← We Can Do Hard Things
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- [00:00]
Glennon Doyle
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. So today we are going to share with you an episode that we did with Esther Perel. The reason that we are sharing this episode right now is that we have been hearing from many people, from our friends, from family, from ourselves, that the chaos and pain and stress of living in the world we are living in right now is permeating into our relationships. Of course it is. When we watch and listen and hear and participate in what's going on in
- [00:38]
Abby Wambach
the world, our bodies have responses and
- [00:41]
Glennon Doyle
unprocessed, of course, all of that stress and anxiety comes out within our closest relationships, which is painful because that's the last place we want to be. Creating more disconnection, right? We've never needed the people we love to be close more, and it's never been harder to feel safe enough to let people close. So we thought today might be a good day to revisit this conversation with Esther Perel where we discussed how to be in a time and a place where we are shaken by fear and anger and uncertainty and still hold our relationships close. My favorite poet of all time, Andrea Gibson, would talk a lot about how to be in hard times and still say, stay soft. How do we love through pain and not make the pain worse by isolating ourselves? All right, let's try to learn that. Here we go.
- [01:53]
Abby Wambach
Okay, everybody, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I have big hopes for today's episode. So listen, Pod Squad. We have been listening to every voicemail you leave us, and one of your most repeated themes is this. At this point in this unbelievable endless abyss of COVID and delta and world shaking, politics and fear and anger and numbness and stuckness, our relationships are suffering. If you are struggling in your marriage or parenting or extended family or work relationships, I just wish that I could play you the voicemails so you could understand how very not alone you are. As I listened this weekend, I kept thinking of that old poem by Baba Fareed that pretty much sums up all my work. And it goes like this. I thought I was alone who suffered. I went on top of the house and found every house on fire. Today we're going to introduce you to a special person who knows a hell of a lot about houses on fire. Abby and I met her years ago. We sat on a stage with her and she helped us understand that perhaps our fights, the ones about food and money and cabinets and toothbrushes, were not at all about food and money and cabinets and toothbrushes, but they were about control and power. And I Found that very annoying at the time, to tell you the damn truth. But it also led me to years of thinking about how when I control Abby, I am not loving her. Because love requires trust and we only control things we don't trust. I will tell you that Abby and I haven't really stopped trying to control each other yet. But now when we do it, we are aware we're doing it and we call that progress. So our guest and Abby and I met again years later at a week long conference. And we spent dinners and long plane ride together and we talked about life and love and her marriage and our relationship and all of our relationships and everything she said rang so true and deep. And so one night in bed recently, I thought. Esther Perel, Esther Perel is a gift I'd like to offer. My gorgeous, vulnerable, perfect house is on fire. Pod squad today. Esther Perel is a psychotherapist and a New York Times bestselling author. And she is recognized as one of today's most insightful and original voices on modern relationships. She is fluent in nine languages, she helms a therapy practice in New York City, and she serves as an organizational consultant for Fortune 500 companies around the world. Her celebrated TED talks, which I hope you've seen, have garnered more than 30 million views. And her best selling book, Mating in Captivity and State of Affairs, both of which rocked my worlds, are global phenomena translated into nearly 30 languages. It's funny that she could probably almost speak all of those languages. Esther Perel is also an executive producer and host of the popular podcast which Abby and I listen to religiously. Where should We Begin and how's work? And what I'm most excited about these days is her latest project. It's called Where Should We Begin? It's a game of stories. Okay, now listen, y', all, here's. You know that Abby and I for years have been obsessed with the questions, the questions we ask each other at dinner to really get to know each other better and use those family times as not just small talk, but times to kind of have a treasure hunt with each other. This game at Esther Perel is how we've been doing this lately in our family. Okay? It is so good. And Abby, do you remember the first time we played this game, Where Should We Begin? With my mom and the kids and freaking. My mom told a story that I had never heard before. All of us ended up just in awe of each other and crying and it was like an unbelievably special moment. So anyway, this game is helpful, very helpful. Now, because I have controlled this entire episode thus far, we would like to actually meet our guest, our friend. We are so excited. Esther Perel, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things.
- [06:41]
Esther Perel
Thank you so much. And when listening to you and seeing a movie in front of me of you playing of us the first time on the stage, of sitting on the plane, it's really. It's like you told a beautiful story. A game of stories. Thank you.
- [06:57]
Abby Wambach
Well, before we jump into talking about relationships in general and how we can make it through this time without losing ourselves or our minds or our people, we know you listened to our fighting well episode that we did earlier, and you know us personally. So what we want to know to start off is, are Abby and I a normal couple? And which one of us is right in general? And why is it me?
- [07:29]
Esther Perel
I could start by saying a pucks on both your houses. That's right.
- [07:35]
Abby Wambach
Okay, that's fair.
- [07:36]
Esther Perel
I could start by saying, you're both right. In your own little world, you're both right. But it isn't difficult to be right. It's just that you will be right. And alone. Being right is never difficult. It's how are you right without losing the other in the process of the conversation? But you are absolutely a normal couple. It could be me. I'm no different either. Let's not think that because a person studies relationships and works as a therapist and that that precludes us, the professionals, of struggling with some of the same things. So it's all of the above. And I really love the fact that I told you the first time that your toothbrush and your closets and all of that wasn't really the issue, because I would say the same thing today. It isn't about food or talking or absentmindedness. What I really wanted to hear that I didn't hear on the podcast was talk to me about the conversation about fighting. The fighting about how you fight. That is really the more interesting part. You don't fight about different things. Every fight you fight is about the same thing in a different language.
- [08:52]
Amanda
I think the way we fight helps us kind of get to the root. And the truthy truth is what Glennon and I say of what we're really fighting about faster. And we appreciate you listening to that podcast. And I also appreciate you telling us that we're both right and being right and alone. Glennon, that doesn't sound fun.
- [09:14]
Abby Wambach
No, I'm just. I need to figure out that part. I do tend to go to. Right. And what we did discover in the other podcast that we did is that some of that has to do with feeling like I want to be understood and I want to be right so I can prove I'm not crazy. And so when you. When we get to the point where you're. Where you say, okay, you're right, what I hear is, okay, you're not crazy. And that is kind of what all of our fights are about. Am I crazy? And then you're always asking me, are you going to leave me? Yeah, that's the constant back and forth.
- [09:56]
Amanda
Well, and I think we could go on for days about us. Truly, I think we could, but.
- [10:02]
Abby Wambach
And we do.
- [10:03]
Amanda
And we also do. But I actually have a more specific question for you, Esther. I know that Covid and what we've all been through for the last 18 months. People are suffering, and a lot of people are suffering most in their primary romantic relationships. And also those who don't have primary romantic relationships. People are reevaluating kind of the boundaries of their lives. And there's so much that has gone on, I think, that we have to figure out. And maybe you can help us figure out if our relationships are screwed up or are just we internally screwed up from all of the trauma of the past 18 months. Can you help us figure that out?
- [10:51]
Esther Perel
Yes. But, Abby, I will start by saying there is no screwed up here. I think that to pathologize it or to personalize the problems or to privatize the conflicts and say, it's you, it's the people, it's, you know, we are living in a time of a global crisis. It can be the pandemic, but it also is climate change as a whole. It's the reckoning politically, economically, racially, that's taking place all over the world. And disasters or crises always function as accelerators, especially relationship accelerators. So you begin to think life is short, everything can stop at any moment, and what am I waiting for? Becomes a part of that awareness of mortality, of fragility. What am I waiting for? Can be, let's move in together, let's have a child, let's go ahead. Or it can be, I've waited long enough, I'm out of here. Same in relation to work. What am I waiting for? What do I really want to do? Why am I doing this? What's the purpose of this? Where is this taking me? Is this really where I want to be? Or what is happening to the sharpening of my priorities? It's my priorities that get revisited because it's an existential crisis as well, you know, what matters? What gives hope? How do I weather my anxiety? What does it mean to live in a state of prolonged uncertainty? How do I become decisive? And how do I cultivate certainty when everything around me is lingering uncertainty? Things like that, and that's what people are experiencing. They're not working from home, they're working with home. They're experiencing all their roles collapse in one place without any sense of spatiality anymore. You know, you don't go to these places for these activities where you change clothes, where you take on different parts of you, and your brain knows, I left the office. I'm going home. You know, as therapists, I was discussing it with a group of colleagues this week that I'm talking training. Here we are, many of us, working in our bedrooms, listening the entire day to stories of suffering and pain. What happens, do you think, to that bedroom? Oh, my God, you know, who goes where at night? Afterwards, you know, what other space can you enter? So it's that that has really been tapping us. And because there is such a talk about the normal, the new normal, the return, the reopening, the re. When you don't just, like, go with the program immediately, you think there's something wrong with you rather than what you're feeling is a normal response and adaptation to what's happening, you know, it's hard. I just titled my annual conference that I do every year for, and I called it like this, the Great Adaptation. How Therapists and Coaches Can Stay Grounded when the Ground Is Moving. But I Could Save People. How do we stay grounded when the ground is moving? The fact that we are not grounded is not because there's something problematic with us only.
- [14:10]
Amanda
Well, okay, I think that that's been good. This podcast is working. I'm excited. I mean, come on, that was like the best damn answer we've had ever.
- [14:20]
Abby Wambach
I like the reframing of the. It's just an accelerator that feels like a positive, you know? And it doesn't mean the acceleration is always going to feel like a positive thing. But that's what's happening to us. Yes, everything's sped up.
- [14:41]
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- [15:40]
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- [15:58]
Esther Perel
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- [16:00]
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- [16:27]
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- [16:29]
Sponsor Voice 2
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- [16:37]
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- [17:44]
Abby Wambach
What are people suffering with right now? Do you see Esther? Like really the nitty gritty of, you know, marriages or parents. You hear people's stories, real life stories, what are.
- [17:55]
Esther Perel
All the time. But like you, you know, I read some. I think we get sometimes similar things sent to us with a different question. Maybe. But here's the thing. What are people experiencing? You know, we can go down a whole group of people, right? People who just met are experiencing an acceleration of the stages of their relationships. Because, you know, why not move in together and then let's see what happens, which would normally take many, many more months. People who have just been together and are wondering, you know, should we have a child? What does it mean to have a child in a world like this? You know, does the child. Do you need to feel hopeful about the world to want to have a kid? Or is it the kid that keeps you hopeful? Because, you know, what does it mean when I say you can't have one person for everything? You can't have one person be your entire village, but here you are on lockdown with one person basically being your entire village. And where is your support system? And who are the people who are able to create pods and to stay connected, use all the devices to have a cohesive force around them? And who are the ones who really realize, I'm all alone here. There is nobody. If something happens to me tonight, I don't have anyone to call. And then you have the people who suddenly find themselves going back home after not leaving home for 10 years for good reasons. And suddenly they have to be in that home again for good reasons. But that's not really where they want to be. And they have to take care of people who were not always such good caretakers of them. And then you have the people who haven't had sex in months, you know, because I'm the whole day with you. I hear you. You. I'm even hearing you at work the whole day. I'm tapped out with responsibilities. I have little kids. I have to be a mother and a teacher and a yoga instructor and a sister and a friend and a partner and an erotic lover. And all of this just seamlessly flowing in from one another, and I can't do it. And what are people struggling with? They're feeling anxious. They feel stress. They struggle with hopefulness or hopelessness. There is proliferation of violence and aggression in the home. There is proliferation of addiction. There is women dropping out of the workplace so that they can do all what they need to do. And in the midst of this, there is people saying, I reconnected with my children, that I had not seen them Nearly as much. For so many years, I was always on the road and I got to really be with my kids and my family. I got to be with my partner. And, you know, when the thing got tough and when my mother got sick and when, you know, I was able to really count on my partner and I actually, my partner came through in a way that I didn't expect. And here is the person I just saw. A dear friend of mine who lost her two parents to Covid on the same day. And you know, it was really a test of what? Where can friends and community be there for you? And where will you always be on some level with your own grief? You know, there is just a place where no one enters anymore, but there is a lot of places where one can be there for you. So everyone is kind of doing a little checklist of who's there for me, who do I matter to? Who would notice if I'm not around, who have I been able to be helpful to? Who are these serendipitous people, neighbors that I never knew existed that I suddenly found myself taking care of. It's the story of humanity, you know, the challenges and the hardships and these little bulbs of light, you know, that shine, where people really were able to be there for each other in unique ways. It's all of that.
- [21:52]
Abby Wambach
Sister, ask your question that you had. I'm dying to hear this one.
- [21:58]
Sister
So, Esther, I know that both of your parents are the sole survivors of their families and each spent five years in a concentration camp. And that early you were kind of fascinated with questions like, what makes someone want to stay alive? What does it mean to be alive? And when I heard you talking about that, I. It got me thinking very deeply, like, what does it mean for a relationship to be alive? You know, I'm not talking about effectively co parenting and living amicably and operating as a unit, but like, to really be alive, how do we. How do we tell that a relationship isn't one that's surviving but actually being alive?
- [22:47]
Esther Perel
Beautiful question. I would say that my entire book, Mating in Captivity, is really about that question where I began to understand the difference of what does it mean to explore the erotic, but erotic in the mystical sense of the word. Aliveness, vibrancy, vitality, energy, life force. The difference between not being dead and being alive. And it came in the book, and that's part of why it connects to my parents, because I noticed that I was coming from a community that was all Holocaust survivors. So many, many people were the sole survivors. It's not just my parents, but in the community. I saw that there were people who didn't die and there were other people who came back to life. The people who didn't die often lived very tethered to the ground. They didn't trust anybody. The world was a dangerous place. And especially they couldn't enjoy or experience much pleasure. Because when you experience pleasure, you're not vigilant, you're not on alert, you're not watching for threat and danger. You have to be able to be unselfconscious and to let go. And that they couldn't do anymore. Trauma was too intense for them to do that. And the people who came back to life, the world was not much safer for them than the others. But in some way, they experienced the erotic as an antidote to death. They remained curious. They wanted to travel, they wanted to explore. They were creative. They used those expressions of life force to fend off the reality of death, of loss of grief, et cetera. And I think the same thing is true in a couple. What you described about the co parenting and the efficiency and the management Inc. That is very important, but that addresses the side of our needs that is about safety and stability and security. But we also have a need for discovery, for growth, for novelty, for freedom, for adventure, for mystery, all of that. The thing that makes you feel like whatever is happening today could be different tomorrow because there is still things that there's still a reason to stay alive for. Things may still happen. If everything has already happened, on what basis do we stay hopeful? And that energy, curiosity. To stay interested in your partner and in yourself, in their presence, to remain playful with each other, to take risks together, to explore things together that is not about being efficient or getting things done. That's a whole different dimension. I'd call it the erotic dimension in the relationship. But it is the thing that makes people feel alive, present, focused, joyful, that peace. And that's the difference. And it's very active. It's very daily. You know, you were saying before Glennon that, you know, the opposite of control is trust. But it's interesting. Trust is actually a leap of faith. You know, it's an active engagement with the unknown. Since Rachel Botsman. And the question about trust that is always so interesting is do you need to trust in order to take risks, or is it the act of taking risks that actually leads you to trust? Mm.
- [26:25]
Abby Wambach
Mm. Oh, how do. When I hear you talk about those people who went through such trauma and were unable to come back to life, there's so many people who deal with trauma. How. What has you. Have you seen that actually those people who have experienced trauma in different ways can do to bridge that gap, to be able to come back to life, whether it's in a relationship or in their own personal lives. How do people who have been through trauma get to live?
- [27:01]
Esther Perel
I think the most important, I mean, there's lots of different ways to answer this, but one of the most important responses, curative factors is connection with others, others who went through the same things or others who. Who care about it. Trauma is a severing of the connection of the social thread. Trauma leaves you isolated. Trauma leaves you feeling that it's only happened to you, that you're alone, or trauma leaves you feeling ashamed. And when you feel ashamed, you want to hide because what's wrong with me? So any of the forms of which people come together and they come together to sing, to wail, to read, to pray, to light candles, to hold vigil, to tell stories, to listen to each other, to relate. All of that, I think fundamentally is probably the most important thing. It's very different from what we do actually in therapy. It's people with whom you don't have to tell all the stories because they kind of know because they went through the same. And then you can actually just cook together or eat together or be quiet together. But fundamentally what brings us back from trauma is the reconnecting with others in a meaningful way. That includes this is back to Amanda's question, what Viktor Frankl so beautifully called tragic optimism. I went through all of this, but it wasn't for nothing. I did something with it. It gave me the energy, like, what is it about people who forge ahead against adversity? It's like, I didn't suffer for nothing. I'm going to do something with this. I'm going to make it so that it doesn't happen to somebody else or I'm going to, you know, I. It becomes a raison d'. Etre. It becomes a cause that pushes me rather than the thing that crushes me.
- [28:59]
Abby Wambach
I think that's so beautiful because we tend to. I know with my own stuff, we tend to think that the way to get through trauma is to just continuously go back to it and keep mining it and keep telling and. But what you're saying is there's an element of moving towards what is warm and joyful in other people that is also a way of addressing that trauma that's not always going back to the. Well, of that.
- [29:25]
Esther Perel
Well said. That's it. Because if you just go through it, if you just deal with the trauma the whole time, it's like you can take off the cast, but that doesn't mean that you have learned how to reuse your arm, let alone enjoy it. So a piece of the trauma work is the actual. You know, how your reaction to events. Trauma is not an event. Trauma is how we react to certain things that happen to us. But the other part that is often not as included that I highly. That I do emphasize from the work and from the observations that Amanda was asking about is the reconnecting with. I use the word pleasure, but in the broad sense pleasure. Because when you to experience pleasure, you need to experience self worth, deserving. I deserve to feel good. I deserve to eat something that I enjoy or to wear something that I enjoy, or to be touched in a way that feels really nice and not creepy and hurtful. I deserve. So when you think pleasure, you think fluffy. Fluffy. But in fact, pleasure, joy, being fed, being seen, being cared for, they come on the heels of feeling desirable, lovable, attractive, wanted, deserving, self worth. That whole group, when you just go back to the trauma all the time, you don't give yourself experiences of worthiness. But if somebody holds your hand, gentle, tender, without asking for anything because they want to give to you, not because they want to take from you, the actual experience of that hand will do way more for you than whatever talking about the trauma that you're going to be doing.
- [31:19]
Abby Wambach
Esther, what would you say to people who have listened to this part and feel that their relationship has lost its aliveness? And they are. We know from your work that desire requires some distance from each other, and that's one of the reasons why we're having such a lack of desire across the board, is because that requires some mystery and distance, and we have none of that. So there is some deadness in relationships. But what would you say to a person who's listening, who would like to add some aliveness to their relationship, but is still stuck in Covid what's something they can do?
- [31:59]
Esther Perel
A lot. So many things. So if I ask you, all three of you, I turn myself off when or I turn myself off by which is not the same as what turns me off is. Or you turn me off. My partner turns me off when. What would you say? I turn myself off when.
- [32:25]
Abby Wambach
When I'm not showered, when I eat too much sugar and carbs, when I have a million things to do on my to do list, when the kids are everywhere? I guess that's not. That's There, that's not me.
- [32:44]
Esther Perel
Or when I'm busy thinking of them being.
- [32:47]
Abby Wambach
When I'm thinking of them. Yeah. When I'm thinking about the world or work or.
- [32:55]
Esther Perel
So when I don't take care of myself, when I feel that I neglect my own, when I'm busy in caretaking mode and in responsibility mode, when I feel not attractive because of my own behaviors. You know what's fascinating is that all of these are not specifically related to sexuality or to desire, but they are related to numbing, to shutting down. At this moment, it's a very important piece because your partner could be doing all kinds of things but you won't respond because you are in that. No, no, I don't deserve. No, I don't feel good enough about myself. No, my critical voice is there. No, I'm too worried about others. No, I can't check out and just pay attention to myself. I won't even notice if you touch me. Or at best, I'll notice that it bothers me. Same thing is in reverse. If I ask what I turn myself on when or I awaken myself when you're going to tell me when I take care of myself, when I go and spend time with friends, when I go dancing, when I listen to music, when I sing in the shower, when I pamper myself, when I'm in touch with my aliveness and with my inner beauty, so to speak. So the first thing at this moment is to ask people, how are you feeling vis a vis your own desire inside of you? And if you are feeling flat, what are the things that make you feel alive and energized and radiant? And if you tell me it's listening to music or it's dancing on my porch or it's playing my guitar or it's going for walk, then my next question will be when it's the next. The last time you did this. Because if you don't have any of that receptive energy inside of you, the relationship can't. You know it. There needs to be a full tank or at least a half tank inside. So that's the first thing for yourselves. Find the things that energize you, that give you pleasure, whatever the sources of them are. But the next thing is write a note to your partner and just say, see you tonight, eight o', clock, we'll be going out for a special dinner, even if it's in your kitchen. Step outside of the restrictive reality in which you are. Freedom in confinement comes from our imagination. Kids do this all the time. They know it they play and they step out of their world and they enter another world. And for a while, they are whatever character they want to be. You know, we, too, have that ability, by the way, people who have talked about being in confinement in camps or in prisons have written about that forever. The mind is what gave them the freedom to step out of the dull, of the monotony, of the. You know. So play with your partner, and if you're worried about being weird and ridiculous, you say, this is an unusual note that doesn't come from me. It comes from, you know. And invent another name, you know. She decided to join you this evening because your wife decided to leave for the night. Build it in. Or your girlfriend, or whichever partner you are. Right, but the idea is, of course, it's awkward. It's not the usual thing. Then play with the fact that it's not the usual thing. I decided to tell Maria to leave for the evening, and I invited Yvette to come in instead. So this evening you're going to meet Yvette. And, you know, now you don't have to do anything. It doesn't need to lead to anything. It just needs to lead to that laughter that you and I just have right now. The smile, this notion that, oh, my God, we don't just have to be, like, succumb to this heaviness, to this deadness, this flatness we can breathe, infuse, energy, imagination. From there, you go wherever you want to go. I had a woman who did the most amazing, beautiful one. She left a note to her husband, and she said, this is after she tells me, I just don't want him to touch me. I mean, decades of this. And then she says, I left him a note. I said, I want you to take the initiative one time, but I don't want you to do anything. This is not about, you know, having sex, et cetera, et cetera. Certainly not in the hetero notion that you have. Just, I want you to take an initiative. So she comes home, she leaves a note after the dishes, and she says, this evening, we will be meeting at a party. We will be meeting each other for the first time. We will have an absolutely wonderful time, and we will each live on our own. And so he goes and does the dishes. She goes upstairs, she gets dressed as if she's going to a dinner party. She comes downstairs and they speak for the entire evening. And throughout the evening, since she's meeting him for the first time, she's telling him, you know, I'm married and I'm Married to a man who sometimes I just can't stand when he does this and that. And she basically tells him. And at other times, I actually find him absolutely delightful in those situations. But I have been feeling this way with him. And she's talking to this stranger, the husband, about the husband, and two hours later, she says, well, I think I'm gonna go home now. Do you care to accompany me to the door? And then she goes to her own separate bedroom and transformed. I thought, man, I could never give this kind of assignment. I just gave her one thing. But she went with it. And she, you know, it was beautiful. It's that idea of how you ignite.
- [38:39]
Abby Wambach
Yes, ignite. And what you're saying. You said something really quick in there that I noted, and I wanted to get back to you. You said this pleasure. Not in the heteronormative sense. Because when you're talking, I'm thinking, this feels like what Abby and I, and in our, you know, lesbian friend world, it's activating a part of us that doesn't have to be it. Sex as something wider, something bigger.
- [39:01]
Esther Perel
Absolutely.
- [39:02]
Abby Wambach
It doesn't have to be mandatory, leading to that thing. It's tapping into this place where, if we're having any joy together, any playfulness, art museums, reading a poem together, it's just this place that we go to that is sex. Even when it's not sex. And it's better when we haven't decided it mandatorily has to lead to sex.
- [39:19]
Esther Perel
Correct. So I call it. It's erotic. It doesn't have to be sex. You can have sex and feel absolutely nothing.
- [39:26]
Abby Wambach
Yes, ma', am, you can. For decades.
- [39:28]
Esther Perel
Not for decades. Exactly. So, you know, women have done that for centuries. So we're not talking about doing anything. We're talking about entering a space inside of you. It's. Sex is not just something you do. It's a place you go, you know, inside of you with another. So where do you enter in that thing? And when you describe it like that, that broader dimension called erotic, radiant, alive, curious, desirable, interested, playful. Then you feel sexy without having to do any sex. Then if you want to do whatever, do. But the fact is that you can do plenty and feel none of the other.
- [40:03]
Abby Wambach
That's right.
- [40:11]
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- [43:27]
Abby Wambach
Sister. Does that ring true to you? Like, it's like the aliveness is going to that place and together. And if you're not going to that place together, that's the deadness. Regardless of whether there's sex or not.
- [43:42]
Sister
I think it's so. I mean, when you first were answering the question Astaire about, it was like when you're saying that the. The part of your life that requires efficiency and you know, that's keeping the trains on time, you know, it's. Apart from that, I feel like speaking. Speaking for heteronormative people in this world with small children. It's like we don't ever get to live in the other space. I feel like a lot of people that I know are just living in the space of efficiency because this time is requiring so much of us that I am intellectually aware that there's this other space. But like, I haven't been there in a long time. And I think that leads to this resentment. And resentment is really hard to get to playful from. And so I guess that's.
- [44:41]
Esther Perel
But you have to step out of one thing for that. Amanda, what tell me is that the notion is I will get there when everything else is done rather than I will get, you know, when everything will be organized, every closet, every game, you know, everything prepared for tomorrow morning when I'm done doing duty, then I can go to desire. And interestingly, you know, the issue is really more nothing will ever be fully done. I've got 20 years of this to go, you know, But I am going to give myself the permission tonight to shift the toys, stay on the floor, and I bring out the woman that is behind the mother, or I bring out the sensual being that is behind the worker, productive woman. And I invite that person in because I give her that permission rather than thinking that she has to be perfect first in this other category and then only she'll get a little bonus.
- [45:42]
Abby Wambach
And can we suggest that maybe we invite that woman forward in a way that is not just for our partner first because that feels sometimes like it's adding more duty. Like now here I am as a role of maybe.
- [45:56]
Esther Perel
Oh, no, I'm not talking about that yourself. So glad you bring this up, Lynne. I'm not talking about, you know, preparing yourself. I'm talking about you too, are going to sit this morning when you drink your coffee and not everybody sits while you're running around like a chicken without a head, taking care of everybody, making sure everyone has what they need. You're going to sit down, too, because you, too, get your four minutes to just sip your coffee or tea or whatever it is. It's small things like that where you don't resent the fact that you don't matter and that you come last. You make the space in small ways for you to say, I, too, have a place and I exist. And I'm not just there to exist by virtue of how well I take care of everybody else's needs.
- [46:44]
Abby Wambach
Esther, is there a way that people can. Because this, for me, this is like a chicken. What is it, A cart and a horse thing. What comes first? If two people are just dead in a relationship, isn't there an argument for each of them rediscovering their erotic selves? Whether it's pursuing some sort of interest or, you know, just reawakening that self separately before they try the coffee? Because it's like there's no selves left anymore. Like, when I think of Sister, I want her to be able to, like, re reawaken this part of herself on her own first, not in relation to anybody else. Because there doesn't. There have to be an I to even have, like, I see you like.
- [47:32]
Sister
But I think that's what she's saying. She's saying, like, you deserve the dignity of sitting at the table. You take it, take it for yourself. And then once you. Once you have the dignity. Dignity, you have the worthiness. Once you have the worthiness, you're worthy of pleasure. Once you have pleasure, you decide what the hell kind of pleasure you want and go get it.
- [47:49]
Esther Perel
Got it. Rather than waiting for somebody else to grant it to you or feeling that you can only get it if you leave the house. Yeah. Which, of course, is what we've done. You know, people understand that the domestic is suffocating. Let me go find, you know, freedom and fresh air and a sense of who I am. Else when. But then when you come home, you get the same thing. So it's really a both end. It's a both end. We know that couples who do well are couples who innovate, do new things together, take risks together all the time, and are not just counting on each other for it. But I think that what Amanda described is exactly one line. And then parallel to that, there is the line of, maybe I go with my partner and we do something, you know, every once in a while that is just purely. Pleasure is the measure. It doesn't accomplish anything. There's nothing productive to get from it. We go play. It's another version of going to play. Could be dancing, could be sport, whatever it is, but it's not about, you know, doing something that's good for you. No puritanical other thing attached to it. The coffee is a very good example. The coffee, the. I'm going to sit and read for 10 minutes. It really is. The effort is about the woman, in this instance, giving herself the permission that she deserves this. In fact, she doesn't even have to deserve it that she wants this. Deserving is the wanting for the deprived. But you know, that she just wants. I'm going to take 10 minutes, I'm going to just listen to something or listen to the podcast or whatever, you know, and then I'll go back to doing this. It's okay. Rather than continuing pushing through, resenting it, being upset at the others, A, for not seeing how much I'm struggling and resenting it, B, for not stepping in and helping me, which no matter what they do, they won't do enough, and C, hoping that if I'm so good at this, somehow they'll tell me, take a day off. Take your day off.
- [50:03]
Amanda
It's breaking patriarchal norms, especially for anybody who's listening, is in the heteronormative marriage or relationship. Start in your own home, have a
- [50:14]
Sponsor Voice 1
coffee, and don't ask for permission. Just take it.
- [50:19]
Abby Wambach
Ask. Sister, ask the. The quality control manager, because this is. This is the next step, right? If we do the thing, if we drink the coffee, if we. That there's things that we have to let go or. Sister, ask your question.
- [50:33]
Sister
So this is my question. I'm asking for a friend.
- [50:36]
Abby Wambach
Esther.
- [50:37]
Esther Perel
I love it. So I'm happy to meet your friend.
- [50:43]
Sister
She's lovely. A little screwy, but lovely. So what happens in a relationship where. I mean, in other contexts you might call one a maximizer and a minimizer. Well, but whatever it is, in. In a relationship, there's one person who has become like the default quality control manager, where if they're. They are the person that will bring. Our relationship seems to be suffering here. Here's a way we could get deeper. Is this working out for both of us? And so, like, if something is going to be brought up, if something's going to be improved in the relationship or addressed, it would always come from the quality control manager, because the other person either is seemingly fine with how Everything's going or cannot or will not ever say it. So what does that do to a relationship? And what happens when the quality control manager is like, I'm sick of doing this exclusively?
- [51:52]
Esther Perel
There's a few different scenarios. The first thing that comes to mind is when you go to your partner and, by the way, to Abby, the heteronormative is inside our head. It's not just inside the particular structure if you are in a straight relationship or not.
- [52:09]
Amanda
That's right.
- [52:10]
Esther Perel
So imagine you go and you say, you know, I want to bring up this, and I'm wondering, you know, how this sits with you, et cetera, et cetera. The first thing is really the response. If the response is a version of, thanks for bringing this up, or I had never thought about it, but now that you're saying it, let's talk about this. If the response is receptive, you may wish that sometimes your partner also would do this, but you also know that you may be more attentive to this and there is someone who is receiving you. The difference is if you bring it up and someone is systematically saying, can we talk about something else? Or I don't know what you're talking about, or you always have to bring up something. It's never right enough for you. Or here's everything as a criticism of them, not as a need of you, but as what's wrong with them. They're not doing enough. They're not. So all those alternative scenarios become the thing that you actually fight about. You don't fight about whatever you brought up in the first place. At the same time, in a good balance, you may be the one that often bring or always brings up if there is something we should talk about in the relationship. But on the other hand, you have a partner who maybe sometimes, by virtue of how they are, lets you decide that maybe this time I don't have to bring it up. It's okay. Not everything needs to be fixed. Not everything needs to be measured with the highest quality control. We are fine. Rather than, he doesn't see anything and I see everything, it becomes. He helps me sometimes decide what I need to see. So that's the first thing. Is there a balance here where you wish that sometimes your partner would bring these things up? You wish that sometimes your partner would initiate certain things, but it's not about maximizer. You see more, you care about it more. And there's a part of you that can't rest unless this has been addressed. On the other side is someone who may not always know how to bring things up has been thought to be okay with whatever is, rather than wanting more. Maybe chose you because you are the quality control and knows that with you there will be more in life, but isn't the person that generates that? And so. So I always say to people, broaden the frame. Because if you just go into the. I always bring it up and then what happens? Broaden it a second and look at these two traits within a larger set of complementarities in the relationship. How does this thing balance each other? You know, how much do sometimes the silence of one person, you know, basically, does it calm you or does it always make you feel like I'm the only one who cares? Is your partner able to tell you, I care no less, but differently than you? It's not because I don't want to improve things all the time that I'm not paying attention to things. How multilingual can you become? Because we tend in a relationship to see the things through our own lens. It's amazingly powerful, that lens. And we interpret everything on the behavior of the other person through that lens. We give to the other what we would want the other to give to us, but it isn't necessarily what they would want. You know, if you want to be quiet after we've had a conversation and I want to talk, I'm going to talk because that's what I would want. You know, rather than understand that you need 24 hours and then you'll come back. So it's these very minute things, and it's not a one size fits all. That's very important for all of the questions that we received is not to think that there is one. Model relationships really take place in the detail. The first detail is when I said we need to talk. If I have somebody who says, how long? Not what about, but how long? That's a very different. This story is going to go into a very different direction than if I say, I need to talk and somebody says again, or I need to talk and somebody says, now what? Or I need to talk and someone says, you know what? I can't do it now, but let's have a date tonight. I'd love to hear. The speaker is defined by the listener, and the listener responds to the style of the speaker.
- [56:56]
Abby Wambach
When you talk about speakers and listeners, and tragically, this will have to be our last question. I feel like we started two minutes ago. When you talk about, you know, people bringing things up or conflict, can you give us your best tips for what kinds of behaviors are, in general, constructive and helpful in terms of conflict and what behaviors are destructive in conflict.
- [57:19]
Sister
What.
- [57:20]
Abby Wambach
What are the best conflict resolution partnerships you see doing, and what are the worst?
- [57:26]
Esther Perel
Okay, the first thing I would say is the form is more important than the content. Don't ever think that it's the issue. The food, the shoes, the laundry, the toothbrush, the kids, the money. It's not. And one of the most useful things I learned was from Howard Markman, the researcher, way back when he said most conflicts are about three power and control. The hidden message, the hidden agenda is power and control. Whose priorities matter? Whose needs are the ones that we pay attention to and not two, care and closeness. Can I trust you? Do you have my back? And three, respect and recognition. Do you value me? If when you speak and you say your shoes don't matter, what I feel is that you don't value me, the shoe is just another. Then my fighting is going to be about my value, about my integrity. What people fight about is power, closeness and care and recognition. That's the underlying stuff. What destroys it is when you go into categorical statements. You always, you never. Because by definition, if you do that. I'm going to give you one example when that was not the case. Why? Because I don't want you to enter into my guts. It's intrusive and you're not the owner of me and you're not going to tell me what I am. So that's one. Two. When you say you never, it's a metaphor. It's an expression of your experience. It's not a fact. So understand that much of these conversations are pseudo fact. It's your subjective experience and that's valid. But it is that it is not the truth about the other. It's the truth about how you feel. Two different stories. The third one is to know that there are times if somebody says I don't want to talk about it now, that it's not just. It may be avoidance, but you're not going to get anything good if you keep pushing through. So wait, wait till things calm down, let the warmth come back a tiny bit, and then have a discussion about what happened rather than in the midst of it. When people are in fight and attack and defense mode and they're completely jarred up to try to have a resolution. Very few people can do that.
- [60:03]
Abby Wambach
So. So that gets to sister. What you've always said is this stupid idea of don't go to bed angry. Is that the stupidest rule? I feel like that tells us we should keep at the dead of night, when we're at our absolute worst, when we're pissed at each other, when we're acting like second graders. We should keep talking about that.
- [60:24]
Esther Perel
I happen to think that it's perfectly okay to say, you know, I'm really mad right now. We're not going anywhere with this. We're going to go to bed and hopefully the night will do its integration and we will come back tomorrow and be better off. This continuing, continuing, continuing with the hope of it very rarely solves something. I mean, you're going to have somebody, as you were saying before Glennon, where Abby would say, okay, you're right, you know, but you write really means I have enough of this.
- [60:52]
Sister
Can this be done?
- [60:53]
Esther Perel
This is done. Enough, Enough. You know, it has nothing to do with you, right? It could be, you know, it's just. Is a nicer way of saying, you know, enough or shut up or so. No, I think sometimes people do go to bed angry. I think sometimes people go and sleep in a different room for a night, and that's fine, too. It's, you know, the symbolism of this. We slept in a different, you know, it was better off. It's okay. Come back tomorrow morning and just say. And then it's the big thing. Say the thing that you can take
- [61:24]
Abby Wambach
responsibility for in the meantime, when life gets hard, and it will, all of you are going to remember we can do hard things, and we're going to keep doing them together. Okay?
- [61:35]
Glennon Doyle
See you soon.
- [61:36]
Abby Wambach
We are proud to say that We
- [61:38]
Glennon Doyle
Can Do Hard Things is an independent
- [61:40]
Abby Wambach
production brought to you by us, Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who
- [61:46]
Glennon Doyle
want to stay human. And you can follow us at We
- [61:50]
Abby Wambach
Can Do Hard Things on Instagram.