Notable Moment: Love Expert Reveals Why 80% Of Modern Relationships Fail

We give our best energy to work, but what about our relationships? In this moment, Esther Perel reveals how small moments of disconnection—like looking at your phone instead of your partner—can erode intimacy over time. Discover how to bring attention, creativity, and presence back into your relationships before it’s too late. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link//qmlJPkdxXQb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link//TgMnzfgxXQb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  Our relationships, you know, I think we all, certainly I think I have for much of my life, and I say that because I look at my actions. So what I might say is different to how I think I've behaved over the last, I don't know, 10, 10, 15 years. We see them as kind of an afterthought to everything else in many regards. So the amount of effort I put into my businesses and to the podcast and to every little detail, the creativity, the thought, the brainstorming, all of that, relationships, we kind of all just think they're just, they just happen. And if it doesn't happen perfectly, then it's broken and I need to find a new one.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a terrible way to think. I mean, and everybody knows it. If you give the best of yourself at work, if you bring the leftovers home, if when you come home, you say, I've given everything I had now, I'm just putting my feet on the table. I just need to chill. I don't want to make any effort, you know, slowly your relationship degrades, period. And then there's all kinds of ways it ends. None of them are particularly joyful. And basically, if people were able to put a little bit of creativity, attention, attention into their relationships, as they do with their customers or their guests,

• 1:22Speaker 01

  relationships would be doing a lot better and my profession would be seeing a lot less people. I mean, there's no doubt. And why are people so lazy, so complacent, so unimaginative with their relationships at home? I mean, I see so many people, when you, like here, you know, you're not taking out your phone, you're not, you're looking at me, you're paying attention on occasion, you look for your questions and where we go, but basically, you're, you're with me. But at home, you're, if you do this, or this.

• 1:56Steven Bartlett?

  Looking at my phone.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  You know, and, and then when the person tells you something really important, you go, uh huh. Uh huh, you know, and you're kind of there but not present. And that's the beginning of a kind of modern loneliness, actually. Is that this idea that you can share something really important to someone who is half there, half there. And I think that that's what's happening with a lot of younger people these days, is that they experience a lot of half there-ness. And that begins to cultivate a real sense of loneliness. That is to do not with I'm physically alone, that has to do with do I matter? Who hears me? Who cares? Who pays attention? Who notices? You know?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  So I, I, I, sometimes the advice is very banal, you know? It's to tell people, put your freaking phone down. Take an hour and put your phone down.

• 2:54Steven Bartlett?

  But I'm busy.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 2:56Steven Bartlett?

  But I'm busy.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Well, that you will be busy and there won't be a relationship. Sooner or later, there won't be a relationship. It's not difficult. You can wait, you can wait for the kids to grow up, if there are kids involved, things like that. But in the end, it, it, there isn't.

• 3:13Steven Bartlett?

  Just because someone was on their phone?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Well, it's not just the on the phone. It's on the phone means I am continuously saying something is more important than you. We come last. We're a cactus. We don't need to be watered. We can survive in a desert. It's called, there's a term I've been using for this, that is, I borrow from something else. It's called ambiguous loss. Have you ever heard of this term?

• 3:40Steven Bartlett?

  Ambiguous loss?

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Ambiguous loss is a term that was developed by a colleague, Pauline Boss, a wonderful psychologist. When she talked about what happens when you have some apparent, for example, that has Alzheimer.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  They are physically present, but they are psychologically gone. They're emotionally absent. And you can't really mourn them because they're still physically there. But you're caught in this in-between, in this ambiguous loss. On the other side, you can have somebody who is deployed, hostage, miscarriage. They are emotionally very present, but they are physically absent. In both cases, it's an ambiguous loss. You can't, are they still there or are they gone? Who knows? When we live with this phone thing, when we are, because you've been at work, you've been at the computer.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  You come home, you think, ah, I'm so happy to finally let go of the computer. You turn on the TV, you turn on the TV and then you turn on the phone at the same time. You're watching here, you're watching there, there's a person next to you. And most likely, they often do the same thing in the end too. And gradually, you know, there is less and less of a thread, of conversation, of connection, of joy, of sex, of intimacy, all of what, you know. That becomes ambiguous loss. Somebody is there, but they're not really present. I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, is there a difference between me and the sofa?

• 5:17Speaker 01

  It's comfy, it's routine, you sit on me. But comfy and routine does do not give us joy or meaning or relevance or connection. And that's what we still seem to want. So it means saying to people, you know, it's actually not very, very complicated. What did people do for centuries? They took walks. That's one of the few times you can't click. So take a walk, don't sit, don't try to do, you know, take a walk around the block and just be in motion, then you're parallel, you know, it's not face to face, it's side by side. And you, then you can talk about the day.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  If you, instead of just saying, stop, stop, stop, you just said, you know, let's go for a walk. It's London, but still, you can, you can, you know, and you do half an hour walk. It will.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  You'll come back to me and you tell me what it will do. But it's amazing how these small interventions that are playful, creative, not digging, change the dynamic of the relationship. Because she is only pursuing you.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  In part because of how much you are withdrawing.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  You change, she change. If you want to change the other, change yourself.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Once you understood the figure eight and how we create the other, you understand that if you do something else, sooner or later, they do something else too. So if you want to change the other, change you.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  This is part of the question you asked me, right? What are some of the essentials understandings of working with relational systems? This is true at work, in companies, this is true in intimate relationships. This is not just for romantic love. This is foundations of relational systems. Feedback loop, it's called in cybernetics.

• 7:19Steven Bartlett?

  So many busy couples can feel the spark in their relationship waning away slowly, but work isn't necessarily the first place you look. Like pulling out the phone at dinner isn't necessarily the place people look because that seems so small. So they aim at bigger things. They'll say, I don't know, something bigger. But do you believe, are you saying that you believe a lot of it, much of it often starts with those small moments of disconnection where the person basically ends up becoming the sofa?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  The Gottmans call them bids for connection.

• 7:52Steven Bartlett?

  Bids for connection.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  You know, it's the little things. It's the difference between turning towards someone or turning away. You know, when you read something, there's a classic example they give. Do you read something? Do you actually say, hey, did you read this? Let me send you this article. That's a bid for connection. It's not a big declaration, but it says, we're in this together. When I see something that's interesting that I think you would like to read as well, I share it. I'm thinking of you. I know you exist even if I'm not with you.

• 8:25Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know what my partner said to me something about a year ago? And we stayed with me because I thought that's such a strange thing to say. She said to me, when we were in conflict resolution, so we were talking about things. She said, you know, when I send you things on Instagram, in Instagram DMs, like I'll be out here now in New York. So she'll, she'll, if she sees something interesting on Instagram, she sends it to me. She goes, you've stopped acknowledging it. I used to just like double tap on it or make a comment back. She goes, you've stopped, you stopped acknowledging it. And I thought, why does that matter? Why does it like, you send me something, I watch the funny video, I crack on with my day.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Because it's like when you receive a birthday gift, do you think?

• 9:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  When you buy a birthday gift, is it important to give it?

• 9:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Okay, that's reason.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  I mean,

• 9:16Speaker 01

  how would she know that you watched it if there is no acknowledgement? And the acknowledgement is not about the video or the DM. The acknowledgement is we share something.

• 9:27Steven Bartlett?

  Well, it's even worse because it says seen on Instagram. So it says that I've seen it.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yes, but I, but, but the seen it means that I have seen the video. The acknowledgement is we are in, we are part of a thread. We're connected. She's absolutely right. So in that sense, when people lose the spark, it is a lot of these small details that people say so much in the beginning. You know, all the positive stuff that people use and it's, it's actually only more important with time rather than less important with time. The, the death of a relationship is when people take each other for granted. And when you stop acknowledging those things, it is part of the mechanisms of taking for granted.