Esther Perel: Use This Simple Trick to Heal & Deepen Your Relationships EP 1291

Psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author Esther Perel is recognized as one of today’s most insightful voices on modern relationships. Fluent in nine languages, she helms a therapy practice in New York City and serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Her celebrated TED Talks have garnered more than 40 million views and her bestselling books, Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, are global phenomena translated into nearly 30 languages. Esther is also an executive producer and host of the popular podcasts Where Should We Begin? and How’s Work? Her latest project is Where Should We Begin - A Game of Stories. In this episode, you will learn:How sexuality is only a piece of eroticism. Why humor is so important to heal your relationship. The difference of being aware and feeling your dread. Why play is one of the keys to success. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1291For Esther's previous episodes:The Secret to Desire in a Long Term Relationship: https://link.chtbl.com/1236-podRed Flags To Avoid In Relationships & How To Find Real Love: https://link.chtbl.com/1277-podThe Power of Erotic Intelligence: https://link.chtbl.com/732-pod 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.

• 0:00Esther Perel?

  The relationship becomes the holder of all that stress. And that is part of the divorce rate of the moment. And the weight that has felt on the relationship. It's not just people didn't get along.

• 0:14Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, 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.

• 0:41Lewis Howes?

  What is the main thing you would recommend people work on themselves? Whether in transition of relationships or in a relationship? Is there one thing that they could always be working on to improve themselves? To be better for other relationships?

• 0:55Esther Perel?

  If their entire story about the relationship that just ended is about what the other person did wrong to them, something is missing in the story.

• 1:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07Esther Perel?

  That doesn't mean that the other person may not have done things that were hurtful to them. But add to it, who were you in this relationship?

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:16Esther Perel?

  What role did you play? What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to? What things do you wish you had done differently? What pieces do you wish that your partner had seen and accepted from you differently? Where did you wish you would have said less? And where did you wish you would have said more? What do you learn from this relationship? And if when you say what you learned is just that I want to make sure that the next person is...

• 1:49Lewis Howes?

  Right, gives me what I need.

• 1:50Esther Perel?

  You know, or is less of this or more of that, you know? Who do you want to be in the next relationship?

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  How are you going to add value?

• 1:59Esther Perel?

  A relationship is a story of many people. It's not even a story just of two. Who was too involved in your relationship? Who was not involved enough? So it's, there's a cast of characters in a relationship. And it's all those questions that you want to ask when you are in transition. What?

• 2:21Esther Perel?

  I think that's it. I mean, you can, but there are both directions. If you find yourself with a spotlight only on the other person and you in a passive receptive stance, you're missing a whole pan of the story.

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and you're probably more of the problem than, of the relationship than them. If you're just focusing on them, probably.

• 2:44Esther Perel?

  A relationship is not about this person and that person. The relationship is what happens in between. This is my view on relationships. It's, it's not an essentialist view. This is this personality and that personality. It's the dynamic.

• 2:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 2:59Esther Perel?

  You can have a dynamic with a certain partner. You've had dynamics with certain partners. And of course, it was just the right fit between the match and the ignition. And so you had enough inside of you to react with a certain kind of, let's put, your jealousy.

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:18Esther Perel?

  But you may meet another person who acts differently. And you may still have a little bit of that jealousy inside of you, but it doesn't get activated because this person is responding very differently to you. And when you say, where were you? They don't say, why do you always have to ask me that question? They just say, I just went to do this. It's all good, darling. I'm right here. I've got you back. And then you don't go into your chest pain, you know, pain. So this is very important to understand. We are not the same person with, with different partners. We may have certain things that come out depending on what is being sent over to us. So the relationship is a figure eight.

• 3:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 3:58Esther Perel?

  It's what I do that makes you do something that then makes you react to me a certain way, that then draws that out of me, that draws that out of you. And each one actually creates the other.

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:13Esther Perel?

  And when you get that view of relationships, when you come out, you, and you're in transition, you say to yourself, let's say, I was with someone who completely disconnected. Okay, they disconnected.

• 4:28Esther Perel?

  Did I push them away?

• 4:30Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 4:32Esther Perel?

  Are there ways in which I contributed sometimes to the disconnection? And that is not self-blame. That is understanding the dynamic. You can take responsibility about things without blaming yourself. And you can hold the other person accountable without blaming them. It's not a blame dance. But it is an understanding of what did I do that made you do what you then did to me? That then made me? That's the relationship.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And if someone's like, you know what? They're listening to you, they really wanna have an amazing relationship. They wanna have a rich life. Knowing it's not gonna be perfect, but they wanna create beauty and adventure and play and go through life through the sadness and the adversities and all the things that happen in life. And they're thinking to themselves, how much should I pour into myself for my dreams, my health, my friends and family? How much should I pour into the other person? Into their life that I'm creating partnership with? And how much should I pour into the relationship itself? What would you say to that?

• 5:36Esther Perel?

  But you asked me, it's different questions, right? What keeps a relationship alive is one question. How much do you invest in a relationship is a different question. So, I'm gonna go to the one about what keeps it alive. Because it's part of, and I'm suddenly watching the box and thinking, this, it is what I'm mostly interested in. Because I work on eroticism. What keeps us alive? What keeps us hopeful? What keeps us engaged with possibility?

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  Not physically alive, but connected alive.

• 6:16Esther Perel?

  Connected to life, life force, life energy. Why? Because...

• 6:22Esther Perel?

  Because I think everybody understands relationships that are not dead versus relationships that are alive. Teams that are not dead, companies versus companies that are alive. What is flourishing versus surviving?

• 6:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:36Esther Perel?

  And because it is part of my personal history, and I come from a background of survivors, of parents who were in concentration camps, and I wanted to understand how do people stay alive when they spend five years in a concentration camp? So that's why I got interested in eroticism. Sexuality is a piece of this, but sexuality is not eroticism. You can have sex every day and feel nothing.

• 7:01Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:02Esther Perel?

  Eroticism is the poetry that accompanies it. It's the meaning we give to it.

• 7:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 7:07Esther Perel?

  Right? It's the story that's attached. So eroticism in a relationship is the quality of imagination, curiosity, playfulness, mystery, risk-taking, novelty, that people bring to their relationship. Those are the things that I think bring life to a relationship. So in the research of Eli Finkel, it means doing new things together, taking risks beyond your threshold, out of your comfort zone. Because if you do pleasant things that are familiar, it's cozy, it's friendship, it's love, but it's not exciting, it's not erotic, it's not necessarily desire.

• 7:50Esther Perel?

  It's calibrating your expectations, so that you have, and that means diversifying your intimate connections or your deep connections, doesn't it? You know, for me intimacy doesn't mean sexual either, it just means people that are important to you, that accompany you through the life stages and through the big events in life. These three things, expectations, calibrating expectations, diversifying your social connections, and taking risks and doing new things, is the research of Eli Finkel for driving relationships. But then in that piece, I think play is ascension.

• 8:27Lewis Howes?

  It's huge, right?

• 8:28Esther Perel?

  Playfulness, it's huge. And it is actually the quality of emotions that is the least talked about.

• 8:36Lewis Howes?

  How often are you playing in your relationship?

• 8:39Esther Perel?

  All the time. Humor is essential. It's an essential salve and balm in my relationship. I can be in the middle of an argument and then I start to laugh. And then I just get perspective and we just kind of ground ourselves back again. It's flirting, it's teasing, it's making fun of. It's that whole realm of we're not really serious and we don't take ourselves that serious.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  And what happens when relationships are taking themselves very serious and they're not playing?

• 9:12Esther Perel?

  Look, I had a teacher who once said to me, if a couple comes to you for therapy and there is absolutely zero humor left,

• 9:23Esther Perel?

  it is diagnostic.

• 9:24Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 9:25Esther Perel?

  Now, is it true? You know, nobody has proven that scientifically. But what you know is that humor. And if you listen to my podcast, if you listen to the sessions on where should we begin or on how is work, you'll see in the middle of talking about trauma, painful event, major fight, strife, I laugh with them. I manage to see if they can see themselves, if they have a bit of distance, of perspective, if they understand sometimes the absurdity of the things that we get into, the things over which we fight, the way we do it. And even if it's just a glimmer, a smile on the side, on the corner, I know they know that I know that we know.

• 10:07Esther Perel?

  And it creates that complicity and it invites a new possibility.

• 10:14Lewis Howes?

  Some people may be resisting the humor. They want to hold on to the seriousness.

• 10:19Esther Perel?

  Yes. If you want to hold on to righteousness, to I am right, to victimization, to I have the view that is the only view that matters and only my perception and my experience is the truth, then you are in a polarized system that is rigid and unyielding. Humor and play is possibility. Possibility invites change. Change invites healing.

• 10:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes. I want to ask you a few more questions, then I want us to play your game for a little bit. Over the last two years, was there anything that came up for you personally, in your own inner world, that you noticed, oh, there's something, like we talked about it, it created a lot of pressure for people if there were things that came out. Was there anything for you that you were like, huh, there's something I still need to work on myself, or need to continue the healing journey of that came out in the last couple of years? With being at home and, you know, not doing things the way they used to be?

• 11:21Esther Perel?

  I will answer this in two ways. The way that I experienced the pandemic. So in the first, in the beginning, right after I left you, I went back to New York and I went in lockdown.

• 11:35Esther Perel?

  And basically, it was in the, you know, it was suddenly kind of, I got gripped with a bit of a panic. And primarily because I thought, I can't catch this thing. Because if I catch it, I am now suddenly considered elderly and past sixty.

• 11:53Lewis Howes?

  But you're thirty-five.

• 11:54Esther Perel?

  Yeah, yeah. For the pandemic, it changed. It suddenly shifted overnight. I became elderly. And that meant I wasn't sure if we entered the hospital, me or Jack, that we will pass the triage.

• 12:06Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 12:07Esther Perel?

  And he's older than me. And I got really, really scared. I had a lot of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are very much connected to the Holocaust and to my family experience. That sense that overnight, this whole life I have built could just disappear like this. And it was irrational. I was terrified that Jack would die. To the point, you wanted to know about humor in my relationship? So we are in the middle of construction at the time, and the workers, and at the point, he comes to me and he says, I asked the workers to create, to dig a hole in the garden. I said, oh, yeah? Why? He said, so that when I die, you can just roll me right in.

• 12:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow, talk about humor.

• 12:53Esther Perel?

  And I, but I cracked up because it, he showed me, girl, you gripped in fear. And I just started to laugh and I just realized, no, no, no, he's not dead. Cause I was ready to stop construction. I said, we're not making this.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  No one can come here within a thousand yards of us.

• 13:08Esther Perel?

  No, no, it's more like we will not survive.

• 13:11Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 13:11Esther Perel?

  I was, I really, when it's post-traumatic, it's, it's trauma is the word, right? So I really was very, very, very scared and his humor diffused it for me. And just brought me back and said, we're continuing to build. We're gonna live. We're gonna survive. Don't worry, girl. It's like, so this was one and it slowly, you know, I entered into the, into the, the, the long term of the pandemic and it dissolved. And that's when I understood, this came out of that. I missed my friends. I missed my dinner parties. I missed intimacy. And I created a host of different group experiences, pods.

• 13:53Esther Perel?

  I had a movie club on Zoom on three continents.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 13:58Esther Perel?

  I had a book club. I had a yoga group that met four times a week still till now. That is over two continents.

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 14:07Esther Perel?

  And I had a hiking group. I had a swimming group in the summer. And then one day I said, I need to play and I need to continue to have conversations where I learned something new. I was so freaking tired of talking about the pandemic all the time.

• 14:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 14:20Esther Perel?

  And I said, I'm gonna create a game, not having any idea of what this thing was going to become and, and what it represented. I just thought, oh, I wanna do something creative and I'm gonna, I want people to be able to talk about something that isn't just like, you know, when you live six months like this, in lockdown, you begin to have the same conversations.

• 14:39Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah, yeah, of course.

• 14:40Esther Perel?

  So I just thought, how am I going to make couples have fun? Get energized, you know, be curious about each other, talk about something else. And I thought, we need to play, because play is a container. Play gives you the possibility to take risks, to talk about things that you would otherwise not talk about. Because it's under the guise of play. Play allows you to ask questions that you would otherwise not ask, certainly not to your partner. Because we get more shy with the people that we live with than with strangers sometimes.

• 15:11Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, yeah.

• 15:12Esther Perel?

  You know, you're more daring to ask sometimes questions to strangers.

• 15:16Lewis Howes?

  That you're never gonna see again.

• 15:17Esther Perel?

  Or people you've just met than the person you live with for decades on end.

• 15:21Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting.

• 15:22Esther Perel?

  I just, so play became very, very central. When you play, you still are able to lift yourself from the ground. And it means you can enter the world of imagination and where the rules are different. And every child at this moment, you know, around the Ukrainian crisis, you can see when kids are still able to play. It is the moments when they are not in hyper vigilance. It is an essential survival skill.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes.

• 15:54Esther Perel?

  Underrated. And from that place came...

• 15:59Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 15:59Esther Perel?

  Where should we begin?

• 16:00Lewis Howes?

  It's one of the key things in a relationship and in life, is what I'm hearing you say.

• 16:04Esther Perel?

  It's essential.

• 16:04Lewis Howes?

  It's essential.

• 16:05Esther Perel?

  It's essential.

• 16:06Lewis Howes?

  Now, here's another side question before we get into this.

• 16:08Esther Perel?

  Play is problem solving, play is creativity, play is risk-taking, play is...

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Spontaneity, it's all these things.

• 16:19Esther Perel?

  It's the other side of fear.

• 16:21Lewis Howes?

  Well, you can't, when you're playing, and as an athlete, when I'm playing, I'm not thinking about other things.

• 16:27Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  If you're playing, you get in the zone, you're flow.

• 16:31Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Lewis Howes?

  And you can't put your attention somewhere else. When you do, that's when you mess up the game, right? You're not in your best flow state when you're thinking about something else. So play allows you to get out of that, which I think is really powerful. And my friend Matt, he's like, I'm just, I'm always playing with him.

• 16:46Esther Perel?

  When you play, do you play for fun or do you play for winning?

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  To win?

• 16:50Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 16:51Lewis Howes?

  No, I play for both, yeah. I used to only play to win.

• 16:54Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  Now I play for fun, but I also... You know, it's like, me and my girlfriend, we play cards a lot. We have a game that we started playing over the holidays called Nerds. It's kind of like speed solitaire, right? Where you both play and there's like some shared space in the middle where you play as well. And I'm a, we play for fun, but I'm also, I wanna win. So it's like I'm competitive, but it's okay. I can just play and have fun too.

• 17:20Esther Perel?

  And you can appreciate a good game.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cause it makes me wanna go again. Let's play again, you know? So I love playing, yeah. Um, but I used to be only, I had to play to win and it was like an obsession. And now that shifted to, I'm still a very competitive human, but I can play.

• 17:40Esther Perel?

  So I used to play without having to create a situation where there is a winner and a loser so that I could have fun.

• 17:48Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 17:49Esther Perel?

  And then I, it was the same idea here.

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  That's why you created this.

• 17:52Esther Perel?

  There is no winner. It's a storytelling game. So there is no winner so that you don't have to compete so that you can have fun.

• 17:58Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 17:58Esther Perel?

  Some people are like, yeah.

• 18:01Lewis Howes?

  I wanna get into this in a second, but there's one thing I wanna ask you about this last couple of years. If someone's listening or watching and they're thinking to themselves, here's Esther Perel. She is one of the top people in the world on healing and therapy and connection. And she's been studying this and created bestselling books and podcasts and games. And this is your life's mission. And yet she has, you know, post-traumatic stress or things that come up for her still. And she's the expert in this. Is there anything that you feel like you still need work healing? In order to letting certain things go, or are these things always gonna be with us at certain times? Different stresses or pains or wounds or PTSD from the past of our individual lives?

• 18:46Esther Perel?

  Look, the notion that when you heal, it's something utterly disappears is one component of healing. But the other part is that

• 18:59Esther Perel?

  you need a bigger trigger to reactivate an old wound. But there is a whole new range where the wound can live without being activated.

• 19:11Lewis Howes?

  But you've healed a certain amount of triggers, but there might be a bigger.

• 19:15Esther Perel?

  So, you know, you

• 19:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:18Esther Perel?

  You come back from the, from, from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from, you know, all the wars that people have fought here. Um, and you, or, or you are a refugee from Syria or from Afghanistan. I mean, all sides. You may not at every siren. Jump anymore. But if suddenly.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  If there's a bomb.

• 19:40Esther Perel?

  Yes, you will jump.

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 19:42Esther Perel?

  So the the the range and the response, you know, to the danger shifts.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 19:48Esther Perel?

  That's the piece around healing. I think for me, it was a real surprise that this fear that I got to experience. I didn't remember that. It had been a long time since because.

• 20:01Lewis Howes?

  Because you're constantly doing the work. You're constantly in the.

• 20:03Esther Perel?

  I thought I have kind of created a life where I have a sense of ownership, I have a sense of control, I have a sense. But I always live with dread.

• 20:12Lewis Howes?

  You do.

• 20:12Esther Perel?

  I do.

• 20:13Lewis Howes?

  Still today.

• 20:14Esther Perel?

  That my whole life.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  Live with dread like.

• 20:16Esther Perel?

  That every minute something could happen.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  The sky could fall and.

• 20:20Esther Perel?

  The whole thing could disappear.

• 20:21Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 20:21Esther Perel?

  Because that is the the core story of my family. And um, but I don't have the dread all the time. But when it grips.

• 20:32Lewis Howes?

  It grips.

• 20:33Esther Perel?

  In the past, it would grip without anything happening. It just was like happening to me because I had a day where I just didn't know what I was going to do in my life. So it disappeared. I could talk about it, but I wouldn't necessarily feel it. It's physical, it's visceral. It's like you described the chest for me, it's the gut. It says, right. But when the pandemic arrives, it's a trigger that is strong enough to bring back that sense of dread.

• 20:59Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 21:00Esther Perel?

  At that time, I wasn't aware of my dread. I was feeling my dread. That's very different. That's what I mean by the external versus the internal.

• 21:13Lewis Howes?

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• 21:57Lewis Howes?

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• 22:08Esther Perel?

  Now, what do people struggle with? People have struggled with prolonged uncertainty. Here are the five things of the pandemic that have affected relationships the most.

• 22:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Esther Perel?

  One is a prolonged sense of uncertainty. It's not just that you're not sure when this is going to end, but you're not sure about you're not being sure.

• 22:26Esther Perel?

  This thing keeps coming and going all the time. One minute you say it's gone, the next minute you realize, it's not gone at all. That, then it's the notion of what we experienced was a collapse of all the boundaries. Here I am, I'm at home, I'm on my chair, at my kitchen table, and I am a therapist, and a supervisor, and a podcaster, and a mother, and a friend, and a wife, and, and, and. And I haven't left the chair. And I'm still just in sweatpants with the, you know, and I'm like, where is work? Where is life? Where is morning? Where is night? Where is just like, all the roles have collapsed. And we are not made like this. We are physical people and we are spatially oriented.

• 23:10Esther Perel?

  And we change location for our activities. We change clothes for our activities. And they help us enter the role. Now I'm going to work. Now I'm going to play sports. Now I'm going to the club. Now I'm going out. Now I'm going to visit my mother. And I look, I feel different. I look different. I wear different. I have rituals. I have things, a different bag, a different racket. None of this. You know what it means when your entire arsenal of rituals that give meaning and frame your parts dissolve? You get exhausted. So that was the collapse of boundaries. Then there was the sense of ambiguous loss. You know, we lost spontaneity. We lost plans.

• 23:54Esther Perel?

  We lost the weddings, the graduations, the parties, the promotions.

• 23:59Lewis Howes?

  Sports, games, everything, yeah.

• 24:02Esther Perel?

  It's not, there is the loss of death, but there is that other loss. The buildings that are standing, but they're empty.

• 24:08Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 24:08Esther Perel?

  They're physically present, but emotionally vacated. We have the grandparents and the parents that are physically gone, but emotionally present. We call that ambiguous loss. When you are either physically present and psychologically gone, or psychologically present and physically gone.

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 24:26Esther Perel?

  That ambiguous loss became a part of what then Adam Grant began to describe in The Langishing. Langishing is you're not depressed, you're just like eh, lifeless, flatlessness. Nothing is really giving you the sense of meaning and purpose and joy that you generally want. That has happened in your relationship. And what happens when you are in a period of liminality like this, where the big dilemmas are not getting answered, is that all the unknowns are filtering onto your relationships. And the relationship becomes the holder of all that stress. And that is part of the divorce rate at the moment. And the weight that has felt on the relationships.

• 25:11Esther Perel?

  It's not just people didn't get along. It's that people needed in the relationships to deal from the political polarization, to the racial reckoning, to the economic insecurity, to the ambiguous loss, to the prolonged uncertainty. All of that fell on relationships. This is the story of the last two years. That people know, they feel it, but they don't necessarily articulate it.

• 25:39Lewis Howes?

  Hard to make a relationship last. If you don't have the tools and you're not willing to work through it.

• 25:43Esther Perel?

  How do you stay grounded when the ground itself is moving?

• 25:47Lewis Howes?

  It's quicksand.

• 25:47Esther Perel?

  It's the great adaptation of this moment.

• 25:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Esther Perel?

  And so, relationships began to see the cracks inside their relationship. And people also began to see the light that shines through the cracks. Both that.

• 26:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Well, play is key in a relationship and I'm glad that I'm playful and I'm down for this game. Where should we begin?

• 26:07Esther Perel?

  I'm gonna hook you to this game so that you and Marta

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  We play it all the time.

• 26:12Esther Perel?

  To tell stories to each other like never before.

• 26:14Lewis Howes?

  This is a game that came to you, you know, this is one of the things that came to you during the pandemic because you wanted to have creativity, you wanted to have play, connection, all these different things. So you created this game, "Where Should We Begin?", a game of stories by Esther Perel. And there's no winner, there's no loser, so it's not the type of game I, you know, I'm used to playing. Yes, exactly. So we both have a set of cards. Do I pick any or should I give you one?

• 26:40Esther Perel?

  No, you pick from mine. I'm gonna have you pick from mine.

• 26:42Lewis Howes?

  Should I go first or you go first?

• 26:43Esther Perel?

  Yeah, you go first.

• 26:44Lewis Howes?

  You sure?

• 26:45Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Lewis Howes?

  Let's go the safest one?

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so then I pick and do I get to say if I want to answer it or not?

• 26:53Esther Perel?

  No, you have to answer.

• 26:55Lewis Howes?

  I have to answer it, okay. A rule I secretly love to break, a rule.

• 27:02Esther Perel?

  When are you rule breaking?

• 27:04Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I'm always breaking the...

• 27:07Esther Perel?

  But it's a story.

• 27:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I gotta tell a story, okay.

• 27:10Esther Perel?

  It's a story.

• 27:11Lewis Howes?

  Okay, well, I always break.

• 27:12Esther Perel?

  I actually think stories, relationships are stories. Stories are bridges to each other, stories bind us, so...

• 27:23Lewis Howes?

  Here's a rule I like to break consistently.

• 27:25Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 27:27Lewis Howes?

  And since we're going on the story of play, in some ways I feel like I've emotionally and physically matured and grown up. In other ways, I feel like I've kept this childlike curiosity inside of me. It's one of the reasons why I love to interview people and do the podcast. It's one of the reasons I try to make people feel uncomfortable when I meet them for the first time by asking them questions that maybe they wouldn't have, you know, answered with a stranger. So one of the things I love to break is in my relationship. Is trying to bring play to every moment. Even when it's stressful.

• 28:05Esther Perel?

  Do you like to be goofy?

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  I love to be goofy, love to be silly. And tease. And I think there's a difference between teasing and bullying. I don't want to be a bully.

• 28:15Esther Perel?

  It's a world apart.

• 28:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be a bully, but I love to be playful and tease and just throw a little, what about this, you know, a little comment here. Martha, she says that she thinks I was like, you know, a Mexican in another life because I have, she says I have the humor, not of a white person from America, but of a Mexican. Because I'm teasing and playful. And I have a sarcasm that she says is similar to the way that she grew up. So I think for me, I don't take anything too seriously. And especially in the relationship, which is why I love that you said play is one of the keys to success. And which is why if someone is not reciprocal, then it becomes challenging if they're not wanting to play with you.

• 28:57Esther Perel?

  It's like throwing a ball that drops the floor.

• 28:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're playing ping pong and it just with yourself, yeah. So that is a rule I love to secretly break is just being, being a child, having childlike energy, but having maturity at the same time.

• 29:13Esther Perel?

  Nice.

• 29:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes, okay. So then what, I finished the card and now it's your turn, right?

• 29:18Esther Perel?

  Right now, we're doing it like this. But you know, sometimes I put two cards and then I get to pick for the other person. Or people pick themselves. Then we have little orange tokens, in which when you play with a group, we can put pressure on the card. And then we have, the group says, we want you to talk about this.

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  To make some, kind of like have someone do it, yes.

• 29:41Esther Perel?

  So there's all kinds of variations, but it's.

• 29:44Lewis Howes?

  I kind of want to do a sexual one too, but I think we took all those cards out, but here, I'll let you just choose one.

• 29:49Esther Perel?

  You asked for us to take them out, so I was gonna go.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  I know, I should have.

• 29:54Esther Perel?

  Oh God, the most humiliating I've ever felt.

• 29:58Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:59Esther Perel?

  Oh God.

• 30:00Lewis Howes?

  The most embarrassing or humiliating story.

• 30:02Esther Perel?

  I can tell you immediately the thing, it's, it's, it's, I'm like ten, eleven.

• 30:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 30:07Esther Perel?

  Goes back a long time. I, I, I stole a candy.

• 30:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's it?

• 30:12Esther Perel?

  Well, you don't wanna be caught.

• 30:15Lewis Howes?

  You got caught?

• 30:16Esther Perel?

  I got caught.

• 30:17Lewis Howes?

  By who? The, your parents? By that store person?

• 30:20Esther Perel?

  Person that was waiting in line.

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  They saw you?

• 30:23Esther Perel?

  That saw me and said to the person.

• 30:26Lewis Howes?

  She stole it? No way. What did you have to do?

• 30:30Esther Perel?

  I gave it back.

• 30:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh man.

• 30:32Esther Perel?

  And she said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't want it. She said, you have to pay for it. I said, I don't have the money. She said, you leave me something and then you come back with the money.

• 30:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So you have to pay for it even though you didn't take it?

• 30:44Esther Perel?

  Well, I didn't have the money.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  Oh wow.

• 30:46Esther Perel?

  So I went home, I got the money because I had to leave my, my school.

• 30:51Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh. Oh, you had to leave like some collateral, something like your ID or your phone at the time. Yes.

• 30:56Esther Perel?

  Yes, I had to leave collateral.

• 30:58Lewis Howes?

  And bring money back. That's so embarrassing and humiliating.

• 31:01Esther Perel?

  It's like, yeah, because if you're gonna take something, you're not supposed to take the whole point of it.

• 31:07Lewis Howes?

  Is then I get caught. You know, it's interesting. I, and I probably love this because I bet other people have conversations when you answer and then it triggers something in someone else.

• 31:17Esther Perel?

  Um, yes.

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  I, I stole for a couple of years from, I don't know, ten, eleven, somewhere around there, eleven, twelve.

• 31:24Esther Perel?

  Same age, yeah. What was your deal?

• 31:27Lewis Howes?

  Candy all the time. Right, candy. And I thought I was so smooth. I never got caught from a store. But one time I went to my, this was the most humiliating probably and embarrassing and probably most shameful thing, you know, as a kid growing up. I, my dad brought me and a friend of mine after basketball practice to go to one of his clients. He sold life insurance. And we had to drive, I don't know, forty-five to an hour away to a farm. He was like a client of his at a farm in Ohio. And we go there and my dad's like, okay, you got you kids like hang out on the farm or whatever in the house and walk around. I gotta talk to Mr. So and so for an hour to go over stuff. So we're walking around, nosey little kids, you know, 12 years old. Go down in the basement and I'm like opening up drawers.

• 32:12Lewis Howes?

  I'm doing stuff I shouldn't do. I see a wallet. I take out the wallet. I open it up. There's a $20 bill and a $5 bill. And we're looking at each other like, should we do this? I'm like, he will never know. I take the five, my friend takes the 20. I get woken up that night at, I don't know, 4 a.m. in the morning. And my dad is hovering over me. At this time, my dad's pretty intimidating still and he's hovering over me. Did you steal from so and so? Money? And I go, no. Right away, I'm like, am I dreaming? Am I awake? I'm like, no, I'm defending myself, right? Lied right to my dad. And he goes, Mr. So and so um was going to buy food for like his cows, right? Or for his like animals on the farm.

• 32:56Lewis Howes?

  And he doesn't have the money to go buy the food like it's gone. I go, I don't know. I don't know what happened. You know, I just lied, but I was also like waking up. I was like disoriented. And then he calls my friend's parents and he admits to it. And it was the most humiliating, embarrassing, shameful thing because I had to drive back alone. My friend didn't have to go, but I drove back for the hour with my parents in the front seat, me in the backseat, just so ashamed. And I had to go face this guy and say, I'm sorry with like the most, you know, he was so frustrated and angry and upset. And I never stole again after that. So I don't know, did you steal after that moment?

• 33:35Esther Perel?

  No, you know, I my my moment is I taking the thing and somebody goes like this.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  No, they did that?

• 33:42Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  No way. Oh, my gosh.

• 33:46Esther Perel?

  And it's like you freeze. Oh, the shame.

• 33:50Lewis Howes?

  I'll never forget this guy's face. Like I was 12 years old, right? Okay. Okay. If I could whisper something in the ear of my younger self, I would say, and I'd probably say something very loving.

• 34:09Lewis Howes?

  Part of me wanted to be playful, but I'd probably say something loving because that's what I would need to hear. I'd probably say that you are loved, you matter, and it's all gonna be okay. That's what I would say, because I think that's what I needed to hear the most. And it's funny because I've said this so many times on my show, so my audience is gonna get tired of me saying this, and I'm gonna show you this. Uh, over a year ago, I put a photo of my younger self on my screensaver, right? I've talked about this so many times now. And so for the last year, since my therapist Clara had me do work on my inner child, on healing the relationship that I had with myself back then, and really having intimate conversations, exercises with the five, six, seven-year-old

• 34:54Lewis Howes?

  that was sexually abused, I've talked about that with you before, which I never really fully healed, you know, that whole conversation with. And it's been a beautiful journey to have intimacy, connection, you know, and bridge the gap from five, six, seven till now, and be able to have a conversation between that space and time, and really bring the two together, you know, my inner child into me through healing.

• 35:20Esther Perel?

  So what would this one say to you?

• 35:22Lewis Howes?

  What would he say to me? Oh my gosh, um, that's a good...

• 35:28Esther Perel?

  Actually...

• 35:29Lewis Howes?

  It's really good.

• 35:29Esther Perel?

  May I bring him back?

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:32Esther Perel?

  What does he say to you?

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, he probably says... Let me see, I'm getting my heart here.

• 35:41Lewis Howes?

  He says, "Thank you. Thank you for being willing to be courageous in all these scary emotions. All the scary emotions that I'm feeling right now, the things that I'm uncertain about, the things that I'm afraid of. Thank you for having the courage to dive in and be, uh, you know, put all your emotions on the table, address the messiness, handle it all, and supporting me in finding peace and healing that I've always wanted." That's what it, that's what it would say, yeah. So, yeah, I know, it's crazy, it's crazy.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, okay.

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I'm going to the next one. This is what I do, I laugh when things get deep. I laugh, I get deep and then I'm like, okay.

• 36:33Esther Perel?

  You laugh where your tears are streaming down your face.

• 36:36Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course. Okay, this is you.

• 36:39Esther Perel?

  Oops.

• 36:42Esther Perel?

  I would sell everything to be able to.

• 36:48Esther Perel?

  It's interesting, I don't have a dream, you know, I live a lot of my dreams at this moment. So I don't feel like I, I would sell, but I think if I was to, I would sell everything

• 37:04Esther Perel?

  to remain healthy.

• 37:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:06Esther Perel?

  Or I would sell everything for my kids or my partner to be healthy. And if I needed to, like, I would go everywhere in the world just to make sure that if there's something that can keep them, it's not just alive, it's healthy.

• 37:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Esther Perel?

  Because I don't want them just to...

• 37:23Lewis Howes?

  Not to suffering and alive, yeah.

• 37:24Esther Perel?

  Yeah, yeah. I think that at this point, that's the only...

• 37:28Lewis Howes?

  Is that, is that the biggest fear for you?

• 37:32Esther Perel?

  Um, yes, but you see, when I say I live with dread, you, you jumped like, really? Because it's not the, you know,

• 37:43Esther Perel?

  I live with the fear of loss. It's not, it's not dread, just bad things happening. It, what's underneath is the fact that my parents had lost everybody and so their entire families, they were the only two that came out and I, I, I, this is part of my DNA. And so the fear of loss, of traumatic loss and the grief, that's what I fear. So health or selling everything or, you know, imagining myself, you know, cruising the world to find the best doctor that could help me.

• 38:17Lewis Howes?

  Solutions, yeah, yeah.

• 38:17Esther Perel?

  Yes, with something is part of preventing that loss, you know.

• 38:22Lewis Howes?

  Have you had major losses?

• 38:24Esther Perel?

  No, except that, actually, I, on a personal level have not, but I often, you know, if, if, if one of them drives, I often at night.

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  Get worried.

• 38:35Esther Perel?

  You know, I, I just... I've never said, "Don't go," but I just like the little call when they arrive.

• 38:42Lewis Howes?

  You're like my mom, too.

• 38:43Esther Perel?

  I can easily imagine accidents.

• 38:46Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 38:46Esther Perel?

  I can easily imagine, yes, I am a catastrophizer in that sense, you know. But I, so what does therapy do? It allows you to just, in the mind, it's like, no, you're fine.

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  Calms the mind.

• 39:03Esther Perel?

  You go out, it calms you, but I still like the call.

• 39:06Lewis Howes?

  Of course, there's assurance.

• 39:08Esther Perel?

  So the fear is loss. And the dread is the manifestation of that fear. So I would sell everything. Actually, I don't know what it's like. I could put it like that. I would sell everything to be able to live without dread.

• 39:24Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 39:25Esther Perel?

  That would probably be the...

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  What would it take from you?

• 39:28Esther Perel?

  I don't know.

• 39:28Lewis Howes?

  To process, to let that go.

• 39:31Esther Perel?

  I look at people who don't have those fears and I think, they are free of this. It's like, what does life look like without worry?

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  Peaceful.

• 39:40Esther Perel?

  You know. They have other things.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, there's stresses.

• 39:44Esther Perel?

  They have other things. It's an amazing thing when I see people who don't have, you know, that is not their thing.

• 39:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Esther Perel?

  I don't have their things.

• 39:53Lewis Howes?

  You don't have jealousy or insecurity, yeah.

• 39:55Esther Perel?

  No, I don't have that.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  Do you work with a therapist yourself?

• 39:58Esther Perel?

  I have. I don't do, I don't work with a therapist at this moment, but I have over the many years of my life, yes.

• 40:05Lewis Howes?

  Do you think it's important for therapists to have therapists?

• 40:08Esther Perel?

  Absolutely, absolutely. You, first of all, if you don't, then you, you will be triggered by things that people bring into your office and you will be projecting things on them that don't belong to them. We call that countertransference. So, you know, there is what people put on you, but there is what you put on them.

• 40:28Lewis Howes?

  Because you have something unresolved.

• 40:29Esther Perel?

  Or there is what you can't work with because of what is happening inside of you.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 40:34Esther Perel?

  So it's an essential.

• 40:35Lewis Howes?

  You've got to be cleansing yourself constantly, probably. Interesting. What do you think, you said you haven't had a therapist in a while or worked with one in a while. Where do you think, what would be...

• 40:44Esther Perel?

  What would I go to for today?

• 40:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, what would you, what would be available for you today if you were doing it?

• 40:49Esther Perel?

  Today, I would go to a coach because I need practical help. It's less internal at this moment.

• 40:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:57Esther Perel?

  It's more, it's more...

• 41:00Esther Perel?

  Practical things.

• 41:01Lewis Howes?

  What's holding you back from?

• 41:03Esther Perel?

  I don't, I maybe, I, I talk, I am a person who likes to receive help.

• 41:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. You just haven't found the right coach.

• 41:10Esther Perel?

  I wrote a whole piece recently about asking for help in the blog. And because I realized that it's very easy for me to ask for help. Actually, when we met early, early on, I asked for help.

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 41:22Esther Perel?

  And I just thought.

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  Like, I've never done this marketing stuff.

• 41:25Esther Perel?

  Yes, like, I know nothing about marketing. You're like the genius marketer. I'm a therapist who suddenly finds that. And I just thought, I know people and they can help me. And I don't feel, like, I have no problem saying I know nothing about this. But I, because I know, I trust what I do know a lot about.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 41:45Esther Perel?

  And this is new for me. So I don't experience it as belittling or admitting or vulnerable or. I think it's an amazing thing to ask for help. I loved, and by the way, I did ask on social. I asked people, you know, how do you feel about asking for help? And like seventy something percent of people said, I don't do it. I don't like it. That doesn't make me feel good, etc. And then I said, and how do you feel when other people ask you for help? And the same seventy percent said, I love it.

• 42:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 42:16Esther Perel?

  And I'm thinking, you know what? It's like when other people ask, you don't think they're stupid. They don't know, they're vulnerable, they're, they're, they're, you know, you think.

• 42:24Lewis Howes?

  You, you wanna help.

• 42:25Esther Perel?

  You wanna help. Well, why don't you think that when you ask for help, other people enjoy that too?

• 42:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:31Esther Perel?

  So I'm big into the asking for help these days. And therapy is a piece of that. At this moment, therapy is not the thing.

• 42:38Lewis Howes?

  That you need one.

• 42:39Esther Perel?

  I need, but that doesn't mean that, you know, Jack thinks I should meditate. And actually.

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  Maybe you need a meditation coach or.

• 42:47Esther Perel?

  So I do, I do, but in movement. I get calm when I move.

• 42:50Lewis Howes?

  What, you're walking or hiking?

• 42:52Esther Perel?

  I don't sit. That does not work for me. And.

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  What's the one thing that triggers you the most that you would like to evolve beyond?

• 43:01Esther Perel?

  What's the thing that?

• 43:04Lewis Howes?

  Irritates you or triggers you or frustrates you?

• 43:06Esther Perel?

  Bureaucrats, rigidity. Rigidity, which is the opposite of playfulness.

• 43:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, not flexibility, yeah.

• 43:15Esther Perel?

  Right, and arbitrariness, rules for the sake of rules.

• 43:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Esther Perel?

  Bureaucracy, you know, in the big sense of the word. And bureaucrats as a whole, you know. That, you know, things that, you know, rigidity, which means that you're right, you don't listen to others, you make your point. I mean, conversations that are not conversations, people that yell at each other for the sake of yelling at each other, cancel culture from all sides.

• 43:48Lewis Howes?

  Frustrating, yeah.

• 43:50Esther Perel?

  Yes, I mean, my work is about helping people have the difficult conversations that they need to have, want to have, don't know how to have. As long as they want to, I can do something.

• 44:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:03Esther Perel?

  If they think they know it all, and if they think they know you even better than you know yourself, and that they have no curiosity, I find that challenging.

• 44:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Esther Perel?

  I love curiosity, I hate... What's the opposite of curiosity?

• 44:19Lewis Howes?

  Fixed, yeah.

• 44:20Esther Perel?

  Yeah, certainty, but certainty is the enemy of change.

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. I want to go one more question each, I want to make sure I'm respectful of time, I think we've got about 10 more minutes.

• 44:29Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Lewis Howes?

  Before I ask the... I think it's mine, I'm gonna pick, before I ask, because I want to pick it, but you just brought something up to me that... I had a conversation with another therapist, Dr. Romany, and she speaks all about narcissism.

• 44:44Esther Perel?

  Yes, she was the keynote speaker at a conference that I went to this year, too.

• 44:48Lewis Howes?

  And this, this video got so much attention that I did with her, this interview, and we don't have to go into it for too long, but you were just mentioning how people have like, that don't want to do the work, right? You mentioned like they're fixed, they're shouting for shouting, they're not willing to look at themselves, and she was mentioning how it's really hard to diagnose a narcissist because they have to be willing to come to therapy, and most of them will never do it unless they're forced to.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  In your practice, do you interact with a lot of narcissists? And she also mentions how it's almost impossible. I don't want to say exact words she said, but I think she said it's almost impossible for a narcissist to change and evolve, unless they do therapy every day type of mentality where they really are practicing this thing on a consistent basis. And I'm sure there's a spectrum of narcissistic personality traits and a range of how strong someone is in that. What's your thoughts on narcissism in general? And can people change or evolve out of it?

• 45:48Esther Perel?

  I can answer it clinically and culturally. I mean, maybe we should start by talking about, like Christopher Lash talked about, we do live in a narcissistic culture.

• 45:57Lewis Howes?

  Selfie culture, the likes.

• 45:58Esther Perel?

  We live in a culture of narcissism. Once you are continuously evaluating yourself, proving yourself, performing, demonstrating yourself, you know, posting about yourself, engaging in fake news about yourself, you are in a narcissistic culture that, you know, criteria, diagnosis, accompany the culture of the day. In the 19th century, we talked about hysteria. We do not talk much about hysteria today because we realized that the majority of these hysterical women, supposedly hysterical women, were actually women who had experienced sexual abuse. They were not hysterical, they were traumatized.

• 46:42Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:44Esther Perel?

  Narcissism is the word that we come back with on the 21st century. Stress and anxiety and depression was the 20th century. So every century and every culture has its expressions through mental illness or mental manifestations, okay?

• 47:05Esther Perel?

  Eating disorders exist in some cultures and not in others. You, you, you know, a diagnosis, a personality disorder doesn't just exist like that without a background. So, that means that it's easy to make these issues very personal, but they are also societal. That said, I have sat with people who have a whole range of narcissistic tendencies. To get to saying somebody is a narcissist, somebody is depressed, somebody is, you know. I think that there are, there's more to us than just that.

• 47:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:40Esther Perel?

  But you see a lot of people with narcissistic tendencies. And you see a lot of people who are not just this exhibiting it with manifest narcissism, but there's a whole other form of narcissism that is called covert narcissism, which we talk about much less because we not name it in those ways.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  What is the difference?

• 47:59Esther Perel?

  That is a long conversation. That is really a long conversation.

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  In the short form, what is the?

• 48:04Esther Perel?

  You know, power can come from above and power can come from underneath. You can have power through victimization. You can make people feel guilty all the time. You can be passive aggressive. You can make people continuously feel that they are responsible for your life, that if they don't do what you want, that you may kill yourself. There's loads of ways to make other people submit themselves to you.

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  And that would be considered covert?

• 48:32Esther Perel?

  Those are expressions of more covert narcissism.

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  It's not like this domineering, but it's a psychological...

• 48:39Esther Perel?

  You can control people from the top and you can control people from underneath. You know, it's, I think that there is a certain profile at this point of when we say narcissist, everybody has five or six associations that are quite similar. And I, this is really a whole other conversation. But, um, what I will say is that, um, yes, I have sat with people who have very little regard. People who bring everything onto themselves. People who see everything as a reflection of themselves. People who are charming, charming when they need to seduce you. And then once they, you, they think they have you, they turn and they have, they go into the next people who they need to charm. But those that they have already recruited are disregarded and discarded.

• 49:25Esther Perel?

  So those...

• 49:26Lewis Howes?

  They got the most out of them already, yeah.

• 49:28Esther Perel?

  You know, people who can lie pathologically to you. People who have very little empathy for what is happening. So... There is a cluster of things, but I think for me, I tend to look at behaviors and I tend to look at interactions because I'm a relational therapist and I'm a systems oriented therapist. And so I less spend my time labeling a personality. I that I I think it's useful on occasion, but it is not my primary vocabulary.

• 50:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Esther Perel?

  Um, but she's very, very eloquent about it.

• 50:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes, we'll have to have you back on to do a whole two hour conversation on that another time. It's a lot to that.

• 50:10Esther Perel?

  It's really, I I do not want to talk about complex topics.

• 50:15Lewis Howes?

  In a short.

• 50:17Esther Perel?

  Because it doesn't do them justice and I don't like to reinforce

• 50:23Esther Perel?

  notions that have not been examined.

• 50:25Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 50:26Esther Perel?

  But that are easy to grab on.

• 50:28Lewis Howes?

  We'll have you back on for that. I'll do one final card and then I think I've got to make sure I'm respecting him the time.

• 50:34Esther Perel?

  But you're gonna touch on me. Yep, what is that?

• 50:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I'm my own worst enemy when?

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting. I.

• 50:44Esther Perel?

  You know what?

• 50:45Lewis Howes?

  Want to give me a different one?

• 50:46Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 50:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 50:47Esther Perel?

  I want to give you this.

• 50:48Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 50:48Esther Perel?

  Because you because of what happened just a few minutes before.

• 50:51Lewis Howes?

  Last time I cried was, I mean, yesterday, you know, in terms of my father just died two months ago. And so I've been crying a lot, you know, every couple of days I hear a song that really connects me to a memory to him and to the whole. It was a sad experience because he happened into a car accident 17 years ago, had a severe brain trauma, was in a coma for three months. Then he woke up, he went to a different country in New Zealand at the time I was in college. Then he came back and it was like my dad was physically here, but emotionally, mentally and spiritually not.

• 51:32Esther Perel?

  Ambiguous loss.

• 51:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 51:34Esther Perel?

  This is it.

• 51:34Lewis Howes?

  I never was able to fully grieve.

• 51:37Esther Perel?

  That's ambiguous loss.

• 51:38Lewis Howes?

  My father, he was physically here, but the emotion.

• 51:41Esther Perel?

  The same person.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  And every interaction I had with him was reminding me of the loss was I'm grateful he's here and it's great to experience some time with him. But every time I go and say hello, he says.

• 51:58Lewis Howes?

  Louis, right?

• 52:00Lewis Howes?

  Didn't you, didn't you used to play? What sport did you play growing up? Where did you go to school again? So he could have a conversation with you and speak conversationally, but it was the same story over and over again. I'm needing to remind my father

• 52:15Esther Perel?

  Seventeen years?

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  For seventeen years of the memory loss that he had. Show him photos of him with me, taking photos of me playing sports. The second half of my life with him was beautiful. He showed up, he transformed, he overcame a lot of the the anger and resentment he had. And I had two different lives with him. When I was thirteen before, I had a, some love, some scary with him. Then after thirteen, it was like this incredible friendship. So it's like I lost my dad, but he was physically here. And every year, there was some type of health scare. He had a couple of strokes, a heart attack, he had multiple surgeries from the accident, just the complications from the accident.

• 53:00Lewis Howes?

  And so every year, I didn't know if he was gonna survive or not. And I was, it was always, is it gonna happen this year? Okay, he's in the hospital now, is he gonna make it? Do I need to be there? In this seventeen year cycle of learning to accept something and doing my best to be okay with it. And, and accepting and loving where it's at. You know, so for me, it was seventeen years of I wouldn't say numbing, but it was acceptance and just like managing it the best I could. And then when he passed in February, a couple of months ago, it was

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  man, just full circle, kind of like going back seventeen years ago and reliving that and then reliving my whole childhood and allowing myself to be to have a full range of emotions. And I think it's beautiful because

• 53:49Esther Perel?

  Do you feel like this time, actually, you can fully grieve?

• 53:52Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I can.

• 53:53Esther Perel?

  Because it's, see, this is ambiguous loss, what you just described. Can't grieve, can't mourn because he's there, but he's not there.

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:00Esther Perel?

  And this one gives it, now you can experience the full range.

• 54:04Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. I didn't feel like I could. And, and I feel like I have a more spiritual connection to him now than in the last seventeen years. You know, every night, I'm connecting with him in my own way, in my little meditation room and You know, throughout every, the days, there are things that come up where I feel the spiritual presence and it's, it's a beautiful, sad, it's beautiful, it's emotional, it's a wide range of emotions. And, you know, there's a lot of sadness I have because I wish it wasn't that way. But I also,

• 54:36Esther Perel?

  Relief.

• 54:37Lewis Howes?

  I have some relief and I'm also doing, doing my best to create meaning from the whole thing. So that it's not just this thing I'm frustrated with constantly, but like, you know what? I probably wouldn't be doing this without that pain and sadness and loss. I want to be a curious, hungry, I wouldn't have been as resourceful if I had him there, so.

• 55:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I've been crying a lot, been crying a lot. And it's been beautiful to have a, a safe environment in my relationship with someone who allows that. Because I think that's hard for some people to allow that, especially for men to be able to express their full range of emotions. And for that, their partner to feel safe with that too. So I feel very grateful. Um, but it's,

• 55:25Esther Perel?

  Absolutely.

• 55:26Lewis Howes?

  It's not, it's not, it hasn't been fun, but it's also been uh, allowing me to have like peace with it.

• 55:34Esther Perel?

  Amazing thing that if you ask people, when's the last time you laughed? Nobody has to justify laughing.

• 55:40Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm, but crying.

• 55:42Esther Perel?

  But crying, people have to justify it. They have to.

• 55:46Lewis Howes?

  Interesting you ask that.

• 55:47Esther Perel?

  I mean, it is the absolute natural emotion to feel in sadness, in grief, in loss. What have men, women, they, them, whoever.

• 55:57Lewis Howes?

  I had a woman on two days ago who, who hasn't cried in years. And I had a man on yesterday who hasn't cried in, I think, ten or twelve years.

• 56:08Lewis Howes?

  And it's interesting, it's like, there's something there, I think, to be able to have the full range.

• 56:12Esther Perel?

  Of course.

• 56:13Lewis Howes?

  I'm not saying you need to cry all day long or something, but allowing yourselves to feel. But um, that's probably for a whole nother conversation.

• 56:19Esther Perel?

  I mean, I would say that it's hard for people. To really fully say yes if you can't fully say no. And it is hard for people to fully laugh if you can't also cry.

• 56:34Esther Perel?

  It's if something is funny, you automatically do this. If something is sad, the fact that you stay like that affectless or that you repress it or that you hold it in or that you don't even notice it or that the thing is coming down your face and you don't even realize. I've had people tear in my office while they say I never cry.

• 56:56Lewis Howes?

  What does that, what does that mean when someone isn't able to fully laugh or fully cry?

• 57:02Esther Perel?

  What would it be like if a person comes into this world and doesn't scream? I mean, if a baby doesn't scream when they come out, you think they're death at birth. What is it like when people make love and make no noise? When it's impossible, I mean, you're a sports person, you know that if you lift something, you make noises.

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  You scream, you grunt here, yeah.

• 57:20Esther Perel?

  The voice is, it's just, what does it mean when this whole thing is closed off?

• 57:26Lewis Howes?

  There's something inside that's missing or dead or trapped?

• 57:29Esther Perel?

  Or trapped?

• 57:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:30Esther Perel?

  Or was shut down or can't come out, but for sure it is a blockage.

• 57:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. We've got another, we've got another session we're gonna have to do because I'm, I'm feeling, I'm feeling the time and I want to be respectful of what you have next after this, but I could talk to you for hours.

• 57:47Lewis Howes?

  This game is a lot of fun. Where should we begin? A Game of Stories by Esther Perel, so make sure you guys get this, get a few for your friends. Have it on your coffee table. Wedding season, graduation, schools, parties, births. All these things are happening now, so this is a way for you to connect. I think this is brilliant because I don't think most people have these type of intimate conversations. This is something that I live by.

• 58:12Esther Perel?

  It's as intimate as you want, by the way. You can stay perfectly light and fun.

• 58:15Lewis Howes?

  You can just do sexual fun talk and you can go deeper and all these different things.

• 58:19Esther Perel?

  Indeed.

• 58:20Lewis Howes?

  So get the game, it's gonna be powerful for you. And I think the world is craving connection and conversations in this way.

• 58:28Esther Perel?

  You know what I was thinking? If people want to have an opportunity to have a conversation like we have, we're casting for housework.

• 58:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 58:38Esther Perel?

  For the work-related podcast. So they're live.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  Where can they go to do that?

• 58:43Esther Perel?

  EstherParel.com/podcast.

• 58:47Lewis Howes?

  Okay. There's a casting on there.

• 58:49Esther Perel?

  There's a casting on there.

• 58:50Lewis Howes?

  What do they get if they're selected?

• 58:52Esther Perel?

  A three-hour session with me, recorded anonymously.

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  So they don't say their names, or yeah?

• 58:58Esther Perel?

  No, all identifiable features are removed, so that it becomes a conversation for all of us, and...

• 59:05Lewis Howes?

  Sacred, yes, still. They get a free session?

• 59:08Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 59:09Lewis Howes?

  That's, you're in high demand. You're like, wait, this is like, three years, so that's a big deal. So if they go to EstherParel.com/podcast, they can apply for that, to see if they can get a session from you.

• 59:20Esther Perel?

  If you want to work on a relationship issue that pretends to work. And the fascinating thing is that it seems that people have a harder time talking about their romantic relationship than about work.

• 59:31Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 59:32Esther Perel?

  That's for when I come back.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  So many topics for the next conversation. Excited. We've got this, we've got narcissism, we've got the trapped emotions of not crying. All these things. They can go to game.estherparel.com to get this game. Where should we begin? I recommend you guys getting it.

• 59:52Lewis Howes?

  Esther Parel, everywhere on social media. Where are you spending the most time these days on social media? Where should they, is it Instagram or? Instagram, okay, cool. So we'll go there. And also your two podcasts. Make sure you guys subscribe, both on Spotify, right?

• 1:00:09Esther Perel?

  Where should we begin?

• 1:00:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes, Where Should We Begin is life-changing. If you want to master your relationships, you're gonna hear so many crazy fascinating stories about people's...

• 1:00:18Esther Perel?

  Maybe you should see, it's Life Couples Therapy.

• 1:00:20Lewis Howes?

  Life Couples Therapy, it's fascinating. You've done how many seasons now? Two, three?

• 1:00:24Esther Perel?

  No, six.

• 1:00:24Lewis Howes?

  Six! I've only heard the first two, so I need to get caught up, okay. So six episodes, six seasons of that, and then you've got Housework, which is all about work dynamics.

• 1:00:33Esther Perel?

  Yep.

• 1:00:34Lewis Howes?

  You've got some fascinating stories there, so I'm very excited about those. Make sure you guys subscribe. Get the book, two books you have.

• 1:00:41Esther Perel?

  Meeting in Captivity. It's the state of affairs.

• 1:00:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes, get those books. We'll link all that stuff up as well. Two final questions for you, that I've asked you before, this is your fourth time on, but I want to see if it's changed after the pandemic.

• 1:00:55Lewis Howes?

  Imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away, but you get to live as long as you want to live. And you've gotten, you've gotten rid of dread in your life, right? So you've got no more dread. But for whatever reason, it's the last day for you, many years away. And you've got to take everything with you that you've created. Or we don't have access to the games, the books, the podcasts anymore for whatever reason. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three truths that you would share. And this is all we would have. What would those three lessons be for you?

• 1:01:26Esther Perel?

  The quality of your relationships is determined. Or I would put it that the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your lives. When people tell me, you've changed my life. When people stop me on the street to talk about the podcast all over the world. And but what they say is, you changed my life. You accompanied me through my relationship, my divorce, my affair. I just feel like I have a reason to be here. It's a tremendous affirmation. It's what I've done for others, what it means for them to have been in conversation with me.

• 1:02:08Esther Perel?

  And this is true for my friends, this is true for my patients or for the people who listen. So what I take with me is the people who would tell me what my presence has meant in their life. And the third one is, I live with three men, my husband and my two sons. And I really, if I go, I want them to take all the love, the joy, the fun, the laughter that we have experienced together and go and experience it with other women. They happen to be into women, so they should all go to other women.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:02:46Esther Perel?

  That, you know, that I will continue to live in them through the relationships that they will have with others.

• 1:02:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's beautiful. I want to acknowledge you Esther for the way you continually show up in this world. Because I think I've known you for like six, seven, eight years. And the conversations we have here and off of the podcast are always so inspiring to me and also to so many people that watch and listen. And you're amazing at what you do and you help so many people. So I really acknowledge you for consistently living a life of service to help people on the thing that is the most important, which is the quality of their relationships. The relationships with others in work, intimacy, and with themselves. So I really appreciate you and acknowledge you for giving us the wisdom and advice we need to help mend these relationships.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  My final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:03:41Esther Perel?

  I would love to hear what a thousand people must have defined this for you. And I'm curious what I answered on other topics about this one.

• 1:03:51Esther Perel?

  I think that I like the sentence from my friend Terry Wheel, who you should have on the podcast.

• 1:03:58Esther Perel?

  And who will talk to you about narcissism and grandiosity in people.

• 1:04:02Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:04:04Esther Perel?

  On the other side of grandiosity, you know, it would be a great conversation to have with you about grandiosity. But greatness is when you can see yourself as a flawed individual and still hold yourself in high regard.

• 1:04:22Lewis Howes?

  I don't think I even shared that before.

• 1:04:23Esther Perel?

  If you know that you are imperfect, you are actually not that great. You're great, but not the greatest. And you can still hold yourself in high regard, then I think you are great.

• 1:04:37Lewis Howes?

  Esther, thank you so much. Appreciate you. Appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.