The Tony Robbins Podcast
Episode: Esther Perel Reveals the Secret to Lasting Love & Passion
Date: February 20, 2025
Host: Tony Robbins
Guest: Esther Perel
Episode Overview
This deeply insightful episode features renowned psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel, joining Tony Robbins for a masterclass in the complexity of modern love, lasting passion, and the paradoxes of commitment. Through a combination of lecture, group exercises, and powerful live coaching, Esther unpacks how expectations for relationships have evolved, the difference between love and desire, the struggles and liberation around sexual freedom, and how repairing trust and healing are possible after betrayal. A vulnerable, participatory workshop, this episode dives into raw, honest conversations between Esther, Tony, and members of the audience, culminating in moving exchanges around shame, forgiveness, and self-acceptance.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
1. The Evolution of Relationships and New Expectations
[02:51 – 16:00]
- For most of history, marriage was about duty, survival, and family—not love or passion.
- Modern relationships ask partners to be everything for each other: best friend, lover, confidant, inspiration, and more.
- As individualism grew, and contraception separated sex from reproduction, expectations of erotic, passionate connection became central to coupledom.
- Esther observes: “We turn to one person to give us once what an entire village used to provide. This is the model today. One person for everything. And for the long haul. And the long haul keeps getting longer.” [04:40]
2. Shifting Definitions of Love, Sex, and Monogamy
[10:00 – 17:30]
- Intimacy has shifted from shared work and obligation to “into-me-see”—connecting at a vulnerable emotional level.
- Desire and happiness are now expected from our primary relationship; monogamy is redefined as emotional and sexual exclusivity for a period, rather than for life.
- The “soulmate” ideal mingles spiritual and relational needs.
Notable Quote:
“Romantic love has become the most powerful engine of the Western psyche. We seek in romantic love transcendence, meaning, belonging, ecstasy—all these things that we used to look for in the realm of the divine. And now it's all one person who has to provide all of that.”
— Esther Perel [08:45]
3. The Paradox of Love and Desire
[16:00 – 25:00]
- Love’s language is “to have,” seeking safety and closeness; desire’s language is “to want,” needing space, risk, and the unknown.
- Seeking both stability and adventure from one partner is the “grand ambition of modern love,” and often creates tension.
Audience Exercise:
Esther prompts, “When I love, I feel ______. When I am loved, I feel ______. When I desire, I feel ______. When I am desired, I feel ______.”
- Participants reflect that love feels warm, safe, accepting; desire feels powerful, exciting, sometimes risky or uncomfortable.
Notable Moment:
“When I felt wanted, I felt invincible. Like a king. Like my true self. Magnificent. Godlike. Like a hero.”
— Coleman, audience member [20:20]
- Esther remarks the absence of “power” in descriptions of love, and the association of love with “warmth” versus desire with “heat.”
“It’s very rare that I hear the word ‘powerful’ in the category of love. If I hear any temperature in love, it’s warm. If I hear temperature in desire, it’s hot.”
— Esther Perel [23:31]
4. Childhood Experience & Erotic Blueprints
[28:00 – 34:00]
- Esther explores how childhood experiences of love inform adult patterns of giving, receiving, and expressing desire.
“If you tell me how you were loved, I will be able to tell you how you make love.”
— Esther Perel [28:59]
-
Buttercup, an audience member, shares: “It’s only through my body that I feel fully alive. Desire takes me on a journey from being viscerally alive in my body to other stratospheres...I’ve not yet experienced the simultaneous love and desire I know is coming.” [30:34]
-
Esther: “Make peace with your container so that you don’t have to leave it in order to feel free, but you can be inside it and also feel free. There is no greater vengeance than to feel free in one's own body—especially when you had to learn to flee it in order to feel safe.” [31:12]
5. The Relationship Verbs – The Grammar of Connection
[34:27 – 41:30]
- Esther introduces seven core relational verbs: To ask, give, receive, share, take, play, and refuse.
- She urges listeners to reflect on which relational verbs are difficult and could use development, both emotionally and sexually.
Notable Quote:
“If you don't know to say fully no on occasion, you may not always know how to say yes either. This is for me, the basic grammar.”
— Esther Perel [34:15]
6. The Role of Energy and the Erotic in Everyday Life
[41:30 – 44:00]
- Passion isn’t just about what you do in the bedroom; it’s about who you are with your partner—bringing the same lively, playful, attentive energy home that you share elsewhere.
Notable Quote:
“Foreplay doesn’t start five minutes before the real thing. Foreplay starts at the end of the previous orgasm.”
— Esther Perel [42:20]
7. Live Coaching: Sexual Shame, Freedom, and Permission
[43:43 – 66:55]
- Kylie, newly single, shares a conflict between sexual liberation and shame rooted in “good girls don’t” scripts.
- The group examines double standards: Women are shamed for sexual freedom; men are shamed for seeking emotional connection.
- Philip and Mark (audience) address the impact of their attitudes and actions on women’s experiences of shame and value.
Mark’s powerful apology:
“To protect myself, I brought every woman down to the broken level that I felt I was. So that I could feel okay. It was never your fault.”
— Mark (audience member) [62:17]
- Esther reframes the conversation, highlighting that sexual freedom for women is not just actions, but the full permission to accept and feel good about their desires.
Memorable Moment:
“The primary definition of sexual freedom for a woman: it’s not to do what she wants—it’s to accept what she wants...experience it with dignity and freedom, without the cheapening or shaming attached to sexual freedom.”
— Esther Perel [67:19]
8. Healing, Forgiveness, and Moving On
[68:50 – 79:12]
- Natalie in the audience voices fear and trauma born from an abusive relationship. Esther identifies two core relationship fears: losing the other, and losing yourself.
- Esther questions the automatic rush to forgiveness: Sometimes, for some, not forgiving (while still moving on) is an act of self-respect and regaining agency.
- Esther’s firm counsel: “For you, if you were to forgive him, it would actually be an act of forgetting yourself...Certain things are not okay. Are we clear on that?” [74:10]
9. Conflict: Forgiveness vs. Empowerment
[86:37 – 90:20]
- Tony challenges Esther’s advice, stressing forgiveness as a tool for liberation and warning against empowerment via victimhood or rage.
“You can forgive so you can be free. You don’t forgive to be a good person...You don’t have to be a victim to be empowered. And you don’t have to live in rage to be empowered.”
— Tony Robbins [87:02]
- Esther clarifies: her advice not to forgive was meant specifically for Natalie in her context, not as a universal message.
“If you try to just make yourself be good, you’re going to stay in touch with the fear...You don’t have to stay angry. I talk to one person—I’m not making this a principle.”
— Esther Perel [89:08]
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps
- On modern expectations of marriage:
“We turn to one person to give us once what an entire village used to provide.” — Esther Perel [04:40] - On the power of romantic love:
“Romantic love has become the most powerful engine of the Western psyche. We seek in romantic love transcendence, meaning, belonging, ecstasy.” — Esther Perel [08:45] - Difference between love and desire:
“When I felt wanted, I felt invincible. Like a king.” — Coleman (audience) [20:20]
“It’s very rare that I hear the word ‘powerful’ in the category of love.” — Esther Perel [23:31] - Sexual freedom for women:
“It’s not to do what she wants—it’s to accept what she wants...experience it with dignity and freedom, without the cheapening or shaming.” — Esther Perel [67:19] - On forgiveness and boundaries:
“For you, if you were to forgive him, it would actually be an act of forgetting yourself.” — Esther Perel [73:41] - Tony’s perspective on forgiveness:
“You can forgive so you can be free. You don't forgive to be a good person.” — Tony Robbins [87:02]
Important Timestamps
- [02:51] Esther begins discussion on the history/evolution of relationships.
- [19:14–25:14] Audience exercise and reflections on love vs. desire.
- [34:27] The Seven Verbs of Relationship.
- [41:30] Energy and the erotic in everyday life.
- [43:43–66:55] Coaching on shame, sexual autonomy; live audience conversations.
- [68:50–79:12] Live healing conversation about trauma, forgiveness, and fears of love.
- [86:37–90:20] Debate between Esther and Tony on forgiveness, empowerment, and the risk of misinterpretation.
Summary Takeaways
- Modern relationships carry enormous expectations for emotional intimacy and erotic passion, often with contradictory needs (stability & novelty; closeness & desire).
- Love and desire inhabit different emotional and physical spaces—nurturing both takes conscious effort, permission, and vulnerability.
- Childhood experiences shape adult expressions and needs in love and sex.
- The journey to sexual freedom, especially for women, is as much about internal permission and acceptance as it is about external action.
- Healing after betrayal, abuse, or shame requires not only self-affirmation, but sometimes boundary setting rather than immediate forgiveness.
- Open dialogue between partners (and between genders) is crucial to dismantle shame, double standards, and disconnection.
- Empowerment, healing, and freedom in love are personal, complex, and non-prescriptive—both Esther and Tony advocate for awareness, intentionality, and self-respect.
Closing Thoughts
Esther Perel and Tony Robbins together offer a brilliant, nuanced exploration of the intricacies of lasting passion and love, punctuated by real-world struggles and breakthroughs from the audience. The conversation is raw, challenging, and ultimately hopeful, reminding listeners that extraordinary relationships are possible with self-awareness, honest dialogue, and a willingness to rewrite inherited scripts around love, sex, and forgiveness.