The Tim Ferriss Show - #755: Hugh Jackman and Esther Perel

Starting point is 00:00:00 I don't know about you guys, but I've had the experience of traveling overseas and I try to access something, say a show on Amazon or elsewhere, and it says not available in your current location, something like that, or creepier still, if you're at home and this has happened to me, I search for something or I type in a URL incorrectly and then a screen for AT&T pops up and it says, you might be searching for this. How about that? And it suggests an alternative. And I think to myself, wait a second, my internet service provider is tracking my searches and what I'm typing into the browser. Yeah, I don't love it. And a lot of you know, I take privacy and security very seriously. That is why I've been using today's episode

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Starting point is 00:05:20 The Tim Ferriss Show. Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to sit down with world-class performers from every field imaginable to tease out the habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply and test in your own lives. This episode is a two for one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its 10th year anniversary, which is insane to think about, and passed 1 billion downloads.

Starting point is 00:05:56 To celebrate, I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites from more than 700 episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited to give you these super combo episodes. And internally, we've been calling these the super combo episodes because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks, but to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider stars. These are people who have transformed my life, and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps they got lost in a busy news cycle. Perhaps you missed an episode.

Starting point is 00:06:31 Just trust me on this one. We went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests, you can find that and more at Tim.blog slash combo. And now, without further ado, please enjoy and thank you for listening. First up, Hugh Jackman, an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning performer, whose roles include Professor Harold Hill in Broadway's The Music Man revival, Jean Valjean in 2013's major motion picture adaptation of Les Mis, and Wolverine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, a role which he will reprise

Starting point is 00:07:14 in the upcoming Deadpool and Wolverine. You can find Hugh on Instagram at TheHughJackman. What books, if any, come to mind? I know you read a lot. Have you gifted the most to other people? I learned this from a great mate of mine, Billy Shaw, who's often known as St. Billy. Runs No Kid Hungry, Share Our Strength, you know that organization? I do.

Starting point is 00:07:38 Yeah, they're incredible. So he came over to my place one day and he gave me two books that I now gift very regularly. One is E.B. White's Here is New York. And the other one is David Foster Wallace's speech, This is Water, his commencement speech. I've heard you talk about the David Foster Wallace one, so I know you know that. I said, oh, I haven't read either of these. And he said, man, I learned a long time ago. It's really nice to give books

Starting point is 00:08:05 but it can be a burden to give a big book because people feel like oh i'm gonna see i'm gonna see him in a month oh shit i'm having dinner with him next week and sharing the book but like the david foster wallace is a 15 minute book and the eb white book here is new york the new york had a program post-World War II where they were invited the greatest writers in the world to come to New York and just pay them for three months just to write essays about New York. So that was his. And it's amazing to read a 1949 account of New York and how much of the spirit still resonates now. So that's the little book that anyone who lives in New York or likes New York, I give. And in terms of fiction, and this completely breaks that rule, Tim, because this

Starting point is 00:08:51 is a long book, but I was gifted it actually by Gary Hart, Senator Gary Hart, who I played in a movie, The Overstory by Richard Powers. I'm not sure if you read that, but that's the most transformative bit of fiction I have read in a long time. I need to read it. It's been recommended so many times. It's sitting on my Kindle and I started reading it. I remember I read for about a half hour and it said, whatever it said, 0.001% complete. And I went, oh my God, how big is this book? It's big. And stick with it. For those who don't know the book, could you give it just a quick description? It's Richard Bowers, I believe it won the Pulitzer. I think it did. It's a piece of fiction interweaving about eight storylines of humans. But what you realize, the misdirection of the book is by the end, you realize the book is completely about trees. So we might relegate trees or nature to some 5% or 10% of our awareness.

Starting point is 00:09:50 And this book, what it does is draws you in in these incredible human stories and these very varied characters and their varying degrees of interaction with nature in various different forms. But by the end, you realize the book actually, the main character of the book is trees, is nature. And it completely reverses the way you look at the world when you walk outside. Now, I promise you, after you read that book, Tim, you will sit in your backyard and you'll notice things you have never noticed before. I'm in. All right. My complacency has been called. Stick with it. It works on you in the way nature does. It's patient and it's in no rush. It's slow and it's steady and it's true. Could you describe your meditation practice and what you feel are the

Starting point is 00:10:40 main benefits that are derived from that practice? Sure. I was introduced to meditation when I was at drama school and it was a form of transcendental meditation. There's lots of different types of meditation. Just very briefly, it involves the use of a mantra, which you are given, which you repeatedly sound. And the very basic concept is that the nature of our minds is to always be working, always be thinking. And the trick to life is not letting that mind be your master, but to let it be a servant. Then it's an incredible thing. Once it's running the show, it's very easy to get off track.

Starting point is 00:11:18 So during this period of meditation, you are given a mantra, which was described to me as the mind is often called the monkey mind in Eastern philosophies. So a monkey is very energetic and if not given something to do, will be mischievous. So the mantra is like basically saying to the monkey mind, I need you to climb to the top of that telegraph pole. And when you get to the top, I need you to climb back down. And when you get to the bottom, I need you to climb back up. And when you get to the top, I need you to climb back down. And when you get to the bottom, I need you to climb back up. And when you get to the top, I need you to climb back down. So it's just giving this activity. So the mantra or this word that is silently repeated ends up fading away.

Starting point is 00:11:56 And the best way I can describe it is the effect that it has on me. I mean, sometimes I fall asleep, by the way, which is totally fine and clearly what my body needed. But when you first pour a glass of water, it's cloudy. And then in a period of time, that all settles and you see crystal clear through the glass, through the water. That's what meditation does for me. It's got that feeling where things drop down. I have a feeling of coming home, the feeling of experiencing my true self and not just being caught up in the monkey mind or being reactive to life. And it gives me a finer energy.

Starting point is 00:12:36 I don't always get out of meditation ready to do a one-hour Peloton class, but I always come out with a finer energy. My intention feels clearer. My listening is more purposeful and things feel easier and more connected. Do you meditate then twice a day in these, I guess one might consider the traditional TM format. If you meditate in the afternoons or later in the day, how do you time that for yourself? I always did it twice a day for years. So I started when I was 23, I'm 51 now. So I did it very regularly, twice a day. And about three or four years ago, I kind of let go of the duty element there was, and I can be guilty of this. This is good for you,

Starting point is 00:13:24 shouldn't be doing this. Don't fall off that wagon. It's a slippery slope. And once I let go of that, I just had kind of experiment with myself. I was like, okay, why don't you meditate when you really want to meditate? And that has turned into a practice where it's every morning for sure. And then definitely when I'm working, if I'm on a movie set or I'm working in theater, there will always be a second one. But sometimes I'll let the afternoon one go. And when I say afternoon, I can't sit down or I get restless leg syndrome. So after about four or five o'clock, it's uncomfortable for me to sit for 20 minutes. So I will do it around lunchtime or just after lunch. Could you describe your emotional energy practices and replenishing approach when it comes to,

Starting point is 00:14:17 let's just say stage performances and stage work, because it's really hard for me to even wrap my head around how you have that much energy output repeatedly in a given week. I know in my heart that I was born to be on the stage, right? It's taken me a long time to feel the same feeling on a sound stage for acting. One of my favorite movies of all time, and definitely my favorite quote from a movie of all time, is from Chariots of Fire, which I loved as a kid. And Eric Liddell, who's the religious runner who decides not to run on the Sabbath during the Olympics. You've seen the movie, right?

Starting point is 00:14:59 I have. Yeah. So there's this great scene where he's meant to be going off after the Olympics to do missionary work in China, handing out Bibles or something. And his sister's talking to him. She's like, you've got to throw away this silly running thing. We have really important work, God's work to do. Why are you doing this and spending time on this? You know, basically kind of accusing him of not following God's will.

Starting point is 00:15:24 And he just says, he looks at her and he says, but I feel his pleasure when I run. And I've always, somehow that line, it always makes me tear up just saying it. That's what I feel on stage. There's a kind of natural energy. And what I keep saying to my kids, actually, don't settle. Find that thing that resonates with you in that way where you feel some kind of the pleasure of the universe, of consciousness. Like there's some joy where you feel you can do it longer.

Starting point is 00:15:55 And in that way, it's not such a Herculean effort. Although I'm going to tell you in a second, I have a bunch of sort of rituals and things that I do to make sure that I can be my best. But there is a natural energy that I understand other people going, I don't know how you do that. But maybe that's the same way I don't know how you train for ultra marathons, for example. So in terms of self-care, on Broadway, I have a bunch of rules. Or when I was doing my tour, I certainly don't drink alcohol before. And I really limit it after.

Starting point is 00:16:31 It's really important for me to wake up feeling in a good frame of mind rather than that feeling of catch up. You know that feeling if you wake up and you go, I just want to go back to bed. Then that's a really difficult place to be in if you've got to perform that evening because then an anxiety comes in that you're going to be withdrawing on reserves that are not replenishable. I don't go out after any show and I would love for you to come and see. I'm doing the Music Man come, but I never go out. That's a blanket rule. I don't go out with anybody partly because the party I've just had on stage is better than anything I can imagine anywhere else. The other thing is I think it's really important to me to get quiet, to allow what has happened, the energy of what has happened, because there is a lot of energy.

Starting point is 00:17:20 I think I'm the only actor I know who I can be asleep within 45 minutes after getting off stage. There's something very calming. It's like you've had your greatest workout, you have a bath, that feeling after the bath, after a great workout in the evening where you just can sit and be at peace with yourself, that I love. So I limit the amount of coffee I have just because you're battling dehydration with stage work all the time. I know what my routine is before I go on stage and I'm religious about it. And that's more about quieting my mind. I don't ever want my monkey mind saying, oh, you didn't do your warmup today or you only half did it or this or that. You haven't stretched. You haven't done that. You didn't really eat very

Starting point is 00:17:59 well today. My mind can easily pick up on that the perfection side of me i always take a minute before i go on stage literally before to pause and just connect with the senses so even if i'm not in the opening of a show i will stand in the wings i first of all like to just listen to that titter of excitement as people come in to the theatre because I love the theatre myself and I remember that and it reminds me of how privileged I am and how much I owe every single audience member at every single show. They're not coming in to see my fourth show of the week.

Starting point is 00:18:38 They're coming to see the show for the first and probably only time in their lives. So who knows what they've sacrificed to get there. So I really take that minute and then I fall still and remind myself that this is all in service of something. I say, Om Karamat Naminama, which means I dedicate this show or whatever it is to the service of the absolute, that there is something beyond the show, some reason we're doing this.

Starting point is 00:19:10 Same for your show. There's got to be a reason beyond just what the immediate thing is there, and that just connects me to that. I'm pretty quiet during the day when I do a show, and the other thing I really try to do is read and listen to other stuff. I had a great acting teacher, Lyle Jones, who said to me, he goes, you can't call yourself

Starting point is 00:19:32 a real actor unless you expose yourself to ballet and classical music and David Attenborough. You should be so inquisitive and curious and find inspiration from surprising places could be a walk in the woods but that stuff feeds you so that in the act of performing which is very much giving out you have enough energy there and stores i suppose they'll be the main things i'd love to ask about your dad if that's possible And I have a specific example that jumps to mind. And this is from a piece some time ago in Good Housekeeping. So I want to give credit where credit is due.

Starting point is 00:20:12 But the quote here, and feel free to correct it, this is from you. I remember at one point being in a fellowship and everyone used to wear the fish symbol. It said you were a Christian. So I asked my father, dad, why don't you wear that at work? And he said, your religion should be in your actions. He set a great, great example. Could you speak to what when people talk about their, oh, my father always told me this. There weren't many times the dad would come up with a sentence. But there's a few I remember. You cannot over-invest in education. That's one he would say to us. And he says, if you're ever in doubt of what to do, go and learn more, is what he would say. Your actions, that one, it was, I actually now remember it. It was, we grew up very religious. My father was converted by Billy Graham and my mother and father, I think, went to the Billy Graham crusade and my father was not religious at all and became a born again Christian. My mother did not. That was one of the

Starting point is 00:21:20 things actually, I think that brought the end of their marriage. They sort of went down different paths. My dad was not a Bible basher. He rarely talked about it. And I remember saying, Dad, because I was really about 13, 14. I was really in school, church groups, fellowship groups. And I got one of those stickers that you put on the back of the car. And I said, Dad, we should put that. Like, we meant to do that.

Starting point is 00:21:44 We meant to spread the word and do this. And when he said that to me, I was disappointed. I thought he was copping out, but only later did I realize that when he said people should know you're a Christian through your actions, he's so much more powerful. If someone eventually comes up to you and says, you know, there's something about you, man. I don't know what it is, but I'd love to know where I can get it. Then there's an opening,

Starting point is 00:22:09 but someone, people have noticed how you act is far stronger than what you say. And we all know that. I often speak a little more about my dad in interviews because my mom left when I was eight. So I was brought up from that moment on primarily by my dad. So I got a lot of those lessons as I was growing into a man with him being around. But my mom, I always remember her saying, she says it to this day, everyone needs to feel appreciated. It doesn't matter what they do.

Starting point is 00:22:39 It doesn't matter who they are. That's a need in everybody. And I sort of have extrapolated that out to being people need to be seen. I've learned a lot of that from Brene Brown. They need to be seen for who they are and appreciated for what they give. And I've seen my mother in particular, and my father do that. And that's something we were all taught. So it has become a natural thing. I'd love to ask about journalism or communications. This is maybe going to seem strange.

Starting point is 00:23:12 I just remember what it was about my dad. Oh, fire away. Let's go there. Stickler on ethics. If you get an invitation to go across the road to your mate's place for dinner, and then an hour later you get an invitation from the Queen of England to go to the Buckingham Palace, you stick by your first one. It was just a stickler on ethics.

Starting point is 00:23:35 You keep your word, even if it does not benefit you. You always keep your word. That was a big one. My dad was always big on ethics. And the other beautiful one, I remember when my, because his relationship didn't work out and it was a big source of pain for him. You know, he shared with me, it was a real feeling of failure for him around his marriage. And when things started to take off for me with X-Men, he very rarely offered advice

Starting point is 00:24:01 at all about parenting, nothing. Even when I asked him for advice at one point, I had an opportunity to be in a TV show. I got cast in a TV show and at the same time I got a spot at a very revered acting school in Australia, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, and over the weekend I had to choose do I go on Neighbours, which Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce, Margot Robbie, you know,

Starting point is 00:24:24 all these people, that was the breeding ground. Or do I go and study for three years? And I asked my dad on the Friday, I said, dad, I don't know what to do. I need your help. And I was 22 at the time. And he said, I can't answer that for you. And I was really, I can't watch that, please. Anyway, by the Sunday, it was clear to me I wanted, you know, obviously his lesson about education had sunk in, and so I went, no, I need to go and study because I want to feel that not only do I belong on a TV series set, but I can also audition for the Royal Shakespeare Company

Starting point is 00:25:00 in England. And I didn't feel I had that before I studied. So I went off and studied. And when I told dad the decision, I remember he saw it. He goes, oh, thank goodness. I said, you knew? And he goes, of course I knew. I said, couldn't you have just saved me this grief the last few days and told me? And he goes, man, he says, you're a man. You have to make those decisions on your own. Now, as a father, I have a 20-year-old, I don't know if I'd be able to hold my tongue. If I could see it so clearly, go right, don't go left, to be able to hold back.

Starting point is 00:25:31 That was another great bit of advice. At the end of drama school, did you make a contract with yourself about pursuing acting? And could you speak to that, please? Damn, your research is good. So I had worked, I don't know how many jobs. I graduated drama school at 26. So gas station attendant, I dressed up in a koala suit for the National Parks and Wildlife Foundation. That's a tall koala. Oh yeah, totally. Yes, I've been punching the kidneys by 14 year olds, you know, the and yes i told him to fuck off all of that you know uh restaurants the thing i learned from working in all those jobs that if you start a business it could be a pizzeria it could be a bar a restaurant anything you have to give it seven days a week for five years and after five years

Starting point is 00:26:24 you may be able to pull back a little bit. You may be able to be in a position where you built the brand at a certain point. You may be able to hire a manager. You may be able to hire staff to make things a little easier. But no one really goes into owning their own business thinking, oh, this is going to be the easy life. They do it because there's something they want to create

Starting point is 00:26:41 and they don't want to be told what to do, and they go out and make it happen. And it dawned on me really only in the last semester of drama school that that's what I'm doing. I'm going out there. No one's employing me in their company to be an actor and then sending me out. I have to go and rehire every time I go for a job and my brand is my name. So I have to build that up. And so I thought, okay, what have I learned from all these jobs? I've got to give it seven days a week. So I vowed to never wait for the phone to ring. I was going to write letters.

Starting point is 00:27:13 I was going to start me and Simon Linden, my fellow mate I graduated with, we were going to start a theatre company, which he did, by the way. I ended up getting a job straight out of drama school, God lucky, but the Tamarama Rock Surfers, which is in Bondi in Australia, still going today after 25 years. But my feeling was you have to drive, you have to work, you cannot be a victim, you cannot wait for the phone to ring. You have to go out and generate and get your brand out there and get going. So I figured five years was the time because I was 26. So five years, I'm like 31.

Starting point is 00:27:46 We all hear stories of people staying too long at the party. I mean, if you go to LA, there's just so many people who stay a good 10 years too long at the acting party, you know, and they're like, I met a guy, my gym, and he's introduced me. He's the guy who parks the car around the corner of his place. He knows someone who's a friend of the casting agent and he's introduced me. He's the guy who parks the car around the corner of his place. He knows someone who's a friend of the casting agent and he's putting it away and I think I'm going to get a, you know, that story comes out and this feeling of it's going to happen next week and I figured 31.

Starting point is 00:28:14 Okay, 31. If it's not happening, be stoic. By the way, thanks for Ryan Holiday and the stoicism, all that stuff, love. Be stoic. Be hopeful. But work your ass off. But know when it's time to leave the party.

Starting point is 00:28:29 So after five years at 31, I'd done X-Men. It was all sort of happening for me. It didn't happen immediately in terms of what most people think of as success, but certainly after that first five years, I did actually mentally say to myself, all right, another five years and we'll see how it goes. I don't like the word career, particularly when I began and I say to actors, I said, I'd be wary of the word career. I said, it's not a right that you're going to act. 98% of actors are unemployed. It's a privilege

Starting point is 00:28:57 when you get a job and don't expect there'll always be one around the corner. Work your ass off as though this is the last one and you have to be at your best to get there because that's kind of what it takes. So I'll admit I don't redo the contract anymore. What were some of the best decisions that you made in the first few years of working hard, pounding the pavement as an aspiring slash working actor? Well, definitely going to drama school. That was before. That was a huge turning point.

Starting point is 00:29:28 I just had also this attitude, you've got to say yes to everything when you graduate. Just say yes. Go for everything. When my agent called me and said they're looking for someone to play Gaston in Beauty and the Beast in a musical, I was like, well, I'm a theater actor. I'm not a singer.

Starting point is 00:29:43 She said, yeah, I just think you should go for it. And me saying yes to that audition and going and getting singing lessons was a huge turning point. I mean, now I've done a bunch of musicals and I've learned a lot over those years, but I did not think I could ever do that. That was a big one. And doing Beauty and the Beast, man, in my contract, I think I must be the only actor in history. In my contract, it said, must get a singing lesson once a week, paid for by the company. So I was a professional, on paper, professional musical theater actor, and I had to go and get singing lessons, which I love, man, because I was singing eight times a week in a show, getting a singing lesson every week. That's really where I learned how to sing. So that

Starting point is 00:30:24 year was amazing for me. But this was more of a turning point. I remember when I was doing Beauty and the Beast, I started getting well known for that. And I remember seeing something like they had a list of people, what are they doing for Christmas kind of thing. And they had Hugh Jackman, singer. And it was up at the theater. Someone put it up in the theater. And I just remember going, oh, I'm being labeled as a singer. I'm an actor. This is a problem. This is going to affect me. And it did become a problem. I couldn't get an audition for a film because there was, I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia, a kind of snobbishness about musical theater that you weren't an actor, you were a performer,

Starting point is 00:31:05 stagehand, jazz hands, and that's not acting. So anyone in musical theater can't act. I couldn't get an audition. It drove me crazy. So I made a choice then to get out, basically. I'm going to get out of musical theater and I'm just going to concentrate on acting until I've established that, then maybe I can go back to it. And just as I decided that, my agent Raymond said, Sir Trevor Nunn is coming to do Sunset Boulevard in Melbourne. And I said, I really want to meet Sir Trevor Nunn. He was a huge hero of mine through drama school, the Royal Shakespeare Company, everything, like huge. I really wanted to meet him. That's really who I wanted to work for, that it was a musical. And this was another 12 months. And I thought, no, it's going to be back-to-back musicals.

Starting point is 00:31:52 I'm going to be even more entrenched down this path. You know, it was a one-way street. And I think back, it was a pretty arrogant thing. I rang the casting director myself and I said, I need you to do me a favor. And I had met, I knew her. I said, I really want to meet Trevor and I want And I had met, I knew her. I said, I really want to meet Trevor and I want to audition for him, but I don't want to do the job. She said, what? What do you mean? I said, I really want to meet him, but I've made this decision. I've got to go into acting, but can you just do me a favor? I just want to meet him and I want

Starting point is 00:32:18 him to see me act. So I went in, the audition was the most incredible hour I've ever spent. I learned so much. Like one hour on our audition, he taught me so much about acting. He heard me sing and then he came and worked with me for 40 minutes. And I remember about halfway through that going, okay, if he gives me the part, I'm going to do it. It doesn't matter to me if it's a musical or not. I've got to work with this guy.

Starting point is 00:32:49 I feel it in my gut. I've got so much to learn from him. And that was a massive turning point. I got the part. I learned an incredible amount from him. He then went on to cast me in Oklahoma and London, and really working with him gave me the confidence to be able to take on the world stage. I'm not sure I would have had the confidence to do that before him, but I suppose the lesson of

Starting point is 00:33:11 that or the tuning point of that was when you have that gut feeling, go with it. And I haven't always done that, by the way, actually not long after. So after I did Sunset Boulevard, I doubled down on my commitment to not doing musicals, right? Or after I go home, I've now done three musicals and I still couldn't get an audition for a film. And I got an offer to do The Boy From Oz, which I went on to do here on Broadway about 15 years ago. And when I heard the pitch for that show, I had that same feeling in my gut. Oh my God, this is going to be amazing. You've got to do it. But my head was saying, you've done three musicals.

Starting point is 00:33:49 Stop. When are you going to stop? You've got to stop. You made a commitment. So I turned it down. And when I went to see that show two years later, by the way, I still hadn't to my stomach because it was everything I knew it was going to be when they pitched it to me. And there I was making some strategic plan in my head and it was wrong. And from that moment on, I've always followed my gut on stuff,

Starting point is 00:34:22 even if it doesn't make sense. How do you relate to intuition or that gut feeling now? Is there a certain way you think about it or have become more tuned to feeling it? I'm asking in part because I've spent a lot of my life trapped in the front of my brain, hyper analyzing things. And it has often been a disservice because it's overpowered feelings, intuition on deals, partnerships, friends, or foes that I should have listened to. So I'd just be curious to know how you have developed a relationship with listening to that. I've never been asked this question. I think this is probably the most vexing, most important, vital thing to work out in your life, certainly in my life. And I think about it a lot. To answer the question, what I do now, I think I need to take you back. I've never really

Starting point is 00:35:16 said this before publicly, this particular thing I'm going to say, but as I told you, I was brought up in a very religious household. So a lot of the messages I was getting and instructions for life came through the examples of Jesus and through all these characters and the parables in the Bible. And I carry them very close to my heart. I can remember praying nightly for, I don't know how long to God. I remember just saying, I don't care, God, what it is you want me to do. If you want me to collect trash, I'll collect trash. If you want me to, I do not care. But please make it clear to me what you want me to do. Please make that clear. I had much more fear of being on the wrong path than I had fear of failing at a path, if that makes sense. That whatever that decision was, whatever that moment of clarity becomes, whatever

Starting point is 00:36:12 gets you to that feeling of Eric Liddell on Chariots of Fire, I feel his pleasure when I run. For me, that was always, and I carry it today, even though my feelings about religion are different than what they were when I was younger, the essence is the same, that there is some calling that Joseph Campbell would talk about, follow your bliss. There is some calling that is beyond the conscious brain's strategizing of how to be happy and successful or meaningful in life. There's something elemental and instinctual. And learning that, the people I admire the most really hone that ability in big decisions in their life to small

Starting point is 00:36:55 day-to-day decisions. So now, I still, like you, battle with that because I can be dominated by my mind, my brain, pros and cons. Think this through. And I should have mentioned this up front in terms of that first question you asked me in terms of performing and the things you do daily. I do a daily design every day. I create as if in the past tense of what the day had been. Dreams can be crazy, can be wild.

Starting point is 00:37:25 And then at the end of the day, I score it out of 10. I keep myself accountable to what I was trying to manifest or make happen. And one thing, a consistent theme in that is that I listen to the messages, that they come in crazy ways. They come in strange but clear concise ways okay so i've just come full circle let me give you an example i'm going to go back again in terms of knowing to get into acting right following those examples i went and studied auditioned for an acting school and i got in i got in on the reserve list so i didn't get on the first time around. This was a one-year course I did before my three-year one. I just snuck in. I was so excited. After graduating

Starting point is 00:38:10 as a journalist, I'm going to go to acting school for one year. Then I got a letter in the mail a week later saying, congratulations, you're in. Please make sure you come with the $3,500 tuition fee. It had never dawned on me that it was going to cost anything because when I was young in Australia, secondary education was free, like all university was free. So I was like, uh-oh. And I thought, I've got to go and ask my dad. And I've just graduated from college and I thought, I can't do that. I literally ripped up the letter, screwed it up, put it in the bin. And I'm not joking. This is to me one of those signs, crazy signs that are just like a wallop in the face. I got a check the next day

Starting point is 00:38:52 from my grandmother's will. She died three months before for $3,500, the exact dollar amount. Wild. Yeah. I mean, that's an obvious example. That's when the universe is going, all right, you're an idiot. I've given you a lot of signs. You went off and did the play. You walked into that house. You got that sign. You knew this is where you're meant to be.

Starting point is 00:39:14 This is it. And maybe it's time to move on. And you're about to throw it up because the $3,500 and that party is going to go down. You're going to kind of falter at the first first hurdle and then the wallop comes to my face. And so I've had really clear moments of that, but I ask every single day, Tim, not ask, I manifest every single day that I will hear those messages. You've transformed yourself multiple times, certainly. And I've seen you work out. It's enough to make me want to retire my sneakers. It's just outrageous, the intensity involved. And I'd be curious to know if there

Starting point is 00:39:53 are any particular exercises or types of exercise that you have found to be particularly good bang for the buck. So if you had to just take the desert island test and you could only take a handful of exercises or X, Y, and Z with you, does anything come to mind? Rowing machine. Definitely. A rower. There's a reason the rower is usually empty at the gym because it's difficult. And a lot of people want to say and feel they've worked out and they want to get a sweat but they don't necessarily and and i learned a lot of this from your book and i worked at a gym by the way before our body i worked at a gym for three years so i saw a lot of people coming in five days a week and not really changing anything about them and And the rowing machine, I think if you add in some chest works

Starting point is 00:40:47 and pushups, that's everything you need to keep fit, healthy, strong. I've learned a lot of that. I work with Beth Lewis, the trainer, who you can look her up. She does a lot of free classes right now, I think during COVID. I found her through Peter. Do you know Beth? Have you met Beth? I know of Beth. Well, she was a power lifter and a dancer. It really is great for me because I mean, in the past, even with someone like Wolverine, I have to prepare to look physically away, but I can't get injured. So I can't prepare as a bodybuilder. I have to be able to prepare as a really jacked, ripped athlete slash dancer because fighting is dance. There's more relaxation in a fight scene than there is strength, which is probably the case for if you think of all the great athletes you see, there's relaxation. And that movement has moved in sports.

Starting point is 00:41:40 That's why you see every sprinter poking their tongue out now and dancing around with joy before they run the 100 meters. That sense of having the right level of relaxation, I think they call it the 85% rule. If you tell most sort of A-type athletes to run at their 85% capacity, they will run faster than if you tell them to run 100 because it's more about relaxation and form and optimizing the muscles in the right way. So Beth has really taught me that with the rolling machine, man, you can't go wrong. And forget time, just do the seven-minute thing. And I had to do this for a film, a movie in Australia. Baz wanted me to be big and so I was big. And then about a month before,

Starting point is 00:42:21 he said, ah, doing a lot of research about these jackaroos or cowboys. He goes, they're lean. They're all lean, lean, lean. And I'm like, dude, you asked me to get big. I've been getting big. And he goes, I need you lean. So I went to my trainer and he goes, who was a rower? And he said, you want to get lean? Row. So as well as the ice baths that I learned from your book, which I used all through the Wolverines, particularly the later Wolverines, when you see me in better shape, that's a great way to lose fat. Seven minute row, four times a week, and the goal is 2000 meters. And when you try it, at some point you're going to hate me for it. But still, that's the quickest, best way.

Starting point is 00:43:07 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now. A lot. That's an understatement. Are we in a recession? Is it a bear market? What's going to happen with inflation? So many questions, so few answers. I can't tell the future. Nobody can. But I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings, and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. And right now you can earn 5% APY, that's the annual percentage yield, with the Wealthfront cash account. That's more than 10 times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov. So why wait? Earn 5% on your cash today. Plus, it's up to $8 million

Starting point is 00:43:50 in FDIC insurance through partner banks. And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra $50 bonus with a deposit of $500 or more. There are already nearly half a million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more, and build long-term wealth. So why wait? Visit Wealthfront.com slash Tim to get started. That's Wealthfront.com slash Tim. This was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. psychotherapist, New York Times bestselling author of Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, Rethinking Infidelity, and host of her top-rated podcast, Where Should We Begin? You can find Esther on Twitter, at Esther Perel, and Instagram, at Esther Perel Official. Esther, welcome to the show.

Starting point is 00:44:43 Thank you. Hello. I am thrilled to finally have connected with you. And you have one of the hottest possible areas of expertise imaginable. And there's so many questions that I would like to ask and so many questions that my fans would like to ask. But I thought we could start with a bit of background. And if you could tell us just a bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like, I think that'd be good as context to get us started. So I grew up in Antwerp in Belgium, mostly. Antwerp is the Flemish part of Belgium. And I was there till I finished high school. I grew up with, I have a big brother who is 12 years older than me. So I was the young girl and my parents who were actually Polish refugees who came to

Starting point is 00:45:33 Belgium after the war. From Belgium, I moved to Jerusalem and I studied at a Hebrew university in Jerusalem. And I lived there for almost six years. And then I came to Cambridge, Massachusetts to finish my master's degree. And I really thought I was coming for one year to America, but that one year became two years in Cambridge. And then after that, I came to New York and I thought I would do that for one year because I wanted to have the New York experience. And I never used my return ticket. And here I am. I wanted to have the New York experience. And I never used my return ticket. And here I am.

Starting point is 00:46:07 You're still having the New York experience. I'm still having the New York experience. Exactly. So you, as I understand it, grew up among Holocaust survivors. And I would love to hear you elaborate on that experience and what it was like, what you learned from it. And then we can talk about, I'd like to talk about Jerusalem, but I am very interested, as many people are, in the history of the Holocaust, but even more than that, the personal... The lived experience.

Starting point is 00:46:39 The lived experience. And there's a book called If This Is a Man, and there's another book called The Truce, both are written by Primo Levi, which was recommended to me by the illusionist David Blaine, who actually has Primo Levi's inmate number or prisoner number tattooed on his forearm. And it was one of the most impactful books I would say I've read in the last 10 years. But I have no direct experience with Holocaust survivors. What was that like? And what did you learn? So interesting that we're starting from there. So I think that If This Was a Man by Primo Levi is one of the most powerful books one ought to read. I think it's a unique, unique testament. So it's very simple. There were 60,000 Jews in Belgium before the war. The vast majority of them were decimated throughout the war and in camps.

Starting point is 00:47:29 And so after the war, a group of Eastern European Jews basically came to Belgium through all kinds of means. That's kind of where they arrived. And my parents, who were both the sole survivors of their entire family, which means 200 people lost, I guess, on every side. They were both the youngest in their families. My mother was in the camps from 18 to 22, and my father from 25 to 31, actually, because the war started very early for them.

Starting point is 00:48:00 So they came, you know, with nothing. They were legal refugees for three months who were meant to continue from there to other countries where they had been given refugee status, but they chose not to leave. And so they stayed for another five years as illegal refugees in Belgium, which is very telling for me right now with what's going on in our country here. And I'm born later. So when I am born in 58, they already found a way to legalize themselves to become Belgian citizens. And I grew up in a different environment. But I am growing up in a community of 20,000 Jews that are all Holocaust survivors. That's basically all

Starting point is 00:48:39 we knew in the Jewish community. Of course, there was the larger Belgian community around. And, you know, you saw numbers, you asked, why don't we have grandparents? You asked, what are these numbers? It came with mother's milk is the best way I could say it. It was so ever present. We spoke Yiddish, German, Polish, French, and Flemish in my home. Depending on the subject matter, we changed. And depending on who was speaking to whom, the language changed. But there were five vibrant interchangeable languages going on the whole time. And if you can imagine that a language is a door to a world, then you can imagine how many worlds were coexisting at the same time that had nothing to do with each other, actually. I grew up above the store because most of the Jews of Antwerp

Starting point is 00:49:27 actually are in the diamond business. My family was among the 2% that were not. And so they had clothing stores. And I grew up in a neighborhood where there were two Jewish families. So it's like the deli store with the foreigner in the neighborhood, you know. And you know who they are, the two foreigners. And they have an accent and they look different and the whole thing. And I lived above the store and in this very popular neighborhood, lower middle class neighborhood, and where we spoke

Starting point is 00:49:56 actually not even just Flemish, but we spoke dialect Flemish from the street, like from the hood, the equivalent of the hood, basically. And I would straddle back and forth. One of the ways I can describe it is my father, when he turned 50, had two birthday parties. One birthday party was for his Jewish survivor friends that took place in Yiddish and in Polish and with a lot of vodka. And one birthday party was with his Flemish friends, and that was in dialect and with a lot of beer. And by the code, by the drinks, you knew exactly which world you were traveling in and how you had to behave and how much you could show that think, maybe more than anything, when you grow up in that kind of a community, you grow up with the notion of impermanence, that what is today could disappear any moment. I think that's probably one of the strongest experiences. You don't ever think that there is a notion of, you know, what is now will be there tomorrow. You'd never know. And so you learn to adapt to that notion of impermanence, of insecurity, if you want. And my parents were bon vivant, you know,

Starting point is 00:51:11 they loved life. They didn't survive for nothing. They were going to enjoy at best. And as I have often said, they understood the erotic as an antidote to death. As in they knew how to keep themselves alive and enjoy. Not everybody was like that. You had very different kind of moods. They were storytellers. So people would come from everywhere and they would tell about their life and their experiences. And they were good storytellers, which means that they knew how to screen out and they could make you laugh and they didn't make you completely tense when you would listen. And everybody wanted to know their stories. They were amazing, amazing, amazing stories of survival, of subversion, of, you know,

Starting point is 00:51:53 my dad was illiterate. He spoke five languages, but he was basically illiterate. And he was a grand, grand human being, you know, who had done a lot and had saved quantities of people. Because I would say maybe the strongest value in that community, or not the strongest, but one of the very strong values, one was definitely decency, you know, how you behave towards your fellow other people. And the other one was to manage, street smart, to be street smart, be street smart you know to know to survive basically to find your way out of situations and to be able to to survive survival was the central organizing experience of all these people and then the second experience was revival and i have so many different directions

Starting point is 00:52:42 that i would love to take this so i'll try to do it one at a time. Dialect Flemish from the hood. Could you give us any example of what street Flemish sounds like? Or are there any? Ja, manneke. Moet ik dat eens even in Antwerps vertellen. So what did you just say? Yes, dude.

Starting point is 00:53:01 Do you want me to say this in Antwerp dialect? How would you say, how are you? In like, this in antrop dialect how would you say how are you in like what's up in say that one more time oh boy yes i'll save my embarrassing rehearsal for when we meet in person i think you might have just insulted my ancestors but i'm not sure what just And I can tell you all that. Now I'm going to say that in English. I think you might have just insulted my ancestors, but I'm not sure what just happened. I said I could say all of this in Antwerp dialect,

Starting point is 00:53:36 but in order to be sure we all understand it, I'm going to tell my stories in English. That is a fantastic idea. So thank you for that. I love languages. So I just wanted to hear something that I'd never heard before. You mentioned that your parents were soul survivors in their families, if I heard you correctly. When you look at your parents, I don't know if it was simply because of their age or other factors, but when you look at your parents, that would be the primary focus, but and that

Starting point is 00:54:01 other soul survivors, what did they credit the survival to? Oh, that is a great question. I did get to ask them this question. So my mother, she first spent one year in the woods at 18, running from farm to farm, hiding in the woods of Poland. And then she was so terrified that she actually surrendered by herself to a camp, to a labor camp, to a man's camp, because she thought if I am in a camp, at least they probably will put me in the kitchens or in the laundry and I could at least wake up every morning in the same place. My mother ended up going to nine different labor camps. Now, labor camps were generally next door to the concentration camps. And as long as you could work, you were in a labor camp. And if you were not selected that morning

Starting point is 00:54:49 for transport, then you could continue work. But the distinction is often a very narrow distinction. And my father was in 14 camps. And my mother definitely, so the rest of their families was either gassed in Treblinka or in Auschwitz, basically. His family in Auschwitz, her family in Treblinka. My mother would say it was a combination of premonitious dreams. She was very, very superstitious and she really believed her dreams. That would tell her tomorrow, don't go there. Tomorrow, be a little bit late there.

Starting point is 00:55:23 Tomorrow, make sure to have an extra layer of newspaper on your feet because it's going to be really, really cold. She had all these premonitious dreams of her father talking to her and things like that. And she will always say, chance came first. My father too. I think ultimately both of them said chance came first. And then there was what you did with the chance that was given to you. So there is always a mixture between choice and coincidence, choice and chance. And my mother said she always made sure that she was clean, that she was groomed, that she was mending her socks, that she maintained her humanity, that she didn't allow herself to become dehumanized and degraded the

Starting point is 00:56:06 way that she was being treated by the Nazis. And my father, when we went to visit Auschwitz, actually ended up telling me a story of a Dutch convoy that arrived of women. And he somehow picked a woman out of the crowd and he decided that he would help this woman. And basically, the next day they were shaven and so he couldn't even recognize her. So he asked the capo, who is the other woman that he had noticed the day before? And they began some correspondence, which I have no idea how he wrote because he couldn't write and I never bothered asking him, who wrote for you? But he fell in love with this woman and he just decided that there were certain things that

Starting point is 00:56:49 the Germans couldn't take away from him and that had to do with feelings and with love in the most dire of circumstances and then he basically developed this black market in one of the camps where he was with his best friend where they were for almost a year and a half, where he ended up feeding 60 young men who would otherwise not have had enough to eat and therefore to work and therefore to survive. And he ended up feeding the Nazis too. So when he got caught with those letters, one of the Germans basically sent him back to the factories and said, you're not staying in here. And factories meant you have one week to live, basically. But he had been feeding the German guy so well that the guy said, I eat better when you work in the kitchens. And he put him back in the kitchen. of chance and ingenuity, street smart, what he would call, and doing for others. Doing for others gave you a purpose to stay alive and to wake up in the morning. If you look at then the survivors, whether by chance first, like you mentioned, choice,

Starting point is 00:58:01 some combination of those factors and others. You mentioned survival and revival. When you look at the survivors, who ended up being able to revive themselves and who did not? So the third reason my mother always said is that she always thought that they wanted her to stay alive because if the others were not going to make it, there needed to be at least someone from the family. And she always thought that she would somehow be reunited with somebody. So she maintained this very deep connection inside of her that they were waiting for her somewhere. Then they realized that there was nobody. So, you know, it's an interesting question that I organized in my mind like this. And I organized it when I was actually writing Mating, my first book, Mating in Captivity. At the time, I had a conversation with my husband who was working with survivors of

Starting point is 00:58:55 torture and political violence. And I would ask him, when do you know that people come back? And what does it mean to come back, right? Come back from different war zones, to come back from having been kidnapped, to come back. And what does it mean to come back, right? Come back from different war zones, to come back from having been kidnapped, to come back from solitary confinement. And what does it mean to come back to life? And then as we were talking,

Starting point is 00:59:14 it became very clear that when you reconnect with life, not just when you are surviving, but when you are living, it means that you're once again able to take risks, able to broach out, to go into the world, able to play because you cannot play if you are in a constant state of vigilance and guardedness and able to trust. And then I thought to myself, oh my God, this is so much what I saw in Antwerp. I remember since my entire classroom

Starting point is 00:59:45 with children of similar families, that there were always two groups of families in my community. And then I decided that I would call this, there was one group that did not die and one group that came back to life. And the did not die, you could feel it when you went to their houses,

Starting point is 01:00:03 you know, they often had plastics over the couches and the curtains were pulled down. It was morbid. It was just, you know, you're not dead, but you're not celebrating your life. You certainly are not enjoying because if you enjoy, then you are not being careful and you have guilt. You often have survival guilt. Why am I here and none of the others made it? And you are weighted down and the world is a dangerous place and you are not to trust anyone

Starting point is 01:00:30 outside the family and all of that. And then I thought there is those who came back to life. And that's what led me actually to really want to explore what is eroticism? What is this antidote to death? How in the face of adversity do you continue to imagine yourself rising above it, connected to joy, to love, to pleasure, to beauty, to adventure, to mystery, to all of that. And those people, you know, it was very interesting. You had people who came together because they were the survivors of this camp and the survivors of that camp. And then you had people who came together for this kind of holiday or that kind of celebration, and they never discussed their experiences. It was all implicit, but they were together and they were charging ahead at life. You know, the first thing they

Starting point is 01:01:17 did when they would come out of the camps, by the way, is have a child. Because I'm alone, you're alone, I have nothing, you have nothing, let's get married and let's have children. Because if we have a child and we know that we are still human, we are able to procreate and we create legacy. And they didn't kill everything off. And so my parents, you know, they planted trees in all kinds of places in the world. They put plaques in the memory of all the other people of their families. My mother at one point received $10,000 in 99.

Starting point is 01:01:48 She received $10,000 from one of the factories of slave labor. And then decades later, she took the $10,000 and she went and planted an entire forest that had just burned. And she replanted the forest because it was like a therming life with a sense of defiance. You didn't all die inside. And I think it's that energy, that life force that really, I think defines, and this is true for my community, but I would apply this to any large scale trauma that communities experience. I don't think it's unique. I agree. And I don't know why I want to ask you this question right now, but you mentioned trust as one of the elements, one of the ingredients

Starting point is 01:02:31 in the group that was revived, that was living and not just having avoided death. Do you think that, and these are not mutually exclusive, but does trust come first and then vulnerability, or does vulnerability come first and that's how you develop trust? That depends on your theory of trust. This is the big debate on trust theorists. Rachel Botsman will tell you that trust is an active engagement with the unknown, you know, so that's one direction. And the other direction is that it is the actual experience of vulnerability that allows you to then trust and it goes in both directions it really i don't think there is a definitive answer for that and maybe it's not an either or but it's a both and

Starting point is 01:03:18 both end right you know for some people it's like do you need to know in order to taste or do you want to taste first and then be told what it was? Definitely depends on what type of cuisine and what type of chef. But I understand what you mean. So a child needs to be able to trust in order to get off from your lap and to run into the world and to become and to explore and discover and play and be gone in their own space. And at the same time, it is the act of doing all of that and coming back to base and sitting themselves, popping themselves back on your lap that reinforces the trust.

Starting point is 01:03:57 I actually tend to think more in dialectic terms at both ends rather than either or. But I think it's a fantastic question, the question of trust. Does the act of trusting release the option, the possibilities to experience the vulnerability? Or is the vulnerability of the unknown that you actually engage with ultimately what builds the trust? Right. This is something I've been thinking quite a lot about. But I want to also ask you about impermanence. And I've tried to focus much more in a sense on things that are impermanent in my life in the last year, year and a half. And in part, that was a result of a conversation I had on this podcast with BJ Miller, who is a hospice care physician. So he's helped

Starting point is 01:04:45 more than a thousand people to die. Great guy. He lives here. We were at TED together. Yes. So fantastic guy. I was actually, so I went to Princeton undergraduate and he was one of the warning stories because he lost three of his limbs in an electrocution accident a few years before I went to school there. I asked him what purchase of less than $100 had most positively impacted his life in the last six months, a year, whatever he could pull from memory. And he mentioned a bottle of wine and it wasn't an expensive bottle of wine. And the reason he mentioned it was, and I'm going to paraphrase here, but he said, it was the fact that it went away and how that encouraged you to enjoy something that you knew was impermanent. And so I've thought about that a lot since and how to not fear things being impermanent,

Starting point is 01:05:33 but really use it as a source of leverage to savor impermanence impacted you or your behaviors or your routines or anything. If it did, I don't know. Oh, I would say in two ways. First of all, I'm rather voracious in living. If there's one more experience I can have, one more thing I can discover, one more place I can travel to, one more conversation that could be interesting. I am quite voracious, not because I'm insatiable,

Starting point is 01:06:13 but because a part of me always says, who knows what will be tomorrow? Right. You know, I don't live with the, there is always a tomorrow. I live with the, who knows if there will be a tomorrow. And that's very simple. And then the other thing I would say,

Starting point is 01:06:26 that's maybe something that's not always so known about me, but I also live in a bit of a, what we call in my jargon, a counterphobic way, which means I act as if I'm fearless, but I'm actually petrified with dread. Okay, please elaborate. Counterphobic. I act as if I'm actually petrified with dread. Please elaborate. Counterphobic. I act as if I'm fearless.

Starting point is 01:06:47 Counterphobic means like I act like it doesn't, not nothing, but like there's a lot of things I do that could be very scary sometimes to other people anyway. And I leave it as if I have no fear. You know, even today I was driving down on my bike and I was thinking like, last week it was filled with snow here. Why am I always just pushing the edge and seeing if I can get away with it?

Starting point is 01:07:10 And, you know, the truth is I got on my bike in the snow and I realized there was no way I was going to be able to do this. And I put the bike back. But I was thinking, how many times I do things thinking nothing's going to happen. And at the same time as I do it, I think at some point something bad is going to happen. It's that what I mean. It's like I live, you would think that and I wouldn't do it. If I think something bad can happen, it would stop me. But no, I do it.

Starting point is 01:07:38 And at the same time, I think something bad is going to happen. Every day I think something bad is going to happen. Do you wish that were different or do you think that helps you in some way? Oh God, I wish it was different. I mean, yes, I'm sure it pushes me and stuff, but there must be a way to live without that constant fear like that. It prepares me very well for the modern times we live in. I can tolerate a lot of uncertainty and the political climate we're in, all of that. But today in Antwerp, there was another car that drove on the main drag, driving into people. It's like, that's not a surprise to me. I expect it. That's what I mean.

Starting point is 01:08:17 I live with that expectation. It's just a matter of when, not a matter of if. But I think it creates a level of anxiety that I don't wish on anybody. No, I don't think it's normal. I think it's normal given the history I come from. I don't think it's a good way to live. Well, let's talk about this antidote that you mentioned earlier. So the erotic is an antidote to death, but, I'm going to interrupt myself. And before we get there, how old were you when you went to Jerusalem? 18. 18. And why did you go to Jerusalem? Was that your choice? Someone else's suggestion?

Starting point is 01:08:54 Why did that happen? So before I went to Jerusalem, I actually came to the States and I hitchhiked across the country for seven weeks in 1976. Calculate. You know, in the bicentennial and at the time you could still hitchhike very freely. And I had one of the most formative experiences of my life because I saw America like I don't think I will ever see it again since I had zero reference. I had no judgment and I just was welcoming of anybody who was willing to pick me up and take me in. I really saw the country in and out in ways that I wish my kids could have an experience like this, but I don't know that this is happening these days. And then I went to Jerusalem because I didn't want to study in Belgium. I didn't like the university system in

Starting point is 01:09:41 Belgium. Why not? Because we have a system where you have to study a curriculum that is prepared by the teacher and you have to regurgitate it and study it rather by heart. And I thought it was a 19th century system. It really was not at all a useful way of learning. And I had done that already for 12 years before. I studied Latin, I studied Greek five, six hours a week. I mean, I have the whole classic education, humanistic education. And I thought Jerusalem was mysterious, mystical, beautiful, complex, you know,

Starting point is 01:10:13 in the middle of these hotbeds of all religions. And we were going to Israel a lot with my family. So that, it's not like it was a place I didn't know. And I thought it was the one place that I could leave to study abroad with my parents' blessing. So it was very, very easy. It's like for them, you know, you didn't come to study in America at that time or, and I had a choice between, I was very passionate about theater. And my mother said, if you want to do theater, you stay in Belgium. And if you

Starting point is 01:10:45 want to travel, then you have to go to university. I want you to have a structure. And I thought if it's university, Hebrew University is a great university. The city is magnificent. And at the time it was really a spectacular place and it was much more open than it is now. And I thought, what an adventure. I mean, I didn't need much explanation at that time. It didn't make sense and it made perfect sense. If you look back at your time in Belgium and Jerusalem, were there any particular mentors who leap out at you if you had to give them credit for helping steer your life in the direction that it's gone or help you to make any

Starting point is 01:11:26 very important decisions? Is there anyone who really jumps out at you besides your parents? It's interesting you're asking me today because I am going to Washington tomorrow to a big psychotherapy conference called the Psychotherapy Symposium. And I am doing an homage to my mentor, but the mentor from America who is 95 and I've been asked to be one of three people to be the person to thank him. So I'm in the midst of this experience right now. What am I going to say to one of the most influential teachers of my life? We could also talk about that 95 year old mentor. That's totally fine as well. Or both. I mean, it's an interesting question. I am the product of mentorship.

Starting point is 01:12:11 This is true throughout. From the Hebrew University to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to studying with Salvador Mnuchin, that's the name of this mentor. I have been mentored pretty much throughout, but even in my adolescence to my theater teacher and dance teacher, mainly because my parents couldn't always help me with any of these things. They had zero reference to the world I lived in. I sought teachers. I sought mentors. I sought people who could help me integrate in Belgian life, who could help me believe in myself as well, you know, guide me. My brother, that's definitely one of them. Every book I read was recommended by him, but I am totally the product of mentorship. It's like I sought them out one after the other.

Starting point is 01:12:57 This man that I'm going to be commemorating tomorrow is alive, but Salvador Minuchin, who is one of the fathers of the field of systemic family therapy. How do you spell Salvador's last name? Mnuchin, M-I-N-U-C-H-I-N. Got it, Mnuchin, thank you. Argentinian. I mean, you know, you're anointed when you have studied with him. It's like studying with Freud, but a century later. I knocked at his door. I arrived to New York. I was here. I knew I have a year to be in New York. I knocked at his door. I arrived to New York. I was here. I knew I have a year to be in New York. I knocked at his door and I said, can I come and observe?

Starting point is 01:13:29 He looked at me like, who are you? And that's the story I'm going to tell tomorrow. Like at the time, you could still knock at somebody's door and say, I want to learn from you. You inspire me. And then he let me stay there 10 weeks. And then after 10 weeks, he said, that's it.

Starting point is 01:13:43 That's about as much as one can learn from observing. You can go now and i said no no no no no i have to you know please please let me stay that kind of thing and he always says like i entered through the window you know so i actually want to sorry to interrupt but i i want to dig a little deeper on that because i am constantly asked by well well, I'm asked to mentor, which usually means unpaid consultant for life. So I don't often say yes to that, but the question of how should I approach mentors or how should I seek people out like Salvador and someone along the lines of your story, a little bit different, but I remember a professor who had a profound impact on me, Ed Hsiao, who was at Princeton and was a

Starting point is 01:14:31 very eclectic character. He was similar in his appeal to me as Richard Feynman because they were so diverse in their interests. So he was a competitive figure skater, had taken several companies public, was the first, I believe the first computer science professor at Stanford, because the person who was supposed to teach it didn't show up. And then the administration asked if anyone would volunteer and he did. I was a congressman for a few terms and I really wanted to be in his class, but I came back from overseas and I was late to apply to this class, which had become very, very popular called high-tech entrepreneurship. So I went to the first class and I appealed to him and I said, I'll sit on the floor, I'll clean the erasers, I'll do whatever's necessary. Can I just sit in on a few classes?

Starting point is 01:15:14 It was a somewhat similar approach, but when people ask you, and I'm sure they do, how should I seek out mentors? How should I approach people I want to learn from? What advice would you give them? And maybe any specifics from what you've done in the past? Did you just knock on the door of his classroom or was it his office? His classroom. I mean, I called, I said, I'm in New York and so-and-so suggested that I come meet with you. I would love to learn with you. I had nothing, no credentials. I had no reason to be there. Could I please? No, it was like, get my foot in the door. And like you, I would have done exactly what no credentials. I had no reason to be there. Could I please? No, it was like, get my foot in the door. And like you, I would have done exactly what you did.

Starting point is 01:15:49 I would have said, I'll do anything. I'll bring you coffee every morning. Can I just be here? Because I just needed my foot in the door and then I can start thinking. And now what? And I admire the people who do that with me. I have to say when they come and they fly

Starting point is 01:16:03 and they write and they say, you, I've been reading you. And then that with me, I have to say, when they come and they fly and they write and they say, you, I've been reading you, I've been, you know, and then they show me not just I like you or I admire you, but also they say a few things that let me know that they get what I'm talking about. So I also feel deeply understood. And then I feel like, oh man, I was there. I was that 21 year old, you know, and I had no papers. I had no visa. I mean, I was, I came here with love and fresh water, really. And that's what I mean, street smart. It's like, you know, refugee, go for it, knock at the doors. And if they say no, come back again.

Starting point is 01:16:42 If you're at the third time, if you don't act crazy, they will understand that you are deeply motivated. And if you do it with somebody who did it too. That if you don't act crazy is a really important, bolded part of that sentence. You know, you have to be really, you're not a cuckoo. You're not like just some loose screw, but you really show that I see you and I want your trajectory or I want to learn from your trajectory. After 10 weeks, when he said, you're out. And I said, please, please. He said,

Starting point is 01:17:12 you can be a fly on the wall. And I said, fine, I'll be a fly on the wall. I will melt in the wall. You know, let me be as invisible as can be. and then one day there was a couple that was their family and it was actually a holocaust survivor family working with the with the therapist behind the one-way mirror that's how we were learning at the time and then somehow suddenly he looks at me and he says you there in the back don't you know something about this he said what would you do you know and then i've like spouted something out. And then he says, that's an interesting thought. Go tell them.

Starting point is 01:17:51 And he literally sends me to the other side of the room, into the session, you know? And I thought, oh, I'm no longer invisible. I exist. And that was the beginning. Then I worked with him for the next four years that's amazing so spice the word in yiddish oh yes healthy creative imaginative chutzpah yeah i need more chutzpah i'm not saying it correctly

Starting point is 01:18:19 and less what is it perfectly less less mich're saying it perfectly well. Less, less Michigan, right? Yes, yes, exactly. Less crazy, but another, you know. I think that mentors, I agree that sometimes it's kind of consultant gig for life, but sometimes it's just, you must have had authors or books or musicians, those that you read when you were young that kind of really shaped you. And it's a very strange thing when suddenly you become a shaping force in someone else's life. For some reason, you speak to them. And I am always curious, why me?

Starting point is 01:18:54 Like, what is it that I say, because other people talk about some of these things, that touches you? That you would want to come here from far away countries just to meet with me. And on occasion, I'll go and have a cup of coffee with these people or, you know, a glass of wine. I have responded more than once just by the way they write the letter. It's all in how they write that mail to me. I can't explain, you know, it's no logic. Are there any key ingredients that you can think of? I'll share from my side as well. So one of the things that, and we both get, I'm sure, a lot more inbound than we could

Starting point is 01:19:32 possibly ever respond to. But one of the things that I would say, certainly there's, it can't be 10 pages long, but that's obvious. I would say that very often people think that it is a form of optimism that'll be rewarded if they end with, and I look forward to your favorable response, or how about next Tuesday? And I'm not personally someone who generally responds to that very well. I'm more likely to respond if they close with something like, I completely understand if I never hear from you because you must have an incredible amount of inbound requests like this.

Starting point is 01:20:07 But if you've read this far, thank you at least for reading this far. It lets me off the hook counterintuitively maybe that makes it more likely that I'll respond because I perceive they have some empathy or ability to understand the situation that I'm in. So that would be one contributing ingredient for me. And then the other, I remember I ended up hiring someone years ago to help me work on the 4-Hour Body and some other projects because he heard me talking about things that I needed or read about certain projects I was going to be working on. And he said, oh, I just went ahead and did A, B, C, D, and E. Here's the work. You don't have to respond. I just thought this would be helpful. And I was like, wow, okay, that's very proactive. What about yourself?

Starting point is 01:20:54 Yes. It's a combination. I mean, what you just described for me, it's a combination between boldness and humility. Right. You know, the boldness is, I'm going to do this. I've been reading you. I've been listening to you. Something in the way you say it strikes it right for me. But I don't expect it. I totally know what I'm asking you. And it would mean an enormous amount.

Starting point is 01:21:18 You have no reason to do this. But if you were to do this, it could change my life. It would mean so much. It's not so much that I can say no or yes. It's that they really understand the vulnerability of the request. You feel that they are prepared for you to say no. And so if they were to hear a yes, it would mean so much. And I have been there.

Starting point is 01:21:41 I remember, you know, I've been that person. So you can't write to me as if you already know everything. But at the same time, you have to be bold enough to want to say, what do I have to lose? What do I have to lose? And then they say sometimes, I have never written something like this. And then I would probably say one thing for me that makes a difference is if they just say, you know, I've always wanted to be a therapist who works with sexuality and couples. No, but if they say in the way, if they reflect back something about me in which I recognize myself and it's a mirror that I like to look in at, then I feel like

Starting point is 01:22:19 they really get what I'm about and what I'm talking. They're not just projecting onto me, you know, that helps that I feel also really understood. It's a variation of what you're describing in terms of the empathy. So I think it's similar. It's a different wording for something that's quite similar to what you're describing. That sounds similar. So I promise to get back to this. And I know people are going to want to dig into this. We'll continue to bounce all over the place, but you mentioned the erotic as an antidote to death. What is eroticism and can you explain what you mean by it being an antidote to death? Animals have sex and we have the erotic and the erotic is sexuality that is transformed by our human imagination. The erotic is the meaning that you attribute to sexuality.

Starting point is 01:23:11 It's the poetics of sex. It's not nature, instinct, primary force. It's everything that gives it a meaning and in a context. It's everything that turns sex not into an act, but into a place you go, not just something you do, but a place that you go. And that place that you go is a place where you connect with vibrancy, with aliveness, with renewal, with life force, with vitality, with mystery. And that's why it becomes an antidote. That's why people often talk about it in spiritual terms, in religious terms.

Starting point is 01:23:49 It has a transcending quality to it. It's really the more mystical meaning of the word erotic, eros, zohar, life force. It's really modernity that narrowed the meaning of eroticism to something that is more blatantly sexual rather than life force. But that life force often expressed through the sex takes on a whole other dimension. So for me to understand that I wasn't just working on sexuality, because I'm not interested in what people do, the act, you can do sex and feel nothing. Women have done sex and felt dead for centuries. It's really that other side of it.

Starting point is 01:24:28 And that you don't have to do much of anything. Your own imagination. We are the only ones who can have sex for hours, blissful sex and a wonderful connection and orgasms and all the likes and never touch anybody just because we can imagine it. And that imagination, his ability to transport ourselves outside of this moment that we are in into something completely different, that is the erotic élan. And I am very interested in that because I work with people who come and complain about the loss of desire and the loss of that energy. And they want to reconnect with that force and they don't know why they lose it

Starting point is 01:25:06 and they confuse it with arousal and it has not much to do with that. And, you know, when people complain about the listlessness of their sex lives, they sometimes make them want more sex, but they always want better. And that better, when you analyze it with them, it's about that life force, that vitality,

Starting point is 01:25:24 that vibrancy, that mystery, that imaginative play, that curiosity. Curiosity is an essential ingredient of the erotic. And that's what they want to reconnect with. And so then that metaphor that I talked before about not dead versus alive, survival versus revival, that's, you know, you can survive and have sex and have children, but you may feel dead. Whereas you can have an experience in which you feel utterly alive and you're in your 80s and you do whatever 80-year-old people do. It doesn't really matter because the force transcends the act.

Starting point is 01:25:58 And that's, for me, the interest of working on eroticism. I work with people who want to feel alive. If you say, look at your group of patients and you then look at a subset who are what they would consider happily married in the sense, or happily in a committed relationship, maybe committed is too low to determine. They're happily in a relationship and they don't want to leave that relationship. There are many incredible elements of that. Yet they've hit that point, which many people have hit. Certainly I've hit before. I'm very good. Let's make this personal. So I'm very good at monogamy. I can do it. I'm very, very good at it. But after say a year, a year and a half, I have to, or I feel like I have to

Starting point is 01:26:42 suffocate a part of myself that subjugates my sex drive so that I don't wander. And that ends up affecting sex with my primary partner, with my partner in this case. So if you're talking to these people and they hit a point where they feel sex drive decrease or listlessness, what do you view as the ethical options that are on the table to address that? Okay. But there are like four subtopics. Yes. No, exactly. There's a lot. That was probably far too complex a question, but I suppose making it personal is leading me to do that. No, no, no. So mating in captivity for me was really a conversation on that very question

Starting point is 01:27:30 that you just asked, right? People would come to me and they would say, we love each other very much. We have no sex. Or we love each other very much. Where is the desire? Which was very different from the traditional model that you would normally learn in school, which was, of course, if there is no sex, people mustn't love each other. Because when one leads automatically to the other, and therefore sexual problems are always the consequence of relationship problems, and you should fix the relationship and the sex will automatically follow. That was the premise.

Starting point is 01:28:02 And I decided to question that premise because it didn't really work like that in my office. I saw people who got along much better and it still didn't change anything for the desire. And so I began to ask, what is the relationship between love and desire? Yeah. So that's the first one is what does that mean? This is, is desire faded to degrade, you know, is the degradation of desire inevitable? And what does it mean? And how does one rekindle it? And can one rekindle it? And can you want what you already have?

Starting point is 01:28:32 Which is the fundamental question of desire. And then there is the second part to what you're asking, which is the question of monogamy. And when you say I can do monogamy very well for a year, then you are defining monogamy by one criteria only, at least in the way I've understood you, where you speak is that you're defining monogamy as a sexual exclusivity. Sure. In this particular case, that's what that means. But that's one definition of monogamy because, you know, monogamy is a term that has continuously evolved in its meaning, right? I mean, for most of history, monogamy was one person for life.

Starting point is 01:29:07 At this point, monogamy is one person at a time. Right, right. And everybody goes around saying, I'm monogamous in all my relationships. Well, that doesn't mean I had like an orgy and every five minutes it was one person at a time. No, I know, I'm kidding. We have a model of No, I know. I'm kidding. We have a model of sequential monogamy. Right.

Starting point is 01:29:27 We don't arrive monogamous to our relationships. We've had previous ones. So at this point, where does monogamy exist? In reality, but not in your history and not in your fantasies.

Starting point is 01:29:39 So that's another consideration. And then there is, you know, maybe if we stop just looking at monogamy from the exclusivity model, because the exclusivity model is an economics model. Monogamy generally throughout history has been an imposition on women. It has not necessarily been a requirement for men. In fact, men practically had a license not to be,

Starting point is 01:30:00 and they have had all kinds of theories to justify why they shouldn't have to be, because we needed to know about paternity and about patrimony and lineage. So monogamy had nothing to do with love. It had everything to do with an economic system. That word has transformed since romanticism so much that at this point, I think that the conversation about monogamy should probably be less a conversation about sex and sexual boundaries and sexual exclusivity and more about the multiplicity of relationship configurations. In which monogamy may be more emotionally determined rather than just sexually determined like gay couples have done forever. I think we need to loosen up the term, not totally trash it or not totally bind it,

Starting point is 01:30:47 but certainly untie it, you know, loosen it up and redefine it. Now, within that, it's a choice, monogamy. It's something you choose to practice when you keep it in the definition you want. And then the question is, what do people do with their thwarted desires, with their other attractions?

Starting point is 01:31:07 Definitely they have them. They can acknowledge them. They can have a relationship in which they negotiate with each other what to do with these other desires. They can hopefully not always interpret them as you're not enough, which is the most powerful reaction

Starting point is 01:31:24 that people have today to that term. And the majority of people have practiced proclaimed monogamy and clandestine adultery. And that's been the dominant model. Sure. You know, the question is simply, do people want to have a negotiation with themselves that is private and secretive? Or do people want to incorporate this as part of the conversation of couple-making at this point? We're not meant to have desire for one person for life for 60 years. That is not how we were conceived. Neither way we ever conceived of having 60-year relationships

Starting point is 01:31:55 with the same person either, for that matter. So we are left with a host of new questions about the nature of erotic desire, given, first of all, that until very recently, we didn't have sex in relationships just because of a desire. We had it for procreation, and generally for women, it was a marital duty. So sex that is rooted in free will, for pleasure and connection, just because we want it, and with you, and hopefully at the same time and so forth is a very new model and we are all grappling with it everybody's wondering you know what do you do with the loss of desire how important is sex anyway can the relationship sustain without sex can the relationship sustain with sex with others while having a relationship what What are the boundaries? I mean, this is the conversation of modern love.

Starting point is 01:32:47 There's one of them anyway, there's a few, but this is one of the dominant conversation of modern love. So I don't know if I've answered you, but I hope I've kind of highlighted some of the flashpoints. You have, and I think we can, I mean, we've got the time, so we're going to keep going. You mentioned, and I think this is a very important observation, that adultery used to threaten economic stability. Now it threatens more so emotional stability.

Starting point is 01:33:15 Although, in some senses, certainly, if you're within the legal construct of marriage, there can be economic ramifications, certainly. And I'm going to bring it home to San Francisco for a second. So I live in San Francisco, that's home base. And I've tried different relationship configurations in the past. I'm not married, I don't have kids. And I've had some wonderful relationships, I'd say for the last 10 to 15 years, I've done a better job of setting my own boundaries, understanding other people's boundaries, making sure that all of those are very explicit so that whatever agreement we have, at the very least, the agreement is clear. So I've had some really good relationships. What I've seen in the last, say, let's call it five years, it's certainly existed for longer

Starting point is 01:34:01 than that. But whether it's books like More Than Two or Opening Up or others, there is a trend, at least in the Bay Area, for people to try what they would consider monogamish or polyamorous relationships. And I have just in the cohort that I've observed, and there are a lot in the Bay Area, the always honest, all the time, radical candor approach seems to implode with pretty spectacular fireworks on a regular basis. So the question I want to pose is, is there such a thing as too much honesty? And how do you think about that when you are advising? How do you think about it, whether yourself or in your own relationships, or how do you advise your clients when they're grappling with this? Should we, because for instance, I'll give you, and for you out there

Starting point is 01:34:59 who are sensitive, earmuffs, cover your ears, but there are people out there who can have a high tolerance for, say, what they would call compersion for people who don't know that word. That is, at least the way it's been explained to me, getting gratification or pleasure from someone else's pleasure. So if your partner is having sex with someone else, you derive a certain amount of pleasure from that. I know couples who have tried this because they've been told it's a more highly evolved approach. And so they'll sit down to dinner and let's just say in a heteronormative relationship, the male will say, so what was it

Starting point is 01:35:31 like having so-and-so inside you last night? And they'll try to have that conversation and everything blows apart at the axles and it just doesn't work. There are some people for whom it works very well, but how much honesty is too much honesty? Is there such a thing as too much honesty? Are there other parameters that you've seen work for people? Yes. But you see, I think that you want to, there are two different cultural systems here. So when it comes to the polyamorous model in San Francisco, you know, it is a bit of a growing movement in the hotbeds of startup cultures like Silicon Valley, because it's people who choose a lifestyle that has to do with an entrepreneurial mindset that aspires to greater freedom of choice, to authenticity

Starting point is 01:36:16 and flexibility. And so there's a kind of a marriage between the community that lives there and the appeal of a more polyamorous life. But for me, the question of honesty is actually much broader than it extends way beyond. And I think, look, you live in the United States and America prides itself on being a pragmatic culture. And as a pragmatic culture, it likes unvarnished directness and it has all kinds of expressions for conflating honesty with factual truth. Say it as it is. Don't beat around the bush.

Starting point is 01:36:54 Get to the point. I mean, there are so many expressions in this culture that favor explicit statement versus more opaque communication, you know, that conflates the concept of the moral cure of honesty has to do with truth telling and transparency. That's the definition. There are many cultures in which honesty means something very different. Honesty is not about, you know, laying it all out there. It's actually about thinking about what the consequences will be for the other person to live with the truth. It's not a confessional model. It's not rooted in Protestantism. So honesty is not about, I have to tell you everything I feel or everything I've done. It's about what will it be like for you to live with the consequences of knowing. And so you don't say certain things because you want to save face for the other person

Starting point is 01:37:47 or because you just don't see the point of it because there's almost something slightly, almost aggressive about it a little bit. You know, it's like, what am I supposed to do with all of this now? Right. You know, you feel better, you've unloaded. What about me kind of thing?

Starting point is 01:38:01 And I think it's very cultural. For me, certainly coming from Europe. We don't necessarily think that saying everything and putting it all out there and through telling and transparency are the only markers of importance. I think we think that sometimes keeping things to yourself is just as important. Not everything must be said. And here, this notion that connects with that is also that intimacy is about saying everything. It's kind of wholesale sharing, you know? And if you don't say everything, then you must be keeping a secret because the opposite of transparency is secrecy and there is a complete loss of privacy. And this is true in the intimate realm of relationships,

Starting point is 01:38:42 as it is true in many other sectors of our society. Privacy is at risk. And so people respond either with the other extremes. Yes, I do think that there can be too much sharing. It's not too much honesty, but it is too much sharing. And the sharing is problematic when you think that that's the definition of honesty. This is a really important... Was that clear what i just

Starting point is 01:39:05 it was clear no it was clear and i think the honesty does honesty or 100 sharing always equal caring for the other person or fostering intimacy i think is an interesting question and the answer is no the answer is no. then maybe you're not close. And this telling is becoming almost like a bit of a, I deserve to know, what are you thinking? What are you feeling? Why don't you want to tell me? No, those are invitations. Those are not rights. You don't have a right to enter another person. You're invited in. And for those people listening who want to have a very illuminating but entertaining read, short read on this type of question and radical honesty. There's a great article. I think it's called I Think You're Fat by A.J. Jacobs at Esquire,

Starting point is 01:40:13 who is hilarious and a good friend. So you should read that. But I want to bring up an anecdote and get your advice on or hear how you would advise someone. So I remember having lunch with a close friend of mine about two years ago, I would say, and he had a friend approach him who had cheated on his wife. He had had an affair and he was grappling with whether to tell his wife or not. And my friend's advice was, he said, no, that is your burden to carry and you carry that with you. It's not fair to inflict that on her because you want to make yourself feel better. After a very, very long conversation, that was his conclusion. And so I'm curious to know, in a, say, patient setting, if you have someone, male or female, because certainly women cheat,

Starting point is 01:41:02 and I've been cheated on before. I mean, it happens, certainly. when someone is grappling with whether to tell their partner or not, how do you walk them through that decision? What is it that you want to tell your partner? What is it that you want to tell? You want to tell that you fell in love with someone else. You want to tell that you realized in having a fling with someone else, how much you loved her or him. You realize that you have been lying to yourself all these years. You realize that it's time to get back into gear because you've become lazy and complacent. You realize that you have been keeping all kinds of sexual secrets that have nothing to do with non-monogamy, but more with your history. What is it you want to tell your partner? You know, that's the first thing.

Starting point is 01:41:49 And do you want to tell something about what happened to you in the meeting with the other person? Do you want to tell what that meeting with the other person made you think about your life? You know, we're not just talking about a series of facts. We're talking about the meaning and the motives of the transgression. So that's the first thing I ask. What is the meanings and the motives?

Starting point is 01:42:11 Why did you do this? How did this happen to you? Were you looking for it? Did you choose it? Did you just stumble into it? Did you resist it? Did you not resist it? Did you hope it would not, you know, are you living with conflict?

Starting point is 01:42:23 What is the guilt that you're feeling? What is the guilt? Is the guilt that you realize that you know, are you living with conflict? Are you, what is the guilt that you're feeling? What is the guilt? Is the guilt that you've realized that you don't have desire for your partner? It's the guilt that you realize that your partner must have been really terribly frustrated because you've been a terrible lover to your partner. What is it? And so before I ever wouldn't, I don't have to tell people do or don't tell or don't tell. I help people figure out what it is that they would tell, why would they want to tell it,

Starting point is 01:42:50 and what do they think will happen to the other person when they tell it to them. I think the notion that sometimes not to tell is kinder than to tell the way that your friend did is also one of the many options. It's not the only one, but it is definitely in the repertoire that sometimes you tell for your own conscience and then the other person can churn the whole night. So there is the positives, the liabilities and the positives of telling.

Starting point is 01:43:16 And then there is the liabilities and the positive of not telling. What do you think your partner would want to know? That's the other thing. And when you want to tell, do you ask yourself, do you think your partner would want to know? That's the other thing. And when you want to tell, do you ask yourself, do you think your partner would want to know? Are you speaking because of your thoughts about the other person or are you thinking of speaking because of how you feel about yourself? You know, there's a full spectrum of dishonesty, right?

Starting point is 01:43:39 There's simple omissions, there's partial truths, there's white lies, there's blatant obfuscations, and's partial truths, there's white lies, there's blatant obfuscations, and there's mental hijacking. I mean, secrecy can be cruel and secrecy can be benevolent, you know, and sometimes you lie to protect yourself and sometimes you lie in order to protect your partner. And then there is the ironic role reversal in which sometimes you realize that you've been lying to yourself and it was you that you were deceiving. And it's all of that that you want to unpack, all those twists and tangles of lines before you'd send people out because you can never take anything back. Right.

Starting point is 01:44:15 You know, and the next thing that's going to happen, you're going to say, I slept with someone and then they want to know, how was it? And then they want to know, did you fall in love with that person? And then they want to know, maybe they don't want to know. So slow down, sit with this, ponder it, figure out what this was about for you. If it really meant nothing, what does that mean when you say it meant nothing? You mean to say it's not supposed to threaten the future of your relationship. This is not a person with whom you want to live. But even something that is meant to mean nothing has psychological valence.

Starting point is 01:44:50 So, you know, a lot of effort goes into making something not mean anything, paradoxically. For sure. So, you know, sit with that. And I will sit with you for whatever time it takes till we figure this out. And then maybe we'll write a letter. You're not just going to go there and sit. And we'll write a letter and you're first going to handwrite that letter and you're going to get your first version out, which you probably won't send, in which you just cleanse your soul. You do your own conscience cleaning. And the next

Starting point is 01:45:20 letter will be the one in which you're less thinking about you and more thinking about your partner and your relationship. That's the steps. That's very smart. The next question I want to ask, which is actually from the audience, do you think it's possible for a partner in a non-monogamous marriage, could be relationship, to get over the fear of being left by opening that door? I think this is a very common question because maybe one person is more enthusiastic or feels the need for some form of non-monogamy, meaning sexual monogamy,

Starting point is 01:45:54 than the other. Or they're both open to it, but they haven't experimented or experienced this for an extended period of time. Or maybe they have and they've been burned. Do you think it's possible for someone to get over that fear of being left by opening that door? And what are some of these strategies or coping mechanisms, if so? But what if I told you that the person who experiences that fear more openly and is able to say, for me, this triggers the fear of losing you altogether, is actually experiencing a lesser fear than the one who is wanting to have other partners. Could you say that again, please? Yes. Couples have a setup. In a setup, every couple has a setup. It's an organization, right? In every couple, you will often find one person who is more in touch with the fear of losing the other and one person who is more in touch with the fear of losing themselves. One person more in touch with the fear of abandonment and one person more in touch with the fear of suffocation. And that tells you which is the one that is more interested sometimes in experiencing open boundaries and non-monogamy or non-exclusiveness anyway.

Starting point is 01:47:11 But the person who wants the open relationship presents as the one who doesn't have the fear of abandonment. I see what you're saying. You understand? Couples have complementary systems. So I don't, at face value, would believe that the one who says I'm afraid to lose you is the only one with that fear. I believe we all have it, but I believe that the one who expresses it in the couple isn't always the one for whom it is actually the most intense. Sure. No, I agree with that. That's the secret of a lot of relationships. No, I agree. I agree. secret of a lot of relationships no i agree you understand the person who gets to voice it is actually sometimes only voicing a fear that the other one doesn't even voice oh no i agree i agree okay well that said i think it really depends i would not have a set answer for this there are plenty of people who at first felt very scared and then have learned to trust

Starting point is 01:48:23 differently and have learned to understand that their partner really comes back to them. And in fact, the more they feel free, the more they want to come back to them. And they really have learned to trust that. And then there are others for whom it's excruciating. It just feels either a replay from childhood, either a sense that they're not enough because they have really this notion that you would need more than me and that I can't fill all your needs. It's very, very painful to them. And they bought into that idea very powerfully.

Starting point is 01:48:56 Sometimes there is the sense that, you know, you allow yourself something that I don't. Why can't you stop yourself? There are other things that I don't get and I don't go and get them elsewhere. Compromise should be a part of what both of us do in the name of our relationship. I've seen it go both ways. I've seen people for whom it really became a way to live that they never knew existed. And I've seen people for whom this is just not the way they want to live. They don't want that fear. They don't want to remember every time their parents went out that they didn't know if they were coming back. They don't want that notion of what if you will fall in love somewhere else, which of course in and of itself would happen

Starting point is 01:49:34 no matter what. That threat is always there. That reality is part of any couple, but somehow I don't want to have to know it with such vividness or because I feel that there is something lacking in me or I feel my own insecurities. And therefore, every time you go, my insecurities get awakened. It's a complex system. I would just say that it generally works better when both people are from the same tribe. When both people have that same curiosity, when both people experience the fluidity as something that is additive and not something that's an anxiolytic, then it becomes an enhancing experience rather than a dreadful experience each time.

Starting point is 01:50:15 It's very complicated when one person says to the other, I really want this. And the other one says, this is hell for me. I can't live with this. And there's very little flexibility sometimes in that system because both people feel it very intensely and more than one relationship has had to end on that basis. this question is, and I'm going to stop hedging all my comments. So obviously everybody listening to this, there are a million different ways to organize relationship and a million different sort of combinatorial approaches to it, right? Whether it's homosexual, heterosexual, unisexual, I have no idea. You're right. There are a million different ways to go about it. So I'm just going to assume for the sake of simplicity that a lot of people are in heterosexual relationships. This question is very common, I think, from women who are,

Starting point is 01:51:09 you have a male in a relationship who wants more sexual variety. And the woman, in many cases, not all cases, is, at least around San Francisco, potentially open to that, but doesn't have the same sexual drive necessarily as the male. So the male is going to exercise that option more than she will. And that leads to, or contributes to, perhaps fostering some degree of insecurity. If he's going to be seeing X number of other people and I am not seeing Y number equivalent of people, then the likelihood

Starting point is 01:51:46 of him disappearing is higher. And the, remember I was told once by someone, they said, well, no one can take the person you're meant to be with. Now, the way that the context in which that was provided was to underscore the fact that, like you said, whether you're married, not married, in a relationship, whether you're married, not married, in a relationship, have an explicit agreement or not, the potential and the risk for digression or meeting someone else is always there. But I guess the fuel on the fire here is that when you explicitly give someone the option, the fear is that it's more likely to happen. And that's just more of an observation. I wanted to mention two things I've been very curious about recently that seem, at least in the group that I've observed, to work pretty well,

Starting point is 01:52:32 even though I think they are, at least one of them is viewed as pretty unfashionable. And so I wanted to get your take on it. So the first one is an arrangement, and this I've only heard once, but I thought it was very clever. Actually, no, not once, twice was older gentleman. He's in his sixties and married for, I want to say 20 plus years has a number of kids. And I was asking him about his marriage and he said, well, we have an open relationship. Okay. When we're having some wine, tell me more. So we continued talking. He said the way I asked him, how do you prevent it from causing problems? And he said, well, every relationship has problems. So it's not like one is immune and one is not, but his wife gives him a report card every quarter. So every three months he gets a report card. I think it was one to 10 scale in four categories, lover, husband, provider, father. And he's allowed to have a low score

Starting point is 01:53:28 in any one of those as long as his average is high enough. So they agreed on what his average had to be. So he might say be overseas for a period of time on business trips, and he might also sleep with other women. So he's going to get a low lover score, a high provider score, and then the other two are sort of up for debate. But I found that appealing maybe just because I like measuring things as a way of course correcting and keeping things in check. The second, which I particularly like your thoughts on, although we can go anywhere with this, is that looking at maybe a contrast to the tell me everything, I'll tell you everything breed of polyamorous relationships where radical honesty is an underlying tenet.

Starting point is 01:54:14 I've run into more than a few people who effectively have a don't ask, don't tell policy. And it pains, not doesn't pain me to say it, but I suspect I'll get a decent amount of backlash from my audience. It seems to work pretty well in the sense that more than a few couples have said, look, that whole polyamorous tell everything. And I know those are not mutually dependent is not for us. But as long as you're safe, as long as you don't embarrass me, then you can do what you want.

Starting point is 01:54:44 And the policy is don't ask, don't tell. That seems very old fashioned. I mean, maybe the fact that it's a two-way street makes it less old fashioned. But what are your thoughts on that? Because it seems to me just intuitively to be, and maybe it's highly dependent on the person, but to be less prone to kind of supernova destruction versus the radical honesty piece for most people. Do you have any thoughts?

Starting point is 01:55:11 That's a mouthful, I know, but I've been thinking about a lot of this stuff for a long time. So I think that I would start and I would say that trust, loyalty, and attachment come in many forms. And when you describe this example and you like it because of its measurements, I would say I like it because of its creativity, because there's thoughtfulness, because there's a shared complicity, because it seems to have worked, because there's imaginativeness and resourcefulness in it. And because I think that couples often lack a lot of that. Every other system gets innovators and gets new ideas and put into it all the time. And it is extraordinary how much relationships enter into a certain mode

Starting point is 01:55:57 and then stay in it for decades. Right. So anything where I see couples coming up with their own imaginative solutions to various situations and then be flexible about it and review it and change it, to me is great. That's it. I think that unfortunately, coupledom does not benefit from the same innovative spirit that every other company and entrepreneurial space these days gets to benefit. There isn't one model fits all.

Starting point is 01:56:29 And a certain couple may have lived for a while in a monogamous arrangement and exclusive arrangements, but then decided at some point because of all kinds of issues having to do with age, with illness, with success, with you name it, with children leaving, with a new awakening, with loss of weight, you name leaving, with a new awakening, with loss of weight, you name it, you name it. There's lots of triggers that make suddenly people want to change their relational arrangement. And I think that if people are going to stay together a long time, they need that ability to review their relational arrangements and to negotiate it and then to try something

Starting point is 01:57:01 and then to see if it works and to change. I mean, I can't enough emphasize my desire for flexibility to become part also of coupledom so that it doesn't just be, it enters a groove, it goes until it can't, and then it just kind of ends there. Right. It needs to be something a little bit more enriching there. So the first thing I think for some people, don't ask, don't tell, works extremely well. It gives them enough privacy. It makes them both know that there is still a primary loyalty and commitment. There is an implicit sense of knowing where one can go, how far one can go, et cetera, et cetera. And there needs to be ample, continuous investment and reassurance and building into the relationship itself. The point is not that you should have the leftovers at home and everything

Starting point is 01:57:51 else that is meaningful and exciting and interesting and engaging elsewhere. By definition, you still want to be able to put some logs in your own fire. For other people, transparency and radical honesty has become an ideology. The problem is ideologies generally are rigid. Right. You know, they don't lend themselves to being adaptive and fluid

Starting point is 01:58:16 to what's in front of you. It becomes a matter of principle rather than a matter of what makes sense. I still, I may be a little bit, you know, of the school still where does it make sense? Just does it, is it, does it work? I don't care if it's true or if it's right. Does it work? Is it decent? Is it caring? Is it warm? You know, has it been adapted? Does it fit both people? Those

Starting point is 01:58:37 are the criteria as you go back and forth, like kaleidoscopic, not just like two ideas, you know, for many people, the notion of radical honesty, transparency, truth-telling, authenticity, those have become the values of the economy of today and so is it in the economy of the home. We want experience, you know, we want purposeful, transformative, you know, experiences. We want them at home, we want them at work, everywhere. For other people, home is a different thing. And home is meant to satisfy other needs, et cetera, et cetera. And there is a segmentation that is accepted. We share these kinds of things. We share other things with other people. And to me, it's really a matter of, does it fit this particular couple? Does it work for them? Or is there one person who is quietly hurting over a long time and kind of giving in, but

Starting point is 01:59:30 there's a power dynamic because the word we haven't used is that in all these negotiations, there is an element of power. You know, there is power when you bring in other people. There is power when you feel that the other person can leave you. There is power when you have faced with the hurt of a person who is constraining you. There is a dynamic of power in all of these issues. And the question is, is there an equity in the decision-making? Do both people feel that they have equal power in their ability to say what works for them? In this instance that you describe, what's beautiful is you feel like,

Starting point is 02:00:06 you know, whatever he does, she gets to evaluate him. And so the evaluation is power. It's authority. Right. You know, in a good sense of the word, I use the word power. And so they are calibrating power.

Starting point is 02:00:19 You know, you get to do things, but I don't want to have to suffer because of it. I want to know that I still get the primary goods. I want to know that I come first. And so, yeah, you want to go play, go play. But don't play on my behalf and don't play on my account. I don't want a devaluation of our assets because you are accruing other revenues somewhere else. You know, and they play with this.

Starting point is 02:00:41 And so for this couple, to me, you know, I'm putting my script onto it. But when I listen to the description, I'm looking at what is the power distribution. Because the power is the sovereignty. The power is the dignity of this. Otherwise, you know, all these things become not power, but power maneuvers. And that's a whole other thing. And that has nothing to do with just sex alone. You know, these things take place in a, all, every relationship is a power dynamic.

Starting point is 02:01:09 I think that that has to be laid out first. Inside of that, we can come up with so many different arrangements that people will live for a while and then switch. I wanted to say that, I would say that to the polyamory people as well. I mean, it's like, there is a beautiful proliferation of non-monogamy thinking that is taking place, okay? And they're very different from the free love pioneers of the 60s and the 70s. But then, of course, many of those people are the children of the divorced and the disillusioned. And they're not rebelling against commitment per se, but they're looking for more realistic ways to make their vows last.

Starting point is 02:01:46 And they've concluded that that includes other lovers. And I think that the form, you know, can vary enormously. You can have occasional hall passes. You can have swingers who play with others. You can have established threesomes, foursomes, complex polyamorous networks. All of these things have one purpose, to reconfigure love and family life, which we have done from time immemorial. Right. Your comment on power reminded me of, I think it was Oscar Wilde said, everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.

Starting point is 02:02:18 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You've spent so much time with people grappling with these issues what was the research process for your new book and that is i mean really kind of fresh on the mind i would think at this point for you why do another book and what was the research process like so you know mating in captivity looked at the dilemmas of desire inside the relationships. And The State of Affairs, which is my new book, looks at what happens when desire goes looking elsewhere. And I had gone to 20 countries on book tour for Mating. And in many places, the only chapter people wanted to talk about was The Shadow of the Third, the chapter on monogamy, which was only one chapter in that whole book. And I thought, there's no way that I can do a thorough study of desire without looking at

Starting point is 02:03:14 desire that goes wandering. You know, what is roaming desire like? What is the power of transgression? Why is the forbidden so erotic? What is this thing called adultery, which has been historically condemned and universally practiced? You know, and so seriously, it's like, and it took me a while. This is 10 years since I wrote Mating in Captivity. I'm not, I take a long time to think and I only write if I feel I have something to say. And something to say means that I want to change the conversation on the subject. I don't want to just add one or two thoughts. I want to really frame the conversation. I want to take something and make a cultural shift around it. So for the past six years about, I began to travel the globe and have conversations about the subject of infidelity, transgression,

Starting point is 02:04:11 thrists, love affairs, fuck buddies, betrayal, trauma, lying, deception, cheating, gaslighting from both sides. What is gaslighting? I've heard this expression before and I don't know what it is. It's when I say, I know you are seeing somebody else. I know, I know it, I feel it. And you say, no, no, you're crazy. This is because of what your father did to you. You're just paranoid. I see. And you literally destroy the coherence of my reality.

Starting point is 02:04:34 Got it. When you're accused of something, you turn it around and then sort of fracture someone else. You also literally begin to make me feel like I have no longer a grasp on reality. I see. Got it. It's a real mental torture. You know, it's not just that you're denying, it's that you're also saying, what's wrong with me that I'm thinking this?

Starting point is 02:04:55 And then you basically make me doubt myself. And you make me doubt that when I think the tea is hot, it's actually hot. You know, I no longer know to trust the world that I live in, my perceptions, my thoughts, my feelings. And that becomes an internal breakdown. It drives people crazy. It's really cruel, actually. It's very common, but it's a cruel thing to do.

Starting point is 02:05:18 I saw, you know, I'm 34 years a couples therapist. I have a fascination for couples. I work in seven languages. I can take them from all over the world. And I began to only see couples who have been affected by infidelity in one variation or another. I also did a TED Talk in Passant, which has, you know, seven and a half million people in a year or two. And I thought, OK, I've got 1500 letters. I thought, my God, I'm walking confessional. The world is pouring their secrets onto me

Starting point is 02:05:51 on this subject anyway. And let me try to think it through. Let me really delve into this and look at it from a systemic point of view. Meaning if I ask an audience, have you had any experience with affairs or infidelity? You know, nobody's going to lift their hand. Nobody's going to say I cheated or I've been cheated on so easily. But if I ask the same audience, have you been affected by infidelity in your life? I probably get 90% of the fingers up. It's an amazing thing. As the child of, as the friend of, as the boss of, as the lover, as the other woman, as the partner, as the person who went out, you name it. And now it becomes really a

Starting point is 02:06:33 collective experience. So I wanted to look at it from all angles. And I see couples two, three hours at a time. And I delve into the labyrinth of passion, all of it, you know, from all sides. And then I collected all the data I wrote. I transcribed hundreds of hours of sessions. I transcribed all the letters and I began to gather and then decide what are the main assumptions at this point about this subject? How does our culture think about this? Because no matter, and by the way, infidelity happens in polyamorous couples too, you know. The fact that you get an open license

Starting point is 02:07:14 doesn't prevent people from climbing the fence. Something about transgression is deeply human. And you've also observed the definition of cheating continues to expand, right? Where you have sexting, texting, dating apps, watching porn. I mean, the inside of the wall is getting narrower and narrower in some respects also. Absolutely. The definition is elastic.

Starting point is 02:07:35 It's unbelievable what people today, how many more ways that we define something as being outside of the boundaries and we consider them infidelities. And it is one of the experiences that encompasses the entire human drama. Everything, jealousy, hurt, betrayal, pain, lust, love, passion, all of it. It's like every opera, there's a reason. You know, and it is one of the most complex human experiences to really delve into. But it is endlessly fascinating.

Starting point is 02:08:11 And so I wanted to rethink infidelity. What does it mean today? Why does it happen in any kind of relationship? What does it mean to know that your partner never really belongs to you? They're only on loan and with an option to renew or not. So related to that, I get asked about marriage and kids a lot, even though I feel very unqualified to comment on either. But what is the argument for marriage these days?

Starting point is 02:08:40 Because I have trouble coming up with one. The argument that comes to mind, because the legal construct, the financial consequences, the difficulty in the sort of unraveling, if you want to change direction or a new chapter means a new partner, whatever it might be, there are a lot of consequences. Now, the only argument that I can come up with for it is related to loss aversion, where maybe if you really want to make a strong, committed effort to maintain a relationship for a long period of time, that if you have something to lose, if you don't enforce that, that in this case takes the form of a legal construct that you're not going to put in the requisite effort. So, okay. But it just

Starting point is 02:09:22 seems to me that there's so much downside that prevents flexibility. How do you think about that? Or is there an argument for the legal construct of marriage? Because I have more and more difficulty as I see friends' marriages imploding, exploiting good people, often faithful people. It gets harder and harder for me. Yeah. But Americans love to marry. You know, once, twice, three times. You know, part of the way that I began the project of writing about infidelity came out of the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal because I was very intrigued. Why was this country so tolerant about multiple divorces and so intransigent about the slightest transgression? Right. Fair enough. You know, no matter how much sex becomes open, they remain intransigent about the subject of infidelity. And the rest of the

Starting point is 02:10:10 world, by the way, that is more family oriented has always opted the other way around. You protect the family, you know, and you don't divorce. So why Americans love to marry, I have never fully understood. I mean, I have my thoughts, but it's not like I have a definitive answer to that. I think there's two questions. Why is a deep, meaningful connection with another human being with whom you weave a story, you know, along the stages of life? That is one thing. Does it need to take place within the construct of marriage is a very different thing.

Starting point is 02:10:46 Agreed. You know, in Europe, we marry much less, but we have families. And we try to create families with what modernity has given us, which is a rather nuclear model of family, which is a very difficult model for family and a terrible model for couples. We were not meant to be two adults with four or two or three or four children all alone in cities. I mean, none of it is the way we were meant to do it. And so it's extremely taxing on the couple. And at the same time, the only reason families today survive is if the couple is doing relatively well. That's the only thing keeping families

Starting point is 02:11:23 together. So we're facing a very interesting thing. At the same time, if Apple sold you a product that fails 50% of the time, would you buy it? And yet that's what happens to marriage. Right. You know, if you think that that's a guarantee, think again, because at this point, it is really not doing that well

Starting point is 02:11:41 in terms of guaranteeing you things. But I think there are very few rituals at this moment. You know, with the loss of traditional religion, there are very few rituals, there are very few structures, very few institutions to which we can adhere. And I can see that in that sense, the importance of marriage as a ritual that is rooted in a tradition and that comes with a code of conduct and with an official norm to it. And so that's where I place marriage. I don't think of it in legal terms at all. I think of it very much in terms of its cultural meaning. You know, it's like a spine. There are very few things people can

Starting point is 02:12:22 hang themselves on these days. You know, everything is about the self and the burdens of the self are very heavy at this moment. So marriage has become that institution that still tells you how to go about doing these things in life. To me, the very interesting thing when you ask about why marry, I think about the gay marriage. Gay marriage really was one of the ways to try to understand what does it mean to legalize, to give rights to queer families, to allow people to adhere to a norm when there are so few norms at this moment.

Starting point is 02:12:57 Everything has been re-evaluated and redefined. And I think people are sometimes very desperate for norms, structures, pillars, architecture. Everything else is fluid, fluid, fluid, you know, but we all need solid as well as we need fluid. And marriage has remained one of the last solid constructs, even though it fractures way too fast and way too often. Can you do it without marriage? Completely, you know, but for some reason, people feel that commitment without the structure isn't buttressed in the same way. The marriage is the buttress. It's the fulcrum. And I don't know if relationships, actually, that would be an interesting thing to look at numbers. Do relationships that are not held together by the

Starting point is 02:13:41 contract of marriage, do they dissolve anymore in Europe than they do here? I'm not sure. You know, it's 52% or 48 at this point, maybe it's gone down a bit on first marriage, but the fascinating data is not first marriage. It's 65% divorce rate on second marriages. 65%. Yeah. That is the much more interesting data. Yeah. Why? Yeah. Why? Why do you find it interesting? Because

Starting point is 02:14:07 it touches on something else that I think is much more interesting as a, certainly as a couples therapist is that, okay, let's assume the second time it's easier. You've done it the first time. You may not have the young children, et cetera, et cetera. But to me, the more interesting thing is that the first time you still actually adhere to the model. You know, I think that often the divorcees are the true idealists. They believe in the model, they just chose the wrong person and they'll do better next time. The second time they begin to think that maybe it's not all about the other person and that maybe it's time to take some responsibility for themselves. Everybody at some point has some relationship things to work out and the only question is with whom who are you going to do it with but it would seem that at some point you should also ask wait

Starting point is 02:14:54 a second if the people are coming out of the same factory meaning the structure that has a 50 failure rate perhaps you that the structure should also be a variable under consideration i would think absolutely but that's coupledom that's not that's not just marriage sure sure i agree you know i i think that to me i'm really fascinated by how creative having just written a book about infidelity i can tell you if people took 1% of the creativity that they put in their affairs and brought it to their marriages or to their relationships, you know, it's astounding. It's the same people change context and they suddenly are filled with imagination and attention and focus and generosity and kindness and desire. It's like it's not marriage per se as coupledom. And for some reasons,

Starting point is 02:15:45 the expectations of couple them have never been higher, but what people invest in it hasn't really measured up. They bring the best of themselves, not to their partner. They bring the best of themselves at work, to their friends, to their colleagues, to their hobbies, to their children for that matter, much more, not to their partner. And that is a much more interesting thing to me than marriage per se. It's like, I don't ask so much, why do people marry? I ask more, why do people so often bring the leftovers to their partner while at the same time wanting their relationships to be so glorious? Something doesn't click.

Starting point is 02:16:26 What do you think the answer is? You know, it's like when people say my partner is my best friend and I'm sometimes, especially in my office, I have to say, do you treat your best friend like this? Right. What kind of BS is this? I mean, no, no, that's not how you, you know, would you say this to somebody else? Could you imagine being that critical with your friends? What is the idea? And this is where marriage comes in. It's because you really think that because you married the other person,

Starting point is 02:16:55 it's just going to be there and take it. Vice versa. This is in both directions, right? It's like there is something about the seal underneath that has locked this that allows people to then behave subpar. Right. And maybe if there was more of a fear of losing it because your friends won't take it. Certainly your boss won't take it. Your colleagues won't take it. You behave that way at work, you're out. But at home, you think you can do these things.

Starting point is 02:17:24 You can treat people really poorly. You can put them down. You can disqualify them. You cannot listen to them. You can shout. You can kick. You can neglect them. You can be indifferent. I mean, my God, there are so many ways to not behave well at home and then call them, you know, it's like, to me, this is where I make people accountable. It's like, excuse me, you can't trap another person. This is like, you know, marital sadism. So you have, we could talk for hours, and you have a number of different venues and vehicles

Starting point is 02:18:00 through which you're exploring these topics. The book is one, of course. And what, could you say the title of the new book one more time, please? So the book is The State of Affairs, Rethinking Infidelity. So I suspect that that will be, as your talks and previous work has been, very, very popular and topical. I would say this. I would say, why do people cheat? Why do happy people cheat? Is infidelity always a deal breaker? Why do we think that men need variety and are bored, whereas we think that women are hungry for intimacy and lonely? Why do we have such complete different ideas about why men and women cheat? What do we do with jealousy? Can love ever be plural? Is possessiveness an arcane vestige of patriarchy or is it intrinsic to love? It's all these questions that I'm taking on. And you're also going to be exploring that in your own program on an Audible channel soon,

Starting point is 02:19:01 as I understand it. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind describing that just a little bit. Yes, I'm very excited about it. I mean, it's really different ways of exploring. You know, the book, The State of Affairs, is not really a book about infidelity. It's really a book about what do we learn from infidelity about the human heart and the human condition. So I use that lens to enter and to excavate many, many subjects.

Starting point is 02:19:27 And I wanted to also have, you know, the opportunity of letting people come into my office and actually be in those conversations that I have with couples, because most of the time we have no idea what happens in a couple. Youples are isolated islands. Sometimes the women may talk to somebody and the men talk to very few. And so we have no idea what's in the antechamber of the couple. And I did a series with Audible, and we're going to do a second one already, that of 10 couples therapy sessions covering a range of subjects where you think you are actually entering into the intimacy of these other relationships and you very quickly realize that you're actually looking inside, you're looking at your own mirror and you're looking at yourselves. And you start to talk

Starting point is 02:20:19 with the persons and the people of your life, your partners or others, about where you are in relation to these questions. So say, and there are stories of infidelity and stories of sexuality and stories of raising children and stories of infertility and stories of unemployment. And it's a very, very poignant experience because it's intimate in your ear. You don't see them, but you hear them. 10 couples who have volunteered to come and have a session with me like I do generally in my ear. You don't see them, but you hear them. 10 couples who have volunteered to come and have a session with me, like I do generally in my office. It's exactly what I would normally do,

Starting point is 02:20:51 but this time recorded and told as stories to share and stories to invest ourselves in. What is the name of the series? Where Should We Begin? Where Should We Begin? Isn't that what every session starts? Indeed. Where Should We Begin? And for people listening in the show notes, I will have links to everything that I can get links to that we've discussed. The podcast comes out May 18. And at first it will be on Audible and on Amazon Prime. And then the book comes out in September,

Starting point is 02:21:30 will be in stores October 10. And then the podcast will also be released on iTunes. And so it will be re-released at the same time as the book comes out. So I have just a few more questions. I want to let you get back to your day, but just as we wrap up a few more questions. I want to let you get back to your day. But just as we wrap up, a few quick questions. One is, what books besides your own have you gifted the most to other people? Oh, the book I've probably gifted the most is Viktor Frankl, The Search for Meaning.

Starting point is 02:21:58 Since I'm 16. That is a fantastic book. And what about reread the most yourself what book have you reread or books anything that any books that come to mind that you've reread i recently reread the art of loving by eric from i reread the erotic mind by jack moran i reread for this book i reread madame bovary which was very disappointing how i'll tell you what i reread, for this book, I reread Madame Bovary, which was very disappointing. How? I'll tell you what I reread that I loved, because one of my kids was reading it in school,

Starting point is 02:22:30 Crime and Punishment. You can reread the Russians. They are timeless. And if you had a billboard, this is a metaphorical question, but if you had a huge billboard where you could put a short message on it, non-commercial, but a short message up could be one word, could be

Starting point is 02:22:52 a sentence, could be whatever, to get out to millions of people, what would you put on that billboard? Or what might you put on that billboard? There's always more you can do for another. Just don't have your day without having done something for someone that you don't know for that matter. Not just for the ones that are in your little circle. I don't know, on a billboard it would say, do your part. I love it. And any parting comments, requests of the audience? Could be the same thing that you just said, but any parting thoughts, questions, or suggestions for people who are listening? Any ask of the audience? You know, the reason I say do your part is because

Starting point is 02:23:31 so much of the culture we live in is about doing things for ourselves, enhancing ourselves, pushing ourselves, being more successful, being more healthy, you know, and it is the most powerful antidepressant. I know that you do something on the depression front as well. And I think that the curse of today is isolation. There's a lot of other things we have gained, but we have lost something and isolation and disconnection. It's a curse of modern life. And I think that there is no more powerful antidepressant, nothing that will give us more meaning in life than to know that we matter for others. And that means to do for others, which is a little bit what couples therapy is about. You know, most of the time people come to couples therapy, they don't come in order to say,

Starting point is 02:24:21 I came to check myself out. They've usually come to be an expert on the other and they say, fix it, do something, you know, or I came to drop off, you know. So I'm all the time thinking, you know, and what are you doing? Take responsibility. You know, it's freedom responsibility. And for the rest, it's like, if any of you are inspired by what I say,

Starting point is 02:24:41 join me on all the platforms where you can find me so easily. And there's nothing I think I value more than to be in conversation. Like I've so enjoyed our conversation, you and I, and to talk about these things. It's part of everybody's life all the time.

Starting point is 02:24:57 Love, sex, trust, loyalty, commitment. What else is there, you know? Absolutely. And where is the best place on social media for people to say hello to you if they wanted to say hello? Is there any one preferred place? I would say my fan page on Facebook, probably,

Starting point is 02:25:15 but I am on Twitter and I'm on Instagram and I'm on YouTube. I'm doing this whole beautiful series, actually, of videos that I'm putting up on YouTube on relational intelligence that I think kind of are snapshots of what I say in short, what I often say in long. I'll tell you what I want is we have often these days try to simplify things. And I think what I try to do is create a conversation on relationships and love and all of that at work as well as at home,

Starting point is 02:25:45 both levels of relationships in business, in companies, et cetera, that embraces complexity, that's multicultural, and that's inclusive. And I think that the more people join this, the more you will help me do my piece of social change. So everybody definitely say hello to Esther, Esther.Perel on Facebook, Instagram, Esther Perel official, YouTube, Perel Esther. Switch now, put all of these in the show notes. Esther, thank you so much for taking the time.

Starting point is 02:26:20 This was a real joy and tremendously stimulating and thought-provoking. I have a lot to think on. So I appreciate you sharing your expertise and your experiences with us. Thank you. It's a treat. Thanks a lot. And to everybody listening,

Starting point is 02:26:32 you can find links to everything that has been mentioned, the books, the podcast, everything imaginable in the show notes, as usual with every other episode, you can just go to tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun

Starting point is 02:26:59 before the weekend between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet friday easy to sign up easy to cancel it is basically a half page that i send out every friday to share the coolest things i've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week it's kind of like my diary of cool things it often includes articles i'm reading books i'm reading albums albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share

Starting point is 02:27:38 them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Momentous. Momentous offers high quality supplements and products across a broad spectrum of categories, including sports performance, sleep, cognitive health, hormone support, and more. I've been testing their products for months now, and I have a few that I use constantly. One of the things I love about Momentous is that they offer many single

Starting point is 02:28:20 ingredient and third-party tested formulations. I'll come back to the latter part of that a little bit later. Personally, I've been using Momentous Mag3 and 8 L-theanine and apigenin, all of which have helped me to improve the onset quality and duration of my sleep. Now, the Momentous Sleep Pack conveniently delivers single servings of all three of these ingredients. I've also been using Momentous Creatine, which doesn't just help for physical performance, but also for cognitive performance. In fact, I've been taking it daily, typically before podcast recording, as there are various studies and reviews and meta-analyses pointing to improvements in short-term memory and performance under stress. So those are some of the products that I've been using very consistently. And to give you an idea, I'm packing right now for an international trip.

Starting point is 02:29:10 I tend to be very minimalist and I'm taking these with me nonetheless. Now back to the bigger picture. Olympians, Tour de France winners, Tour de France winners, the US military and more than 175 college and professional sports teams rely on Momentus and their products. Momentus also partners with some of the best minds in human performance to bring world-class products to market, including a few you will recognize from this podcast, like Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Kelly Starrett. They also work with Dr. Stacey Sims to assist Momentous in developing products specifically for women. Their products contain high-quality ingredients that are third-party tested, which in this case means informed sport and or NSF certified, so you can trust that what is on the label is in the bottle and nothing else. And trust me, as someone who knows the sports nutrition and supplement world very well, that is a

Starting point is 02:29:54 differentiator that you want in anything that you consume in this entire sector. So good news. For my non-US listeners, more good news, not to worry. Momentous ships internationally, so you have the same access that I do. So check it out. Visit livemomentous.com slash Tim and use code Tim at checkout for 20% off. That's livemomentous, L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash Tim and code Tim for 20% off. I don't know about you guys, but I've had the experience of traveling overseas and I try to access something, say a show on Amazon or elsewhere. And it says not available in your current location, something like that. Or creepier still, if you're at home and this has happened to me. I search for something or I type in a URL incorrectly and then a screen for AT&T pops up and it says, you might be searching for

Starting point is 02:30:46 this. How about that? And it suggests an alternative. And I think to myself, wait a second, my internet service provider is tracking my searches and what I'm typing into the browser. Yeah, I don't love it. And a lot of you know, I take privacy and security very seriously. That is why I've been using today's episode sponsor, ExpressVPN, for several years now, and I recommend you check it out. When you connect to a secure VPN server, your internet traffic goes through an encrypted tunnel that nobody can see into, including hackers, governments, people on Starbucks, your internet service provider, etc.

Starting point is 02:31:20 And no, you are not safe simply using incognito mode in your browser. This was something that i got wrong for a long time your activity might still be visible as in the example i gave to your internet service provider incognito mode also does not hide your ip address also with the example that i gave of you can't access this kind of that content wherever you happen to be then you just set your server to a country where you can see it and all of a sudden voila you can say log into your normal Amazon account as opposed to being routed to dot UK or whatever and everything works so ExpressVPN protects you and enables you because it encrypts and reroutes your network traffic through secure servers

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #755: Hugh Jackman and Esther Perel

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