A Bit of Optimism - What Your Love Life Can Teach You About Work Relationships with psychotherapist Esther Perel

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

We’ve never had more freedom in our relationships—yet many of us feel more disconnected than ever. Marriage, family, and even the workplace have all been reshaped by shifting norms, new technologies, and rising expectations. Happiness, once a nice-to-have, is now the very glue that keeps both couples and teams together.Few people understand these changes better than Esther Perel. For decades, she’s helped us rethink intimacy, navigate conflict, and reimagine what a healthy connection looks like—at home and now at work with her new conversation inducing game of questions, Where Should We Begin? At Work. Esther and I explore how our ideas of love and partnership have evolved, why friendships can be just as life-giving as romance, and why learning to “talk to strangers” may be the most important skill for the next generation. We also dive into the role of play, trust, and risk-taking in building lasting bonds.If you care about creating relationships that are strong enough to withstand the pressures of modern life, this episode might just be for you.This is A Bit of Optimism.To learn more about Esther’s work, visit: www.estherperel.comAnd to check out Where Should We Begin? At Work here: https://game.estherperel.com/products/where-should-we-begin-at-work?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21749016432&gbraid=0AAAAA93e13laOUsIrrGSZUodaliBNmZVP&gclid=CjwKCAjw_fnFBhB0EiwAH_MfZtrMmVTRj7QgBn4ER-_HF10aCifdOOpY1DLy9R4dt4K0Sbh2WKJDeRoC2XUQAvD_BwE 

I'll give you a little anecdote. I don't think anecdotes describe a full reality, but it was a moment for me that was very interesting. My younger son was in kindergarten. He had a very best friend. I was convinced he would go into first grade with that same friend. No, I went to the

principal. I said, why did you separate them? They were getting so long. It was such a beautiful friendship that could become, you know, my childhood friend like I have from age six. She said, they need to learn to make new friends each time. I said, it's not being trained for mobility. He's a five-year-old who is being trained for long-term relationships. It's not the

same. And it was really clear. That was the idea. The idea is not how do you continue a long-standing friendship is how do you make new friends all the time. I thought that was just an amazing cultural encounter. Wow. So wow. So we're actually training our young to suck it up and get over it and move on. The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. This is an idea that Esther Perel has been trying to instill in us for decades. She is the guru of human relationships, and she's been trying to teach us in all of her work how we can have successful romantic relationships. I've known Esther for years, and candidly when we've gone out for dinner, I have definitely taken advantage of our friendship and asked her for

relationship advice, and it's always been amazing. And we agree on so many things, which is why I was so excited to have her on the podcast. Our work overlaps so much. We both believe that the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives in our personal lives and the quality of our lives at work. Esther believes it so much she's just launched a new product, a set of question cards called where should we begin at work. So we go deep. We talk about relationships, happy relationships, struggling relationships, all the kinds of relationships and how we learn to navigate relationships, how it will benefit us in our personal lives and in our professional lives. This is a bit of optimism.

Esther, you know you're one of my favorite people in the world, right? it is a mutual experience you're one of those friends that you know i've known each other a long time um i saw you a lot when i lived in new york it's been more difficult since i've moved to l a but you're one of those people you're one of those friends that we don't talk as often as people think we do but every time we talk we pick up where we left off that is true it's as if no time has passed every single time and this is no before we talk we look at each other and we smile a kind of a smile of recognition and complicity. You're right.

Every time I see whether it's an event or even just on the screen, you're absolutely right. My first reaction is a smile. It's like a baby being shown a toy. I was thinking this morning as I was getting ready, there's actually a very genuine question that I have for you that pretty much you and only you could answer. You've been doing what you do for a long time, which means you have been doing, helping couples and helping people in relationships and overcome difficulties that they have through many changes of culture and politics and world events.

I'm so curious what the dynamic of relationships has changed over the course of a career. I mean, the arc is very full of changes. So I arrive in the United States in 83, and we are talking about just a few years since divorce has been legalized, no-fold divorce. That in itself is an enormous change to the structure of marriage and family life. because the rate of divorce increases dramatically, primarily spurred by women. Women are often economically independent, even on every level of the scale, to decide that relationships and marriages in particular need to be emotionally fulfilling because it's not just a material reliance.

Contraception has been democratized. So, you know, reproduction is now, controlled, and reproduction can be technologically assisted, and it can be technologically stopped. So on both sides, sexuality fundamentally changes its meaning from the sole domain of biology to now becoming socialized and becoming a property of the self, something that you define your sexuality, not just a part of your condition. People go from five, six, seven children to one, two, potentially. or even the choice of none.

Sexuality shifts from a marital duty and has already been, but now even more, to a sexual duty, to a sexual desire, sorry, from duty to desire. So that's just a few small things in the romantic realm. Work at that time is shifting from, you know, it's basically in the midst of what we call the service economy. from the production economy of the land and the agriculture to now a service economy.

And by the way, so is marriage. Marriage becomes a service economy too. We want affection. We want trust. We want things that have to do with the quality of the emotional connection between the people. And from there, gradually, these two units, which are really going parallel but also cross, we kind of have a dual revolution taking place at the same time. Work goes from production to service to identity, an identity economy, in which we turn to work for a host of existential needs that used to be part of our religious lives and our communal lives, that now become part of work, purpose, meaning, belonging, community, things that had nothing to do with what we...

You and I have both talked about this, how we used to get purpose from church, we used to get community from our neighbors, we had bowling leagues for our friends, all of those, you know, know, church attendance declines, bowling leagues disappear, and now we demand that work fulfill all of these needs. And we defer marriage per se, marriage or committed relationships by 10 years. So work is the primary hub for your social connection and for all these other needs. It's an amazing thing to observe. This is all before still the Internet. Then comes Internet, then comes social media, Then comes AI. I mean, at every level, relationships change, because I think it's all my work on relationships.

What were the common, when you arrived in 83 and you started your practice, what were the common themes in the 80s that, again, just common themes of the couples that would come see you in the 80s? I mean, themes were always, you know, communication, for example, has always been a theme. or conflict, or basically the origins of couples, this is actually an interesting piece, the origins of couples therapy. Originally, people came to see you as a couple because somebody had said that there were issues with the child and that maybe they were not all about the child, but they were actually about the couple. But in fact, couples therapy really became a discipline on its own when for the first,

time, the survival of the family depended on the happiness of the couple. Right. Because as long as people were married for life and you couldn't get out and there was no exit, it didn't really matter if you got along. You didn't get along. It would be nice. But in any case, you were stuck. Once you could leave, you needed the relationship to really be much better.

And that meant that the only way the family will stay together in its original constellation is if the couple is relatively consistent. content. And so that brought couples more and more to come to couples therapy, be it issues of conflict, addiction, violence, communication, sexuality, sexual incompatibility, you name it. You know, in my time, around it was the first conversations about family leave. Yeah. There was no maternity leave or paternity leave in the U.S. the first presentations around infertility and fertility issues and different ways of conception. The first conversations in the office, I'm saying the first, not in the general, you know,

around issues of non-monogamy and polyamory. So all of this and the personal development movement, the growth movement of the 60s that completely seeped into every aspect of the way we think we deserve. to be happy. This is an amazing insight here, which is the correlation between being stuck in something and desire for happiness or pursuit of happiness, that when you're stuck in something, happiness is a nice to have, but you don't bother working on it because it doesn't actually matter because you can't go anywhere.

So happiness is not a glue. Happiness is a perk. where when the ability to leave a relationship becomes now an option or an easier option and there's less legal complications, there's less stigma, all of the things that go with it, now happiness becomes glue, not a perk. Correct.

And I can't help but compare that to work as well where, you know, a strong argument could be made in the 1950s, for example, where 60s or even 70s where people gave their whole lives to one company. And there was a better deal where we looked after each other and the company would never think of laying you off. And that's all true.

But the concept of like happy at work, I mean, you worked for the company, the company worked for you. And it just sort of, I wouldn't call it stuck. I would call it stasis. But now you get to a modern day. And even when I compare the young generation to my generation,

where I would never dream when I was starting my career, we would never dream of quitting a job within less than a year because it would destroy your resume, where now young people are very comfortable quitting at any time. They're also very comfortable quitting without another job lined up, which for somebody like me is like mind-blowing, right? And I think now if the ease of getting out of it has lost the social stigma, it's not going to destroy your resume, et cetera, et cetera, go down the list,

now where happiness was a perk at work, happiness is now a glue at work. And the question I'm asking is, are leaders focusing on keeping their people happy? I don't mean giving them free lunch and putting ping pong tables. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When I say happiness, I don't mean, you know, smiles. I mean fulfillment. I mean calm. I mean inspiration.

And now these things are no longer and nice to have, which I think a lot of older executives actually still believe. Yep. It's a glue, not a perk. So I think that as a whole, if you really even step back a second, there's two ideas that accompany your question, that for me give it really a context. First of all, for most of history, happiness belonged to the afterlife. You know, it was in heaven.

You suffered well on earth, and if you did a good job, you could be rewarded later, right? Then it comes down. We bring happiness from the heavens to the earth. it becomes an option and now it becomes a mandate. I deserve to be happy. I'm entitled. And in the name of that, a number of major changes occur.

And I think one of the most important shift that takes place in relationships and that connects with your executive is that, again, for most of history and still in most parts of the world today, relationships are organized around duty, obligation, loyalty, structure. You know that you're happy when you're able to fulfill your duties, when you've been able to fulfill the roles that's expected of you as a father, as a son, as a boss, you know. And that is what produces the happiness, is the ability to fulfill those tasks. And you have a lot of clarity. You have very little freedom, if any, and very little personal expression, who cares? We switch that to a model where relationships become organized around choice, and option. And you have more freedom than you've ever had and you are more alone and more

confused than you've ever been. Because all these decisions now rest on you rather than being passed on through the structures of culture and religion and community. And that is underneath the sentences that the executives will say today about the younger generations, about, you know, people talk about wanting belonging, purpose, meaning, community. But you know, your example of the person who moves every year, how can you have belonging on a rotation of one year or even two? How can you have belonging when the notion is that if you leave, you really are a winner? Because you actually have ambitions, you know, that the people who stay, you know, are the people who don't have enough oomph. Do you see that in relationships

as well? Do you see relationships becoming more disposable amongst younger generations where I'm going to keep moving relationships like I keep moving jobs to find the thing that's better and better and will finally make me happy. But to your point, it's a fool's errand. I think I see different things. I see this, people who, I mean, this is a question people are asking me all the time. Do we throw, you know, do we abandon the project too soon? Yeah. I don't know that I can answer it because I also think that so many people have had to tolerate circumstances of life that really, you know, I would put it that sometimes the people who need to leave stay too long, and the people who stay too long should need to leave, yeah.

It's not a flat statement. It's that there are people who probably would do better by being a little bit more patient and enduring, and there are people who would do better by being a little bit more self-serving. That's probably a more nuanced answer to your question. But what I do see is a proliferation of creations of new types of bonding, new definitions of what is a circle of care, new micro communities, new families of choice, new multiple co-parenting arrangements. And that I find is very creative, whereas for a long time, the family system was actually not one that received much innovation. You know, it kind of

followed a certain track all along. And now there is really a zeal of creativity around what are other ways to make family, to make coupledom, to make intimacy. And in that sense, there are people who then may say, I need to move on. So we live what Zygmod Baumann used to call liquid life. Yeah. We went from relationships that were tight knots from which you couldn't extricate yourself to relationships that are loose threads where you can go in and out very fluidly. And as a result, you can feel very free and also very disposable and very invisible and very easily ghosted. So does that make sense? It does make sense.

And again, my understanding from what I've read, I'd love for you to, you know, confirm this or not, which is, you know, younger people are dating less. They're having sex later. They're, you know, Scott Galloway talks about this. just a lot less experience. And even the relationships they're having, you know, are not necessarily, they're not necessarily engaging in long-term relationships as quickly. A, is that true? And B, why?

I think that wherever we go, having just spent quite a few weeks working abroad, we're hearing the same litany, even from Brazil. All the way, I went from country to country hearing the same conversation. I think that, and the conversation is about an increasing social atrophy. That's how I call it. It involves the loneliness, but it's more than that. It's also self-imposed isolation, as some people talk about. It's also a kind of a contactless living.

I don't need to leave my house, neither to work, neither to exercise, neither to shop for food. I mean, I can just stay home. In every country, I ask this question that has become really quite significant to me. Actually, I asked two. One relates to what you said before. How many of you have grandparents who lived and worked in the same place their whole life? The majority. Right.

How many of you have parents? They already moved. How many of you have changed jobs more than that? and once in the last five years. And then you begin to see this notion of fluidity. But the other question I ask is, how many of you grew up playing freely on the street? And the vast majority of an audience of thousands raised their hands,

they grew up playing freely on the street. And how many of you know children or have children that are playing freely on the street today? And you get a sprinkle. Yeah. And I find that such an amazing, see it visually. It's like, you know, when you draw a chart, this is a human chart in front of you. The loss of the primary ground of social negotiation that we used to grow up with, where you

met all kinds of kids, where you negotiate, where you make war, where you make peace, where you create alliances, where you make, you know, where you have repair. All of this specific place where you hone your chops of sociability, gone. And I think that that has a major effect. You know, as you were saying this, my mind immediately went to a nature documentary where you watch lion cubs, and they fight with each other.

And the mom lets them fight with each other and slap each other around. And what they're doing is they're learning to hunt. They're learning to hunt as cubs fighting. And the question, you know, and it raises the question, question, we're mammals. We're supposed to learn all the things that we need to survive as a species when we're younger. And to your point, on the playground, we had war, we had peace, we had fights,

we had negotiations, we had heartbreak, we had anger, we had success. And it was all a safe microcosm of life. By the way, and all this is the mammal stories that we all learn this stuff through play. We all learn this stuff through play. And when we're taking the play away, And when you and I are talking about play, we mean very specifically interpersonal play. Yes. You know, when we take the interpersonal play away, it raises the question, where are we as homo sapiens, where are we as human beings going to learn these essential life skills? And the essential life skills we're talking about are not how to code, how to prompt.

We're talking about essential life skills like how to make a friend, how to ask for help, how to say I'm struggling, how to fight, how to make peace, all of these things that are essential. And now we're just looking to the machine to AI to fill those gaps. But the gaps they're filling should never need to be filled in the first place. Or they should be small gaps filled rather than huge big, you know, chasms. I totally agree. I mean, you were asking about the workplace. People sometimes ask me, how did you get to be involved in the workplace?

You're this couples therapist. You're this family. And I'm like, I didn't change. I mean, but work understood that. relationships are no longer just soft skills, you know, and forever, soft skills meant that they're not part of the promotion, they're not part of the evaluation, you don't get anything for being a good mediator, a good negotiator, a good peacemaker on your team. None. This is not what I'd are considered useful skills. It's, you know, relational skills used to be feminine skills. Yes. Nice, nice to have, idealized in principle and disregarded in reality. This is like, nice. Now, I think that the workplace actually, interestingly, because of AI, is understand and because of tech in general, you know, that this is actually the cutting edge, this is the competitive edge, this is the stuff that people need a tremendous amount of help with.

My hope is that people not only go to AI to ask how to write an apology letter, because you can get a very nice apology letter these days and have no idea if the person experienced an ounce of remorse to begin with. Yeah, yeah. It's not the letter. It's the accountability. Of course. And this is where I think most people don't realize that since you and I met,

one of the reasons we get along so well is you and I are not talking about romantic relationships and you and I am not talking about work. You and I are talking about human beings in every... You know that you helped me actually. actually formulate what became my primary credo of my entire body of work. I remember this when we very early on you did with me a what, you know, what's what? A Y discovery? Yes.

And we were in a basement. I mean, Jack just reminded me this. And you said, what is it you are doing? Like, what is behind? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this? And I blurted out because it is the quality of our relationships that determines the quality of our life. Amen.

And you looked at me and I thought, I finally said it in one sentence. And this was with you, but I forgot who it was with today's. Well, I'll take all the credit. Thank you very much. I did it back to you. And this is why you and I, like you happen to come up through psychology and couples counseling and I happen to come through the corporate world. But fundamentally, you and I meet in the middle where we both believe that the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. I'll tell you a quick, funny story. So I did something called a glycan age recently where they basically take blood and they, I can't remember exactly what they do, but they look at inflammation in the body.

They're looking at the cell coating and they can tell the inflammation. And, you know, inflammation is this insidious thing inside us that if you have it, it is a precursor to all kinds of health. problems later in life. And so if you have less inflammation, you're, you know, what they call a glycan age, you're younger than your, than your chronological age. And what they were, what they're telling me is that if you're eight years younger, if your glycan age is eight years younger than your chronological age, they've considered that very healthy. I found out that I'm 22 years younger than my chronological age. And they go through my lifestyle and everything. Now, I exercise, not obsessively. Sometimes I don't exercise at all for quite a while. You know,

I eat well, mostly, but, you know, not great. I talk to one of the counselors and I go through all of the markers with me, but fundamentally, I want to be happy and I want to spend time with my friends. And those things that I do things for the, I want to have fun when I do things and I want to spend a lot of time with my friends, it reduces stress. And you look at the health-obsessed people, like the longevity-obsessed people, they're putting themselves through such extreme stress by freaking out about the, metrics every day. And they're doing cold plunges and a hard workout and intermittent fasting,

which all of those things are healthy by themselves. But when you start stacking the stress, it actually makes, it actually creates inflammation and actually reduces lifespan. I learned that elite athletes actually don't live long. And so basically when we say, when you say, the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life, that is biologically true more than just what you eat, how much exercise you do, and whether you do intermittent fasting or not? I mean, you know, first you're describing what the Harvard longitudinal study on men, by the way, that has been going on for decades, it's absolutely clear that relationships and meaningful

relationships is the number one bar non for happiness. That doesn't necessarily mean that you live longer, but you live better. I want to live a long happy life, not just a long life. What we know is that all people who arrive at a certain age, as one of the great physicians said to me, I have yet to meet a man in his 90s who is alive alone. Oh, so good. Everybody who is there a long time is there

because they have somebody right next to them. It doesn't have to be a spouse, but there are people right next to them that say, oh, it looks like you're limping a bit. Oh, you don't seem to be. hearing me as well. Oh, have you considered, you know, getting eye surgery? Whatever, people look at you and are saying, I see you, how are you doing? You know, they know, for example, about relationships and health, that the growth of the lots, the living apart

together, you know, the fastest growing configuration of couples in America today, is actually correlated with the decline in health, especially in men who often don't pay attention to this. And so who they male partners or female partners. But it means in partnership, somebody says should go see a doctor. Even Dan Butner's work, you know, the blue zones, which is wonderful work, and he's fantastic. You know, a lot of, and he does talk about it, but a lot of the people that what they take from his work is walk every day, drink olive oil, eat vegetables, and they completely ignore the fact that these blue zones that they live in commune, they live together, they eat together, they work together, they do things together, they walk together. And to your point,

they're like, you're limping. You're not listening to me. And they, they know how to have effective confrontation. They know how to resolve. All those human skills that we talk about that should be learned in the playground, they learn them and they're using them into their old age. You're a hundred Isn't it amazing that we need to be reminded of this, that we are social beings, that we are mammals, that we survive by the connection we have to others, that we are born to connect with people? I'll give you a little anecdote. I don't think anecdotes describe the full reality, but it was a moment for me that was very interesting. My younger son was in kindergarten. He had a very best friend.

I was convinced he would go into first grade with that same friend. No. I went to the principal. I said, why did you separate them? They were getting so long. It was such a beautiful friendship that could become, you know, my childhood friend like I have from age six. She said, they need to learn to make new friends each time.

I said, it's not being trained for mobility. He's a five-year-old who is being trained for long-term relationships. It's not the same. And it was really clear. That was the idea. The idea is not how do you continue a long-standing friendship? It's how do you make new friends all the time. I thought that was just an amazing cultural encounter.

Wow. So, wow, we're actually training our young to suck it up and get over it and move on. Yeah, I mean, they don't, it's not seen this way. It's seen as having the competence, the quality of being able to make new friends wherever you go, you know. And there is value to that too, but at five, I'm thinking, you know, this is, you can see a value system that occurs, you know, two decades later. and how it seeps into the mentality of early childhood, basically. One of the things we don't think about until, you know, we're looking in the rearview mirror

is what are the experiences we have when we're children that mold us into the adults that we become? And like, we know the generation that grew up during lockdown. We're not sure what the impact is yet, but like our grandparents who grew up during the war, you know, and during rations, you know, for the rest of their lives, they saved every little piece of tinfoil and reused every jam jar, you know, and they would, they hated waste.

And the reason is it's not, there's nothing mentally wrong with them. It's because they grew up during a time of depression and war, you know. And so it marks them for the rest of their lives as an entire generation. I think that you have two things happening right now. One is that we all understand that people come to work with two CVs. They have two resumes. They have their work resume and they have their relationship history. Everybody comes to work with the relationship CV in which that determines your relationship to authority, to power, to powerlessness, to boundaries, to boundaryless, to communication, to conflict, to implosion, to explosion.

Every aspect of relationship takes place in the workplace and it has a resonance to the early relationships where we learn things. family, community, cultural. In addition to that, you have now a whole generation that is basically learning to live with predictive technologies. And these predictive technologies who tell you where to go, what to eat, what to watch, are giving you specific answers to every question that you have. Erasing all complexity, erasing nuance, erasing the idea that in the realm of life, many problems are not problems that you solve, but paradoxes that you're.

you learn to manage. And so these people have transposed their expectations of how the apps respond to them to how people should respond to them. They want the same kind of smooth, frictionless, polished perfection. And when there is an obstacle or a frustration or a conflict, they are often stumped and they don't know what to do. And that entire thing is now entering the workplace, especially places that have tech-oriented where this is constantly on a reinforcement,

with a daily doses. Most people, I mean, I think they appreciate now in this conversation, which is you and I both have our own brand of Trojan horse, which is you fundamentally believe that if you can teach people to resolve conflict and learn these human skills in their relationships, it'll fundamentally benefit everything that happens at work and all the relationships at work. And my Trojan horse is if I can teach people to human skills

of conflict resolution and asking for help at work, it'll fundamentally improve their relationships and friendships outside of work, because at the end of the day, what you and I peddle in is human relationships. It actually is irrelevant, whether they're personal relationships or work relationships, they're relationships. And the reason your friends love you is the same reason your clients and colleagues love you. It's because it's you. And if one of those places you act differently than in one of those places, you're lying. And the goal is to, and I Again, I'm agnostic as to where somebody learns the skills. I don't care if they learn them in couples therapy,

and I don't care if they learn them in a listening class that their office gives them. I don't care. Just learn the damn skills somewhere, please. For the benefit of all your human relationships. And as we're learning, it's the quality of our relationships that determines the quality of our lives. And our work lives, these are all modern constructions

that we're talking about, the way that the relationship exists, that the work life exists. But fundamentally, since the dawn of humankind, it's human beings who have to cooperate with other human beings in order to survive and thrive as a species. Correct. And the stuff is just, is just, is the context. It's the specific context and that matters and it shapes things, but the fundamental dimension is universal. So, you know, we haven't talked in a while. And you and I, because we're friends, we've both cheated in our lives, meaning, I should probably elaborate.

I'm watching, no, no, no, I'm like, where is he going? Where is he going with this? Exactly. Nobody knows. What I mean is, just as you said that I helped you with articulate the meaning of your work, so too when you and I would go up for dinner, you know, I'd get free relationship counseling, you know, and, and you and I would, because you and I are genuinely interested in each other's work and in our own work. And so, you know, we, we open up to each other. It gets, our relationship, our conversations be quite personal. And so I haven't talked in a while, so I need to give you an update.

So what better place to give you an update than on a public broadcast? I had a huge profound shift in my thinking about my own relationships that I hope, I think, will make you proud, which is, I, you know, I haven't had many long-term relationships in my life, and I'm never been married. and in my dating life, very often, especially on a first date, a woman will say to me, what's wrong with you? Because they'll start quizzing me. What's your longest relationship? They're quizzing me. They're going through whether I'm capable. And I'm honest. And then they literally they say, well, how come you haven't been married or what's wrong with you? Are you relationship phobic or

are you commitment phobic? And it didn't sound right. But the empirical evidence would demonstrate that maybe I am, and I started to believe the evidence, even though it didn't feel right to me, and it caused me great insecurity. And then I started to realize, when somebody says, how can you haven't been married yet? The answer was obvious. I haven't met the right person yet. But more important than that, more important than that, is that I've recognized that I have focused on friendships, and I have a very fulfilled and happy life. And I get a lot of what other people get from relationships. I get from very, very deep and meaningful friendships. And I have a friend, she was in a 16 year relationship. And she will freely admit that she should have been in that

relationship for one year. It was very unhealthy, very toxic, and mostly unhappy. And she says, I should have been in the relationship for one year, but she stayed in it for 16 years. And society looks at her and says, she did it right. That is correct. And society looks at me where I didn't have one monogamous relationship and they say, something's wrong with you. And I've, I've exercised those demons and I've recognized that so long as I am in happy, healthy, fulfilling relationships, the exact dynamics where it fits society's definition of what I should or shouldn't be doing is irrelevant. Am I happy? Do people love me? Do I love people? Do I feel that I can go to someone and say, I'm struck? Is there someone to say, you're limping? Go to the doctor. There's something

in your teeth. Do I have those friends that are unafraid? And I think we, especially in this modern context, where the definition of relationship have changed so much to your point, which is whether we're in these long-term, healthy, monogamous relationships has become yet another stressor in our lives. And the question is, are you in happy relationships, whether they're work relationships or romantic relationships or friends? Do you have successful relationships that you know how to manage and they, and they too have the skills of having, and I've recognized whether it's just me because I'm a weirdo,

maybe it's society, but I'm much more at peace with the fact that there's nothing wrong with me. So I'm going to, if you allow me, I would. the personal one we'll do at dinner. But the broader one, I think, is a very relevant question, which is kind of what I was addressing earlier when I said there is a proliferation of new emphasis, new creations of social bonds, new definitions of what is family,

what is a family of choice, what is a circle of care. And I think that what you're describing among your friends is that. What you're saying is, if I understand it, is that we have over-indexed on the romantic partnership as it being the one and only, the be-all, the central one, the one that everybody needs to have one and fulfill. And it also happens to be a model in which one person has to be able to provide you what an entire village used to provide.

And that means that you have to experience with the same person, the sense of belonging, a propos what we described about work, a sense of belonging, of continuity, of safety, of predictability, and also of adventure and of novelty and of playfulness and risk, all of this in one relationship. I think there are three models, actually, in that sense. There is a relationship model that is romantic and intimate, in which people do experience the joy from the relationship itself. Then there are people, maybe this woman that you describe, for whom marriage or committed intimate relationships or remade relationships are scaffolding. They basically provide a structure that enables you to go elsewhere and find different sources of meaning, activities, shared interests, purpose, you name it.

Desire, you know. But basically friends, because people find that if they are in the structure of a couple, they have fulfilled the norm and it enables them to go and make friendship and things like that outside. And then there are people who basically are blessed with multiple friendships and multiple binds and bonds and connections. And they don't necessarily see the intimate relationship as the primary relationship to be in. And you are right, they are often seen from a normative point of view as the ones who didn't fulfill, you know, what's expected, the code of conduct. When in fact, not everybody finds the best of themselves in an intimate romantic relationship. Some people are way better as managers, as mentors, as friends, as teachers than they are as life partners. It's really for me about stress, which is I love being.

in a relationship. I love having a romantic partner and a life partner. I really love being in a relationship. And that's why I answered it less personal. And I want and I want another one. Right. But you don't want to be made to feel like there's something wrong with you. But I don't want to be made to feel like there's something wrong with me because I'm not in one or because I don't have a history of a marriage. And that's the, those are the demons that I've exercised. Yes, that is the measurement stick that is used across the globe, by the way. And this conversation. It goes right back to the beginning of this conversation, which is the norm, the norm may have been developed, not because it was out of desire, but because people were stuck.

And as you said, happiness was a, we discussed, happiness was a perk, not a glue. And it was the being stuck in something that defined the rules and roles and responsibilities of that relationship, that when the flexibility to be unstuck changes the rules, roles, and responsibility in the relationship. Correct. And so I think, as I said, for me, it's not a question that I want to, I absolutely want a relationship, but I don't feel there's anything wrong with me anymore. I believed the very sort of judgey questions that were asked to me, you know, over dinner.

And I know I now can smile and say, it's obvious why I haven't been married. I haven't met the right person yet. It's such a stupid question. Isn't that obvious? You know? I think what you're highlighting because that's the lesson for many people is really

we need connection we need connection and my friendships my friendships leave me not lonely and very fulfilled while at the same time of course I'm meeting people and would like and the other thing that's changed is I would meet people

and be like try and make this person my girlfriend okay didn't work try and make this person my girlfriend And of course, I'm putting, so I'm putting pressure on myself and the poor other person. It's destined for failure because of this construction that I'm trying to force. Now everyone I meet, my only goal is see if there's a friendship here. See if there's a friendship here. Foster friendship. And if one of those friendships blossoms into something more than I'm open-minded to that.

But build friendship first. You know what you're highlighting. What you're highlighting, which is very interesting, is the difference between belonging and fitting in. Say more. I mean, you want it to try to fit in. You want to try to fit the person into the mold. You know, romantic love is fantastic. It's one of the greatest inventions we have.

But it doesn't come at the expense of every other type of bonding and relationship. And I mean, what I have been saying for quite a while now is we need the spread of it. We need the mentorship. We need the teacher. We need the creative pair. we need the deep friendships, we need the peripheral friendships, we need the work friends. We need because we don't have these ready-made, all-encompassing communities that we used to be part of, in which one community determined every aspect of our lives, as it is still in many

other parts of the world, but not here, we need to create this. And this is a real creative endeavor, actually, but it demands practice, it demands routines, it demands rituals, it demands continuity on a daily basis. You're right that your friends make you not lonely, hopefully. And you're right that many people who are in committed marriages or romantic relationships may often really experience a lack of friends and a deep loneliness while there's somebody living right next to them. It's not the numbers and the constellation that guarantees the quality of your connection and the internal feeling. You know, I got interested, you know, I mean, I've written and spoken about this for decades on the personal front,

but I got very interested in it in the workspace because when I, as when we began, I said there is a kind of a dual revolution happening at once. The business terms have entered the romantic and the intimate relationships, but the psychology and the language of intimate relationships has entered the business world. authenticity, vulnerability, trust, psychological safety. I mean, an entire vocabulary has entered the workplace and especially the business world that, you know, in the same breath we talk about psychological safety as we talk about performance indicators. And we totally see this syncretism as normal.

And so from that place, I thought, oh, maybe I can also within the workplace address not just our relationship, to work, but our relationships at work. Yeah. And I started to create the card games, and I started to create experiences of interaction when people know that storytelling is the bridge for connection. How do I make people share of themselves in that context? Because now we need as many contexts as we can.

I wonder if the group that's at highest risk. Is the young people. But not kids in school. because kids, you know, the question is do they play in the street, maybe not, but they still play in the playground. They still go to school and more and more schools are taking the phones away or at least restricting their use. So there's still common experience at school and they still have fights on the playground. The post-high school or the post-college. And I think the highest risk is college and post-college, where they start to have some independence and especially post-you know, when they enter the entry-level workforce.

Entry-level workforce is... I think entry-level workforce, that population is the most at risk, especially with the concept of remote work, because if they don't have to come to work, they don't want to come to work. If there will be work for them, it's a job, blood back. If there will be work to them. And the idea of like the lion cubs learning the skills they need for adulthood, I would argue that first-level workforce, that entry-level workforce, that, you know, entry-level sucks. You know, you have to be good at everything.

It's not about your unique challenge. You think you have to be good at everything. You have to think you have to be good everything. And you have to, and you're asked to do things. Like I, when I was entry level, they wanted me to be very organized. That's hilarious. But I had to do it. And it's the stresses and strains.

And I had to learn who are my friends and who are my enemies because there were people who stabbed me in the back for their promotion. And you can't just stab them back. You have to like learn to navigate. but it happened the playground, the street was the office and the politics and the and the egos and the insecurities, mine and theirs and the ambitions and all of this came into the pot that was the office place. And I fear that because it feels nice not to come to work and it feels nice to have all that freedom that as you describe the liquidity, the liquid work

life balance, that the rigidity and the structure, even to the point where companies are saying, we'd like it to come back to work, and it's not just for us, it's also for you. There's such a harsh pushback amongst particularly, I think, younger populations, because it feels nice not to come in, but the question is, is it good for you? When I've spoken about this, the comments in the sections are like, you're just saying that because you're an exploitive employer and all of this stuff. And I I really am thinking about those lion cubs. I'm really thinking about the time. Because you can't, when you're senior and you scrows something up, it can be really bad.

When you're junior, you're not going to bring the company down. I am who I am today in large part because I was really lucky to have a really shitty boss when I started my career. And then I got a really good boss. And I learned how not to do things and how to do things that had significant molding and influence. One of my favorite cards is actually, I still remember. the manager who. And what you hear is often either the best manager, the one that I adore, that I, that

trade me, that believed in me, that da-da-da-da, that I want to emulate, either it's the manager like the boss that you're talking about, that the shitty manager who really made me sweat and but and who I learned from that person what never to do. It's an amazing revelatory card. Now, I also like the piece of feedback I used to. I wish I had received sooner. That too, because it goes back to your beginnings and what people did and did not tell you. I think instead of polarizing between remote work and physically present at work, the question for me at this moment, I don't want to engage with that conversation, the way where people can then be invited to, you know, I combine, I do my podcast online.

It is a technology where people can listen live to sessions. I also see patients in person. I see patients on a walk. I see patients on a screen. I try to alternate it. And I try to teach my students to not do their entire work on the screen. Because some of the young therapists have never seen anybody work and have never been seen working.

And that, I think, is problematic. Because supervision is the way you learn in my field. That's your feedback session with the manager is a supervision session. So I would say what is important is how we help people connect. It's what people used to say, like, meet them where they are. How do you elicit curiosity? How do you make people appear like they are three-dimensional people behind that screen? You know, what's going on in their life?

How do you? And can we? Because what happens today is you open the screen, even us, We opened the screen, and we basically started within a minute, you know, because I couldn't say, can I get you a coffee or you say to me, can I get, you know, that whole ritual of welcoming, of entering into each other's spheres, of saying, how have you been, of connect, you know, that smile that we were talking about. It's so task.

It's transactional. It's transactional. But, and again, I agree with you. And I'm not making the fore or against in person versus online work either. I mean, I've had a virtual company before virtual companies were a thing. And I still do. Like, my team is spread all over the country, if not all over the world. I'm making the case that it's not one or it's one end, that I'm asking employers to be

flexible, but I'm asking employees to be flexible too. That neither side should be saying it's this or that. Both sides should be saying we would like it blended, even if some of it makes me uncomfortable because I'm an introvert or I'm an extrovert, whatever, because it's not just about, an introvert, I want to stay at home. Well, think about your extrovert colleagues. They want to see you. So sometimes we have to make a little sacrifice for each other. This goes back to what it means to be in tribe. It means to be in relationship, which is we do things for each other so that we can grow, not just that I can be happy, but that we can, we can be happy and we do things for

each other. And so I, like, even my virtual company, like, I remember the, the, the, the, do you meet? Do you have off-sides? We do. We do an annual off-site. I like, I like when the team team meets up as smaller groups throughout the year as well. That happens. And I want it to happen more, if I'm honest. But the value of the in-person cannot be replicated. And I think what you and I are both espousing is flexibility, not dogma. And flexibility, but also I think that in-person and then what?

So I say, when I bring people in person, I want to create connections that are fun, meaningful, elicit the desire for more. So, you know, any activity is good. I happen to do it with storytelling because I think that we are storytellers and relationships are stories. I think that one of our biggest challenges is how do you deal in relationships

with the fact that somebody has a completely different story about the same relationship as you? And that's where a lot of conflict comes in. That's not what happened. I'll tell you what happened because my brain is more accurate than you. That's worth repeating because it's just so funny and so true. That's not what happened.

I'll tell you what happened. Oh, my God. We've all done it. We've definitely all thought. Of course, I know. You know, my brain works. Yours doesn't. And I do it, you know, with the courses.

I do it with the podcast. I do it with the card. But the concept behind it is how do I help people who don't go out enough and don't speak enough in serendipitous impromptu situations? know what to say, ask questions, learn to listen, learn to tell stories about themselves, realize what it means to be revealing of oneself within limits in the workplace. And I think one of the things that the Lions did is play. So a card game is play.

I wanted to use play to create these meaningful connections, which I know for fact improve the relationship culture in the workplace, which therefore, for facts, improves performance in the workplace. I mean, I think you said it best, and I think it's a nice place, it's a nice button for us to conclude, which is play doesn't necessarily mean, you know, a game of foosball or ping pong or something. Play is just is bringing some sort of lighthearted interaction. When you and I go out for dinner, you and I have sometimes very intense conversations, we disagree. sometimes sometimes we pick at each other and at the end of every time we get together at the end of every dinner we both leave and i had such so much fun i had such a good time and and i think because you know what is playing is when when risk when when when risk is fun and what you described was a

concern about comfort and discomfort yeah i am less on the spending side making sure people are not uncomfortable in all of that i spend more time at this moment helping people helping people take risks because, you know, we tend to say that only when you trust can you take risks. But it is also true that when you can take risks, it increases your ability to trust, your abilities and other people. And when we can understand that we treat work as play and relationships as play and all of these things that don't have fixed rules and agreed upon outcomes, agreed upon finish lines, that the mindset must be play. And that in turn, to your point, reduces stress, increases productivity, increases the quality of our relationships,

gets us to see each other as contributors rather than competitors. And it just makes cultures, relationships work better when you view as many aspects of your life as play, you're playing the infinite game. Another way for play would be engagement. 100%. 100%. For those of us who don't like the word play, I just think, replace it with engagement. and this will make a tremendous amount of sense.

I like it. I like it a lot. What's the number one relationship skill Gen Z should master before starting their first job? Talk to strangers. Say more. Didn't expect that one.

I mean, when you spend all your time like this, you don't notice who's around you. You don't talk to people on a plane. You don't talk to people in the queue. You don't talk to people while you're waiting for your coffee. I mean, you don't talk to strangers. And talking to strangers is improvisation, spontaneity, serendipity, surprise, novelty, an active engagement with the unknown, which is actually one of the definitions

that Rachel Botsman gives to what is trust. Trust is an active engagement with the unknown. If you don't know to talk to strangers, you have less trust. And entering the workplace is talking to strangers. If you just came out of whatever school you've done or not done and done any other preparation, but any first job is a series of conversations with strangers without knowing what they really want from you,

without knowing how they look at you, without understanding the codes. You know, you've just been 12 years in school. You kind of figured out what's the deal, what are the social norms. Find yourself in any job, any kind of job. You're looking around. It's like moving to a new country.

Yeah. which further highlights what we're saying about, which is the biggest at-risk population is not little kids. It's entry-level employees. Now, I will add, talking to strangers is sometimes a lot of fun and sometimes uncomfortable. And the discomfort piece is a part of life. The only way you deal with it is by repeating until it becomes practice.

Any skill you will learn at first has an element of discomfort. I think that we've put comfort and discomfort so much in the center of life at this moment, because all these apps are supposed to give us frictionless life that is so comfortable. And we bring those very expectations to places where that is not the norm. Life is complex and it is all of these other things. So I think talking to strangers, which is a thing that often parents say, talk to strangers, no, no, no, absolutely talk to strangers. So good.

So good. What's one daily habit that leaders can use to stay true to their priorities when work and home demands collide? Oh, that's a beautiful one. What is one thing that leaders can be, when they experience the tension between home and work? I think for some people, it's 10 minutes of meditation in the morning, 20, whatever. I mean, just quiet by themselves, where you have to accomplish nothing. You don't have to meet the needs of home or work. You just have to be in your breath, in the moment, you know, in thoughts or without thoughts, depending on the practice of meditation.

But the meditation can also be movement. It can be biking. It can be walking. It can be, you know, so it's it's, it's active disengagement from the, from the responsibility, from the responsibility. You know, it's a moment where you don't have to, you don't have to answer anything. you don't have to solve any problem. You don't have to be accountable. And if it's only five minutes because of the reality of your life, let it be five minutes.

But to have a moment that is in an dirt space away from the obligations, the duties, the responsibility, the accountability of each one. And it's how it pinches on you. And for people who are uncomfortable with the concept of meditation or don't know how to do it, to your point, it doesn't matter what you do. The way I do it, every single morning, I sit in bed. I do wordle, I do connections, and I do the crossword puzzle in that order. Wordle, crossword puzzle, end?

Wordle, connections and then crossword. And always in that order. You know, I think meditation can be totally in movement. I'm using the word more metaphorically than in its literal sense. I think connecting is very important. I mean, I've asked many people high into tech and AI to connect with one person every day, different people if need be could but just brief and with voice not just with text even if it's a voice message yeah i think that we need to really hear the voice is the first thing we hear in neutral we need

to listen to the voice of people we will be misinterpreting each other a lot less if we'll hear the voice so that's but in all you every one of my that's how you fix you know 55 misinterpretations on an email that escalates is you have one phone call and resolved in five weeks please yes you are you are one of the most you were one of the wisest lucid uh clearest commentators on the world as we know it today oh wow and i think thank you i hope i know i know that your your your current work is bringing what you've learned from years of relationship therapy into the workplace which as we've already determined is irrelevant in terms of the context because it's about human relationships the quality of your relationship

relationships, determine the quality of your life. At work and at home. And at work and at home. And you are the OG, you are the Mac Daddy, you are the best. I'm such a fan of you, your work, and I'm so glad I get to call you friend. It's mutual and thank you so much. I love you. I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.

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