel?

  Which for her is not the real thing. The whole real thing is everything else around it.

• 24:56Lewis Howes?

  So it's essentially the game.

• 24:58Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes.

• 24:59Lewis Howes?

  It's creating a game.

• 25:00Esther Perel?

  It's seduction. It's a plot. It's a coming close. It's a tease.

• 25:03Lewis Howes?

  Mystery.

• 25:04Esther Perel?

  It's what animals call pacing. It's that I come to you, but I don't overwhelm you. I come just a little bit so that you can come a little bit toward me and then I don't immediately answer. I actually go back a little bit too. Have you ever seen animals? They do this kind of pacing. And it is an essential playful ingredient of seduction and, and excitement. So women's desire plummets.

• 25:28Esther Perel?

  But we interpret it as women are less interested in sex, rather than women are interested in probably just about the same kind of things that many men are. But women have always known what to choose above what turns them on, which was what gives them stability and security in their life.

• 25:43Lewis Howes?

  Safety, security, family, someone to protect, be there, right?

• 25:46Esther Perel?

  So what people do, look, this is, we want one partner today to give us everything that involves stability and security and everything that involves playfulness and mystery. Okay, that's the grand ideal, okay? I want to be cozy with you and I want to have an edge and I want you to surprise me and I want you to be familiar and I want you to give me continuity and I want you to give me novelty. That's it, as if it's a, right? And no Victoria's Secret is gonna solve that, right? So then there becomes, what is desire? Desire is to own the wanting. If you ask people a question that goes like this, "I turn myself off when?" "I turn myself off by?"

• 26:28Esther Perel?

  Not "You turn me off when?" and "What turns me off is?" You're gonna hear "I turn myself off when I do emails, when I spend too much time on the phone, when I overeat, when I don't exercise, when I have bad days at work, when I don't feel confident, when I numb myself, when I feel dead, when I don't feel thriving, when I'm not alive." You will really hear that it has very little to do with sex. And when you ask people "I turn myself on when or by?" "I awaken my desires." Not "You turn me on when?" and "What turns me on is?", which is, i.e. you're responsible for my wanting.

• 27:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:07Esther Perel?

  What people will talk to you about is when I'm in nature, when I'm connected with my friends, when I get to do my sports, when I play music, when I listen to music. It's stuff that gives me pleasure, that is alive, that is vibrant, that is vital, that is erotic in the full sense of the word as life force.

• 27:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:26Esther Perel?

  And from that place, people remain interested in having sex with somebody else for the long haul. Not because they've scratched their arms for two seconds.

• 27:35Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 27:36Esther Perel?

  It's, I feel good about myself. The biggest turn on is confidence.

• 27:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:42Esther Perel?

  Confidence. You ask people, when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner? Every description has to do with when they're in their element, when they're on stage, when they're with, when, when, when they're doing their sport, when they, when they are radiant, when they are in their studio, on the piano, on the horse, you name it. It's when they are in their element, i.e. they don't need me to take care of them.

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  They're not depressed and down and lonely and sad.

• 28:09Esther Perel?

  They're not needy. They don't need me because desire is about wanting you. Love is also about needing you. Caretaking is a very powerful experience in love and it is a very powerful anti-Afrodisiac.

• 28:23Lewis Howes?

  So how do you experience love and desire at the same time?

• 28:27Esther Perel?

  You calibrate it.

• 28:28Lewis Howes?

  So sometimes you're...

• 28:30Esther Perel?

  It's the same as when you walk. You have to move from one foot to the other. A balance is not about staying on one side. A balance is the ability to see, right now, we don't need caretaking. We can be mischievous, we can be naughty, we can be playful, we can break our own rules, we can stay home and not go to work at eight o'clock.

• 28:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 28:49Esther Perel?

  And now we are in a playful zone. Now we are feeling that we are bringing our own little transgressions home. We are alive. We're not just being dutiful, responsible, good citizens.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:01Esther Perel?

  It's that. It's very small.

• 29:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Esther Perel?

  You know, I always think, when I go and I see people at lunch and you see them talking and they're well dressed and they're awake and all, I think, who is here with their partner?

• 29:15Esther Perel?

  Because you can see them. They're engaged. They're giving the best of themselves. That's erotic. No, the majority are not there with their partner. They're there with their friends, with their colleagues. Their partner is gonna get the leftover when they come home at night. Sorry, you know what? Forget the night date. Meet at lunch, when you actually have energy. You know, when you, and, and in the middle of the day like that, when you're awake, when you have something to offer. It's a very small thing, but they don't do it. They don't do it. And you say, why not? Why not? Why don't you stay an hour extra at home in the morning and not just because when you have a headache? And just say, this matters to me. All in all, you know, committed sex is premeditated sex. It's not just gonna happen.

• 29:57Esther Perel?

  Because whatever is gonna just happen already has. So you're gonna make it happen. Because you say, we matter, we're important, let's do this, let's spend. Doesn't mean if you're gonna make love or have sex, it just means we're gonna take this hour and there's nothing else that matters in this moment, but just you and I to be together, to check in. And then we'll see what unfolds. That's the erotic space in which sex may happen, probably will, doesn't have to. But it is the place from which it is much more likely to emerge. But people don't do that. They do the responsibility, that's the love, right? The citizen, the commitment, the caretaking, the burdens, the safe. And then they say, I'm bored. I would be too.

• 30:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, exactly. There's no mystery. There's no risk-taking, right? Exactly, yeah.

• 30:43Esther Perel?

  There's no risk-taking. That's the word. If you want desire, it's risk. And the risk is an emotional risk. It's not about sexy risks. It's really a risk on the emotional front is that I bring something else to you today.

• 30:57Lewis Howes?

  It's okay.

• 30:58Esther Perel?

  Differently from, um, differently from, from the way I typically present myself.

• 31:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 31:04Esther Perel?

  You know, how can I do this some, what can I do today that will be different from the ways that I've done it until now? How can I do something that I think would actually improve our relationship? Me, right? Not something that I want or that you want, but that I think would be actually good for us, that third entity, the us. Right? And you check every time, you know, how often do you just go on the tried and trodden, as in, you know, it works. Sex that just works for most people is really not interesting enough.

• 31:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:39Esther Perel?

  So, because what does it mean it works generally?

• 31:41Lewis Howes?

  Right. What, what about the people listening who are saying, man, that sounds like a lot of work. That every day you have to change, do something different and unique and be...

• 31:48Esther Perel?

  Not every day, not every day, not every day. But what you can do every day is just a quick check with yourself. You know, is there something that I should notice? Is there something that I can be thankful for? Is there a little note that I could write? Is there, you know, just a way that I can show up a ti- it's small, it's really small. Um, here's the thing. There is work and then there is the creative work.

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 32:17Esther Perel?

  You know, I'm talking about a level that is creative and that elevates you and that actually gives you, you feel, you feel taller. You just feel like you're engaged, you feel awake, rather than this. This is the other seat of position. It's comfortable, it's great, but nothing happens here.

• 32:36Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 32:37Esther Perel?

  This, this is alert. Here is the essential word is curiosity. When you're curious, you lean forward and you watch, you, you're open to the mysteries of life. This is, please don't bother me with anything because I don't want any stimulation. I've had my share, I've been, you know, and this is the position that most people have at home.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 33:00Esther Perel?

  So when people say it's too much work, um, I basically say, look, you, you, if I was to say this in your business, would you say this is too much work?

• 33:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:14Esther Perel?

  Or you would say, that's very good advice. This is high rate consulting fees.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 33:19Esther Perel?

  It's like, excuse me, but you don't think for a minute that your business would thrive if you let it languish like that.

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:28Esther Perel?

  Never. You have a reward system, you have incentives.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  Bonuses, yeah.

• 33:32Esther Perel?

  You have bonuses, but there is no incentivized system in the, in the private domain. So people just think, why bother?

• 33:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 33:40Esther Perel?

  And that's the difference is that the ones who have good relationships are the ones who created their own internal incentivized, incentivized system.

• 33:48Lewis Howes?

  What are some of those incentive systems that you've seen over time that really work or effective for long-term relationships?

• 33:54Esther Perel?

  I would say the first thing is almost one of the first things that our parents teach you, please and thank you.

• 34:00Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 34:00Esther Perel?

  Do you know how many people stop thanking their partners? Thank you, thank you for doing this for me, thank you for picking up the shirts, thank you for, you know.

• 34:10Lewis Howes?

  When you feel appreciated.

• 34:11Esther Perel?

  Yes, appreciation, appreciation is huge.

• 34:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:15Esther Perel?

  Uh, gratitude, acknowledgement of the presence of the other in your life. Not, did you do this? Did you call? Did you pick up? Do this, you know, half the time.

• 34:27Lewis Howes?

  Expectation.

• 34:28Esther Perel?

  Expectations. Of course, you know, expectations is often a resentment in the make. Uh, it's like, with the expectation comes the fear of it's not gonna. Tank person, first of all, and because it also makes it feel like this is not a given. Nobody owes you squat, you're not owed anything, you're not that important, you're actually quite replaceable.

• 34:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:51Esther Perel?

  And with the divorce rate that we have.

• 34:54Lewis Howes?

  What's the rate at right now?

• 34:55Esther Perel?

  About fifty on first and sixty-five on second.

• 34:58Lewis Howes?

  Sixty-five on second, wow.

• 35:00Esther Perel?

  It's not good.

• 35:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:01Esther Perel?

  It's really, you know, it costs a lot of money, it's not good for the health. I mean, it's just like, you know, it's not good for the jobs, it's it's just, it's like, okay, now you could say maybe people should marry, but it doesn't matter if it's marriage legally or the idea is that then we can do better, we can do better in general. I really think that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships. I mean, nobody's gonna write, you know,

• 35:30Esther Perel?

  you worked sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety hours a week and, you know, no, they're gonna say he was there for people when they needed to. He was there at every game, he was there at a party, he's the guy who, when you were in his presence, he had charisma, not because he could stand in front of a huge crowd, but he had charisma because when I was in his presence, he made me feel special. It's a different charisma, so appreciation, gratitude, thank you. Little things to go out of your way, rather than just to do the minimum. A lot of people start to do the bare minimum, just so that they can't be scolded.

• 36:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:07Esther Perel?

  Go an extra thing. On occasion, just do something for the other person, just because it matters to them, even if you couldn't care less.

• 36:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:15Esther Perel?

  Rather than, I don't, it's not important to me, I don't, I don't need this, or I don't care about this. Give each other a lot of individual space, not everything needs to be shared. People have different passions, different interests, different friends, and they need those separate spaces to exist.

• 36:35Esther Perel?

  Admiration, I think is huge. Because admiration is also that you can really see the otherness of the other person. Don't try to make your partner into one person for everything. There is no such a person. Find multiple sources of connection, of intimacy, of friendship, so that you can have a group of people support you. Don't have one person who has to be there for you for everything, especially when you're in the dumpster.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  We used to have a village of people to do that. Now we just expect one person to be the village, right?

• 37:07Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, yes. One person for the whole village. That is a unique. And then we're upset when they don't fulfill the mandate. And that's the more important. Like, I can't talk to you, you're not supportive of me, you're not excited for me. Excuse me, find other people.

• 37:23Lewis Howes?

  Right. I can't be everything for you.

• 37:25Esther Perel?

  No.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Can we talk about, you know, what marriage was about early? When it started? Do you know the history of marriage and how it's evolved and where it's at now? And kind of like how we look at it in society?

• 37:38Esther Perel?

  So I won't go back millions of years because it's a long history. And we were actually much more polygamous and much more polyamorous and all of that. But the model from which we come is basically this. Marriage used to be an economic enterprise. It was a mercantile arrangement. Men depended on women's fidelity for patrimony and lineage so that I can know who are my children and who gets the cars when I die.

• 38:06Lewis Howes?

  When was this? What timeframe?

• 38:07Esther Perel?

  This is pretty much still, it still is in most parts of the world, by the way. And I would say it's probably, um, we're gonna go about fifty, sixty years back.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 38:19Esther Perel?

  That's it.

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay, wow.

• 38:20Esther Perel?

  That's it. People didn't choose who they married. You know. People didn't choose who they married. Arranged marriage is the norm still in many parts of the world. Certainly, you didn't marry because you fell in love. You married somebody who was a good person with whom to have a family with. And if love grew, that was wonderful, but it was not the beginning element of a relationship. Desire certainly was not what sex was about in marriage. So this is the traditional model. That doesn't mean that there was no good sex and intimate sex. That doesn't mean there was no passion. And that doesn't mean there was no love. But that was not what the institution of marriage was meant for. Marriage that becomes a romantic arrangement.

• 39:04Esther Perel?

  I will begin that at the end of the 19th century. It's about 150 years old.

• 39:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 39:10Esther Perel?

  But it needs contraception, it needs a lot of, it needs feminism, and it's a lot of things to become what we want to do, which is a relationship that is rooted in intimacy.

• 39:20Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:20Esther Perel?

  Intimacy, which until not too long ago was basically, we live together, we share the vicissitudes of everyday life, we raise the kids, we work the land. Intimacy now is into me see.

• 39:32Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:32Esther Perel?

  I share with you my inner life. That required individualism. Before individualism, we didn't have the concept self. That's beginning of the 20th century, late 19th, beginning 20th. So it's a, a lot of things go together, you know? The rise of individualism, to move away from religion as the center, the person becomes the center. Hence, my individual happiness becomes central. Now I move away from the community. I, I choose you. And as I choose you, now you become responsible to alleviate my existential aloneness. You know, that's why you become my village.

• 40:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:09Esther Perel?

  Because I've left the village. Um, and, uh, and you're gonna make me feel that I matter because I'm not dicta, I'm not judged by my actions. I'm judged by my personality. It's very different.

• 40:21Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 40:21Esther Perel?

  I'm not, you understand? It's a, a whole new thing. It's like who I am, not what I do. As in, as in, do I show up in church? Am I an upstanding citizen? You know, do, am I doing right by my parents? It's personality, it's a whole new thing.

• 40:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:36Esther Perel?

  So trust, affection, intimacy, desire becomes the four pillars, you know, within modern relationships. That is a whole new model. Affairs used to be actually adultery for most of history was the space where we, people went to look for true love.

• 40:55Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 40:55Esther Perel?

  Because there was, that was, marriage was.

• 40:57Lewis Howes?

  Arranged.

• 40:58Esther Perel?

  Arranged and economic. Now that we brought love into marriage.

• 41:04Esther Perel?

  Adultery destroys it.

• 41:07Esther Perel?

  So what did we do? We brought love into marriage. We brought sex to love. We connected happiness to relational, to emotional and sexual satisfaction. And, um, and we also want a passionate marriage, which for most of history has been a contradiction in terms. Passion has always existed, but somewhere else.

• 41:29Lewis Howes?

  Right, in the affair or in whatever.

• 41:31Esther Perel?

  Yes, wherever.

• 41:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:33Esther Perel?

  Wherever.

• 41:35Lewis Howes?

  How are we supposed to navigate all this? I mean.

• 41:37Esther Perel?

  Actually, I think it's exciting.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 41:39Esther Perel?

  I really do, because nobody in effect wants to go backwards.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  No, absolutely not.

• 41:44Esther Perel?

  Nobody wants to go back where you are stuck. This is it. You have one chance for life. And the only thing you have going is that you die younger.

• 41:53Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 41:55Esther Perel?

  Okay, you actually have the opportunity to do it again, to try a different story, to be a different person, to be a better partner. And to, and to be a better parent for that matter.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:07Esther Perel?

  And I think that that is something that we've never had, is the opportunity to rewrite that story. We always had one job for life and one relationship for life. I think one of the, you know, of course, we therefore didn't have to decide five times, what do I want to do?

• 42:24Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 42:25Esther Perel?

  We have give, been given a unique opportunity. I can have more than one career or more than one job. More than one identity in this world. And I can have a whole new family and I can have a whole new love that I can start at sixty. Forty, fifty, sixty. And I have another twenty years with somebody. And actually do it better this time. I think that is actually one of the greatest gifts we've been given.

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. How long have you been married?

• 42:55Esther Perel?

  Thirty something.

• 42:56Lewis Howes?

  Thirty something years, okay.

• 42:59Lewis Howes?

  And how is your work? Two kids. And how is your work and the constant conversation you're in about this work? Supported or not supported your relationship with your husband?

• 43:12Esther Perel?

  You know, there was a comment that I once made a few years back and it's become a it's become a line in one of my TED Talks, so, you know, where I said, "Most of the people today are gonna have two or three relationships in their adult."

• 43:27Lewis Howes?

  You mean marriages or just relationships?

• 43:29Esther Perel?

  Committed relationships, marriages, committed, I could say marriages, but let's say in Europe, so many of us don't marry, so I would say committed relationships. Most of us are gonna have two or three committed relationships in our lifetime, due to divorce, due to death, various things. Some of us are gonna do it with the same person.

• 43:48Esther Perel?

  I have had probably three marriages to the same man.

• 43:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 43:52Esther Perel?

  Not because we divorced or anything, but because over thirty years, we have had to redefine ourselves.

• 43:58Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 43:59Esther Perel?

  To restructure everything that you do in companies, you know, to change our brand.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  What works for five years is not gonna work for the next five years.

• 44:07Esther Perel?

  That's right. What works when we are just two is not the same as what works when we are four.

• 44:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:11Esther Perel?

  What works when we're in our twenties isn't the same as when we are in our fifties. What works when we have this type of career is not the same as now, you know. And I think that the very principles that you apply to companies today, flexibility, fluidity, the ability to reinvent itself, to redefine itself, to manage tradition and innovation, is really what has to enter into all modern love. That's what coupledom is about. Those who can do it, do it with each other, and the other ones do it by finding a new person.

• 44:45Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. So what's the ideal relationship moving forward in our time?

• 44:50Esther Perel?

  It's this. It's you sit every once in a while and you say, "How we doing? What are the strengths between us?" What, you know, it's, I actually think people should have, do different commitment ceremonies in the course of a marriage.

• 45:04Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 45:05Esther Perel?

  Yes. I think that every few years, or every year, they should have a little summit, or they should have a little, whatever they wanna call it, they could have a ceremony. A kind of, where are we at, checking in? How we doing? What has been good in our life? What could we do better? What could we do differently? Are we doing right by our children? Are we giving, you know, are we meeting some of our important needs at this point? What has changed for us? We've just been sick. We've just lost a parent. We've just lost a child. What's changing in our life? And to actually address this head on. What the problem is in modern, in couples is that most of the big topics are addressed when there is a crisis. Rather than when actually things are good.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  When you're calm.

• 45:46Esther Perel?

  When you're calm. Because you have less incentive to change when things are good. But you have less creativity to change when things are bad. Same for companies, same for couples.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 45:59Esther Perel?

  So I think retreats for couples are unique, actually. Because couples are often isolated units. They talk to nobody. Sometimes women will talk to women, men will talk to no one. And when a group of couple come together in a group, it is powerful. It is so normalizing to know what's happening at the neighbors that you never know and that you can always imagine is different from yours. It's so powerful to hear your partner, like you can never hear them because somebody else just said the same thing. But just with a different word or just with a little bit more distance so that you're not instantly reactive and defensive.

• 46:38Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:38Esther Perel?

  I think that that conversation between couples, the same way that you bring entrepreneurs together to a mastermind to talk about their companies.

• 46:47Lewis Howes?

  To hear something in a different way that it finally lands with you and you can take action towards it.

• 46:51Esther Perel?

  Yes, I think that if we could actually bring the entrepreneurs and their partners, it would be an incredible thing. I do a lot of it with YPO, with EO, with all these other. I see it each time and not to separate the partners from the others. No, actually have the people in the room, you know, have a fishbowl where the entrepreneurs talk about what their life says. And then have a fishbowl on the other side where the, the next inner circle is where the partners talk about what it's like to live with the entrepreneur. And have each of them listen to the other. It's been one of the richest conversations I've had in that space.

• 47:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow, okay. And what's your thoughts on divorce? You know, as you said, over fifty percent are divorced the first time and over sixty-five the second time. Do you believe that, or do you think it's, you know, that people shouldn't experience divorce? They should go through that? Or they think, do you think that they're being lazy? Or do you think that they're just not committed to it enough? Or that they haven't tried all the different things to become better themselves and to see the good in their partner?

• 47:55Esther Perel?

  I would start differently. I would say-

• 47:58Lewis Howes?

  Is that a bad question?

• 48:00Esther Perel?

  No, no, no, no, not at all. But I would say differently. I would think that the first thing that has to happen with divorce

• 48:08Esther Perel?

  is to take away the concept of failure. As long as we still think that it is marriage for life, till death do us apart. When de facto, for the majority of couples today, it's till love dies, not till death do us apart.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  That's when we divorce. We break up, so our love dies.

• 48:28Esther Perel?

  Yes. And then we think it's a failure. I think that a relationship that has lasted for fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years sometimes, that's not a failure.

• 48:39Lewis Howes?

  It's a huge success.

• 48:39Esther Perel?

  It's a long time. It's a good success. And they may have done certain things poorly and other things very well. I think a lot of people who divorce don't have the chance to actually appreciate how many good things they had in their relationship and to, and to do what I like to call, you know, a la guinette pâture, the conscious uncoupling. Meaning-

• 49:01Lewis Howes?

  Oh yeah, Catherine Woodward-Thomas, do you know her?

• 49:03Esther Perel?

  Yeah. Goodbye.

• 49:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Esther Perel?

  This is what I really am thankful for that we had together. This is what I take with me from what we had together. This is what I wish for you as we move forward. This is how I hope our children will remember us. That is a very different departure. And when you do that departure, you also have a very different continuity in your next relationships later.

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 49:29Esther Perel?

  Than carrying bitterness and victimization and resentment and all of that. So I think that many people, something ends, you know? But they moved in together, they helped each other through school, they helped each other in the beginning of their careers. They helped each other when their parents were sick, they helped each other when their parents died, they helped each other with raising children. This is a lot of what marriage is about.

• 49:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 49:55Esther Perel?

  They've had good marriages for all sake and purposes. And maybe other things have come in and they were not necessarily always that nice to each other. And maybe they hurt each other and maybe they abandoned each other, maybe they betrayed each other. Lots of other things come in too. But this stuff all disappears because of the negative that then sits on it, making it look like their marriage didn't work out. It failed. Why? It failed because it ended, the only time it's successful is when they meet in the funeral home.

• 50:21Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Interesting. So you think we should redefine or look at it differently?

• 50:26Esther Perel?

  Yes, I think that marriage has to be disentangled from the concept of.

• 50:31Lewis Howes?

  Of that to us part or?

• 50:32Esther Perel?

  Yes, I think that divorce as the proof that a marriage failed is the wrong conclusion.

• 50:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:38Esther Perel?

  It's not right. And it takes away from people decades of enormous endeavors and constructive stuff. It's not because a company closed that a company failed.

• 50:52Lewis Howes?

  Right, companies close all the time.

• 50:53Esther Perel?

  Yeah, okay.

• 50:54Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So are you, are you saying that, you know, since our, we're evolving and growing and having different needs and desires and things like that? That we should expect, you know, to start a family and then get divorced? And how is that going to affect our, our children's lives going forward? Uh, should we be expecting more of that and be okay with just, well, now I've got a new partner and a new stepmom or stepdad? And this is how, we have multiple families now, how is that going to be moving forward?

• 51:22Esther Perel?

  Listen, when there was no divorce.

• 51:26Esther Perel?

  Basically, the ones who took the brunt of it were the women. It's it the it the the supposed stability of the family basically rested. Because the woman stayed put, made sure that the children had.

• 51:40Lewis Howes?

  Taken care of.

• 51:41Esther Perel?

  Were taken care of.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  And the man went out and did what he wanted.

• 51:43Esther Perel?

  Many times, many times, if they had the possibility, they they certainly would. So I think that we definitely have a model today that is more focused on the adults. When you divorce, it's for the for the well being of the adult. It's not for unless there's real egregious, you know, issues in the family. It's not for the benefit of the children, it's for the benefit of the adult. A divorce is not the end of the family, it's the reorganization of the family. It's the end of the couple, but it's not the end of the family. And if the couple can disentangle with more integrity and more respect and more real thoughts about the children, not manipulation about for the good of the children, then the family can actually reorganize better.

• 52:28Esther Perel?

  And this is where it's gonna go. So we can bemoan it, but the fact is, we better think about a better way of doing it. So that the children, the children of today, I look, the the millennials of today, fifty percent of them are either the children of the divorced or the disillusioned.

• 52:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, parents are divorced, yeah.

• 52:47Esther Perel?

  And half of them, half of you men, grew up with single mothers. So you've come out with a very different kind of emotional intelligence. Because you actually were speaking to those mothers at the table the whole time. And they engaged you in conversations in ways that often did not take place if the father would have been at the table.

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:07Esther Perel?

  So you come, I I think it's a very, very beautiful new generation of men, actually, that emerges out of this that has that that we don't think of it. They were at the table with mom, and when mom said, how was your day? She was not content with just it was good or it was all right. She said, what, she had another question and another question. And and you've developed a a kind of an emotional literacy that most boomers don't have a clue about, men.

• 53:36Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 53:36Esther Perel?

  That the millennial man really has available.

• 53:39Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 53:40Esther Perel?

  You understa- I don't think you've ever thought of that.

• 53:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's great, that's great, yeah, yeah.

• 53:44Esther Perel?

  You see, I mean, watch yourself at the table at breakfast, you know, there was a whole, that conversation did not happen.

• 53:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:52Esther Perel?

  When dad was at the table, not that there was no conversation, it was a different conversation.

• 53:56Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 53:57Esther Perel?

  So, I think families are reorganizing.

• 54:02Lewis Howes?

  And that's okay.

• 54:04Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 54:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:05Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 54:05Lewis Howes?

  It's not failures, it's not bad, it's not wrong.

• 54:08Esther Perel?

  We have blended families, we have single parent families, we have gay families, we have accordion families, we have long distance families. We have the fastest growing model of couples in America today is the lat, living apart together.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 54:24Esther Perel?

  That is the fastest growing, and it's a boomer model, it's the people after fifty-five.

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:30Esther Perel?

  Okay, who are in relationships but don't live with their partner.

• 54:34Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, why?

• 54:35Esther Perel?

  Because they often have their own families, because they have their own living arrangement, because one of them is still working, one of them is already preparing and downsizing. Lots of different reasons for why they prefer to have the benefits of the connection and of the relationship.

• 54:50Lewis Howes?

  And their own space.

• 54:51Esther Perel?

  And their own space.

• 54:51Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 54:52Esther Perel?

  Or because they want to stay closer to their children or grandchildren, while the other person has their grandchildren elsewhere. It's millions, millions, because the question of the lat is what will happen when they get older? Do you have the same commitment to a person who is aging and getting sick? When you have not lived with them and you have maintained so much of your own life? Because I meet you in my fifties, I have a whole life and I'm not willing to let go of that life.

• 55:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Esther Perel?

  I'm willing to ma- to be with you and.

• 55:22Lewis Howes?

  Create a relationship, yeah.

• 55:24Esther Perel?

  And connecting, but I don't want to let go of my, I have a whole world of my own, you know?

• 55:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:29Esther Perel?

  So that's the lat model.

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 55:30Esther Perel?

  And we don't know what the lat model will do for public health.

• 55:34Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 55:35Esther Perel?

  We know that men, you know, live better in older age when there is somebody next to them.

• 55:39Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 55:40Esther Perel?

  They don't take good care of themselves.

• 55:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course. Should we expect, um, you know?

• 55:46Lewis Howes?

  Moving forward in relationships with our time, that monogamy is something that we're gonna be able to do, or with the, there's always something better option, and that it's more available now than ever, especially with social media, online dating, there's distractions constantly.

• 56:03Esther Perel?

  Yeah, you don't have to leave your house anymore.

• 56:06Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 56:07Esther Perel?

  You can pretty much cheat on your partner while lying next to them in bed.

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 56:11Esther Perel?

  But, we are by definition already doing serial non-monogamy. You know, most of us don't come to marriage monogamous, we've come to marriage after years of nomadism, sexual nomadism, so, monogamy is a concept that has already been redefined throughout. You asked me before about how has marriage changed, but monogamy had nothing to do with love for most of history. Monogamy became about love with romanticism. It's the sacred ideal of the romantic ideal, because, the sacred cow, because, monogamy means, I'm everything, I'm it, I'm the one, I'm chosen, I'm unique, and if you are interested in someone else, it means I'm not enough.

• 56:50Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:51Esther Perel?

  Versus monogamy, which was basically for patrimony and for children, you know, so...

• 56:58Lewis Howes?

  So how should we navigate this moving forward?

• 57:00Esther Perel?

  I think that...

• 57:01Lewis Howes?

  This concept of monogamy.

• 57:02Esther Perel?

  Look, if I had talked to you seventy years ago about premarital sex, and virginity was a precondition, you would have looked at me like, this is a taboo, this is impossible. Today, premarital sex in the West, it's like, nobody blinks an eye.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:18Esther Perel?

  Okay, it would have been inconceivable, okay? If I had talked to you about going from families of eight-tailed children to families of one child, you would have looked at me inconceivable. If I had told you that we were going to be conceiving so many children through assisted reproduction, inconceivable. So, today, when you say open relationships, or non-monogamous relationships, or periodically non-monogamous, or monogamy, she'll add in savage, or, you know, or polyamorous, it all, people would say, can't work, impossible, you know, the fact is, monogamy is the new frontier. But you can have it as negotiated through divorce. Or through what most people have always done, which is proclaimed monogamy and clandestine adultery.

• 58:03Esther Perel?

  Or you can do it through a model of transparency in which people have consensual non-monogamy. This is it. This is the options.

• 58:10Lewis Howes?

  Right. What do you think is gonna be working the most for people?

• 58:13Esther Perel?

  There's gonna be a little bit of everything. There are some people who really need stable, committed, monogamous relationships. They don't want open doors. And there are other people for which open doors probably should be the model from the start. That's kind of who they are. That's their curiosity. That's the way they live their life. And it's not because they're less committed or less loving. It's because their sexuality is organized in a certain way. And it lives together with a certain arrangement. And all of that is going to be redefined as we go along. Um, it's de facto what's going to happen. It will be the next frontier. But

• 58:54Esther Perel?

  if you see it on the level of marriage, people say, you know, if you say, okay, let's look under, you know. You have to look at it from the place of before marriage. You know, a Swedish philosopher said, today, monogamy only exists in reality.

• 59:13Esther Perel?

  It doesn't exist in your memories, and it doesn't exist in your fantasies. So, this is not because I advocate it. It's just, there's, first of all, there's nothing to advocate. It's very simple. That by definition, we have multiple sex partners before marriage. We are not monogamous anymore in the traditional sense of the word. The word has been in flux and we don't really know where it's going. We don't. What we know is that people still seek to connect. People want to love. People want somebody who loves them. And how that will play itself out is the mysteries of life. But the fundamental human need for love, for connection, for passion, for transcendence.

• 1:00:01Esther Perel?

  Will never change. The expressions, the forms, the institutions in which we will seek those fundamental human aspirations will continuously transform. That's really how I see the evolution taking place.

• 1:00:17Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:00:18Esther Perel?

  What do you think of what I'm saying?

• 1:00:20Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man, this is so, you know, it's confusing because you hear so many different options that work, that don't work. You see people that love each other that go through breakup and divorce. You see, and then you see the pain and the struggle and the emotional toll that it takes on some people. Then you see people who are in, you know, committed, monogamous relationships who feel guilty because they want to be able to explore, but they they can't because they've made this choice and they've committed to it.

• 1:00:46Esther Perel?

  Monogamy is a practice. We are not by nature, biologically evolutionary, monogamous. It's a practice, it's a choice. And it's a choice.

• 1:00:58Lewis Howes?

  It's not our makeup.

• 1:00:58Esther Perel?

  No.

• 1:00:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:59Esther Perel?

  And it's a choice and it's and monogamy is a continuum. Are you, you know, you have mind, you have fantasy, you have memory, you have a lot of things. At what point do we become non-monogamous? Where does non-monogamy start? And all of these concepts are fluid concepts today. There is just no way to define it like that.

• 1:01:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:23Esther Perel?

  So we make choices and we make compromises. And we sometimes don't just do what we want. And we often need to think about the consequences of our actions. And we need to think about the larger picture and something that may be perfectly desirable for tonight may not be worth it.

• 1:01:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:44Esther Perel?

  For the next weeks and the next years.

• 1:01:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:01:47Esther Perel?

  And I think that in the era of self-fulfillment and the right to happiness, we don't have more desires today than the previous generations. We just feel more entitled to fulfill our desires. And we feel that we have a right to be happy, my personal happiness. The switch, the greatest switch is from a social organization in which I think about the well-being of others.

• 1:02:16Esther Perel?

  Collective is thinking, thinks about the well-being of others, and I sacrifice my own individual needs for the well-being of others. To the other side of the continuum is, I have a right to pursue my individual needs, and the others will have to adapt to it. And I think that we are a little bit on the extreme end of the other side at this point. We really take ourselves a little very seriously. And sometimes at the detriment of other people to whom we do have an obligation and a commitment to, not just our partners.

• 1:02:47Lewis Howes?

  The world.

• 1:02:48Esther Perel?

  The world.

• 1:02:48Lewis Howes?

  So where should we be, somewhere in the middle, you think, or what's?

• 1:02:51Esther Perel?

  In an examined state. I don't know that it's always in the middle, but in an examined state, in a state that doesn't just say, what I like, what I feel, the fact that I have options doesn't mean I have to exercise all these options. The problem of consumer life is that we don't know anymore to make choices. Same with the cereals in the supermarket. Why would it be better with love? So, I could get better. I could get better, I'm like, you know, I'm a victim of FOMO. You know, I'm a, how do I know this is the best? No, you don't.

• 1:03:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:22Esther Perel?

  When do I find the best? No, you don't, you don't find your partner, you choose your partner. It's very different. You know, if you think you're gonna find somebody who is the person who's gonna make you stop looking, it doesn't work this way, because, no, it doesn't, because at some points your inner rumblings will start up again, and then you will say, oh, problem is not...

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  You start looking.

• 1:03:42Esther Perel?

  You know, it's like you just say, this is it. This is where I decide to put my roots in this moment, you know, and I'm gonna, and I'm gonna try to deepen them. I think we are all living with paradoxes of choice.

• 1:03:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:03:55Esther Perel?

  You know, from which phone I get, but we cannot commodify a partner and just kind of beta-test the partner and beta-test the relationship and check out to see, is it good enough, or can I find better? Yes, you can, the fact is, you could find other. I'm not sure it would be better, but you definitely can find other.

• 1:04:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Esther Perel?

  And there are lots of people you can love, and there's only a few you can make a life with. And they're not always the same. There are a lot of people you can have love stories with.

• 1:04:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:26Esther Perel?

  And have beauty, but they're not the person you would make a life with.

• 1:04:29Lewis Howes?

  How do you know when it's the person you can make a life with?

• 1:04:32Esther Perel?

  I think values enter into there a lot more. I mean, you can have magnificent love stories with people you would never live with.

• 1:04:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:40Esther Perel?

  They're just too different from you. They have not the same values as you. They have not, they, they, they, one wants child, one does not. One wants to travel, the other does not. One wants career, the other, the,

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:55Esther Perel?

  Very major, different classes, different, different, Weltanschauung, as they used to say in German, you know, vi- visions of the world.

• 1:05:03Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:04Esther Perel?

  But you can love them.

• 1:05:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:05:06Esther Perel?

  You can have a beautiful love story with that person and be transported in your experience with them. But you know that that's not the person with whom you're going to build

• 1:05:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:17Esther Perel?

  a home, a future, a tra- a trajectory, maybe a family if you want that. Um, that that's not the person with whom, and for that, you need more of shared vision, shared mission, shared values, stuff that is not just in the domain of feelings, but also in the domain of beliefs.

• 1:05:37Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:38Esther Perel?

  Um, it's different.

• 1:05:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:05:40Esther Perel?

  Views about money, views about independence and separateness versus connection, views about, uh, emotional expressiveness, views about power.

• 1:05:51Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Wouldn't you say that those differences that we have also attract us to other people? That we have some of those differences? Maybe we don't share the same values or beliefs, but it's also different, unique, interesting? And so it also brings us together, or do you think it's not enough?

• 1:06:07Esther Perel?

  I think that what attracts you originally is often what becomes the source of conflict later.

• 1:06:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:13Esther Perel?

  The very thing that is so attractive because it's different is also the very thing that becomes difficult because it's different.

• 1:06:20Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:06:21Esther Perel?

  So, of course, it's a mix and match, you know?

• 1:06:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Esther Perel?

  But what makes thriving relationships is not only feelings. It's a mix of feelings, actions, beliefs.

• 1:06:39Esther Perel?

  Touches, physicality. It's a more all-encompassing thing. A beautiful love story can be just about feelings. And you can love more people than those that you can make a life with. That doesn't mean you make a life with people you don't love, but it means that there is a whole other set of ingredients

• 1:06:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:59Esther Perel?

  that enter into the making of a life, which is the creation of a world. It's a little different.

• 1:07:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:07Esther Perel?

  And in that world, you often can be on the side of, you know, there's a lot of sentences today that I never heard 20 years ago in couples therapy. This is a raw deal. I'm not getting my needs met. Where is my return on investment?

• 1:07:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:07:25Esther Perel?

  Excuse me. Excuse me, somebody owes you? It's like, wow. It's, I am in a relationship for what it's gonna give me. That is an important piece, don't misunderstand me. But I'm also in a relationship for what I'm going to give to this person.

• 1:07:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:07:47Esther Perel?

  For what I'm going to give, if I want children, to these children. Not just for what they're gonna bring to me. It's like, the level of narcissism has to be shrunk a tiny bit on occasion.

• 1:07:58Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:08:00Esther Perel?

  It's just like, you know, I mean, I'm part of that same, you know, landscape. But on occasion, I think, it's like, you calibrate it. On occasion, some of us need to really learn to think more about ourselves. And some of us really need to think more about others.

• 1:08:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:08:19Esther Perel?

  Some of us live with the fear that we're gonna be abandoned. And some of us live more with the fear that we're gonna lose ourselves. Some of us are better takers and need to learn to give. And some of us are consummate givers and we need to learn to take. And often, we find a partner who is exactly the missing link. And that can be beautiful complementarity if we actually get to use the other person to become more whole, to learn from them. And it's, it's, and we need both. You need to be able to think about yourself.

• 1:08:57Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:57Esther Perel?

  And to know what you want and all of that. But you also need to be able to remember that others exist near you.

• 1:09:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:09:05Esther Perel?

  Your family, your friends, you, you know, your, your loved ones.

• 1:09:08Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:09:08Esther Perel?

  And that, that's what will make the difference the day you die and who will show up at your funeral.

• 1:09:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:16Esther Perel?

  Basically.

• 1:09:17Lewis Howes?

  I love this conversation. I have four questions for you left.

• 1:09:21Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 1:09:21Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I could ask a lot more and I want everyone to make sure they pick up the book, Made in Captivity. We'll have it linked up here at the end. Um, the first one is, what are you most grateful for recently in your life?

• 1:09:35Esther Perel?

  Recently in my life, uh, I had a kind of a medical scare. So I'm actually very grateful that it turned out to be nothing.

• 1:09:44Lewis Howes?

  A small boo boo, not a big one?

• 1:09:45Esther Perel?

  It was a big boo boo. I thought it was a big boo boo, but it ended up being a small one.

• 1:09:49Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:09:49Esther Perel?

  So that's, uh, that's actually probably the first word that comes to me. Um, I have, um, you know, I spent most of my career more in the professional academic world. And in the last two, three years, um, I really crossed over to the mainstream.

• 1:10:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:07Esther Perel?

  Um, and that has entered me into TED and Aspen and the entrepreneur space and summit and, uh, see that. I mean, it's worldwide and, um, and I think that it's been a wonderful, um, taking what I've done in the four walls of my office to a larger platform and being actually a psychologist, not just in the therapeutic space, but in the larger cultural space in the world. That's been great thing, going digital. Um, the idea that I can actually, um, help people and, and give people an elevated conversation about relationships and that embraces the complexity and that meets them where they're at through my online courses

• 1:10:52Esther Perel?

  and through this whole new platform. That's been a trip. It's been a fantastic, creative, uh, journey for me. It's been just one year.

• 1:11:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:11:01Esther Perel?

  So I'm very grateful for that because it's been fun, creative, new, very different for a therapist, actually. Um, to move into kind of thought leader, if you want, and being part of a great, a more global conversation.

• 1:11:15Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:11:15Esther Perel?

  Great. Um.

• 1:11:18Esther Perel?

  And I that's I'm actually

• 1:11:23Esther Perel?

  in many ways, I'm much happier today because because I've become more.

• 1:11:29Esther Perel?

  If I miss something, I no longer think, oh shit, I will never get it. It's like I used to want, you know, I'm like, okay, it's all right. I don't have to have gone to three things.

• 1:11:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, exactly.

• 1:11:42Esther Perel?

  Full. To go back to the beginning of our conversation, I feel that the day is full, even if I haven't binged.

• 1:11:51Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, okay.

• 1:11:53Esther Perel?

  I used to need to binge for the day to be full. I no longer feel like that.

• 1:11:57Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Uh, good things to be grateful for. A second question is, if someone's looking to get into, find a partner, a long term partner, a committed relationship for or a marriage, what's one piece of advice you would say to go enter into that relationship, to find that relationship? If you could give one piece of advice?

• 1:12:19Esther Perel?

  Yes. Ask yourself, what do I want to give to someone? Don't just ask yourself, who do I want to meet and what what characteristics do I want in that person? And make a list of all the things that the other person needs to have. Think in the reverse, what do you want to bring to somebody? What do you want to bring in, you know, what's the love that you want to put out into the world? The love, the caring, the benevolence, you know, over for another person? Um, I think that that's probably much better than the checklist that most people go go dating with.

• 1:12:51Lewis Howes?

  Here's what I want, yes.

• 1:12:52Esther Perel?

  Here's what you need to be for me, for me to then be interested in you, you know?

• 1:12:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:12:58Esther Perel?

  Be compelling to someone else rather than ask, wait for them to dazzle you so that you can swipe in one direction or another.

• 1:13:04Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay.

• 1:13:05Esther Perel?

  You know, um, and, um, that would probably would be the first thing I would say and and.

• 1:13:14Esther Perel?

  That's it. That will be the most important one. And don't think just like this is the best. You're not buying a product. No, it's not the best. Just decide in advance, but neither are you. You're just the one that you say, this is it. Because often, you know, you pick somebody because you're ready. But there were plenty of others you met before that could have been fantastic partners for you. It's just you were not there in your life. You were not ready for that, that commitment, that decision. So you were ready to have beautiful experiences, relationships, lovers, you know, and you love these people, but you were in your twenties. What did you know about life, you know, about wanting to build something? Now you're thirty three and you say, okay, now I want to do it. So it's the timing.

• 1:13:59Esther Perel?

  It's your maturity that makes you make the choice, not the only the person that you are being dazzled by. So that would be when you go dating.

• 1:14:08Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Um, question, question number three. If um, it's your last day here on earth and your book is gone, it's been deleted from history. Everything you've ever created has been gone. For some reason, it just got deleted. And you're on bed and everyone you love is there. And they give you a piece of paper and they say, will you write down the three things that you know to be true about your experience in this world? The three truths about what you learned. And this is the last thing that will, this is the only thing we'll ever know or have left about you. What do you think you'd write down about the three truths?

• 1:14:44Esther Perel?

  So I, you know, I am a connector. And an enormous amount of people in my life know each other through me.

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:53Esther Perel?

  Worldwide. It's always been something I love to do. Maybe because I had no family and I was one child of two people, you know, soul survivors. I, I, I think that recreating a tribe uh, was something that came very natural to me. And I would write, uh, I have touched a lot of people.

• 1:15:16Esther Perel?

  Who have, and I will continue to live on in their memories because so many of them are now interconnected.

• 1:15:24Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, okay.

• 1:15:26Esther Perel?

  I have created a lot of beautiful events that were fun, celebratory, abundant, where a lot of people came together. And I, I have had a great relationship with the man that I've lived with, at least for now, for the thirty years, thirty-five years of my life. And I've raised two boys who, if I was a woman interested in men, I would have wanted to date them.

• 1:15:54Lewis Howes?

  There you go. I love it, I love it. Before I ask the final question, Esther, I just want to say that I acknowledge you for, for being here and the continuous commitment to the work you do to supporting so many people in the world about navigating relationships and understanding how to have full, rich, meaningful experiences in relationships. I think the work you're doing is so powerful, especially today, more now than ever. And I just want to acknowledge you for the gift that you bring to so many people. So, thank you.

• 1:16:22Esther Perel?

  Thank you.

• 1:16:23Lewis Howes?

  Final question, what I ask everyone at the end, is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:16:28Esther Perel?

  Oh, I went to a company recently and they asked me that question.

• 1:16:36Esther Perel?

  I think irreverence is a big part of it. There's gonna be a few words, integrity, but that's often irreverence, not to take the accepted as the given. I don't think that that's because that's what we do or that's how we think, that that definition means that it's right or it's true. So, I am a person who questions, I topple sacred chaos, I open up possibilities, I'm rather nonjudgmental, and I like to shed a whole new light on something that, that people think they've already heard a lot about and to rethink or kind of challenge the conversation.

• 1:17:19Esther Perel?

  That, those words go into creativity.

• 1:17:24Esther Perel?

  But greatness is that. Greatness is, is when you, when you poked at something. And when you started out, it existed like that, and when you ended, it became something completely different.

• 1:17:40Esther Perel?

  And I think mating, actually, you know, mating or the courses in general, I am counterintuitive. I have, you know, I think people come in, I'll just give it to you like that. People have a story. Every person who comes to therapy or every company who comes to me to consult, they have a story. They describe themselves a certain way. Greatness is when they can come in with one story and leave with a completely different one.

• 1:18:04Lewis Howes?

  I love that. It's a perfect ending. Esther Perel, thank you so much for being here. Where can we find you online? Where can we connect with you? What's the best place to go?

• 1:18:12Esther Perel?

  All right, so it's www'estherperel.com. You opt in with me. I connect with you. I communicate with you. We're in conversation. I never harass, but I inspire. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Instagram. And I'm about actually to release the third online course called Rekindling Desire. That is really, once you've read me, what can you do? How do you bring this home? How do you bring this to your relationships? Committed ones or not, and to yourself. And that's really where these online courses now are. It's like, it's me on, it's not the podcast yet,

• 1:18:51Esther Perel?

  which we will talk about, but it is me speaking to you about how you take all of these ideas and make them personal and transform them into actions that will change your life.

• 1:19:03Lewis Howes?

  I love it. Esther Perel, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

• 1:19:06Esther Perel?

  It's a pleasure.

• 1:19:10Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Esther. She is, again, incredibly wise, been doing this work for a long time. And I hope it gave you some clarity and some freedom in some of the challenges you may be facing in your own internal dialogue about relationships. Again, make sure to share this out if you enjoyed this episode. LewisHowes.com/285.

• 1:19:33Lewis Howes?

  Let your friends know. I know you have some friends that are going through challenges, or have gone through challenges in relationships, and they would love to gain the wisdom from Esther. So make sure to share this out with your friends, email them, tweet them, Facebook message them, whatever it may be. Get this message out there. If this is your first time here, thank you for coming. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast over on iTunes, Stitcher, or SoundCloud. Just go type in "School of Greatness" on the podcast app and click the subscribe button so you can get updates each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday when we release new episodes. Thank you guys again so much for joining me today. I hope you found this valuable and inspiring

• 1:20:16Lewis Howes?

  in your life, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.