Saturn Returns with Caggie - Alain de Botton: What Does It Really Take to Find and Maintain Love Today?

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

For the first episode of Letters to Venus, Caggie is joined by renowned philosopher, author, and founder of The School of Life, Alain de Botton. Together, they explore the evolution of love and relationships, the complexities of modern dating, and why emotional intelligence is more crucial than ever in today’s fast-paced, technology-driven world. This conversation dives deep into: 💌 The role of emotional intelligence in building lasting connections 💌 How technology and dating apps are reshaping the way we find love 💌 The challenges of modern dating and why it feels harder than ever 💌 Why honest, consistent communication is the key to relationship success 💌 How childhood experiences influence our expectations in love 💌 The importance of attachment styles and how they impact early dating 💌 Why love isn’t just a feeling but a skill that requires flexibility and negotiation With Alain’s profound wisdom and Caggie’s thoughtful reflections, this episode is packed with insights and practical advice that will challenge the way you think about love, relationships, and intimacy. Unlock your cosmic potential with easyStars, through personalised astrology insights, AI-powered compatibility reports, and daily guidance from Pixie (your AI astrologer!)  Download easyStars on Apple here or Google here today and enjoy a free 2-week trial! ✨ — Letters to Venus is a spin-off of Saturn Returns that aims to explore the mysteries of love, relationships, and dating through the lens of astrology. Hosted by Caggie, Letters to Venus is inspired by the celestial wisdom of Venus - the goddess of love, beauty, and desire - and aims to help you navigate your heart, relationship patterns, and pathways to true intimacy. Want to go deeper? Join the waitlist for the Letters to Venus Course! To complement the podcast, we’re launching an exclusive course designed to help you integrate these transformative lessons into your love life. Featuring expert guests (including some from the podcast!), this course will help you: 💌 Understand your Venus placement and how it shapes your love language 💌 Recognise and break free from unhealthy relationship patterns 💌 Attract and nurture authentic, fulfilling connections 💌 Cultivate deep self-love as the foundation for a thriving love life ✨Spots are limited! Sign up for the waitlist here to be the first to secure your place when enrollment opens 💫

Today's episode is brought to you by Easy Stars, an innovative app at the intersection of astrology and technology. If you've ever wondered why you are the way you are, how to unlock your full potential or even the best time to make a big life move, Easy Stars has the answers. At the heart of the app is Pixie, your AI astrologer and personal cosmic guide. Pixie delivers daily insights tailored to your astrological chart, whether it's guidance on well-being or tips for better decision making.

And if relationships are on your mind, the Easy Stars AI-powered compatibility reports can help you navigate love, friendships and even workplace dynamics. So whether you're planning a trip with your Leo boyfriend, wondering when to make that big investment or just looking for a little cosmic clarity, Easy Stars has your back. If you're curious to see how the stars can help you become your best self, download Easy Stars today and enjoy a free one month subscription. Hello everyone and welcome to a new spin-off show from Saturn Returns all around love,

relationships and dating. This is Letters to Venus. Venus is the goddess of love, the celestial muse of beauty, desire and connection. She teaches us that love is not just something we seek, it is something we embody. In this first episode, I am joined by renowned philosopher, author and the founder of the School of Life, Alan de Bota. We discuss how the evolution of love and relationships has shaped modern dating and Alan shares his thoughts on the importance of emotional intelligence, the influence of technology on connection and the challenges of dating in the digital age. In this episode we cover the need for honesty and regular communication in relationships, how childhood experiences shape our expectations in love, and the role of

attachment styles and why they matter early in dating. Why love must be flexible and regularly negotiated in long-term partnerships. This episode is packed with practical advice and profound wisdom that will leave you thinking about love and connection in a whole new way. I hope you enjoy. Welcome to the show. I was a bit nervous about this one because you are a big name that I can't pronounce. That you can't pronounce. Any comprehensive words. But I also, I feel like it was super easy to talk to, so I was also very excited about

this. Good. I'm easy to talk to. And for the audience that might not be familiar with your work, would you be able to share a little bit about who you are and how you got into the work you do? Yes. So I've been a writer for most of my professional life. And the topics that really interest me are love, relationships, psychology, you know, how we work, how we don't work,

why we suffer. And then about 10 years ago, I started something called the School of Life, which is an organization devoted to emotional well-being. And we do lots of things. We've got a YouTube channel and we put out lots of content and all kinds of things. We're kind of home for emotional intelligence on a good day. I feel like the School of Life was so ahead of its time. How did you decide that that's what you wanted to do and create? I just wanted to not be alone with all the stuff that I care about. I wanted a team. So on a personal level? Yes. I mean, there's this sort of thing that if you've got something

interesting to say, you should write a book, you know, and that should be it. And I always thought, well, why couldn't a book also be a community, a home, a group of people pushing in a certain direction, you know, a brand, if you like. And so we're kind of brand around emotional intelligence. But yeah, I think, you know, also technology is making it ever easier for people to do that. And you could have your own little studio, your own little broadcasting hub, etc., which is fantastic. But do you think that that it's not quite the same as actual human connections sitting down? Yes, I mean, we also do retreats.

We also, you know, take people away. We... I agree, you know, particularly post-COVID, it's lovely for people to meet in the flesh. And we're ramping up that side of things as well. So, yes, I think I find that people... What people are longing for is two things, understanding, understanding themselves and and others and then also connection You know, it's they're slightly different things

Understanding you you could get in your bedroom looking at a film or reading a book connection, you've got to get out and you know, actually Say hello and do you feel like we've got the balance right for that at the moment or not so much? In society? Yeah. No, I mean, it's striking how whenever sort of architects, planners, politicians talk about community spaces, what they really mean is places where there are lots of people. What they tend not to mean is places where lots of people can talk to one another, let alone discover meaningful things about one another. Do you know what I mean? I mean, in an average sort of piazza in an English town, you're not gonna go up to a stranger and have anything like a meaningful conversation.

You may notice that you're not alone on the planet, but there's a big difference between that and any kind of deeper connection. And it's a pity because if you give people any sort of encouragement, they will go for it. They will deepen things. And create the space for it. Yeah, but you need a little sort of encouragement, they will go for it. They will deepen things. And create the space for it. Yeah. But you need a little bit of encouragement. I mean, we know on trains you've got the quiet

carriage and when it says quiet on a good day, people are quiet. But if you had the chatty carriage, people might chat or they talk to a stranger carriage. Whatever's on the billboard, people will tend to follow. But, but public space is generally silent space, anonymous space. Especially in cities like London, you know, where everyone on the commute is just completely silent. No one's even making eye contact. Yeah. Because, you know, there are reasons why people don't want to be stalked, people don't want to be bothered, people don't want to be intruded upon. You know, there is such a thing as intrusion. Of course there is. And so, but it's surely a balance between a fear of intrusion and a fear of, you know, dying completely alone. And I think we're more towards, you know, the latter danger. We've forgotten what the scale of the risk is.

I would say that we're a lot better at the understanding piece. say that we're a lot better at the understanding piece. Yes, I think we are hugely building up a vocabulary of terms to describe some of the crazy stuff that we do and that other people do. And I think that psychotherapies had a really big role in that, in equipping people with words. I do have a bit of a quibble with some of the way in which that goes, that you can sometimes feel that everybody's pathologizing everybody else, so that everybody else is toxic, has got red flags, is a narcissist, is borderline, etc. These are words that have come from the clinic.

I just think they get wielded around a bit too much. And I think what I mean by too much is it can feel sometimes that by the time you've excluded every last red flag person from your life, it's fantastic. You'll have no trouble, but you'll be completely alone. So, so- As in we all have our red flags. We all, I mean, human beings are all slightly nutty. And you know, and I mean that benevolently, you included, me included, we all, I mean, human beings are all slightly nutty. And, you know, and I mean that benevolently,

you included, me included, we all are struggling with things. And so, you know, one's always right if you say so and so's got this or got that, whatever, you know, probably you're right. But is it any use pointing it out? I mean, you know, imagine a world in which what we're trying really to do is to manage our imperfections, rather than just point them out. We're trying to work out how to live among imperfections, our own and those of others, rather than simply going, that one's got an imperfection. I mean, think of us with our physical appearance, right? Imagine if there was an industry devoted to pointing out how ugly most people are.

And most people, you know, me included. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that one's got saggy. Oh, that one's eyes are a bit think, oh, you've seen that, the ears are a bit droopy, whatever it is. And we think that was, we think that was kind of not just mean, but also a bit senseless. What's the point? Because we think, well, they can't really change. And it just is what it is. And so it's just inflaming people to get angry about something. And the same thing could apply at points to the psychological sphere,

where again, we take a bit too much to learn, go, Oh, look, that one's got it. Oh, that one's got a thing, the borderline thing going on. It's like, well, okay, fine. What have you got going on? What have we all got going on? We're all struggling with things. Well, I also think because the focus is often on the other, especially in the context of dating and relationships, we're not we're not inspecting our own

behaviors quite as much as we are trying to give the other person some sort of disorder. That's right. That's right. That's right. We're labeling the other one as mad and not just mad because that's too casual. We're giving them a clinical description of their pathologies and then saying, you know, good riddance and we're free now. And, you know, there's that sort of narrative of liberation, that heady moment of liberation. It's like you discover that your partner is a da, da, da, and then you're going to push them out. And now you're free and you can value yourself and you have worth and you can love yourself.

Then what? You know, after that heady moment, what? We're then stuck in a world in which most people are laboring under various kinds of pathological behavior, we included. So that's what we're dealing with. And I think that's the myth that, you know, Instagram therapy doesn't want us to listen to. Mm-hmm. And in that, because I really want us to dive into relationships and love.

And if we can kind of take it a little bit back, because the world that we're living in now and the way that we are dating and interacting with one another is so different from the way that it used to be, not only because of technology, but also because of what we're looking for in relationships. So would you be able to take us back in terms of how that has evolved? Because I feel like people feel this huge amount of pressure now to find the right person. But we have all of this stuff going on. And we also don't recognize that we're quite with the first and doing it in many ways.

Yes, that's right. I mean, we can feel compassion for ourselves for the scale of our ambitions, and also the lack of preparation for them. You know. We've set up expectations and haven't really built the structure behind those expectations, which could help us to deliver on them. So just to sketch it, I mean, look, for most of human history, people didn't marry for love. They married for convenience, for dynastic reasons, because your field was next to their field, or they had a plow and you had an ox, and that was a good match. So it was really irrespective of the emotions

of the participants. And that obviously had all sorts of problems, and a lot of art and literature is pointing out the tensions of that. Your heart is in one place, but necessity in society is in another. And it's really because of this unhappiness that the modern world, which is,

you know, say 200 years old, arrives at what we now call romantic love, which is a very different way of approaching relationships. And that's the idea that you should follow broadly your heart, your emotions, your feelings, and that those feelings shouldn't be interrogated too much. It's wherever your heart takes you. If your heart takes you to this person, well, that's the person you should marry. And so the narrative becomes one about, you know, sudden transports of love, the crush gets becomes elevated something, you know, you you see somebody on a train, and then you have to follow them and, you know, they could be your destiny, etc. So a tremendous reverence for a kind of intuition. Intuition will lead you to something amazing.

And that's the way we've been doing it for a while. Which is beautiful and romantic. It's beautiful and romantic. I've got a problem with the word romantic. Everything that's romantic is not romantic. By that I mean... What do you mean by that? If we redefine romantic as actually conducive to love,

conducive to the maintenance and success of love, most things we consider romantic are not romantic. Like what? Well, for example, if you sat down with a lover that you were thinking of getting together with and you started discussing your finances, you started saying, okay, well, how much money we need to live,

what do you make, what do I make how much money we need to live? What do you make? What do I make? How's that going to work? This would immediately be labeled an unromantic conversation. Because the ideology which we sail under is money's unromantic and feeling wins everything. So to stop Romeo and Juliet from doing whatever they want to do and asking them, you know, what's your income is highly strange. I mean, you pick this up in the novels of Jane Austen. Jane Austen's writing at a really interesting time when, you know, the older system of dating and marriage is eroding. There's the beginnings of the love way of doing it. And

Austen is literally kind of poised between the two. And so she's always interested in telling her readers how much her characters earn. She literally says, you know, so and so, you know, he was worth whatever it is, you know, 20 pounds a year or, you know, old money. And that's for her a very vital thing. And it's not that she's arguing that people should marry for money. She's arguing quite sensibly that to ignore totally the financial basis of a relationship is foolish. Those who only pay attention to money also get into trouble. So in her novels, anyone who marries for money is in trouble, but anyone who doesn't look at money is also in trouble.

So it's a very interesting thing. And we would consider Austin a bit unromantic. I don't think she's unromantic at all. She's really interested in how relationships succeed. And one of the ways in which they succeed is if someone's worrying about the money. That's one of the... Do you see what I mean about unromantic? Unromantic things that are actually... Quite important. Another thing that seems quite unromantic is psychology, psychological background. I mean, if on an early dinner date, you started probing at the attachment style of your partner.

It would be quite effective in knowing what's going to come up. It'd be rather interesting. Again, that could be thought of as, you're interviewing me or, you know, this doesn't sound very romantic. But these things are cautionary. It doesn't sound very romantic to work out a rotor for who's gonna clean the bathroom. But once you get that done, a lot of good things can flow. And so things like routine, money, psychological exploration, all put in the unromantic camp. But actually these things are quite useful

at fostering love. I understand that. But if we're looking at the difference between falling in love and being in love, because I think they are quite different things and because everything tends to be quite feeling based at the moment in terms of how we meet people, going with our heart, all the things that you said, what do you think we are of actually dating and getting someone to fall in love with you, you fall in love with them, and then we'll kind of go into the more maintenance around a relationship because they feel like they're

very different things. Yeah. I mean, look, it's not just a friendship. Relationships are not just friendships. There is a biological sexual basis to them, unfortunately, because it means that we're trying to do, you know, some of the reasons why relationships it means that we're trying to do, you know, some of the reasons why relationships are complicated is we're trying to do so many things in them. You know, the best friend, the sexual partner, the, you know, the child... The confidant for everything. ...raiser the confidant, blah, blah, blah, on and on the list goes. But I think that even if we accept, okay, we're going to need a complicated candidate,

the physical does have a role that I think we ignore at our peril. I mean, sometimes people try and say, hmm, I'm an intelligent person. I'm, you know, I'm not interested in looks or I'm not going to think about those things. Those are things of lower things. I'm just not going to bother. And I can understand the sentiment, you know, in a way, who wants to think about that? That's very, it's very counter to our higher aspirations, which is that we should give everybody their due

as mental beings, and we shouldn't consider really their physical dimensions or how we feel about their physical dimensions. But I think that's rather like saying, sleep is silly. Why would we sleep? Why would we bother sleeping? It's like, well, you know, try that at your peril. You know, you're going to be consequences or someone, you know, who climbs a mountain and says, you know, good shoes for the birds. I don't really,

you know, I don't need to bother. So we can be foolhardy in ignoring things. So yes, we exist partly as these biological embodied creatures, and we shouldn't and can't ignore that. And it narrows our room for maneuver. It really does. It means that, you know, show somebody 100 candidates, and simply at the sort of biological physical level, they'll rule out, they have to rule out a huge number of those for reasons that defy conscious understanding. They'll go, I don't know why this person is not interesting to me. I just, I can't tell. Now, there is also a kind of therapeutic, psychotherapeutic sort of explanation

behind this, which is that, I mean, the story goes that the way in which we love as adults is always following in the tracks laid down by experiences in childhood. So we first learn about love as children. And depending on how that experience of love goes, so our approach to adult love will be shaped one way or another. The narrative that we have is the more that early love is tempestuous, difficult, frustrating, unkind, in some way falls short of our hopes, the more we'll approach adult love with fear, that we will think, I won't just be repeating something nice, I might be repeating something painful. And that explains a really puzzling thing about love,

which is that though we think of ourselves collectively as a species always looking for love, I'm looking for more love, the songs are about wanting love, et cetera, the truth is much, much more complicated. A big part of many, many of us is devoted to pushing love away. It's kind of odd, right?

We're as interested in not having love as we are in having love. It's too much of a coincidence that there are so many people whose relationships collapse, who are on their own, who, as it were, can't find a partner. It could all seem like a sad coincidence of people who desperately want love and it just collapsed. Very often, if you scratch below the surface, what you'll find is people

who have been scarred by love, normally in childhood, and in adulthood have serious mixed feelings about making love work. On the one hand, they'd love to be close. On the other, closeness freaks them out. They want someone in their life. At the same time, they feel engulfed if somebody is too present. And so, you know, we're not understanding love if we simply see ourselves as creatures who want to get ever closer to someone else, we are as interested in maintaining boundaries and distance between ourselves and others. And almost always, the more childhood was arduous and difficult, the more distance we're going to need from our adult partners in order to feel safe. And this really, we're going into attachment theory. Or do you feel that that's quite universal

for human beings that as much as we want and crave that connection, we're also in different ways going to push it away? Look, attachment theories, you know, was one of the great developments of 20th century psychology is hugely useful. And it's now spread out into the world. And people on dinner dates will talk about their attachment styles. And thank goodness. I mean, it's a good thing.

It's a great thing, because it gives people a language with which to discuss fear. Because really what attachment theory is about is that people are afraid of love. They are as excited about love as they're afraid of love. And, you know, that classic distinction between the avoidant person and the anxious person. Go one level below that.

Both the anxious and the avoidant person are afraid of love. They're afraid of proximity. They just handle that fear differently. The avoidant by moving away, the anxious by getting angry and pulling somebody near with forcefulness. But it's the same thing below the surface. There's a narrative and the narrative goes something like this. If I get close to someone, bad stuff will happen because it's happened before. In childhood.

In childhood. it's happened before. In childhood. In childhood. For those of you looking to deepen your understanding of love and healthy partnership, I am launching a live course as a companion to Letters to Venus.

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So I was listening to something that was saying that it actually starts from when we're babies and that we will have a way of responding to our parents if they leave the room and come back in, you know, the anxious will continue to cry whereas the avoidant might not make any noise at all. Do you think that it's that early on or do you think it's more a product of our childhood experiences over time and learnt behaviour? I just don't have the experience but my hunch would be that whatever proclivities might be there almost from birth are then amenable to change depending on what happens. And attachment styles continue to evolve. I mean, an attachment style is really a style and styles can be changed by experience. If you have a succession of relationships

which constantly reinforce that people can't be relied upon, you may become more avoidant or more anxious. If you have a succession of relationships that enforces the idea that people can be trusted, you will develop security. And what about sort of someone that goes from one to the other in the same relationship, the fearful avoidant? Yes. I mean, you know, in human nature, I think we fill in the gaps that exist in situations. It's like if someone's very angry, often you can't have two people who are angry. So one person monopolizes the angry space, and then the other one has to almost, willingly or

not, adopt a quieter position. You see this in families where, let's say, there's one very angry parent. None of the children can ever express their anger because the space has been monopolized. So in a functioning relationship, ideally no one should hog too much of any one position. What marks out healthy relationships is flexibility. If you think of it as a tennis court,

people are able to move around the court and hit balls from different angles. And things get very rigid. Someone's always got to be right by the net or someone's always got to be way back. So in terms of dating and the world that we live in today with dating apps and so many people that you said wanting connection, wanting to find love and going out into the world and perhaps they're really putting themselves out there, but they're just falling short. How do you think we can kind of combine, I guess, some of the perhaps older ways with today and balancing the feeling base, the heart led with the more rational and aware parts of ourselves.

I mean, look, first, a shout out for anyone who is going on the dating rigmarole. It's an immensely emotionally taxing event, really, which more than it's been before. Well, I mean, it's still relatively new. More than it's been before? Well, I mean, it's still relatively new. But I think if one ever thinks of what a date is, it's essentially an interview for the most significant role in your life. And to do this week after week, as many people do these days, is very emotionally taxing because you're likely to discover all sorts of really unpleasant things. Someone you like the look of doesn't want you, hugely unpleasant. Someone who you thought might be the answer turns out not to be the answer. And on and on it goes.

I mean, there are very few good possibilities. Someone who initially seems good may then reject you. Someone who you initially thought was great after two weeks turns out not to be, etc. So you really have to keep a handle on hope. At the same time, that's like saying you have to keep a handle on your appetite when you go in a restaurant. I mean, it's like you're there to eat. So it's very hard both to date and not have hope that the date may work out. So there's a huge, I. Dates are often seen as an almost jokey subject. They're seen as someone's dating. There's a kind of carnival feel to the

whole thing. It's deeply traumatic for people. No wonder that at points people will stop. They'll say, I can't take it anymore. I think what they're saying is, it's too difficult. These cycles of hope and disappointment are too difficult. And the chances of, you know, someone right coming along are too small, given the emotional toll. And this is a very poignant moment. And, you know, that really is no easy answer because what we're doing is meeting a very non-negotiable human need for connection with others. I mean, this is very hardwired in us. Meets very high criteria.

In other words, we can't meet that need with just anyone. Meets very limited and intermittent supply. So you've got very difficult set of features coming together. And what's more, people are quite alone with this. It's something that they undertake alone. So a lot of isolation around this. So no wonder people are sad and you get outbursts where people go, never again.

It's quite understandable. Do you think that there's anything that we could do differently though, in terms of equipping ourselves with tools or practices? Because I also think that people go into the dating landscape and perhaps they do have a lot of hope and they have expectations of how it's gonna go and they really like that person.

They're very attracted to them. They have a lot of feeling towards them initially, but they might not be of feeling towards them initially, but they might not be getting the same energy back, but they keep pursuing it because they're basing it on how that person makes them feel. Perhaps that person is making them feel anxious, but they're sort of attributing that to something positive because they can't stop thinking about them. I mean, look, the overall truth is hopeful,

but we haven't yet learned to capitalize on it. I believe that there really is, on a planet of 8 billion people, a suitable match for pretty much anyone. There really is. But, and it's a huge but, the methods of connecting people are still unreliable. So most of what we call dating apps are closer to roulette machines

in the sense that they know that they are not doing their utmost to maximise the lives of those who are on them. They have a lot of information about who would go with whom, that they're choosing not to divulge. For one simple reason, that if they did that, people would be off the app very quickly, and some people would leave the app because the app has not recruited the right number of people for them. So they're never going to be happy. But the app doesn't want to admit that because then people would leave. So it's a calculated contract, and it works for some people, like casinos work for some

people. And that's why we keep going to the casino because we've seen some people where it works. Some people have won, yeah. Some people have won and think, oh, well, then I could win. But the numbers are hedged. So ultimately the casino owner always wins. And they're not that interested in, as it were, the happiness of the people who are using it. But if we were running the utopia, what we would do is have everyone on the planet registered and, not just registered, psychologically understood at depth and a supercomputer would then really properly work out who has the best chance of being with whom, and the answer would then arrive for people in a dispassionate, non-commercialized way.

But then we're talking about something completely different, closer to almost a medical intervention where blood types are aligned, etc. So we could be doing it much better, but as I say, the frustration that people experience is a commercially mandated frustration, and it could be avoided. And, you know, there's room for entrepreneurs, more benevolent entrepreneurs, to get to grips with this. Because that is how people are meeting these days, and that's going to continue to be. And look, I mean, in a way, the app world has made an enormous advance on the old world where, you know, what was there?

The party. And the party is a hugely random way of trying to encounter someone. I mean, that you would gather, you know, someone's gathered 200 of their best friends, and you're trying to find somebody who's, you know, the compatible age, compatible stage of life, by going to talk to them. You know, the mountain is very steep. I mean, there are some people who thrive in that environment, but very many would be highly defeated. So the app is a much better first step. And it fits in with other digital connecting

tools. I mean, we now know that on you know, on LinkedIn, you know, you'll find a much higher chance of finding somebody who's in the right industry, blah, blah, blah, than if you were, you know, walk out in the road and go to a party. Well, as in LinkedIn for dating or in the business sense? No, no, no, LinkedIn for business. LinkedIn for business. So I'm saying that the internet is very good at, you know, if you're looking for light bulbs, it was a nightmare to go from light bulb shop to light bulb shop, I had to find it a slightly unusual light bulb, you put it in. And, you know, hey, Presto, there's a shop somewhere far away with just that light bulb. I mean, that's amazing. That's that's the power of the internet to make connections over pretty

rare things. And so it's no wonder that, you know, entrepreneurs got in on the dating field. But but we're just at the beginning of knowing how to handle that technology maximally effectively. Yeah, because I'm quite a hopeless romantic and like the idea of fate, which I guess doesn't really tie in to the app. But then I was thinking recently about dating reality shows. And in a way, that's what they're doing is that they're really considering the psychology of a person, they've interviewed them thoroughly, and they're putting them or

placing them with these people and kind of doing these social experiments. But what we can see is people are falling in love off the back of that. There has been quite a lot of success when you've got a pretty small number of people that they're putting together. So what does that tell us? You know, kind of in a way, it's unromantic because I think it takes away this idea that there's, you know, fate involved, or you could argue otherwise, but for me it does. And that actually it's some producers or perhaps psychologists or whoever they have in the background going, okay, if we put this person with this person after screening thousands, we think there's a high probability that they're going to have chemistry and perhaps fall in love and it's going to

be great entertainment. Yeah. Yes. And I think that that should give you hope because I think what you're calling romantic in this sense is something heartfelt, spontaneous, et cetera. And I think what we're saying is, get all the background stuff right. Screen the psychology, get people aligned on, you know,

all their needs, and you will find, hey, presto, that all that stuff that you like and see as spontaneous will arise. Look, think about it as agriculture. So think about strawberries, right? So we all love wild strawberries, and it's lovely, you're going for a walk and then you see a bush and there's some wild strawberries and they're absolutely delicious and succulent. And you think how

lovely that nature just provides these. Then along comes something goes, let's put this on a shore of footings, we get more of these for more people. Let's let's start agriculture. Let's lay out some rows of strawberries and you grow these things. And you know, on the one hand, the good side is lots more strawberries. Downside is they taste bland and kind of hollow and like cardboard. And you think, I much prefer the wild strawberries. Now, we know that neither of these two options is ultimately where we want to be. Because the wild strawberries, though delicious and succulent, they just aren't enough of them. It's too rare. You're given too much to chance. And the mass manufactured, agriculture things are too bland and too cold,

as it were. And what we want is something in between. And I think in agriculture, we are learning, horticulturists are learning how to do this, how to create, you know, mass produced strawberries that have some of the qualities of a wild strawberry. But this requires intense scientific effort and intense study of tastes and all sorts of things. So the old world, the pre-industrial world, the world of intuition, the world of chance, had many charming things, old buildings that, you know, an artisan just put up and we think, oh, what a lovely, cozy cottage, or a table built by, you know, an unschooled carpenter that just has a tactility that's amazing. You know, we know lots of things, the homemade, the homespun, that the chance that we're great.

We've moved into a technological industrial world that many of whose products seem cold, alien, unhealthy, barren, empty. And so there's terrific nostalgia. Let's go back. We can't really go back. But I think what we can do is think deeper about how with the tools of

modernity, we can stop accepting the substandard, mass-produced bland offerings of 20th century science and technology to aim for something more individuated, closer to our real passions. And I think where you described these reality shows that help people to fall in love, you know, in a way, that's almost a synthesis. It's a synthesis between passion and technology. So you're not getting just a technological cardboard relationship, but nor are you having to wait around on the train station of love for a train for most of your life.

And, you know, let's not forget how many people in the pre-modern world just waited and waited and waited and died alone, you know? So it wasn't working perfectly. It worked for a very few people. And those people were celebrated in art and poetry and music and that's why we hear about them. But for everyone who found their love by chance in the bookshop, there would be legions of people sitting at home dying alone. That's pretty miserable.

Well it's a sign of what we've got to work cut out and that that's exciting thing. So there's stuff to be done. On an individual level, if someone's listening to this, and they have dating fatigue, they're putting themselves out there. They don't feel like they're getting anywhere. And they feel like it's more, you know, the strawberries that are bland, have no taste. How can they? What can they learn about themselves? That equips them with the knowledge to go, okay, this is actually what I really need in a partnership versus what I'm being drawn

to because of a pattern of behavior that might not even be that healthy or, you know, just to be better on the initial dating stage so that they don't waste their time. I mean, look, if someone is discouraged, I think I would start somewhere slightly different on the initial dating stage so that they don't waste their time. I mean, look, if someone is discouraged, I think I would start somewhere slightly different with all due respect. I would start with acknowledging that what they are doing is hugely complicated and therefore their pain is entirely legitimate. Of course you're feeling down. What you're putting yourself through is incredibly arduous. It looks simple. Oh, I just downloaded an app and it's been flicking through.

No, you're putting yourself through an emotional roller coaster. You're doing one of the more difficult emotional maneuvers that is possible to do in life. And so therefore give yourself some credit and, you know, look after yourself because it's not easy. No wonder, you know, think, oh, you know, I, I swiped whatever left right on, you know, 20 people that had a chat and then I got ghosted and now I'm depressed. No wonder, no wonder this is, this is very difficult. You know, we have a language where we think that's easy. It's not really, really tricky. So, you know, as the old saying goes, be kind to yourself. You are putting yourself through something difficult.

Space it out. You know, make sure you're not doing this all the time because you need something else. You need reminders of your, you know, legitimate existence outside of this. And that may require some breaks. As for the kind of particular thing of getting more accurate, I think what you're saying,

getting more accurate about what you want. I mean, I think very often, we don't tend to ask ourselves sharply enough what really it is that, who we are, what we require. And so we kind of slightly like everybody or like no one as it were. We're not zeroing in enough on the sorts of things that seem to matter.

And say the apps don't necessarily make it easy for us. I think something that I've heard works very well is for people, instead of rushing out to go and meet people in the physical space, is to set up phone calls, video calls, just not to have to leave the house until they're a bit more sure of how they're feeling about things. Because making that investment, I guess. Yes, yes.

But as I say, I think the key thing is, it's a very difficult thing. But then, you know, once you do meet someone, it also pays to know the questions to ask. I mean, you know, we're talking about attachment theory. Many relationships fall apart because of certain incompatibilities in people's style of loving. And if we know a bit about our own style, if we know what kind of style would make us happy, we're going to be saving ourselves time. I mean, here are some things. At the School of Life, we always recommend that people should ask, people on an early

dinner date should probably by the end of the date should say, so how are you mad to their partner? I like that. And it's an interesting question because if someone goes mad, I'm not mad at all, what do you mean? You think, oh my goodness, okay. They're really mad. They're really mad. Yeah. But if they laugh and they say, oh yeah, okay, I'll tell you if you tell me. Okay, good, good. They're at ease with the fact that we're all a little

bit unhinged. And, you know, we don't need people to be perfect. We don't need our dates, our partners, our lovers to be perfect. What we do need is that they have some handle on the scale of their imperfection. And awareness of their flaws. Some awareness of their flaws. Some ability to step back occasionally and go, okay, oh God, I do know I do that thing. And therefore to prepare the partner for some of the challenges. There's an enormous difference between, you know, saying, I, you know, when you come too close,

I sometimes get a bit nervous, need a bit of time on my own. That's might be a hard message to hear. It's a lot easier to hear than someone who just goes, no, I just need to go to the library. That's fine. What are you complaining about? Yeah. It's like, oh, gosh, that's a defensive acting out. And the other is an explanation. And this is where, if there's any hope about people who have more and more relationships, because sometimes you can think the more relationships I have, the further I get from anything, if experience, if we're to make a case for experience, it is that experience gives us more of an opportunity to understand bits of ourselves that, you know, every relationship should be gifting you some insights. I mean, there should be

an exit interview from relationships where, you know, someone's dumping someone if we could bear it, if we could bear it, even if we're being abandoned, we should we should turn to our partner and say, look, I'm not going to get offended. But just tell me what what could I learn? What do you think? Because you've been around me very intensely for five years, six months, three weeks, whatever it is, but you know, you've seen me. Are there things that you could tell me about me that might help me? It's quite a confronting question, but such a useful question, especially if the answer could be delivered with a certain diplomacy and, you know, necessary gentleness, but at the same time, truth. You know, you could say, you know, you have a slightly overexcited manner which then leads to disappointment or, you know, you have a slightly overexcited manner, which then leads to disappointment, or, you know, you're so reserved that actually it leads the other person to whatever. And, you know, in life, we rarely, rarely get feedback on who we really are.

Our friends can't be bothered. They, you know, why would they get involved in, you know, that kind of feedback? Offices, they're just keen to avoid a lawsuit. So if they're getting rid of us, they'll give us some bland thing. I mean, very, you know, our parents, just want a nice easy time with us. They, you know, they're blinded by their affections for it. So, so very rarely does someone say, you know, this is what you're really like. they've had too much to drink, they're shouting and they say you're a stupid idiot. That's not going to help either. I'm talking here about a really thoughtful, kindly, well-meant, but nevertheless true analysis of the complexities of someone's nature. We would benefit enormously.

I completely agree. Because also on that, how, I have a couple of things that I wanted to ask you, but in terms of dating and having that kind of radical honesty, quite early on, where is the balance? Because I feel a lot of people, you know, we do approach it like it's a bit of an interview, we present our best selves, we want the person to like us. So we often without even realizing or adjusting ourselves in subtle ways, and perhaps not really being honest about what we want. And I speak to a lot of people, especially because dating is so complex these days, because there's so many different ways

that people are dating. It's less black and white as it used to be. And then people are kind of molding themselves and like, oh, well, yeah, maybe I could do polyamory, and like sort of trying to fit into these shapes and sizes that just aren't what they really want. So at what point should they be that honest? I mean, it's such a good without scaring people away. Right. It's a good question. Because, you know, when you've been in a

relationship for a certain amount of time, I remember joking to an ex partner, gosh, if I'd said this to you early on, you would have run for the hills. And it was complete. I can't even remember what it was, but it was completely unthreatening in the context of a long established relationship. They didn't mind at all. It was quite funny. I don't know what it was, some personal habit or something. But if I'd said that on the first date, they would have run for the hills.

They would run away. So it is about sequencing things. And I think there can almost be a, you know, we talked about the desire for love not to work. There can be a way in which we scupper love by giving, you know, almost by instinct that we don't want a relationship to flourish. And one of the ways in which we stick a stick in the wheels, a poker stick in the wheels, is that we say something that will frighten the other person, that there isn't enough basis for reassurance. Because we're all the time thinking, sorry, we're all the time thinking, at least one bit of our mind is this person too unbalanced, too crazy, dangerous in some way.

And we need a certain amount of time to pass to reassure someone that we're basically, you know, okay. And then we can come out with a serial killer joke. And then we can, you know, but if you come out with a serial killer joke in the first minute, I mean, it may not be that funny. It may not be that funny because we really could be a serial killer. So it is about context. But look, you're right, there is a kind of dance of honesty, because, you know, we only exist in relationships, ultimately, in order to be as much of ourselves as possible. We want to bring key bits of ourselves to be witnessed and seen by others. It's impossible to be at once intimate and, you know, totally private, locked away in oneself. You can't. Intimacy is the mutual revelation of one's kind of true self.

And so that's going to require some courage and honesty. And I think, you know, again, a bit of experience can help here. Sometimes we're in danger of thinking, that thing that's really private in me has no echoes in anyone else. I'm, I was born, you know, like a Martian, totally alone on this planet. No one feels what I'm feeling. Um, and I think this is something that comics,

uh, understand very well. You know, a lot of comedy is based on a daring bet that what's in you is actually in the other person as well. And so the comic will say, you know how it is when you go to service station and dot dot dot. And no one's mentioned it. And it seems a bit like, oh, that's a bit weird. Yeah, it's true.

Yeah, I do do that. I do that thing too. And you think lovely, you know, and you laugh. And- Cause it's unifying. Yes, but also it's clever that they've, they've been in touch enough with themselves, the comic, and they've also been in touch enough with other people

to know that beneath a kind of guarded, anonymous world, a lot of what's in me is in you. And if I can just bring it out with skill, you'll laugh, you'll be reassured, etc. And so dating has that similar requirement of like, okay, I, you know, I mean, it's what makes people charming, you know, It is an art. It is an art. It is an art of daring to think that what's in you has an echo in the other person. And despite any evidence. I mean, imagine someone on a date who just goes something like... Probably we both want to get out and go buy some Maltesers and go to the park at this point. When actually, you know, on offer was a slightly stodgy dessert or something. And actually, they put their finger, yeah, it's true, we've been sitting down too long, yeah, we do want to get some sweets and go to the park, that sounds really fun.

It actually, it really fits in. If this were my best friend, that's what I would want to do, that's what I'd feel relaxed enough about doing. But the person has intuited that and is taking you somewhere where you'd been too hemmed in. And that's lovely. That's along the path of intimacy. MS. I guess the fear and risk with that is that you're going to say something thinking that the other person has that same madness or that same internal dialogue. MS. Yes. Excentricity.

MS. And they don't at all. MS. But at that point, you're going to save yourself some time. So there is a virtue in taking a risk because really what you'll be doing... And being true to yourself, really. Yeah. I mean, you know how people agonize a lot about, you know, should I call them, should I not call them? Yeah.

And the game playing goes on. Now, of course, we know situations where, you know, the calling really was so intense that it seemed to speak of a kind of worrying level of emptiness in their life and whatever. And so legitimately, we withdraw. But there are many, many cases where it's not going to change anything, whether you call it this point or that point, it's just going to speed up whatever's going to happen. So in other words, you know, you could wait another week, they would feel exactly the same, they either want you or don't want you. It's not going to change anything. So I think people get too hung up on this. On sort of analyzing the text and the wording.

There's also something, we wrote about something for the School of Life on this the other day. We call it the rule of simplicity. And very often people when they're involved in a situation that's feeling a bit complicated, and they start to do a lot of thinking, they go hang on, they do really like me. It's just that they're worried that I don't like them. So that's why they were shy. But their shyness is not shyness. It's actually desire. And they're not calling, is not a sign that they don't like me. It's actually a sign that they really like me. But they're hesitant because of the scale of their love. By the time you're doing all that sort of

thinking, you probably should lean on the rule of simplicity. And the rule of simplicity is very simple and dictates that if a relationship is going to work, it's going to work. It's going to roll. It's going to roll. The shy person will just say, would you like to come out for dinner or whatever. It will just happen. And if it's not happening, and you're to, if that, oh, maybe their phone ran out of battery or, um, as I say, they're scared, but then you're thinking that another adult, an adult, you know, who, who in the rest of their life is having a job and talking to people, et cetera, that this person has miraculously fallen shy, like, like, like an infant of four years, four and a half years old.

It's unlikely. It's unlikely. It's a hard pill to swallow though. It's a very hard pill, but once you get that rule, you quite quickly dismiss it. So in other words, if that text hasn't come through, fine, that's not going to work. Don't, you know. I always like to think you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. A lot of times like when we are dating and then you feel like you've done something wrong to make them not reply or not want another date with you. And if you'd only sent that text in a different way or not called them when you did.

And like you're saying, it's not that. That's right. This kind of belief that you have shattered this fragile globe of love. It was a crystal and you did something wrong. By putting a kiss at the end of a text. Exactly. And that it would have been fine. This is what also happens when people break up and they're thinking, the partner is secretly still thinking of me and they want to get in touch with me, but they're too shy. They're kind of obsessed with me as I'm sort of obsessed with them. And it's all some tragic Romeo

and Juliet thing. I mean, we can't say that that never happens. But it is unbelievably in a minority, you know, if they're not calling, if they've gone silent. And they've actually actively ended the relationship. And they've ended the relationship or at least not complained when the relationship ended. Almost certainly, as the Americans like to say, they're not that into you. Yeah. Or if he wanted to, he would.

That's one of the social media soundbites that goes around, which I guess what we're saying is actually true. Yes. I mean, yes, there's a certain kind of stoic bravery. And yes, to just imagine that people are better at communicating their intentions that we sometimes give them credit for when their intentions seem to be pointing in directions other than the ones we would ideally like. Okay. And so that's the sort of discussion around the art of dating. But what about the art of actually staying in relationship?

Because I feel like they are a totally different skill set. And I think that there's a lot out there around dating. People are often telling their dating stories on Instagram, sharing everything. Like we were talking about earlier, you know, labeling people as whatever, which is problematic in its own way. But when people actually get into long term relationships, the doors close. People don't talk about them as much because perhaps stakes are higher. And I feel like often we don't have the tools and what's required to actually maintain healthy love. Yes, and one of the dangers is the assumption that once love is established, it will just

keep rolling on, rather than the truth, which is that love has to be kind of renegotiated possibly every day. That a love that felt, you know, fresh at nine in the morning may be wilting by the evening. There's, you know, we have this whole idea of sort of, we can do this thing called getting married, which will mean that, because of a piece of paper, love will be assured for decades. As I say, it's closer to a very, very delicate plant

than it is to a chair or a concrete block or something that manages to weather the elements. And love's integrity is constantly in doubt and in question, um, partly because there's frustration and upset that take place at micro levels all the time. We're all the time getting upset and upsetting our partners. There are constant, very minor letdowns.

I mean, they're major ones too, but let's look at the minor ones. You know, someone feels a little distracted at breakfast, and that means that the other person on the receiving end will also withdraw a little bit. And then by dinner time, if there hasn't been a sort of repair of that situation, then they can grow a little bit further apart. And then that means that having sex, meh, no longer so appealing. And then the next day because there's not been sex and it's now been a day of slightly slight withdrawal etc etc and then you know these things there's a line you can plot from that to a divorce. I mean it really is

something you can trace and so it's terribly important to look at the minor cracks that are appearing, like an aircraft engineer that is constantly looking for the tiniest fissures in metal. Because they could cause a crash. Because they could eventually cause a major crash, not immediately, but if left unattended, these are the things that will do it. So maintenance is absolutely key. Sounds unromantic, brilliant.

Because it's unromantic, sounds unromantic, it's gonna be good for love. And so to go into the workshop and say something almost on a morning and evening, to say to your partner, sounds odd, how have I upset you? How might I have upset you? Is there something that I've missed?

Is there something that I'm not getting? Is there something you I've missed? Is there something I'm not getting? Is there something you need to tell me? And also, do I need to tell you something the other way around? The other person does it back to you? Is there something I misunderstood? And this shouldn't be the opportunity for a bloodbath. And if you catch it early enough, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be like, yeah, there's seven things I mean, meaning to get off my chest. Because if you're doing it regularly, be like, you know, yeah, this, you know, there's seven things I mean, meaning to get off my chest, because if you're doing it regularly, you know, and it's so And it's not in the moment where everything's heightened.

No, no. And it's so it's so nice if someone can acknowledge if someone can go look, actually, it's a bit disappointing. You know, the other thing to be careful of is that a lot of these things sound so petty. And that's what people don't do it. They think it would be ridiculous to mention I'm a little bit upset about it. It sounds so silly. Or if it's something that has happened a long time ago. But right. Like eight months ago, this happened and I'm still not in for it. I've been soaring the resentment. Right. And I urge your listeners and viewers, if there's something like that, get it on the table.

No embarrassment. The only embarrassment is to have to go to the divorce court because you haven't done this enough. That's the embarrassing thing. I guess it's about feedback again, right? It's our capacity to kind of handle those difficult conversations. Yes, but it's also a particular kind of feedback. It requires us to acknowledge that we can be hurt by a feather. That once we are in love, we are so delicate. We are taking off our armor.

Out in the world, we'll take knocks and we don't mind what people say. We're a good sport. We laugh along with the jokes, et cetera. When it comes to love, our skin is as vulnerable as a newborn. Our psychic skin is as vulnerable as a newborn. Anything can puncture us.

And this is a bit hard to admit to because it's very possible the other person could turn around and go, you're just a whiner or like you're so needy or you're crybaby. So it's really important for the couple to operate under a kind of rule that both can sign up to, which is we are both needy, we are both small children, we are both upsety, we are both small children, we are both upset by a feather, and that's the way that everybody, even Hercules, would be like this, because we're human beings. We're not unnecessarily wimpy, etc. We're totally competent adults

in other areas of life. In love, we are all as vulnerable, psychically, as newborn children. And that's not you, that's not me, that's everybody. So we take any pejorative association out of it. And on that basis, we can then start to inquire on a daily basis, are you okay? What have I done? I'm sure I've done something. Again, the issue is not, have I done something? What have I done? The question should not be, have I upset you? But how have I upset you? Because you have. Every, it's like, oh, you didn't knock when you came in, or you left a plate on my study table,

and I've told you so many times, or you didn't pick up the dry cleaning, and I'm a bit disappointed, or you said you didn't like my friend Bill, and I quite like my friend Bill, and why does it always have to, etc. it's not that there needs to be perfect alignment, there can't be. Because sometimes you're just going to disagree with something fundamentally.

At least you know, at least you know. And, you know, and there can be difficult information. I mean, you can say to your partner, I love you, but I need to spend a bit less time with you. And it's because, you know, I'm a bit screwed up with my childhood, etc, etc. But I need to spend a bit more time alone. And if they can hear that, wow, it's so, I want to say sexy. I mean, you know, let's talk about sex. You want to have sex with people who understand you. There's nothing sexier than somebody who understands you has's taken the trouble to understand you. And there's nothing unsexy than somebody who seems uninterested

in the things that matter to you. And also someone who isn't threatened by your needs, whether that is space, you know, because if you express that need for space and they can't understand it and can't give it to you, it inevitably is going to make you feel smothered. But alternatively as well, if you don't express it and you suppress that, then you're going to feel smothered anyway. And there are many people who, I mean, in my work as a therapist, I often come across couples who,

they'll say things like, you know, I was really upset, and you know, they didn't do this, and they didn't do that. And I got rid of it. And then I've learned to ask a very simple and sort of naive sounding question. Did you tell them? Oh no, oh no. I told everyone else though. Yeah, yeah, I told everyone else. I told my diary, you know. And I say, okay. And it's not, sometimes they don't tell anyone else.

They don't even tell themselves. Because in order to register the things that you really feel, it does require a certain sort of childhood. You know, if no one else ever cared about what you felt, because everybody was so busy doing their own thing, it's very hard for you to maintain connection, auditory connection, with the deeper sides of you. You won't know you're angry, because anger was never possible. No one ever asked if you were angry.

You might not know that you're disappointed. You might not know that you're disappointed. You might not know that you're hopeful. You just, your correspondence with yourself is stymied, is blocked by the fact that no one was interested. So we might say the way in which we learn to communicate with ourselves is because other people have communicated with us at an early stage, communicate with our depths. And because they communicate with our depths, we are stage, communicated with our depths.

And because they communicated with our depths, we are then in touch with our own depths and can then communicate those to others. But this causes immense trouble in relationships. And sometimes whole relationships are scuppered and people will, 10 years later, realize what was going on, that someone was not able to tell their partner, and no one was being evil. They were just emotionally, put it rudely, but you know, truly primitive. They were emotionally primitive. They did not have the equipment to translate their inner world into something that somebody else could understand. This is something we should be taught and that young people going into relationships should really be on top of.

It's like you cannot expect your partner to be a mind reader. If you are angry about something, you have to acknowledge it with yourself and then put it into words that can be understood by somebody else. Without it being an attack. Without it being an attack. With diplomacy. Diplomacy is the art. We know what diplomats do in the political world. They take a very difficult message from the king. The king is ranting and raging in his palace. And then the diplomat takes that to another palace and goes, my master is a little hesitant to what I'm doing. And they break it down into something that's manageable. And we all need to be diplomats, whatever our professional careers, we all need to learn from diplomats, because family life, intimate life demands it every hour.

Yeah, that's so true. So in terms of long term relationships and sex, how often is sex about sex and sex about so many other things that are going on? I mean, look, sex is about allowing somebody somebody into a very inner sanctum of your life. And the more you trust someone to be delicate and complicated around your complexities, appropriately complicated, the more you will allow them in. So the breakdown in sex is always very eloquent of something, it's telling us something very important. It, it's telling us that, that there are things that are not being communicated. Um, difficult things, I mean, which could include things like, I don't always want to have sex, but if you were able to say to somebody, I don't

always want to have sex, you will want to have sex much more than someone who just has sex without wanting to, and you'll want it much more authentically. to. And you'll want it much more authentically. But it's extremely hard to be honest with other people. And it's extremely hard to bear the honesty of other people. So it's a two-way problem. To really see somebody else as they are, to allow them to be who they are, and to allow them to see who you are. I mean, it's an Olympic are. I mean, it's you know, it's an Olympic sport. I mean, it's it's up there with some of the most complicated things that humans ever do. And this is the thing about love is that we tend to think that love is

democratically allocated, that everybody can do this thing called love. We don't think that, you know, figure ice skating is for everybody. We don't think that playing the violin at high level is for everybody. We understand that these are disciplines that have required an enormous, enormous amount of dedication and work. Why shouldn't some of that be true in the realm of love? We can get better at love. We can sometimes pick up love like somebody like a novice picking up a violin

and just going, right, let me play this. And having never given it a thought. But I guess the difference is we don't all need to be figure skaters, but we all need love. And so that's why we all need to go to the school of love. I mean, we do. We really do need an education, which sounds, what does it sound? Unromantic. Unromantic, which is why it's good. We need to learn about love. I mean, this is, you know, the ancient Greeks were onto this.

I mean, they were, you know, if you read Plato's Symposium, it's a philosophical discussion about whether love is essentially an instinct or a rational process that needs to be learned. And the Greek philosophers end up with a rational process that needs to be learned. And it's very true. It sounds unromantic. I mean, if you said to a partner on an early dinner date, look, probably you don't know how to love, I don't know how to love, but should we learn together?

Should we just get good at love and share our learnings and become experts at this? Like we're trying to learn Spanish or something. What a lovely project. What a lovely honest admission that we might not know how to do it. How odd sounding. But I'd be keen on somebody like that.

I mean, I think probably all would. It is actually an extremely generous gift to offer someone. Because also the things that fuel the initial stages of a relationship in the honeymoon period that are based on sort of chemistry and attraction and all those ingredients that are very important and not to be undervalued, but inevitably they kind of fade a little bit and then we need new tools or new things to kind of keep that the glue of the relationship together. That's right. We do by instinct in the early days. We get almost a gift from nature. We get a sort of instinctive first

three months. Sorry? It's effortless. It's effortless. But, you know, then the question is, you know, does love have to die? Well, that phase of love has to die. But it can be supported by a whole set of tools that look a bit unromantic, but can help to sustain those feelings. You can have some of the more boring disciplines, like therapy, like therapeutic conversations, like reading podcasts, et cetera, that will guide you towards, you know, a more sincere way of loving.

You'll need to work a bit harder, but the prize is that love can be kept going. Mm-hmm. And when people talk about love, do you think that we're all talking about the same thing? Because, you know, it's communicated that falling in love and that everyone has like the same understanding of it and the same measure of what it should be. But in terms of the longevity of love, how would you define that? And do you think it's different for different people? I think you raise such an important point. And it's, I mean, it applies right across the board. When people say the word holiday, do they mean the same thing? When people say the word children, do they mean something when people say the word death, etc. So many philosophers have had arguments about this,

do words, you know, we speak in a language and we think we're understanding each other. But actually if we drill down, it's amazing how we kind of, we manage to misunderstand each other very fruitfully. We kind of constantly trade in misunderstandings, but we get by anyway. The only people who really have a language that's unambiguous, air traffic control. If you do think about how pilots talk to air traffic control, they are so rigorous and there's no room for ambiguity,

which is why generally planes don't crash because it's like they're really drilling down into what everybody, do you mean this bit of the runway or that bit of the runway? You can't just go with the runway. Right. But when it comes to love, you're absolutely right that we're much, much more vague with, you know, with bad effects. And I think it does pay to ask a partner, what do you mean? What does it mean for you to feel that you are loved? What does it mean for you to feel that you are in a good relationship? And there are astonishing divergences. I mean, some people will say, you know, I will feel loved if we can sit down and discuss our feelings for hours on end. Others will go, I will feel loved

if we go hiking together, etc, etc. So, you know, we've grown familiar with the idea of love languages, but it's really love nations, love universes that we could be on different planets when it comes to that. So we definitely need to check in on what the destination is. And that probably changes as well in long-term relationships, you know, what makes a person feel loved.

And this is very, very difficult and very fateful that people are changing. And the most horrific breakups that I've seen are breakups where two people really were on the same page. And without anyone being evil, one person did start to evolve in another way. did start to evolve in another way. And this is something we can never insulate ourselves from totally. And this affects particularly young couples, you know, because there's more of life, there's more room for change. You change more. So, you know, you get these, you know, lovely couples who meet at 20,

and things are just, you know, they have a blissful eight years. And then genuinely something starts to tug in another direction and they become really, you know, maybe one person starts to want something and it's agonizing. And then there perhaps won't be a similar level of evolution again in that person's life. So the person who went off at 28, by the time they're 35 or 45 or 55, they'll have quite a stable view. But between 20 and 28, yeah, there really was a significant change and that really did require the end of a relationship.

And on that as a final thing, how does one know when it's time to throw in the towel and they perhaps have evolved in a different direction and the relationship is just no longer what it used to be and not the place that they're supposed to be versus this is time to really work on myself and for us to work on the relationship to bring us back together. Well, I think, you know, if you're able to ask all these questions with a partner, that's a very good place to be. The horrific things of many heartbreaks, many endings of relationships, is that there isn't a chance to talk. There isn't a chance to explore. The thought processes have gone on in private.

Maybe even the people involved can't understand themselves. They're just impelled in one direction or another. And that is agony because, you know, it's one thing to be left. It's another thing to be left for reasons you don't know. I think if you know why a relationship has come to end, properly know. I don't just mean, you know, I need more space when it's not really, doesn't sound convincing.

If we have a proper explanation, we are spared months, years of agony. We may still be in pain for a while, but my goodness, the pain is less than mystery. . Not knowing. Not knowing. Not knowing is horrible. If you're going to leave somebody, for goodness sake, do them the honor of explaining as far as possible why. Because otherwise they're going to be up, you know, for months in the early hours thinking... And it will also impact their future relationships.

Well, because they won't know. They won't know, well, what was it that I did? What was it that I was? Or what, you know? So it will shatter not just their confidence in themselves, but their confidence in human relationships more broadly. So there's nothing, often people are, often the enemy here is an embarrassment. Oh God, it's embarrassing, I'm going to break up with somebody. So you just want to get it over and done with and run away and bury your head in the sand. There's nothing embarrassing about realizing that you don't want to be with somebody. It happens, it's awkward, But really, it's the minor problem next to the major problem, which you may be unleashing, which is by not doing it properly.

So let's shift the focus away from breakup, no breakup, to what sort of breakup, a good one or a bad one. And how can we leave well? How can we leave well? And as I say, leaving well is leaving someone with a bearable but true explanation of why the relationship failed. The sort that will enable them to get on with reality and be free. You know, so often people are chained by their ex through mystery, whether willingly or not, that they're enmeshed in a kind of labyrinthine structure that's created unnecessarily, totally unnecessarily by mystery. So as I say, anyone watching,

if you're thinking of breaking up or have broken up, do your partner or ex-partner the honor of setting them free and what sets them free is the truth. It's a beautiful place to end. Thank you. Well thank you so much. This has been such a delightful conversation. I knew that it would be and I think it's going to be super useful for our audience. So pleased. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this first episode of Letters to Venus. I hope that you enjoyed it. I feel like there were so many pearls of wisdom. He is, and that is so wise. So it was a true

joy to get him on to this show because I mean there is no one greater to speak to in the realms of love. And a few of my personal takeaways were realizing that the arena of love is a dangerous place to be. The threat and the possibility of heartbreak is high and it's something that's incredibly challenging and we don't have the tools for doing so. We don't have the tools or the experience necessarily to know how to navigate matters of the heart. And I really loved how he approached that, that this is something that is a learned skill and it's also something that we are all vulnerable to. This idea that no matter who you are, what you've achieved

in life, how wise or successful you may be. When it comes to matters of the heart, we are all fragile little beings. So thank you so much for listening to this episode of Letters to Venus. If you wish to dive deeper with me on matters of the heart, we are doing the Letters to Venus course to go alongside this podcast series. Spaces are limited. It is time sensitive. They're going to be live webinars. So if you guys want to sign up, head to SaturnReturns.co.uk and we will send you all the information. I cannot wait to see you there. So hopefully you'll get a space and we'll get to learn the skills that are necessary to create true intimacy and beautiful partnerships.