Esther Perel is one of the most humane
and intelligent psychotherapists at work
anywhere in the world today she draws
enormous crowds both online and
in-person and is a good friend of the
School of Life she recently came to talk
at our branch in London and she'll be
back again in December Perel recognises
the distinctive moment we're at in
history where we now get into
relationships not primarily for status
security or children but in order to be
happy an enormous challenge for which we
need a little bit of help you have just
entered the space of a couples therapist
and you know there wasn't too long ago
that there was very little couples
therapy but couples therapy became
really important once a very important
shift took place which is that this is
the first time that a survival of the
family depends basically on the
happiness of the couple that's why we do
couples therapy to help people
experience a different quality of
connection between them
we are literally making the play book as
we go and instead of having rules what
we have today is conversations
everything is a freaking negotiation
everything is negotiated who's gonna
wake up to feed the baby and whose
career actually matters and who's gonna
plan for the next date and am i happy
and am i happy enough and should I do
this or should I do that should I date
this person should I date only one
person maybe a few what gender should
they be you know it's an enormous amount
of things I'm just you know you used to
choose between two people in the village
John and James that was it Mary and
Rebecca you know that was that this this
new thing here you know you know this is
phenomenal I mean I have options like
I've never had but how am I going to
combine market economy commodification
of people and romantic consumerism it's
partly because our expectations are so
high that we suffer so
in love we feel entitled and when we are
resentful and when we get upset in our
relationships is because we are
grappling with our sense of entitlement
I was promised this thing you owe me
this thing you told me that you would
make me happy that was the story of
romantic love a lot of our unhappiness
in love has come to focus on sex duty
was the organizing principle of
sexuality in committed relationship not
desire but we made an enormous change
around that you know primarily due to
the demo thanks to the democratization
of contraception we could shift duty to
desire we could for the first time
separate sex from reproduction
everybody talks about communication but
we have to talk about things that we've
never had to talk about and it's often
difficult to talk about them with the
person that we are closest to I don't
have to tell you surprisingly that many
people find it much easier to talk about
sex with anybody but the person they're
having sex with part of what kills
relationships
according to parole is the feeling that
you own your partner desire is also
rooted in absence and in longing the
essential question of desire is can we
want what we already have and I think
the couples who have an erotic spark a
copper's who never live under the
illusion that they have each other they
don't think their partner belongs to
them and they think their partner is at
best on loan with an option to renew
that's they can tolerate that truth
because you can always lose your partner
but you can create mechanisms to deny
the truth because it's really
anxiety-producing but that moment of
anxiety that little bit of anxiety is
actually where desire resides because it
makes you keep wanting because you don't
really feel that you have we asked pearl
why people have a fan's what really
interested me is the fact that actually
Affairs do happen in good relationships
too in satisfying relationships that is
much more interesting why do people
still do and the majority of people that
therapists anyway work with I am NOT
chronic philanderers they are often
people who have been faithful for
decades and then when they cross the
line that they themselves never thought
they would cross so then you ask for a
glimmer of what why would people risk
losing everything they have built for
what and that's when this thing about
desire and the power of the erotic
becomes so powerful and the best way I
understood it that one word all over the
world that people kept telling me when
they would interview those who had
affairs I feel alive and what it meant
was that there was a sense of deadness
that had crept up inside of them not the
responsibility of the other person not
even the responsibility of marriage just
and often in a way that they had allowed
themselves to disappear and they began
to say to me this very unusual sentence
it's not that I wanted to leave my
partner it's what I wanted to leave who
I had become Parral
wants us to be open minded about the
sort of relationship that might work for
us what we need is emotional connection
but that might mean all kinds of
arrangements sexually do we want
connection yes we want connection with
there is something about us that doesn't
live well alone and how these
connections will manifest is up for you
know for some of us it will take that
model of the traditional relationship
long term one person the whole thing and
for others of it's going to be a serial
monogamy and for others it's going to be
the consensual non-monogamy or a
polyamory the most important thing is
that it there isn't a once
it's all and at this point there is one
model and if you don't succeed at it you
divorce and divorce is not for the
disillusion divorce is for the true
idealists because they believe in the
model just just think that they chose
the wrong person and they'll do better
next time by choosing a better person
not by you know so check if the model
works for you it's like innovation has
entered every space except for marriage
you know disrupt it a little bit does
this say what we need above all is to
expand the sort of conversations we're
having around sex sex is not something
you do it's a place you go and then you
ask yourself where do you go in sex is
it a place to be naughty is it a place
to be to abdicate responsibility is it a
place to be taken care of is it a place
to be safely dominant is it a place to
surrender is it a place for spiritual
union is it a place to be aggressive and
finally be able to just command your
wishes but playfully playfully and ask
yourselves what part of me connects with
my sexuality where do I go in sex don't
think act don't think performance and
don't think the kind of narrow male
focused genitally model of sex of four
minutes of foreplay before the real
thing and the real thing is intercourse
and it ends with an orgasm and then when
he's done it's done per L is not
pessimistic about love she merely thinks
that if we're to honor our hopes were
going to need an emotional education
thankfully with people like her to hand
we can now start to get one
Esther Perel is coming to talk at the
School of Life in London on Tuesday
December 4th for more information and
tickets please click the link on screen
now or in the video description