Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 236: Love in the Time of COVID | Esther Perel

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

The coronavirus outbreak may pose one of the greatest challenges to romantic relationships in modern memory. For those of us living in close quarters with spouses or partners, how do we live our day to day without resorting to hollering, stony silence, or violations of local and federal statutes? For those of us living alone, what are the rules around online dating? Esther Perel is on the front lines of this battle. She is a renowned psychotherapist who continues to do couples counseling even as the pandemic rages. Much of this work can be heard on her popular podcast Where Should We Begin? She’s also the author of the awesomely-entitled, bestselling book Mating in Captivity. In this episode, we cover the benefits of sex (even if you’re not in the mood), humor, and a specific kind of "thank you." She also holds forth on anticipatory grief and a concept I found particularly compelling: "ambiguous loss." Where to find Esther Perel online: Website: https://www.estherperel.com/ Podcast: https://whereshouldwebegin.estherperel.com/ Podcast: https://howswork.estherperel.com/ Upcoming Live Broadcasts with Esther: "The Art of Us: Love, Loss, and Loneliness Under Lockdown” - https://events.estherperel.com/april-2020-webinar/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EstherPerel Other Resources Mentioned: Tanya Selvaratman: Where Can Domestic Violence Victims Turn During COVID-19? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/opinion/covid-domestic-violence.html Pauline Boss - Ambiguous Loss - https://www.ambiguousloss.com/ John Gottman - The Gottman Institute - https://www.gottman.com/ Megan Flemming - https://greatlifegreatsex.com/ Additional Resources: Ten Percent Happier Live: https://tenpercent.com/live Coronavirus Sanity Guide: https://www.tenpercent.com/coronavirussanityguide Free App access for Health Care Workers: https://tenpercent.com/care Full Show Notes: https://tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/esther-perel-236 See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, we're making a bit of a switch this week. As you know, our team has really been scrambling to meet your needs in the midst of this pandemic, in particular by upping our production to two episodes a week. For the past few weeks, we've been posting on Wednesdays and Fridays. We're now switching to Mondays and Wednesdays. So on Mondays, we'll do shows built around a relevant and topical issue

or theme thus far. We've done anxiety, parenting, remote work, and ethics in a pandemic. Today, as you'll hear in a moment, we're going to do romantic relationships. On Wednesdays, we're bringing on some of the biggest names in the meditation game, OGs like Sharon Salzburg and Joseph Goldstein, because it's our instinct that it might be useful to help you mainline wisdom in these insane times. So that will be the cadence from here on in with a few bonuses along the way. If you want to support our work, which we would love, it will be awesome if you could share any episodes that are particularly meaningful to you with your friends or on social media. So thanks for that.

Okay. This week's episode. The coronavirus outbreak may pose one of the greatest challenges to romantic relationships in modern memory. For those of us living in close quarters with spouses or partners, how do we live our day to day without resorting to hollering, stony silence, or the violation of local or federal statutes. For those of us living alone, on the other hand, there are other questions. Like, what are the rules for online dating?

Should you do it? How can you meet in person? As Stereporelle is on the front lines of this battle. She is a renowned psychotherapist who continues to do couples counseling even as this pandemic rages. Much of her work can actually be heard on her popular podcast, where should we begin, where she actually puts snippets of her couples counseling, it's fascinating.

She's also the author of the awesomely entitled and bestselling book, Mating and Captivity. In this episode, we cover the benefits of sex, even when you're not in the mood, humor, and a specific kind of thank you. She also holds forth on anticipatory grief and a concept I found particularly compelling called ambiguous loss. I'm a huge fan of hers. I suspect you will find that listening to her as a pleasure on two levels. First, you get to hear immediately actionable advice.

Second, you get to enjoy her lyrical and eloquent style of speaking and thinking. So here we go, Esther Perrell. It's a pleasure to see you again, if only on video. And I really appreciate your time because I know you are super busy, not only on the front lines of people's mental health, but also producing your own podcast and granting other interviews. So thank you for making time for me and us. So treat to be back. So I'd be curious before we dive into what you're hearing from couples to hear how you are, you're part of a couple and you're unlocked down, how's that going?

I'll tell you, the practical aspect of it for me, being upstates, being in a place where I have nature right at my doorstep, having a room where I can work without being in the same space as my husband who's seeing patients at the same time and doing interviews is all really, really good. I mean, we have not had any stress from that aspect. What's more interesting for me is the historical memory

that I'm living with. I think that every one of us has resident fears, you know, that live inside of us, but they're kind of stored away in normal times. When acute stress occurs, your own resident fears, your historical memory appears, the one of your own life, the one of your family history of your community. And so this idea, I am living with at this moment,

is people who can't say goodbye to their loved ones. I've known that story. People who are wondering, when is it time to leave? I've known that story. People who are wondering when is it time to leave? I've known that story. As a child of Holocaust survivors, I grew up with the stories of the people who left Germany in time and the people who didn't leave and never could leave again and it was too late and this whole language around how you flee, how you run for safety. And that is actually what is stressing me out, way more than the setup of my physical life.

Does that stress show up in your relationship? I talk about it. We just had a moment earlier when, you know, we were in the middle of renovating something. And I said, like, I can't think about renovation when I'm thinking about death and grief and loss. And my husband said, but thinking about renovation is what gives a sense of normalcy to our life. It's what actually makes it look like there will be a future.

It's important for us. And that was very calming. I thought it was absolutely right. But he goes to the life of firming, you know, to choices, decisions life of firming, you know, choices, decisions that we have in this moment and I can go into moments of despair. And when that conversation occurs well, you know, it actually really helps me that he doesn't go to the same place as I go.

I'm imagining though that your marriage, like every marriage, is not always Shangri-la, and we're also under just terrible circumstances generally, which pressurize all relationships. So I wonder how you don't have to go into specifics of your own relationship, but what are your coping mechanisms? How well are you able to apply your own advice? So today is my 35th wedding anniversary. Oh, congratulations. And as a result, I am proud to say, like we said to each other, if this had happened 25 years ago,

we would not nearly be doing as well as now. We've learned a few things. If we hadn't, we probably wouldn't be together. We would do like many other people do. So in a way, a lot of the things on which we could quibble and get on each other, we have good coping systems, particularly humor that help us get through it. A place where I think in this moment, like many other families, we had to deal with disagreements was, you know, around where will our children go under lockdown? And where should this and should they stay, you know, around where will our children go under lockdown? And where should this, and should this stay, you know, we have one in college, we brought him back to New York, but we wanted him to be with us, and he wanted to be, you know, on his own and with his girlfriend. And suddenly it became this conversation, like, who makes those decisions, you know, and like any other couple, when disagreements around particular issues of child wearing occur, we can, within an instant, go back 15 years, and like remember, this is why we

almost didn't make it back then, because when we disagree on that thing, it's immediate. And that historical memory of our relationship gets activated on the spot. So this is a place where we've had to contend with difference. I think one of us ingurtitates enormous amounts of media and information and press. I have a limit. On the other end, I think it's very important to go outside and to just walk and become and be nature. And I encourage my husband, I push him out the door and then he says thank you for making me go out because he could spend one or more hour listening to something which I just

after a while, I can't breathe. So the challenge is really acknowledging the different coping styles and making space for them and not seeing one person's style as a threat to the other person. You know, you should be like me because in a state of prolonged uncertainty neither of us has the right answer for what is the best way to go through this. Hence the need for partnership and learning from the other person and figuring it out together. Yes, and hence the need for using the differences as a strength and turning it into a complementarity rather than polarizing around it, which is what I've been working with a lot of couples and family in the last few weeks, is to actually understand that you need these two styles. You need one that wants to organize and think that structure will preserve

a certain sense of normalcy. And then you need one who has the flexibility to change everything and to say overnight we're going, we're doing, we're doing something different, you know, these two need each other, the person who can switch like this and the person who hunkers down with with routine, they need each other. It's not that one is better than the other. In a time like this, the differences become a strength. They have to become a strength because it's part of resilience. So let's talk about that. You're continuing to work with your patients during this emergency. And so what are you hearing? What are the big problems that are emerging? There are many, many different situations. What you have is the

just, the, the, the, the risk, actually, of the general couples and family dynamics, but as they intersect with coronavirus. So, for example, diverse couples who have to deal with shuttling their children. That in itself can be complicated in some families. But in addition, you know, I generally don't particularly trust you. But right now, I am living with my mother and my son, and my son goes to you and you are not taking the precautions that I want you to take. And so now the kid comes home and I'm afraid for my mother and I'm being react to because you're endangering my mother, not my kid, my himself, my mother.

That for example, this whole dynamic of people who have to do what they usually do, but the context is adding enormous amounts of other stressors. People who are in the midst of divorce and suddenly find themselves quarantined together and even the biggest house will start to feel suffocating. People who just recently realized that they were in fidelity and they were in the midst of trying to separate and reading their relationship and hear a plough the next day they're all together in the house. People who are not able to go see their grandchildren,

people who are not able to go see their grandparents or their parents, people whose parents are not taking the same precautions as them, and the boomer parent generation is saying to the older ones, you know, you in Florida, do stop, stop, stop, and they are saying, you know, we don't see anything, we don't feel anything, you know, and this notion that the people who claim danger are seen as by the others as slightly paranoid

or exaggerating. And this is such an old story, you know, where the danger people, the naysayers are seen by the others as the party poopers, basically, as, you know, I want to go play golf or I want to go take a walk. People who are at home with children who are disabled or who have a more challenging or who have all kinds of difficulties that the parents usually have tremendous help in managing and they have to continue to work from home, raise to a three kids, school two of the three of them, and cook and take care of everything

in a very small space. I mean, most people live in very small physical spaces. People who want to remain very intimate with their partner when they are stressed, you know, holding them touching them, soothing is the most important and embodied experience they have and they can't touch. You know, people who just began dating and they suddenly are living together, They didn't even see it coming. And people who are about to get married and are in two separate countries and can't reunite and don't know when they'll see each other again. And people whose parents are dying and they can't say goodbye to them, then they know that they just spent the whole last week, they're alone, and they couldn't go in the room and sit next to them or sing to them or pray to them and then my own colleagues who are themselves living all of this and doing six, eight hours of therapy a day with their clients. So that on top of

it, you know, they're absorbing. So they're living it on both sides. And that's kind of just a mini sample. And then, no, one more. And people who have to live in houses where there is domestic violence, and there is incredible volatility, and there is no escape valve. There is no escape valve. And we know that generally when people are confined like this, domestic violence increases. Yeah, a friend of mine, Tanya Selvaratnam, recently wrote an article in the New York Times about this issue of people stuck in abusive relationships in this time. I'll put a wrote an article in the New York Times about this issue of people stuck in abusive relationships in this time. I'll put a link to that in the show notes.

So you just, what a litany of difficulty in suffering. You just, you just gave us so many threads to chase down there in terms of how you would approach these issues. Let me just start with getting you to put this in some sort of historical perspective. Has there, in your experience, in modern times, has there been a challenge to the romantic relationship on par with what we are currently seeing? There have been wars, there have been disasters, there have been acts of terror. All of these, I actually went back to look at the literature of the Gulf War,

when families in Israel had to sit in their sealed rooms with gas masks. And there is a lot of actually research on disaster preparedness and family relationships in disaster. There's a enormous amount of research being done on Syrian refugees, what happens to families on the move who are disrupted all the time. So pieces of this, what happens when there is massive disruption? How do people deal with impending disaster and impending losses? How do people deal vis-à-vis the family dynamics and vis-à-vis the leadership, you know, and

it's need to give clear, concise information and instruction. All of that actually there exists, there are entire fields. What exists around the topic of moral injury that we are finally talking about, even on the side here of the health providers. What has been different here is two major things. One is it's totally global, totally global, and therefore it is creating a homogenization of the responses. The same response to the person who coughs in Wuhan is happening in New York City and in Paris. The same way that people treat each other like pathogens. You know, there has always been a leopard, you know, but you didn't necessarily know about the leopards in other parts of the world who always had this description. There's always been the leopard, you know, but you didn't necessarily know about the leopards in other parts of the world.

Foucault always had this description. There's always been the outcast, the person that you fear, the vermin, the Jude, the sick. This turns everybody into a potential pathogen and in treating others as such. And that is making us behave in very, very weird ways, often the opposite of what would be our natural inclination. Instead of going towards, we are running away, we're not lifting our eyes, we're just like, don't breathe near me, you know, stay away. What is also different is the use of the internet and social media.

I mean, we actually, this very device that a month ago, I would have given talks about how it often keeps us apart. It's currently the most important thing that is keeping us together in lieu of embodied experiences with people that you hug and touch and see, what we are doing that we haven't done in a long time is talk on the phone, which especially young people, many of them have rarely done.

And we are using the internet to talk with people worldwide and find out what's going on with you. So those are, I think, two of the major differences. It's the way that we share the information and the way, therefore, that we homogenize our responses. I'm just curious to hear you listed all of these difficult situations in which people find themselves. I don't know if I can... This is just three days of my work. I literally made them just a list of what if I dealt with in the last three days? Unbelievable. And I want to hear get a sense of how you

advise people to handle these issues. I don't know if that I can recall all of them that you raised, but let's just... Okay, well, talk us through sort of what your process is there. I go like this. For those of you who don't really want to be together, for a host of the reasons, the most important thing at this moment is to create a functional team. How you feel about each other is probably not going to be the central pre-occupation. What you need is adaptive responses to an unusual situation. And that demands, because this is going to be called a great adaptation. You know, that's why you're asking the question, is there ever been an event that has so toppled every aspect of relational life, you know, at every level

of generations and configuration. So really, how you feel about him and how you feel about him, if it's too him, it hurts, doesn't matter. They seriously, in this moment, what you want to know is that you have your basic disaster preparedness plan in place. Have you done a map of your resources? Do you know who is where? Who can you reach out for what? Who is counting on you for whatever? That's called the resource plan. Do you need what you need in the house and when you don't, how do you deal with it?

Have you created a form of schedule? Have you dealt with how you preserve routines and which are the routines that you preserve, which are together and which are a part? Have you found ways to have some sense of structure and rituals so that nothing, everything doesn't bleed into each other. We know that people are working a lot harder

at this moment, they're not taking lunch breaks, they have no commute time. I mean, it's like, it's worse. You would have thought people do less. No, no, no, no. They do more and all over the place. It's no different in France than it is in the US. So you need to be a functional team.

And therefore, you need to respond to each other from the place of collaborators, not of ex lovers or divorcing partners or any of the rest collaborators. And that means when the other person does something right, you're going to make a real effort for acknowledging that. And beyond just saying, thanks for doing the dishes, I think what is really even better is thanks for being thoughtful, so that you're not just emphasizing the act, the gesture,

but you're actually highlighting the characteristic, the personality trait, it's about who you are and not just what you do. That will go a long way, because if you get into distress, the stress relationships typically take the positive for granted and make a big deal of the negative, you're gonna have to really make an effort with that because you are doing

all lot of things for each other, both of you, but you're not even noticing it. Because the only time you notice is when you can actually pick upon something that the other person didn't do. So you need to really turn that around or you're going to get very quickly depleted. And then you need to be able to monitor your own stress levels. That means if you're not able to have a conversation or if you're on edge or if you walk up stressed out or if you didn't sleep well tonight or if you didn't go out for the last two days because it rained and you feel like you're bursting inside,

you have to be able to just say, I'm going to have to do separation in the house. You know, I'm on edge, I'm stressed level six. I'm stressed level nine. Let the other person know where you are at so that when they ask you to do something, you don't bark at them from a place where they want. I only just ask, where did you put the coffee grind?

You know, it's very concrete things to help people, you know, observe themselves rather than feel hostage to their reactivity. And that applies to all of them, actually. It applies to those who are together and to those who, then understand that, you know, when you are together after a while, you can touch each other.

Don't be afraid once you leave just a two of you if you have no other contact. You know, hugs will go a long way. Sexuality is very important, but of course some people will say, when I'm stressed the last thing I can think about is being intimate. And the other person says, when I stress the thing that really relaxes me is to be intimate. And you know, that's a classic polarization. And just find a way to connect in the ways that are natural. You don't have to be on physical separation from each other

after two weeks like that. Let me just jump in for a second. So what if you have one partner who is so stressed that they don't want intimate contact and another that feels like they need it now more than ever? How would you recommend people negotiate that? I said, you know, the thing is you usually, oh, and then they began giving me situations

about the kids are in the house. I mean, you know, there's a long list of excuses. You basically say, look, usually this is a nice part of your life, you know. Don't start because you think you're in the mood. You don't have to be in the mood. You know, there's sometimes days when you don't feel like eating, you you're in the mood. You don't have to be in the mood. There are sometimes days when you don't feel like eating. You're not in the mood, but you're going to do it

because it feels good afterwards. You just feel like you had a headache and you didn't even realize you had a headache. So just be together and be open to see what happens. Don't think, don't make a plan. Now we're going to have sex. Now we're going to make love. But be together and be open and see, sometimes the desire comes while you are having the experience.

The desire is not the precedent for it. You know, it's the desire to connect, that is the precedent. It's knowing that it runs off the edges. So, you have to first take people out of the mindset that you start to be sexual because you turn down, you're in the mood, and that's what you want to do. In fact, it's for many people, it's much more a responsive process. It's not something that you start with. You touch, you kiss, you hug, you caress, you embrace, and gradually your body wakes up. You know, when you go run, you're not always instantly running, you know,

your body warms up, but first you feel like I'm not going to do more than three minutes of this. And then slowly it awakens, the energy comes, the flow arrives, and when the energy comes the pleasure of doing it, and with the pleasure of doing it, it ignites the desire. It's a totally reverse process from how people typically have it in their head. People have made love in prisons, in concentration camps in hell. People have laughed in hell. They need to maintain a connection to the erotic.

That which provides pleasure in the midst of crisis. That which makes you feel normal, human, still young, still alive. Those things have always existed. People have written poetry, they've sang songs. And once you put it in that vein rather than just having sex, it becomes much more something, yeah, I want that. I want to feel more alive. I want to still feel like we have this connection.

I want to have that sense of pleasure rather than I have to respond to my partner who likes to unwind with sex. So the mindset should be this is a fundamental part of the human repertoire. Even if I don't feel like it right now, if we take the proper steps, I will probably, my body will probably wake up and overall this is going to contribute to my well-being and the functionality of my relationship. My well-being and our well-being, relational health involves sexual health, involves mental health, it's a large big thing. I don't have to start

because I'm in the mood. For many of us this is not what's on the forefront of our mind, know, for many of us this is not what's on the forefront of our mind. But it actually is a soothing, you know, it releases the oxytosis and it releases us. It's, it's, it feels good afterwards, but you don't know it and always upfront. And that is the same with a lot of other physical activity. We're not always in the mood to go and do our physical activity, but we do it. And as we do it, the mood comes. And I have yet to find someone who went outside for a walk, or who went for a run, or who exercised, or did whatever, and said afterwards, I wish I hadn't done it.

So going back a few minutes, you said something else that struck me as an important, I'm about to use a word that's going to sound totally inappropriate in the context of what we just described, but I'm going to use it anyway, and I don't mean it in a sexual way in this context. But an important lubricant for a relationship is the regular, is paying extra attention. At least I heard you say this to the thank yous and acknowledging not only what somebody did,

but the emotion that undergirded the action. And then also backing all of that up, reinforcing all of that with physical touch, a hug, pat on the back, or whatever it is, as a way to play extra attention to the optimal attention to the optimal functioning of the relationship given the deeply sub-optimal exogenous circumstances. Did I get that right? Absolutely correct. And there is plenty of research, John Gottman and Julie Gottman have done a lot of research on that. I mean, this, if in general, the ratio of

appreciation and a relationship is a very important marker of relational well-being ever more so now. Say what you need, don't say what the other person does wrong, it's another one of those, very concrete, you know, I need you to xyz rather than you never do or widened you or just it's so tempting to go into that critical voice, you know, because it has this false sense of control as well. So, you know, when you say, I need, you have, it's always more vulnerable than when you say, you didn't do. And since we already are feeling really, you know, much more vulnerable, I think the big unspoken, then in this moment, is that

much more vulnerable. I think the big unspoken, then in this moment, is that in the face of loss, this is what's lost, and for many people loneliness, and for many people death, but not just the physical death. It's the death of the world that you've known, which we call grief and this anticipatory grief, because we're like in the beginning of a horror movie, where the set is set up, the characters have been prepared, but the action is just starting. And everyone is feeling this thing. At first it was called working from home, no, no, no, this is not just working from home. This is, and it knew normal, doesn't even begin to capture it. People don't, you know, six more weeks of this, two more months of this, three more

months of where is this going. And that sense of grief is very hard for people to access and to really speak about. You know, I'm frightened. This is a world I don't know. This is a degree of uncertainty that is throwing us in a feeling where we have lost whatever sense of security we ever thought was possible. Even those of us who are comfortable live with that awareness. You know, you're comfortable because you just don't touch anything and don't go anywhere.

But you look at the world and you say, you know, at first it was, this is China, you know, then it was, this is Italy, then it is New York, now it is, it's just Manhattan, no, no, no, it's coming closer. And it's very difficult for us to articulate that sense of grief, especially because it's just arriving, it's just arriving, still we've gone so fast from the denial stage to the bargaining stage. We're going to work from home. We're going to homeschool for a few weeks. We're going to

two weeks. Everybody talked about two weeks, you know, to suddenly where is this going? That suddenly quiteens everybody. You stay because nobody has the answer. Yeah, I feel that grief personally, you know, wake up in the morning, I'm like, oh, right, I'm back in this situation and I have no idea when it's getting. And it just speaks to the incredible importance of having your relationships be functional at this time because there's so many exterior stressors,

you don't wanna be having stress from your direct surroundings, but it's also hard to be having stress from your direct surroundings, but it's also hard to avoid those stress for your direct surroundings because you're so deeply impacted because you're stuck. There's all this, you use the word loneliness, and I think that's an important issue that we should talk about, especially for people who live alone, but I feel like I'm experiencing the opposite of loneliness. I'm reminded of a record that I liked in the 1980s by the Indie Rock Band, Dinosaur Jr., they had a record that was

called, you're living all over me. And I say this is somebody who's in a really healthy relationship with his wife and we have a five-year-old, but it's we're in each other's hair. So yeah, what would you say to people, you know, who feel lonely in the middle of all that? So there's two kinds, right? There is, living alone doesn't yet mean lonely, and lonely can be next to somebody, you know? And usually it's because there's two things happening at this moment. One is a feeling of loneliness that people have at times next to their partner, which do you have ever heard the term ambiguous loss?

No. No. Ambigius loss is a term that was coined by Pauline Bus. It's an incredible concept. When you have a partner, for example, or a parent who has Alzheimer, they are still physically present, but they are psychologically gone, they're emotionally absent. When you have somebody who is kidnapped or who is at war and you don't know where they

are, for example, they are physically absent but they are emotionally and psychologically present. In both cases, ambiguous laws prevents you from really mourning, from grieving the loss because it's an incomplete situation. When people are living in their phone, sitting next to their partner, hours on end, and you talk to them, but you know that they're not really present? People have begun to experience ambiguous laws

in their own living rooms or bedrooms. It's like there are somebody there physically, but they're talking to everybody else but themselves. And I think that some of the conversations, I think, walks at this point for those who can go outside have actually really brought back this old tradition where people would take a walk at the end of the day and they would talk. And I think the conversations to have is actually how you're doing. What's, you know, how are you doing today? And then listen, don't have a conversation. It's actually one person just talks.

And you listen attentively and you just kind of acknowledge it, you know. You may, yeah, I know that for you, this is the piece that really is the hardest, you know, not being able to go see your grandchild because your son is working in a hospital and for you, the hardest thing is, and listen and validate and just make space for the other person. This kind of emotional space that you create actually heightens the differentiation in a couple, and it makes room and it makes you at the same time not choke but without being lonely because you're connecting but you not have the other person in enter on you because they're maintaining a boundary

and they're letting you talk and they're not even answering. They're just nodding their head like you're doing with me now when I talk. You know, I am talking to you, I reach you, I know you're there, but I'm breathing fine, you're not in my space. It's very interesting you bring this up because this ambiguous loss, because I can see that at play a little bit

with me and my wife, because we both have so much going on. As you said before, people are working harder now. That is definitely the case for me, working much harder than I used to and I used to work too hard. And my wife's in the middle of trying to figure out she's a physician, she's in the middle of trying to figure out how does she, she hasn't been working for the past couple of years. Is she going to go back into the hospital? That's a life or death decision for her, incredibly stressful. And we were getting

into this habit of sitting next to each other, but being absorbed in our own worlds and then trying to have conversations while one person is focused on something and so we'll not really fully focused or having the conversations and the interstices of the day where I've just put the kid in the bath and I'm not fully focused and we've really come over the last couple of days to when we talk fully focused and we've really come over the last couple of days to when we talk, we're going to take ourselves into different rooms and actually talk. And that has made a huge difference. And I would take it a step forward. I would say you talk, you close your devices, that's it for the day because you like every

other person and children, you know, if you're the entire day in front of a screen, we're going to go nuts. And then you can have a date, you can dress up, you can open a bottle of wine or whatever, you can tell either candle and you can go sit in another room. It's a date in another room, you know. And then you just sit and you spend whatever, half an hour or an hour and you give each other full attention. That will calm your nervous system.

It's a ritual. It creates order and predictability. It is symbolic. It says we continue to do these things even if we're just doing them in our imagination. And our imagination is essential at this moment as an antidote to our fear of death. Not just the physical death, the death of everything,

the death of the future that we know, the death of the world that we typically live in. And I think that those recommendations are very powerful, the people who do it. Some do it naturally and some just like being given those kinds of ideas. You've worked the whole day on the kitchen table. Do you go sit, even if it's go sit on your bed?

But make the meal in a different place from where you eat, create boundaries, create delineations. These demarcations are so important. It's why people invented the Sabbath. It's why people invented prayer a few times a day to create the market. If everything bleeds into each other, you become dysregulated basically. And it makes a lot of sense. So we're talking now, I think we've been talking at least the way I've interpreted about

how reasonably healthy couples can adapt. But you spoke earlier about couples that are really stressed or have, you know, are dealing with a recent infidelity or on the cusp of divorce or have decided the divorce. And I can imagine for those people feeling utterly trapped on lockdown with this person with whom they've got such a difficult relationship. And one of the things you recommended was, okay, you need to, to the best of your ability, create a partnership, figure out what your emergency response plan is, figure out what the

schedule is, work together to just get some semblance of proper functioning in the home. And so yes to all of that, but what about the residual, not just residual, but the sort of psychological undertow of feeling trapped in a house with somebody with whom you have an incredibly difficult relationship? If there's a good chance, if you are separating or divorcing, that you have known that feeling for a long time. This is not a new feeling. This is why you're divorcing in the first place.

You know, for some, this is not the only script. You talk to other people. You know, one of the nice things of this moment is that a lot of people are reconnecting, friends from that you haven't talked to in years, or people from work who suddenly become you're confident every day, that's, you know, because you left the office the same day or so, talk to others, find other people to vent, commiserate elsewhere. This at this point is not a place where your exchange of feelings is the most important thing, but there's a variety of situations. For example, you know, I'm doing this special spot cast series for where should we begin for couples under lockdown? The first episode of the couple in Sicily they kind of hair were living with what my friend Megan Fleming calls the invisible divorce They were living married, but they were divorced inside, you know, and she goes to the hospital every day as a midwife

he's home with a three children and this situation is really bringing them, you know, to have to confront the set, you know, who are they for each other at this moment? What binds them together? And in this, so this is, I'm giving you a sense of few varieties. The second episode is a couple that has been living apart for a year and a half.

And she called him from Germany to Italy. And she said, during Red Zone, come right away, two hours later, he was in Germany, home. And they are reunited for the first time after a year and a half, and actually are feeling so much better. But because the coronavirus forced them back under one roof when they were fighting about, he felt abandoned that she left and she felt abandoned that he didn't follow her. And suddenly the situation basically put them back together. So nobody won, or nobody lost. And there's all these varieties, you know. And for them, it's actually been really, really good to be again together

and to be the three of them with their daughter. So I think that what happens is you can spend your entire time focused on, I can't stand this, I can't do another week of this, I, where is this going to take? I got to get out of it. You can do that. And you can also basically say, where would I have been otherwise? First of all, where would I have gone? I mean, let's, let's, you know, and if I do go where am I going? And, you know, if we do have children,

do I not have a sense of responsibility here? I'm seeing a couple today where they're in the midst of divorcing and they're confined together in the house and he feels like he's a prisoner in his own home. That's an expression. There's also simply, you have three young children, and at this moment, you have to be a parent. And you rule as the parent is going to supersede you rule as the disgruntled spouse. Grow up for a moment. You know, it is uncomfortable, but you know, it is,

there's nothing I can say about that, but you can make it worse, but you can make it worse and you can make it more tolerable. You can also say, this is it, I don't work necessarily as much or I don't have work or and I am going to take my opportunity to really bond with my daughters before I leave the home and change fundamentally my relationship and the frequency of my visits with them. So make a goal. What's something that you would like to accomplish while you're here? That the circumstance is putting in front of you. That you think I wouldn't have done this otherwise. Now, not everybody is going to be able to do that, but a lot of people will actually come up with something interesting about that.

I like that a lot. Speaking of your podcasts with a couple and Sicily, I listened to a little bit of that and it was great. And one of the issues that it raised very prominently that I wanted to get with you today was gender roles. Now, in this case, the husband used to work out of the home or was working out of the home pre-crisis, but he's not an essential worker, so he's now at home. The wife is a healthcare worker, is an essential worker, so he's now has to leave the house. She had here too far done all of the, or most of the parenting. Now he's doing the parenting and very interesting to hear about his frustrations, but just broaden out from that. We are at a moment where I imagine men are handling this emergency differently than women. That's probably a gross generalization.

But I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on men versus women in this moment. So let me say it like this. I prefer often to think in roles because what is often described in gender specific terms in straight couples is actually just as present in gay and lesbian couples, but it's not gendered. So in many couples you will have one person who when stress occurs they go and they start to organize. They become structured, they become problem solvents, they're instrumental. They organize, they shop, they make the list and all of that. And the other person is responding to this as in, you're locking me up. This is crazy.

This isn't really happening. Or the other person basically says, what are we trying to organize things for at this moment? We don't even know where we're going. This is a classic division. And, you know, suddenly, having, when there is such a chaos on the outside, it feels that organizing an order is like a bulwark against that chaos. Order on the outside is going to create order on the inside. That's a classic distinction.

I don't know that I always want to put it in gender terms. You know, in straight couples it often appears as such. I think in many straight couples there's often a sense that there is an authority on parenting and it's the woman and she knows best or she thinks she does and she examines him and he's the helper and then she complains that he only helps rather than be the helper and then she complains that he only helps rather than be an equal and then he complains that you know if he doesn't do it like she does then she's going to be critical of it in any way so why bother that's kind of an old trope you know in this moment take whatever you can get

from everybody and whatever the other person does is one thing less you had to do. And don't try to imagine that the house is going to be speak and span as it was, if you, you know, when everybody leaves the house and you can actually make space to clean it up. Just adapting to that is very, it goes in phases. It's like people with a baby and people with young children begin to realize that it for a few years to come the house and going to be nearly as neat as it used to be before. But it takes you realizing and giving up and not feeling that when you give that up, you

give up a part of your identity or like a part of yourself has just been flattened. So now, the one who is taking care of the kids is probably on occasion, just gonna feed them something to get it over with, and it's okay, it's okay. You know, you are in a little bit of a survival mode, and you think that you are still in normal mode just living at home. You know, yesterday I had a conversation like this

with somebody, Passover is arriving and lots of people usually Clean their house and have foods that are specific for Passover and you know, she wants to break a cake That is the end. It's like, you know, I'm sorry. I'm not sure you're gonna be able to break the cake But you see then you start to have a conversation about loss the cake is just a symbol of holding continuity. What we call the principle of continuity. Life is still the way I've known it. Every year I've baked that cake. There's so much tradition to that cake. The grandchildren love that cake. The cake is a symbol for what you have to let go and what you let in go each time is the world that you have known. And then you switch from bickering to sadness and loss.

It's a totally different emotion. And then it's quiet for a moment. You know, you just say, that cake, if you let go of that cake, it feels like another piece of continuity has just gone. And that is really tough. That's sad. that's loss. That's very different than bickering about you. Didn't find kosher Marjarin, which is what they were doing.

And there's a gaffilt of fish shortage. The Jews out there will get that joke. But do you understand? Did that clarify what happens gender wise? It's like, you go for the theme that isn't gendered, rather than she bakes, and which is what she was saying. I do all the cooking, and I'm like,

this is not the conversation we need to have here. Seriously, this is not about you, the woman, the cooking, the kitchen, and how much he enjoys is and he lets you do it anyway, and the only thing you ask is for him to, this is what they were into. You don't enter there there and you really help people for a minute to step out of this and to just realize what are we really talking about?

It's way more vulnerable and way more fragile than the fricking cake. Stay tuned more of our conversation is on the way after this. Hey, I'm Aresha, and I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wundery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles.

After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father, Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance. But the road to success is a rocky one. Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to veer Rue off course. In our series, Rue Paul Bornnaked, we'll show you how Rue Paul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers, opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere.

Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app. I was gonna say I put a call it on Twitter to ask people if they had questions for me that I should ask you, and somebody who goes by the handle butterfly wings wanted me to ask you about fights over household chores and it sounds like you want to elevate those fights out of what they're nominally about the garbage but they're actually about something else.

In the podcast episode they fight over shoes. How many more times can I ask you to organize the shoes, to put your shoes at the door, etc. And of course, this is not a new topic. She probably has asked him about the shoes for the 17 years they've been together. And she's asked it nicely and not nicely, you know, by the time they come to meet, they've already done every version. But the point is this, what she's really asking is saying, when I'm not home, can I trust you?

And then the bigger piece is not even can I trust you, it's, I feel so bad about the fact that I can't be home. I feel so bad about the fact that I can't do it, that when I come home from the hospital, the first thing I do is I scrub myself in soap because I just gave birth to a woman who had fever that day. That's what was really going on. The shoes become this thing to not talk about the real thing.

You know, of course, people are going to be paying more attention to the household chores. And I hear one person after another telling me, I'm tired of doing it all. I'm the one doing all the meals. It's like he's become a teenager. It's like she, you know, she spends all her time talking to people and, you know,

I'm the one who has to make sure that the homework is done. And everybody, you know, will heighten in lieu of that. And I don't think that suddenly, people who have been bickering about home chores are going to suddenly feel better about it. So basically what I can simply say is half the time at this point, when you are doing away

about these practical things, it's because there's something else that is knowing at you. I mean, I saw it with an eight-year-old that I spoke with recently. And she was having massive tantrums, fits, fits like an 80-year-old can do, like a 10-year-old can do, it doesn't matter. But what was so interesting was that she could articulate that it's because she's scared and she's having bad dreams.

And, you know, it's that, it's your detention rises because you actually feel unsettled about other things. The more you can articulate the other things, the more you can actually ground yourself into what you really feel, the less likely the escalations in your relationship and in your household. On a related note somebody named Danielle Craig asked me to ask you about how to handle differing levels of seriousness vis-a-vis the virus. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's not taken it as seriously as you think they should. To your first one by the way, the very important thing also when you bake a rover house shows and all of that, if you're going to start going into you I resent your slob you never do anything I do everything and you just go and you complain and it's you you you

Unfortunately, you're gonna vent you're gonna feel better for two and a half minutes But it will accomplish nothing Try as much as you can to be in the what you need and what you need is not I need to feel taken care of it's what you need is not, I need to feel taken care of. It's what you need is I need you to cook lunch today. It's like go super practical with a very concrete task that the other person can do. Is that different though from, I thought we, I thought the move was to elevate out of the fight and into the sort of underlying emotion. It's both end. It's both end. You also, you know,

if you want more help from the other person because you tired of being the one, the one that does all the house stuff, then talk plan and be really concrete and say what you want. What happens when people start to argue about this stuff is they start what we call kitchen thinking. They start putting all the dirty dishes and they pile them up and you don't even know what we're talking about anymore. Within three sentences, you can be talking about divorce, you know? So keep it focused. If you really want to talk about the chores, then you talk about the chores.

You don't talk about the personality of your partner. You know, if you realize that you're just like picking at anything because it's the thing that's right in front of you, realize that you need to do a checking inside and say, why am I so rattled at this point? What's making me want to bite, you know? I'm want to bite because I'm scared. Like, we do, animals do. When we are scared, we bite. When people they bite each other figuratively.

Yes, we are dangerous megafauna, but just in different ways, and more often than not verbal. So, but let me just go back to gender differences for a second. Do you see any difference in terms of men or women being more or less willing to process their emotions around this emergency? Look, the tendency is to wanna say

that men will be more instrumental and practical and they want to do, so they want to do, you know, and get certain things done and women will be more into the experience of emoting. Honestly, it's not something I see. When I talk with many, many men and you actually don't interrupt and you give them time to speak and to formulate their thoughts and you don't try to shape it. They will tell you, they will tell you but in different language, they'll tell you about what it feels like to not be able to work at this moment, how it feels useless, how they

feel bad about not being able to protect their loved ones, how they feel like they're trapped in their body in a tight space and they're losing their minds because usually they need the movement and the physicality. They talk to you about how their, you know, their brother is a total, you know, whatever, because, you know, he has continued to go, you know, with his buddies to spring break. You know, they won't say, I'm scared for my brother. I don't want to lose my brother. My't say, I'm scared for my brother. I don't want to lose my brother. They'll just say, my brother is such a bozo.

It's like, what is he thinking? And then he goes, it spends time with my parents. I mean, it's like I have nobody to talk to here. But basically, what they're telling you is, I care about my parents. I care about my brother. I don't want to lose them. And he's acting irresponsible. And there's nothing I can do and I feel powerless.

And I give those words, okay, that's my role as a therapist, but I know that they're talking about their feelings. At this point, we can't expect everybody to speak one language, to have a kind of a feminized version of emotion talk. Let's talk about single people for a moment. There's obviously, if you're single living alone, the issue of loneliness, then there are questions around, do you continue online dating?

Yes. Online dating is doing fantastic. But is it worth doing if you can't meet up in person or actually is it okay to meet up in person if you're confident the other person has been quarantined? Definitely people are waiting a lot longer before they meet which means that they are actually having a lot more conversations. And something about that is actually really nice. It's a little, it's a, it lasts a little longer than a swipe. And I think that that in itself is bringing back something that's very interesting.

And also people are actually meeting around something that is quite important that's happening in their life, rather than having dates which look like job interviews. So the context is making people have conversations very early on that reveal them to each other in ways that have not been so present lately. And people are taking their time. to each other in ways that I have that have not been so present lately and People are taking their time and people you know on the one hand they can't touch

so that there is a There's a need to relate to this new person and it's the voice people are talking on camera They're they're spending more time together. They're spending a long time together talking more than they usually do before they just touch each other and never know each other's name. There is actually very interesting things going on, very creative things. People are needing to court each other in this other, you know, slower-paced, sequential way. I have found very interesting stories of people who are actually dating and even

if you are a single, for some people, they are actually surrounded by friends that they are reaching out to, it's important to not equate a lone single and lonely. I think that that's too quickly as something that we lump together. Lonely is really scary at this point. There are people who have nobody calling them or very few and then vice versa. They can really get lost at this moment. I mean, there is a way of thinking that as many as not more people will die from the coronavirus as a result of poverty, depression and loneliness than from the virus itself, it's what we call the comorbidity.

So dating, actually, I think, is a unique moment for that. You can try out a lot of things. You don't have to worry about the actual event yet. So let your imagination go, try out all kinds of things without the actual experience of it. You can, you know, people go back to phone sex for that matter. I mean, there's a lot of practices that are returning very naturally. And, uh, what I think it's a testament to is people want to continue to feel alive, you

know, and vital. And that erotic charge that you have from dating even when you can't go outside of your house with people who are God knows where on this, in this universe is real testament to the human spirit. I'm quite sure you are the only guest who's ever uttered the word's phone sex on this show. Should, should these people progress to actual sex? Is it, is there ever a time that

it's okay to go to the apartment or the house of the person you've been? Yes, if they've been co- I mean, look, this is where everybody is going to measure risk, right? And like your second caller was at Twitter, was asking, how does risk-taker live together with risk manager? And in this relationship, in the people who are just beginning to date, that thing is going to come up very early on. There are, who's the risk-taker? Are both of them risk-takers? Is one more likely to be cautious and risk-manager?

Where are you living? What are the circumstances of your life? When this is like not that different when you talk about public health and when people began for the first time to have campaigns over condoms. You know, people have had to adjust sexual practices with public health all along. This is not the first time, you know, when we began clear that what is an STI and how does it proliferate and how do we protect against? We had to change the way we practice our sexual life and we had to ask people, are you safe?

Are you tested? Are you this? Are you that questions that nobody had to ask before like that? So in this instance is who are you living with and who else is around and who are you coming in contact with and where are you are you still working? Do you go outside of your house? How long has it been that? And at some point, yes, people will meet. Do you do you think this is meeting dating and perhaps beginning a relationship in the middle of an emergency, is that a better than usual time or a worse than usual time in terms of the quality of the relationship. I'm thinking in my own life,

I once began a relationship with a fellow correspondent, journalist, in the middle of a war zone, and it was, it felt important in that moment, but then when we were, when life reverted to normal, didn't function as well. And so I wonder if we're going to see that perhaps with some of the relationships that begin are forged in this particular crucible. You know, when I used to write about families of Holocaust survivors, a lot of these marriages right after the war was, I'm alone, you're alone, I have nothing, you have nothing, let's get married.

And a lot of these couples were indeed very good in surviving together, having children right away, reaffirming humanity and normality. And after that they looked at each other and they said, we have nothing to do with each other. So that is a story where the circumstances give heft and meaning and urgency to your relationships. Lots of people have babies in the middle of war. Lot of, you know, let me put it this way,

when it comes to relationships, one of the most important things that crisis like that, global crisis does, is it functions as an accelerator and the accelerator says life is short what are we waiting for? Let's have babies let's get married or let's live together whatever and then on the other side life is short I've waited long enough I'm out of here and so this is an old story that people will divorce more and will connect more in light of this crisis because it heightens the priorities, it brings you closer to the essence of life.

So I don't know if I would say better or not better. It is clear that under such circumstances the desire to connect is very strong among people and so people will date and people will move in together and people will have quarantines with someone they've met twice before. And then some of them will have to say, you know, we had not really much in common, but it helped us during that quarantine and that was that. And then other people will say, we met then and it became, you know, a 20-year story. You don't know, but you know that crisis, heightens priorities, heightens urgency, and changes the meaning of things. And for some people, it translates well in the after years, after the war, after the disaster,

after the pandemic. And for other people, it was just circumstantial and it was meant to be for the pandemic and after that, bye-bye. So well said. And it brings the mind, something that I think I saw in the New York Times recently a prediction that we're going to see a wave of corona babies and a wave of COVID divorces. Do you agree? Yes, yes. This is a this is with every study of during wars and disasters and and even even snowstorms and you you know have always had the same predictions.

It's like it heightens the existential awareness. It's not just a psychological relation in a way, it's an existential awareness of our fragility. Look, what does a pandemic say to you? It says that the randomness of the way that we can be exterminated at all time has not changed no matter what progress society has made. You know, human suffering is human suffering. Lost death, you know, our fragility, you know, the plagues have existed throughout, no matter what kind of progress we have made, we can be wiped off like that.

The laws of impermanence and entropy have not evaporated, notwithstanding the iPhone. What is it, Terry? I agree, and actually there can be salutary effects to not, despite the massive inconvenience and suffering, there can be some positive effects to re-equating ourselves with the basic laws of the universe. We only have a few minutes before you're off to your next appointment.

In that remaining time, is there something that I should have asked or something you think would be worth discussing that hasn't yet come up? Your question about what you do with two people have different responses to danger or to threat. I think it's really important. Because you want reassured the other person by just saying to them, you're exaggerating. You're thinking about the worst scenarios.

Let them talk to you and just feel less frightened by the sheer fact that they can talk to you and that you are there to listen and to acknowledge their experience. That is actually doing way more than trying to talk them out of it. And to the person who you think is not looking at it dangerously enough, or is, you know, let them explain to you why it is so important for them to still go out. People have gone out in the middle of a blitzkrieg, you know, people like you a partner who may go back to the hospital. I mean, people experience such a sense of urgency and such a sense of purpose in those moments. That is really important and it gives people strength to live and to confront the danger and the threat and the fear and all of that. We have different coping styles, it's not one way.

And what you want is to make room for both in your family or in your relationship. So that is the first one. The second thing is, one of the very important things you can do is tell stories. Even when you sit at night, you know, with your partner, and you kind of just share stories of resilience, stories of triumph and stories of vulnerability. We all carry that memory from our families, from our community. People have overcome adversity throughout history. What are the strengths that you got from your history? You know, what are the things you

learned from your community, from your religious groups? You know, and those stories, give us strength, they give us hope, they give us a sense of vision, they give us a sense of future that people do continue life. Like one of my people was saying, you know, I lost my mother at 13, you know, I've known a long time ago that somebody could disappear and your world could be toppled overnight. I have lived with loss. I know I can make it. And it was just so powerful to hear her just talk about,

I have it in me. And in the moments when I'm totally scared, I remind myself that I took myself to learn to school and I did find my, my, my, my, it's two women married together and I did, you know, I have experienced a tremendous amount of loss and, and my, my, my, my, my brother passed away last year. I actually, today, I'm almost relieved that he's not there because he was living in dire conditions and I think that I worry worry what would have happened to him

in a time like today, and to be able to even say it like that. And then another person also says, my mother has Alzheimer, and I'm just so relieved that she doesn't know what's happening right now. This is the first time that I actually think good for her. And people have these realizations that are completely non-linear, they're paradoxical, they feel contradictory,

like you shouldn't say in Mother Earth's hammer and that's good. But in these circumstances things change meaning. And when you engage with that conversation, when friends meet for drinks online, or dinners, or all the gatherings, you chat about things and have jokes and fun, but on occasion it's also nice to see to people, you know, what kind of thoughts has this brought up for you, you know, what kind of experiences from your life? And you start to see people drop and start sharing with each other at a level that is really communal support. And that communal support is probably the most important factor for mental health at this time. Yeah, in closing, I would I hear so much in terms of it's may not be the common denominator, but it's a quite common denominator of

the things you say your recommendations, your reflections is the importance of asking the right questions and listening to the answers. And making space for the other person to just talk to you and in the talking, they feel less alone and you are doing plenty. You don't have to reason with them, reassure them, rationalize nothing. And that actually has a tremendous security of effect. Closing thing I'll say just is one of the shows that's been getting me through this pandemic

is a show called Parks and Rec, which is a really, really funny show that I recommend. I've been, well, I've been binging it on Netflix and there's a great scene in the final season where this couple is about to have a baby and the husband is really just, actually, if he's not a husband, the baby daddy, to be, is rushing around trying to fix all of her problems and it's making her more and more annoyed that he's just trying to fix everything.

And finally, somebody gives him the advice when she's complaining, the magic words are that sucks. And just to validate, just to hear and to validate is extraordinarily soothing, I think, for most of us. Absolutely. It's such a pleasure to talk to you. I'm going to get you out of this interview on time because I know you've got something coming up. We could go on you and I.

We could. I, you know, I'm a, I'm a unreconstructed Esther Perellle fan and so I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you so much. And for, you know, while you and I won't continue in person, I can invite all your fans to join me through all the different things I'm doing, focused primarily on relationship options, challenges and choices at this moment, in all the relationships that we are in. But it's an amazingly rich time for relationships, really. Check out where should we begin and how's work and check out mating and captivity. And what's the other book again? The State of Affairs.

Check them all out. And sessions, sessions for all of you that work with relationships or are interested in relationships, it's my online training platform, which you and I, one day, we need to talk about as well. There's lots of things, but we're not going to sell, so just go find me and you'll get it. Awesome. Thank you, Esther, appreciate it. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Big thanks to Esther. As we discussed briefly in the show, she's been interviewing couples under lockdown around the world and airing the conversations on her podcast, which is called, Where Should We Begin? To give you a sample of this, Esther has kindly shared a snippet from one of her recent conversations. Check it out. 17 years ago, they met in Germany and it probably would have been just an adventure.

Our story was very crazy and messy at the beginning. I was pregnant after we after our third day. We basically met in February and we were pregnant in July and that was the beginning of everything. She moved to Italy. They've lived together in the Tuscan hills. They've had quite a nice arrangement, the neculiobrium between the two of them. And this eculebium got disrupted a year and a half ago when she accepted a big job in Germany. But I kept checking in with her, are you fine with this, are you coming, are you still committed?

And he said yes, yes, yes. But he never came. And then I started to realize, wow, you're only fighting, what's going on? And it got worse in the summer. He said, look, we've been through a lot and we will always be that special person for me. But I'm not sure if I still love you. I don't know, at a certain point,

I felt that something broke up. And I thought that our love was finished. When Italy became a red zone, she called him and asked him to come immediately. A few hours later, they are actually, for the first time, reunited as a family, the two of them and their daughter. In ways that probably would never have happened otherwise. Finally, I feel protected again, and I don't want to lose this. But what is unsure if this is going to be the beginning of a new stage or just a temporary COVID-19 blip?

It's not permanent, it's temporary, it's the finish and I don't know what's happening to us after this. I still don't understand why I'm here in Germany. I am still captured by the dream that we already had. Like I said, fascinating stuff. Thanks again to S-Dare. Before we go, a few reminders. If this conversation with a stair strikes a chord with you right now, you may want to check out the course we have put up on the 10% happier app, which is called relationships. The teacher there is orange, a sofa, incredibly useful stuff

around communicating not only with people with whom you are romantically entangled, but with anybody. Super practical tools there. Another thing to say before we go, if you're a healthcare worker who is not currently subscribed to the 10% happier app, we want to give it to you for free. Please go to 10% dot com slash care. We'll put a link in the show notes, but again, it's 10% dot com slash care. And you can also tell anybody you know who's a healthcare worker.

And by that we mean doctors, nurses, admin, custodial staff, nurse practitioners, texts, the whole range med students. We want to be holistic in our thinking about who qualifies as a healthcare worker. So give us a shout. Big thanks to the team who helped put this show together. Samuel Johns is our producer. He's been leading the charge in these difficult days. Jackson Beerfelt is our editor, Maria Wertel,

is our production coordinator. We derive a lot of wisdom from 10% colleagues, such as Ben Rubin, Jen Poion, and Nate Toby as well. And finally, a big thank you to Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan from ABC News. We'll see you on Wednesday with the amazing Sylvia Borsni. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad free

on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad free with Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. you