Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - Couples Under Lockdown: New York, New York

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

They have three kids and their volatile marriage has fallen apart. She still hopes to rebuild. He can't get out of there fast enough. Two weeks before COVID-19 forced New Yorkers to shelter in place, they filed for divorce. Now they feel trapped. If he goes he risks not seeing his kids for weeks. If he stays he worries it will thwart his plans to finally leave. Esther urges them to think about this present time together and not about what kind of future they will have apart.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's such a middle finger in my face in the middle of this horrifying thing that's happening all over the globe. None of the couples you are about to hear are ongoing clients of Esther Perel. For the purposes of maintaining their confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed. But their voices and their stories are real. Their relationship is rapidly unraveling. They've been together for 25 years in a highly reactive, volatile relationship. And they're in the midst of a divorce. I'm scared to death of my wife.

She scares me. When she's upset, she's to me like a Disney Bond. Okay? They live in New York City. They have been quarantined together for the past two weeks due to COVID-19. He would like to be anywhere but with his wife at this moment. Living with someone who has so much contempt for me and feels that I am trying to control you

by asking you to isolate with your family, which is what the governor is asking us to do. But he has made a choice out of duty and obligation to be with his family, but it certainly is not what he wants. And he reminds her that constantly. Like two weeks ago, I had to get pediatrician, child therapist, everybody to explain to him why seeing his girlfriend during COVID was not appropriate or safe for the girls. For her, his coldness, his business-like responses are triggering deep woundedness around being ignored. The efficient and professional language that he uses to talk about the dissolution of a 25-year relationship, it is so deeply painful to me that he speaks to me in this way. Which then leads him to talk about how many years

he felt rejected by her because of her sexual refusal and the rut that they lived in for so many years since the birth of their children seven years ago. My wife has told me that we have no chemistry sexually, that she enjoys being with her other lovers more than me. To me, this isn't like a last-ditch effort. It's just somebody that we both respect to help us. It almost is like we started 21 years ago. It got kicked off with a vows column in the New York Times. And it feels very fitting for it to end with you.

Are you good partners to exchange ideas? I think we're really good parents. And we're really good at, I think, you know, looking at the different things you have to navigate as parents and the sensibilities and taking into account the feelings, you know, all those things. I think we're very, very good at doing that together for sure. That's a strength.

Yeah. And it's a strength that is particularly handy at this moment, important at this moment. I think that the other thing that we are good at that has gotten very lost and under, I wouldn't say appreciated because I can't speak for him, but we just resonate together while we don't connect on skiing or race car driving or faith in God. We resonate almost like the way when two little kids meet

and they just like vibe. And I feel like that's how we've always been. And that's, you know, in some ways, the source of my suffering, that connection, which has been a part of my life for 25 years. I miss that. Are you in a situation where one of you,

as I think I understood you saying that at first, I am still very much in, and he is, you are what? I'm very much in as, you know, a partner in parenting our daughters. And it's not like a great word. It's something more than a friend. I just don't know what the word is. But I'm not in as a romantic couple. That is something that has not been there for us for a very long time.

And the choice is, look, you know, there are other things that are amazing about our relationship, but there are things that just aren't there and they're not going to be there. And the decision is either, well, that's our lot in life. Let's just live that way because, you know, we don't want to create any difficulties at home and, you know, disrupt our lives and our children's lives. Or let's just say that we both deserve something better and something different. And we can, and what I'd love to get out of this is, you know, let's promote, nourish and salvage the things that work really well for us. They're in an interesting moment

because while she has accepted that this is the end of the marriage, she still very much wants to emphasize the connection that exists, the embers that are still flickering between them. Whereas he seems to imply that if he acknowledges any warmth, any connection that still exists between them beyond their role as parents, it's as if his resolution would just too rapidly dissolve. So he maintains a very calm, cold, detached,

almost dissociated way about him, which hurts her greatly. Have you sought to bring back some of the things that the relationship lost? Has bringing romance back been a part of your dream for the relationship or you basically segregated it and outsourced it and decided to keep compartmentalized relationships? Well, you know, this is a topic that we've talked about in massive

length for, you know, well over a decade. Meaning that the problem has been... Oh, it's been there for a very long time. So, you know, it's certainly something that's been looked at and I'm resolute that I'm not interested in continuing to try and spark something that is not ignitable. First of all, I want to say that when he speaks about us in those terms, it feels very professional and businesslike. And that's what I mean by the cutting off of the connection. From the start, she wants me to know that she experienced sexual trauma in her childhood and that she has spent years in therapy working on these experiences

and the connection of her trauma with her sexuality and her sexual behaviors in their marriage. She also wants me to know that he too has experienced the same kind of sexual trauma, which I'm not even sure he wants me to know, and which he certainly has not given her the permission to speak about. Because it's his story. Okay, fine.

And I don't know how much he wants me to know about this. I just met him five minutes ago. Right, right, fine. So I will say that my hope was in his support group that after... And this is what often happens in a session, is that one person's biography becomes another person's betrayal. He has no interest in going and digging into his history at this point. He's had his years of therapy as well. What he came back to her with is, I want an open marriage.

You know, and so when he told me that he wanted to have an open marriage, I went along with it. And I thought, okay, well, maybe this is something he needs. It's like part of his process, to process. But the story just kept changing. And to now, he's resolute that it's over. You know, that first night, the conversation was, you're the best wife, you're the best mother. We can make this work.

You can be with someone who you're attracted to sexually. I can be with someone I'm attracted to. And maybe this thing will reignite with us. But if I hear one of the core pieces of what you just said to me, is that when you think about the end of your relationship as spouses, as partners, as lovers, you feel sad about it and heartbroken and you don't feel like he's mourning anything. Well, he has another relationship. And yeah, so I feel like, you know. But is that the peace when you say it's cold? It's that he's losing anything?

You think you're the only one? He's just like, bye-bye. Peace. Good luck. And I understand because he is in a highly sexualized relationship. And so I understand why. I remember being in those relationships when I was cheating on him. I mean, I know the sort of allure and the drug and the thing that

sex does. I get it. I'm just standing here saying we have been entangled for 25 years of like real connection and building and toiling. And I don't mean to paint myself as a martyr, but maybe because of my sort of spiritual path for the past, I never thought he could leave. It's not that I never thought he could leave. You know, we have a big neon in our house that says, I promise to love you, which is what he bought me after he cheated on me with girlfriends for hire 10 years ago. And I believed I promised

to love you. And as a result, for the past 10 years, as part of my spiritual path, as part of my personal work, rather than pointing the finger at him, I've been pointing the finger at myself and deepening and deepening and deepening my practice. My wish for myself has been to soften. I am a killer. That helped me tremendously in business. It serves me less well in relationship. And so my wish to the universe has been to soften, to be more vulnerable, that I'm safe now. I'm not in danger every day the way that I was as a child. And so, yes, listen, this divorce, if anything will soften me, it will be this. And what my wish has always been for the two of us is to be trees next to each

other and not entangled and choking each other, but next to each other. It's a very interesting moment, right? You're physically sitting very closely together. More than one would usually sit actually in my office. You're sharing headphones into one computer on your bed. You're hearing your wife talk and I'm trying to watch the way you breathe, but I can only see your upper body.

And so I don't even know how it's getting more and more shallow. And I don't know if she's reaching you or if all you want is for her to just stop or if it feels like, you know, your head is underwater and all you hear is some noise or if you're so far gone that it's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, she's trying very hard, but I'm not sure if the person that's sitting next to her has still any resonance there. I don't know where you are. Um, well, you know,

I, I, I have a very different narrative, Esther. Um, but tell me first what you experienced when she talked right now. Um, I know what she's going to,

and I, I feel going through and I, I feel empathy for her feelings. However, I am waiting patiently to tell my story, which is significantly different. So I'm going to ask you, hold on a minute. I promise you, I have no doubt that your stories are such that I would wonder if they happen in the same room. Okay, fair enough. Okay, I get it. But what I need to understand is when she talks, when she reaches out, when she still hopes, when she still pleads, where does it land in you?

To me, it depends on, you know, where she's at. You know, like if this was maybe yesterday or, you know, recently when she's very angry, she's going to say something very different, you know, than she's saying right now. And I think overall the relationship needs to move on. Okay. And we can talk for hours about our history and, you know, our feelings and all those things, which are extremely important. And we've done that for decades.

I mean, I'm happy to go back through all that. Right. But I think what's more productive is if we can talk about how we can move on and be great parents and respectful to each other. So, you know, we can be happy in the new sort of way things are going to be. I mean, if you want, I can, I could tell you why I think our physical relationship isn't there. I can talk about what happened 10 years ago when I went outside the marriage. I can talk about why we started one place February 1st with me saying we should stay married. And then now we're getting a divorce. At the end of all of that, the bottom line is I care deeply about her. And because of that,

I know that the most efficient use of our time is to talk about how we can work with the fact that she cares a lot about me. I care a lot about her. We both care a lot about our kids. And I think part of the problem of any sort of moving forward, and I want to be very clear, you know, I'm not here because I'm trying to save my marriage. I'm surrendered to what is, you know, but the efficient and professional language that he uses to talk about the dissolution of a 25-year relationship is part of the sort of anger that he talked about yesterday or the day before today that I was really angry. It occurs to me that while she's highlighting the cold, business-like, unemotional language of her husband, she, on the other hand, is invested in a much more spiritual language where she's talking about surrendering to his decision to divorce. And I'm wondering if another verb would be more apt than surrender. The feeling of rejection that she's feeling or anger or hurt that he has basically dismissed her for a much younger woman

with whom he is experiencing a very powerful sexual connection that is making him feel loved, desired, masculine, intimate, powerful, attractive, and many, many things that he's been longing for in his marriage for a long time. Nevertheless, she's been replaced. And I don't know if surrender is the verb that accompanies the feeling of being replaced. You know, he was obviously in a relationship and wants to break up and I get it. But a month before that, he was begging me to go on a trip, just the two of us. You know, so this wheel turn turn like i'm just trying to keep

my head on my neck and i can't believe the coldness with which my partner is talking to me and he wants us to be these really close co-parents but do we know each other has someone given you a lobotomy where are you this is very important and here's why i might come across that way i'm scared to death of my wife, about my feelings, about my family. And she's been physically abusive. She rages. And for self-survival, I am leveraging my sort of way I can look at things logically and just be as, you know. Because I don't feel safe, like, emotionally in this relationship. And that's why I come across the way I come across.

Because I'm leveraging those faculties to help me navigate this. And this is also though, how you relate to your family. I mean, I'm not the only family out of this. I'm just saying that I'm not the only person you feel must feel unsafe about because you speak this way to your family as well with whom you've been estranged and completely cut off. I'm just saying this this isn't just... You can talk about my family. We have a great relationship with our family. People, you're going to convince me in two minutes that while you talk about how much you care about each other,

you also know to trash each other gloriously. And in that department, you probably are both wearing same size gloves. So I'm watching, I'm listening to how much you care and how much you want things to remain as harmonious as possible as a family. But it doesn't take 30 seconds for one of you to basically shame the other one and bring up things about each other that you haven't really asked the permission to share or you know feel that you've been exposed and then instead of saying leave that to me that's part of my story then you come back a moment later and you just say you want me to show you how i can

trash let me show you my trash and it's each of you which you get with your garbage cans you know and that that is really that that that is not going to be really helpful. And I understand that you kind of say, I'm going to try to de-escalate as much as possible and not react when she's vicious and not react when she's kinder and vulnerable. I'm just going to try to become as robotic as can be so that I maintain some sense of composure. And for all I know, you may feel that you mourned this marriage a long time ago. You've done your grieving. You've had your sadness.

That's precisely what I told her. And then you come to her now and she seems all surprised. And she says, you know, where are your feelings about this? Don't you feel like you're losing this incredible bond that we had? And then you say, I care deeply about her. And the next minute you're telling me, you know, completely contradictory stuff. But if you want to find some way to collaborate together and to be the parents that you are to your kids, you're going to have to resist your vicious temptations.

I do feel that he hates me. That when he says, I love her and the things that he says, I don't actually think that's true. I think he says that because he wants to be a cordial person. You know what would be better though? Yeah. Ask a question.

I've asked him. Meaning that when you do it like you just do it now. Yeah. Look, your masters are talking for each other. And at implying that you know exactly what the other person feels. And then putting it down. So I think it's probably a mixture of a lot of things. You have moments when you hate each other's guts.

And moments when you feel like there's this intense connection still. And moments when you laugh with your daughters and you think, how could that ever end? And moments when you think, I can't stand another minute of this. That's true. And it's rapid succession of all of it. And on top of it, you have your erotic longings, you know, parked somewhere else. So being probably confined to your home at this moment

must not be an easy thing either. I mean, when you're smitten by someone and you have to be confined with your ex or your soon-to-be ex, it's kind of an interesting constellation. I live with one, but I dream about the other. It's very simple. And then when you can't be about the other

and you're frustrated about that, you will take it out on this one. But I feel like I always own, I know what I do wrong. I'm not in any denial of what I do. And I am apologetic immediately. I catch myself. I'm not saying I'm perfect.

I'm a highly imperfect person and he holds grudges you hold grudges i feel like she she she tortures me and i just my sort of reclamation of i want to take my body back want to have a healthy physical relationship with a woman wasn't a function of any recent therapy. This is something that's been building for years. Where did you lose your body? I think very alpha in my career, but beta in my personal relationship.

And I've accepted a role that I don't blame my wife for this. I bring it to the table just the way she does. We set ourselves up with different roles. And this role was one that was very disempowering for me. And I think a symptom of that is certainly lack of physical connection. My wife has told me that we have no chemistry sexually, that she enjoys being with her other lovers more than me. That she's not comfortable having sex with me. But those things were deeply painful. Because I never had a problem sexually.

Certainly, you know, we met after college. But, you know, certainly in college and prior. And now, I think it was just the chemistry between us that we're both responsible for. So it wasn't some like recent thing that just happened, you know, in some recent therapy that I had. You know, she's been telling me this for years. I never wanted to believe her. I now believe her. The way that people de-eroticize each other and the way that people see the sex out of their relationship is beyond just matters of chemistry.

You know, it's not just about sex. It's about being related a certain way. Of course. By my partner. And again, the sex is just a symptom of a function that is either there or not. And I believe my wife deserves that too. When I talked about this to her, you know, in early February, it was, I thought that right away she would have some sort of relationship

because she hasn't, I mean, allegedly haven't had any physical relationship in many, many years. What made you move from the suggestion of being a consensual non-monogamous couple to opting for divorce? Well, um, uh, I, I started to, um, you know, to act on what I talked about and be romantic with others. And it was a lot of craziness and rage and violence, and it was very painful for my wife. And it was to the point where it was impacting our kids. And it was just not, it's not, that's not going to work. And she was not interested in seeing people herself. So it was,

it was very inequitable. Like I would be going out and I'd come home and it would be a battle. And the next day she would be raging the whole day. And part of this sort of reclamation is I'm not going to be treated that way. You know, like I'm not going to, I don't want to live a life where I'm being raged on and being called all sorts of things. And it was actually my wife's suggestion that we should, we should divorce. And I agree. Have you spoken with your daughters? We have. The oldest one.

Well, all of our daughters know that, you know, I'm living in a different bedroom, and couples change people, you know, parents don't, and we've been really sort of going through that. But the little ones don't know that we're specifically getting a divorce. Only the old one does. They will know once we, you know,

there's also this COVID situation, And that's, you know, right now is like a hot topic with he and I, like two weeks ago, I had to get a pediatrician, child therapist, everybody to explain to him why seeing his girlfriend during COVID was not appropriate or safe for the girls. And he's now, okay, he said, okay, I'll give it two weeks. And now, despite the fact that in Central Park, there are tents of people who are ill and dying, he's picking it up again. And I just feel desperate. I feel worried about my children. I feel that I worry also about my husband, that his need for physical intimacy is clouding his judgment. And I am being villainized in order to give him an excuse. I'm being very, and I'm not going to go tit for tat with the things that he said, like calling me violent. You know, one time I sort of lashed out physically after his first interaction with a woman and he came home with

two women and he came home at 3.30 in the morning. That was really painful for me because I was still in this marriage. That was hard. But to paint me out as a physically abusive person because of that is really just looking for ammunition in order to say, I'm not safe and I need to leave during COVID. And, you know, listen, every mother is singing the same tune, right?

I am home cooking three meals a day, homeschooling three children, two of whom are too young to really be able to do anything on their own, the 11-year-old better. But still, I'm having to manage all of that and make sure we have groceries and make sure we have toilet paper and paper towels and just all the stuff that is coming with this. And this is the time he wants to like, also make me try to keep our children safe from their own father moving out because he's not safe from someone he's been married to. I'm safe enough to leave the children with. I'm safe enough. I mean, I'm safe enough for everything. It's just like such a, to me, it's such a middle finger in my face

in the middle of this horrifying thing that's happening all over the globe. But the issue is that you would like to be able to live in the home but continue your relationship with your girlfriend? I certainly would like that. I'm not doing that. I mean, I could do that, but I would have to leave and it would be unsafe. Like if I were to leave, let's say, and move into an apartment, I would not be able to see the children. And, you know, right now that looks like it's at least a month based on what the authorities have said. And I'm not willing to not

see my children for a month, especially at this time of transition. And quite frankly, I am concerned for them, you know, because I think it is hard to process this, you know, it's hard for both of us and for my wife being alone with shouldering all the responsibility without me being able to help at all, because if I can't see them, I can't help. And then I'm worried about the stress and the feedback from that with the kids. So for all those reasons, I'm sort of trapped. But this may be a time where, in fact, you are called in to primarily be in the role of parents. And your individual needs may have to be on the backseat. And that's fine.

But is it fine? Because that's not. No, it doesn't have to be fine. I mean, it's not fine. Right. It is. If I fight it, like, what am I supposed to do? Right.

It is. My option is just to, you to you know yeah give her the middle finger and say look it's not like i'm out running around i have one relationship and that person's also being extremely careful and you know i do have to leave the home now right to go get groceries i have to go to the office you know once or twice a week that's covid sprayed and we're all being very very careful i could just say look in my opinion that's good enough and office, you know, once or twice a week, that's COVID sprayed. And we're all being very, very careful. I could just say, look, in my opinion, that's good enough. And I'm, you know, I'm coming home every day. Do you meet her? The problem is that that's going to create so much friction and anger with my wife because she won't tolerate it. And then now what I'm trying to do

to help the kids is hurting because she's going bananas. And that's impacting the kids. You know, I don't know what to do. When you say what you're trying to do to help the kids is hurting, what are you trying to do to help the kids? By staying and supporting you as a co-parent. That's not hurting the kids. What's hurting the kids and what's hurting me. Okay.

What's hurting Barbie dolls in the, in the, what's hurting me is living with someone who's has so much contempt for me and feels that I am trying to control you by asking you to isolate with your family, which is what the governor is asking us to do. And I'm sorry that that doesn't work with your social plans, but this is a time that people are suffering. I can't argue with you anymore. No, but you are.

I'm saying I'm not happy about it. But you are, you are arguing. I have a choice. You were arguing as of yesterday. Okay. Okay. Well, my attorneys are telling me to leave because when she raged, she was beating herself up. She self-injures. Do we really want to go down this road? Well, I want you to understand why is it that I'm fighting you on this. But am I just self, am I just. Let me just stop you.

Let me stop you. Okay. You don't have to try and convince me. I'm not your lawyer, and you don't have to plead your case. You prefer for him to be in the home, even though you probably don't want him there either except for what he can do, right?

And he prefers to be elsewhere. Do you meet your girlfriend? No, but I want to. Of course. Okay, that's normal. You want to meet her. But you don't want to be there, but you're going to do it because,

all in all, it's the more responsible thing to do. In effect, it's a very strange thing, I'm going to tell you as a therapist. Your feelings for a moment don't really matter nearly as much. It's your sense of responsibility. It's simply you're doing things because practically it's the best thing to do at this moment. Neither of you are going to be pleased with it. If you can, at best, express the slightest appreciation for each other rather than pissing on each other as you do

and presenting the other in their worst versions, you don't need to worry about me thinking that you are that kind of a woman because I'm not paying attention to this, just so you know. What's painful for me to be characterized in the way that I'm being characterized is not because of any external view of it. It's because it feels like such a betrayal. Yes. I have been cooking for this man, three meals, like good meals a day and serving him with pleasure. And when he does something that hurts me and I get upset, he calls his lawyer. And it's just like, I don't understand. I just, to me, that just feels so contrary to trying to be peaceful together in this situation.

Like, I am grateful that he's here. And I tell him every day that I'm grateful. And he is so angry that he cannot see his girlfriend. And it's my fault. And I just, at what point is my children's safety, our children's safety? I just am asking him, please, to just surrender. This is the end of our marathon. This is the end. COVID will not be for the rest of his life.

And it's just, why do we have to have this, the end of our marathon be filled with contempt? It feels unnecessary to me. It feels like all I want is to honor these 25 years saying we got through this together with love and respect and honesty and authenticity. So I will suggest to you something a lot more modest. Yeah. No, I do not think at this moment that you're going to have love and respect and honesty. You haven't had it till now. You're not going to suddenly invent it.

At best, I am suggesting that you could be putting your fault lines on the side for a moment and just try to be the best team you can be for the job at hand. I can do that. It would be nice if you could each experience some form of acknowledgement from each other about what you are doing for each other. That would go a long way. You know, can I just have some appreciation for the fact that

I am managing these kids and their schedules and everybody's food and the cooking? Can I just get some acknowledgement? And his answer to me was every woman's doing this. I always tell you how much I appreciate what you do. I'm also managing my business is very challenging with my whole team scattered everywhere. But I'm grateful to you for that. But I'm not looking for attaboys every two seconds. But I give them to you because I do love you. I love you. I love you.

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so esther is your is your advice to me then because what i'm really challenged by is the contempt the contempt feels like poison to me because I haven't grieved the marriage. Who knows how long this has been going on in his head and not to me, right? This is all I feel shell-shocked. Is your advice to me to just be able to ignore the contempt and just almost like how at work there might be a person who hates me, but we still have to work together and just like barrel through. Is that your advice? I think it's a little bit more nuanced than that.

Yeah. The first thing I'm going to say is I'm going to repeat it. You're going to have to try and put your fault lines on the side and just simply talk from the place of two people who are managing a collaboration of a challenging situation that is quite scary not because of the immediate but just because the world that you've known the world that you have lived in till now the future that you've imagined the world you girls have known is no more and probably won't be the same that's coming back. And each of you are dealing with uncertainty and on top of it you have the certainty, uncertainty if you want, of what's happening to your relationship. A piece of it is ending,

you have no idea where it's going either you have no idea how your daughters will react to it once it happens right now it's a it's been told but but you're in the same house so what you're in another room you know you're there you wake up with them every day they see you and you're even more home than they than you've usually been when you get into your rapture, your contemptuous rapture together, you are losing touch with reality. You are frustrated, you're upset, you don't want to be there, and a part of you will need to not blame her for not being there. Not because you consciously are saying it's her fault, but because fundamentally you're trapped with her. You're not just trapped in your home because of

COVID. You're trapped with her and you feel like, you know, trapped in the house and trapped in the relationship. So kindness would go a long way. You don't have to like each other. You don't have to love each other. That's why get away with the big words, love, respect, friendship. You know, we're there.

You use the word and the next minute you punch, you know, you're doing a lot for each other. Both of you just acknowledge those and don't have to ask for it. And even more than acknowledging the thing that the other person did, thanks for cooking, it's, you know, that's very thoughtful of you. Acknowledge not just what the other person did, but who the other person is. You can't go around constantly, you know, telling her, the last thing I want to do is be here with you.

Even if you don't say a word, mister, your face is just oozing it. But you can't go around. And the last thing you're reminding him is, you would rather be anywhere than here with me. This dance in this moment, because you're only two, three weeks into it. You've got a few more weeks to go, if not months. Let's be realistic. Your girls are not going back to school in two weeks. And you're not going back to the office in two weeks. And you need to be able to talk with your friend here, this woman that you've been with for 25 years, and talk about the nerve

about running this company and trying to keep it going and talking with your workers. And you carry a lot. You're the boss of this company? Yeah. Okay. You carry a lot. That's an enormous amount of responsibility. He comes in my room at night to talk about-

That's great. What his emotions are. He had a death in his family. He's had ups and downs and he does come to me. That's wonderful. That's where you dare for each other. But depending on what's happening in his private life, which I'm not privy to, then suddenly like it turns ice cold. When it turns cold.

That's so painful. Yes. it turns ice cold. When it turns cold, that's so painful. Yes, but when it turns cold, you will have to basically, at this moment, not ask him to warm up, not ask him to explain, not get into reasoning with him about how he has no right.

You simply tell him, we have separate rooms. This is probably where you need to be at this moment. You're going to need to learn to stay away from each other and navigate being together apart. Esther Perel is the author of Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs, and also the host of the podcast Hell's Work.

Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise for Gimlet and Esther Perel Productions. If you or your partner's professional world has been turned upside down by COVID-19, and you're willing to share your story with us, please apply for a session at whereshouldwebegin.esterperel.com. Starting this month, Esther wants to speak to you on Facebook and YouTube as part of a series of conversations about this new normal, what it means for our relationships, and how we can move forward in a time of social distancing, uncertainty, and grief. To RSVP for the series and for more information, go to estherperel.com

slash lockdown.