Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - Good Relationships Need Better Fights

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Conflict is not toxic or immoral. In fact, it's generative and the lifeblood of our relationships. It isn't something to avoid. It matters, and it can even bring us closer together. Priya Parker, author of The Art of Fighting, joins Esther to dig into how conflict can be a productive force in our relationships rather than something to fear. For more about Priya Parker and The Art of Fighting visit https://www.priyaparker.com/ Also, please join me on Entre Nous, my new home on Substack for anyone who wants to live, love, and work with more connection and imagination. I invite you to sign up and become a free or paid member at estherperel.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Priya Parker, welcome to where should we begin. It's a treat to have you on the podcast. I don't often do interviews, but I work with couples and families and friends and co-founders and I deal with conflict so much of the time. And you just wrote this very, very special book on the art of fighting. And I love the fact that you call it an art. So that it's not just a technique, a mechanism, a set of skills. It has intuition in it.

It has artfulness in it. It has practice. Those are elements that come with art. And you work with groups primarily and families as well. I come from groups, but then I moved to families and then to pairs, mostly couples, romantic couples, but also friends and colleagues and co-founders. And there is a timeliness to your book that I really want to highlight because you'd look at conflict, not as something toxic or immoral, but in fact as something very generative,

as the fact that it is the blood life of a relationship, that it means it matters, that one is willing to duke it out and get in there and articulate. What is me? What is you? What matters to me? What matters to us? What are we really about? You focus on a particular kind of conflicts, because I think the subject is so vast. Who hasn't been in conflict? Who hasn't had conflict? Who hasn't caused strife, been a recipient to strife, or witnessed tears and disruptions of trust and so forth?

So in our society where we are so often so polarized and so divisive, anyone who tries to do good and to create something that is pro-social and generative about bringing us together and helping us with the fragility of our connections, For me, it's a real honor to be with you. I am deeply, deeply honored. If you listen to where should we begin,

you know that relationships are undergoing a massive cultural shift. We've never been more connected and we have never felt more disconnected. We crave understanding, collective experience. We want to be seen, but we're optimizing for isolation. I believe that the only way to improve our relationships is to remember the basics of being together. This is why I'm inviting you to join me for an immersive experience, my international tour. Strangers, Friends and Lovers is starting in Australia this December with dates in Sydney,

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Kampari liqueur, 24% Alphi. Alcohol by Volume 48 proof. 2026, Compari America, New York, New York. Please enjoy responsibly. Art of fighting. First of all, it's a glorious title. Thank you. That is the title of your new book.

It comes after the art of gathering. And so the first thing is just the fact that you think of it as artful, not as a technique, not as a set of skills. That's all part of it. But that you are talking about an art, which is something that is acquired, but that demands intuition. the senses, practice, etc. So the art of gathering was a book that really entered my head. I am a

gatherer, but I had never done it with the kind of intentionality that you brought to it. I no longer have any gathering without saying, why are we here? What is the purpose? So you enter my head. But you're a deeply intuitive gatherer, and you always have been. You're a beautiful gatherer. You were doing many of those things. You host, you host with intention, you connect people, you don't assume. that they're going to know what to do. So maybe I helped give language to it, but you already were a very skilled gatherer. And I think a joyful one.

I think that's correct. I did it, but you added a layer, that's what I said, the layer of intentionality of awareness of craft, that made me even a better one. Thank you. Now I want to use your book to become a better fighter. I am a fighter.

But I like the notion that you can be a better fighter. I like the idea that there is constructive and destructive conflict, but I love the subtitle of the book, which is the transformative power of conflict. And the idea that conflict is not toxic, it's not immoral, it's not a lack of responsibility. O'Contrere, it is the prime expression of the fact that something matters. Beautifully sad.

So I read and I just underlined lines that, that spoke to me because they said what I live, what I do in a slightly different context, but not really. We both work on relationships. We are focused on human connection, which involves expectations, ruptures, repairs, and I would say the art of ending. Absolutely. The art of ending, because this is a question that so many people bring in a more overt way to a relationship therapist than to a conflict facilitator. It's okay in a couple to say, you know, shall I stay or shall I go, is it time to end?

Whereas with groups, there's more... We don't have language for it. No, and they're more maneuvers, underground maneuvers. And there's single exits. A group can break in a thousand different ways. It can be split, you know, clean in the middle as some churches are, but it can also be silent exits.

here and there, we, we, I often look to couples therapy and so much of your work over the last two decades because you, though you work on marriage, on couples, so much of your work is actually about relationship and connection. Your context, to my, to me, your context, you locate within the couple. But the work you do is about human connection and thriving and individuation and how much of us do How much do we give of ourselves and alter of ourselves and where do we stand in our ground? I mean, when you work with couples, you often can make a divide between couples that are conflict avoidant and couples that are enmeshed in negative escalations. And you call it unhealthy. Peace.

Peace and unhealthy heat. Right. I love it. It's a beautiful metaphor. But I wonder how you came to the problem. concept of unhealthy? I come from a family on both sides. I'm biracial and bicultural. You know this. You've met my mother. And I'm half Indian, half white American. And in both family lineages, for the most part, I think there was an unspoken belief that good people don't fight. And I write about this in

the art of fighting, one of my earliest memories of this message was I was sitting in my, in Jessup, Iowa at my grandfather's funeral. Yes, yes, yes. And the minister rose to say, to give the eulogy for his funeral. And he said, in 50 years of marriage, they've never had a fight. They've never had a fight. Now let me enact the second part. And then the mother-in-law comes, stepmother.

Step-mother, whispers in your ears, that's not such a great thing. Exactly. And she is not, she is somebody, my father's second wife, is not somebody who is conflict-averse. And I remember both that the virtue, that this was the story in my family, that good people don't fight. In fact, I texted my father later to see if he, if I remembered it correctly. And he sent me like the most dad text back. Can I read it? Because I actually don't. So I texted him, dad, dad, do you remember? Is that true? You never, they never fought?

And he said, I think that is true. The last fight my dad had was in the South Pacific during World War II. He won that one and did not need to do it again. Dad. Wow. And so I grew up and my parents, I've spoken about this, my parents divorced. And when they separated, everyone in. including me, was shocked because they never fought.

And so I learned that just because they're not fighting doesn't mean that there's not pain or anger or disagreement. And at some level, they were so afraid of burning the house down that they lost their spark. So in our language, one would say, when you are conflict avoidant, you also blow block differentiation or you block what is one of the things that you look at as essential to conflict, which is that it helps us define who we are and what matters to us. Yes. I, you know, I think of conflict. I'm a conflict resolution facilitator. That's my profession. And I've come to think of conflict as relevance. People don't fight about the things they don't care about. That's correct.

And so when we, as in my family, I think we should repeat that sentence. So I've come to think of conflict to reframe it in my own head as relevance, as mattering. People don't fight about the things they don't care about. And they also don't fight with people they don't care about. And I'm not actually talking about, you know, screaming at strangers on the internet. The central question of the art of fighting is how do we fight with those we want to belong? to. And growing up, I didn't know what that looked like. Actually, you say it even more precisely. You say to close the gap between loneliness and

belonging is to go through the conflict that is the maturation process. I mean, that may not be exactly your words, but that's how I remember it. And I just thought you've connected three things here. Loneliness, belonging, and the bridge in between is the ability, to navigate conflict? I started thinking about the art of fighting, the summer of 2020. And I wrote, The Art of Gathering came out in 2018. And the summer of 20, as you remember, it was the first summer of the pandemic. There was a racial reckoning.

It was return to office, return. And so there's all of these battles raging for a lot of different reasons. And I'm a conflict resolution facilitator. And so I was inside many of those reckonings professionally. I was on those little zooms, the little small squares. You know, I'd log in. I'd see 80 faces inside zooms. And part of what, and I was brought in, I'm not a lawyer.

So the lawyers would come in to figure out the legal stuff, but the facilitators are brought in to basically do, they don't call it this, but group therapy, right? Restitching the social fabric. And so much of what I saw that summer was that we don't have the skills or tools to know how to hold a fight. And so I brought in this language of healthy heat, in part because what I saw in so many of these organizations was that we oscillate between no one's saying anything and then people either rage quitting or burning the house down. Or splitting. Or fragmenting. Or fragmenting, right? And actually, there was one of the symptoms of that was there was a lot of union movements to unionize that summer.

And many people, including in those unions, would often tell me one of the reasons where unionizing is because this is one of the only structures that exist for us to be heard. And many of the problems that we have within our company don't actually aren't what unionizing is for. And so we don't have the skills and structures in regular life to fight well. And so I wanted to begin to explore my, the art of fighting was my journey to explore where are people who are doing this well? Where are restaurants that realize there's conflicts every night of service? How do we actually learn how to repair quickly every night? How do we hold games so that we get the release valve out? Where are companies, where are friend groups that have learned to do this well?

And also everywhere is messy. And so how do we begin to ask the questions of how do we fight and how do we hold heat? in the most meaningful relationships of our life. So it's interesting. I did a course last year on conflict in couples. And I also read Amanda Ripley like you because she is one of the guides on this, what is good conflict or constructive conflict? What are defeating strategies?

For example, couples who have negative conflict. destructive conflict, escalations, of repetitions, of the same stuff over and over again with what we call kitchen sinking.

We start to discuss our disagreement about what we were going to do tonight and it becomes a story about the last 22 years of kitchen sinking. And every other thing

that has ever been a disagreement between us enters into the same butt. That's one of the things. Then we go into totalistic thinking.

You always, you never. Then we go into... This is so great. It's mapping. One of the people I spent time with is a wonderful facilitator. You also know Prentice Hemphill. Yes.

And one of the things Prentice told me is we're often having the wrong fight. And the job of the facilitator or the person in the group with some group intelligence is to help us have the right fight. Yeah. What is the issue underneath the issue? Yes. And what do we actually need to talk about? I'll give a simple example.

I had a, you know, I think all of us, if we look at the concept of friendship. And I, I, I, in the book, I talk about groups of friends who have been friends for 30 years. And then all of a sudden they hop on a Zoom during the pandemic and realize half of have stayed in their hometown, half have moved abroad or outside of the town. And they realize like, they don't have anything in common anymore. And not only that, half of them think the pandemic is real and half of them don't. And oh, by the way, half of them are at Black Lives Matters rallies. as white women and half of them think those are deeply, quote unquote, dangerous movements. And it just sort of all came to the surface.

And part of why I think looking at friendship in this conversation is interesting is because we all have friends and we think that friendship should just be fun. But actually in modern life, friendship is one of the most important relationships we have. And there's all sorts of wear and tear in friendship, but there's so little language for it. I had a friend of mine who I'd been friends for years. She was one of my closest friends. And we didn't live in the same city for a period of time. And we'd always text.

And she was sort of in my psyche. And I saw her at one point. And then a few weeks later, just radio silence. And I would text and I wouldn't hear back. Or I'd text some funny thing, you know, some vivy thing, some meme, some inside joke. and I'd get a one-word response. All right, so you knew. And I was like, uh-oh.

So then for a little bit, I tried to like poke around. Is she okay? I asked other friends. Like, they were hearing from her. I was like, okay, it's me. Then you ask, is there something? And then you wait to see, am I going to get a real answer, or am I going to get a skirting around?

And exactly. And I got a skirting around. And so then I went through this, I mean, I felt silly almost at the time, but I went through this like five-month grieving period of just kind of in my own head. I mean, it wasn't inaccurate, but I'd lost something. I'd lost my friend. And one day I got a text from her, and I talked to my husband about it. I talked to my friends about, you know, I'm sort of going through this ending by myself. And one day I heard from her, I just, I heard a sort of chirpy text and she said something like, it's been a while. We should catch up.

And I felt such rage. We don't need a catch up. We don't need a catch up. We need a real conversation. Yes. And now my question to you is at that moment, do you want to engage in the conversation? Or do you want to say, I just spent quite a bit of time letting go of you. And now you're coming.

So I care, but I am more angry in this moment than my care. And there, right? That kind of, this is conflict. This is conflict. And the first conflict is an internal conflict. Right. And so I had to ask myself those questions. Do I want this? Also, there's a bit of like, oh, now you're coming back. Right? Like, oh, wait, I've had the lower hand for the last six months. Now, okay, how do I respond? And I had to go through my own set of questions. Actually, the word here is grudge. Right? Now you want, after all this, I'm not so sure. Or, No, like the Italians do, right? Totally. And that's the grudge, a grudge, which is a word that I didn't see in your book, by the way. But it is so prevalent in the world of conflict.

And I almost think of a grudge physically, like if I'm thinking of somatically as a body of like a, it's sort of a, it's just a piece of like mass that needs to be opened up. It's like a piece of density. Yeah, it's an abscess. And in this moment, I mean, this was in microsome. seconds. In that moment, I was more relieved to hear her. I was also, I was, I was, I was mad. I was all of the things. Like I, I, you know, it was like, welcome to the mess. Welcome to the mess of our many feelings. And I thought about it. And at that point, honestly, I had gone so through my own grieving process that I was sort of out of the other side. And, and I, and I wrote back. And again, I'm a

facilitator. I thought very deeply about what is I want to say. And I decided, first, I have a choice, do I want to face or not? And what are the questions I go through of whether or not I want to engage and you don't have to respond right away. But then I thought, I really actually want to know what happened. I feel kind of dumbfounded. And so, but I don't want to pretend. Do you think in that moment, what did I do? Oh, I thought for six months, what did I do? So you do ask yourself deeply, you know, what did I do? And that also is in the realm of conflict. Who's responsible for the tear? Yes. Right? Is it me? Yes. Do I instantly think what did I do? Or do I instantly think what did you do to me? Yes. In that case, yes. In that case, yes.

What did I do in part because the action was from the other side? What did I do? And then, you know, you sort of make up these stories and you head, well, you know, whatever it is, it couldn't be this bad. So I, this is, so I even, I texted back and I said, I don't know about you, but I've experienced a huge change and loss in our friendship. And maybe I said and have a lot of grief around it. I don't think we need a catch-up as much as a, and I use the word clearing. And that's a term that I learned from a facilitator friend of mine. And she, you know, you see the three ellipses, the three dots.

She responded right away and she said, thank you so much for the good words to her credit. I'm up for that. Nice. Let's do a clearing. And that's just the pre. And then the anger. I mean, if you talk about the physical. of conflict, something goes down in that moment.

Yes. Because we are back again in a shared reality. Yes. And there's an exchange. Yeah. Right? I threw the ball. She actually first threw the ball.

I caught it. I thought about what did I want to, what shape did I want to throw it back in? What did I want to say? How do I want to be? How much vulnerability do I want to show her? And then I threw it back to her and she caught it. And so part of what that entire process was was actually the pre-conflict resolution. And in the art of fighting, I have 10 chapters.

Only one of them is the actual facing. It's called The Room Where It Happens. And that's because fighting, we have such a narrow concept of the fight, right? It's actually all of the things you're talking about. So it's so interesting, I would never even call it pre. To me, this is a part of this. It is a part of it. It's like four play is not four.

You know, it's part of the play. Yes. So, you know, what I experience when you describe, this. It's like she threw the thing. I could, I caught it. I could have done so many different things with it. I allowed it to enter me. I remembered why I love her. She's my friend. I decided not to spew. I then send it back to her. There's so many moments here where it can derail. Yes. The fragility of it all. You know, that's why it's the art of fighting. Because at any moment, you could lose a 20 year friendship here that has been so important in your life.

and that's why we need the art of fighting. And we don't have scripts. You're right. Every moment is a threat. Every moment is an opportunity to either be misunderstood. Or to escalate. Or to make it worse. Or to provoke the other into battling.

Or to switch from good conflict or healthy conflict to unhealthy heat. And I reverse it to. And all of the above. And I think part of, you know, when I, if I, If I were to distill all of the art of fighting underneath, like, what is the core, what is a core concept that is deeply important in fighting with the people we love? It's, and I did this in that moment, because I had a lot of it, is tapping into your relational longing for the person, despite your anger.

And seeing if you can tap into, even if you're mad, right, your, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. residual desire for connection. So in couples' work, we call it switching affect from the reactivity to the reflectivity, from anger to longing. Interesting. That is the, if you stay in the fighting, because behind every criticism is a wish. A veiled wish. Wow. Beautiful.

You know, you never, you always, I can't believe. is I wish, I was hoping, I wanted. Yes. I longed for. How did you not? There's a longing. But when people come, so the interesting thing is you said, fighting with the people you love.

But you, I work with fighting with people who love each other or ones did. You work with people who may love a cause in common, but not necessarily each other. Yes, beautifully said. And so when I say a group you want to belong. to, I actually mean quite widely. And I'm looking at teams. I look at 150-year-old swimming club. I look at the Seattle Seahawks. I look at families. I look at all the Bernie Man founders. I look at any group, because in modern life, we choose our groups that you actually want to belong to. And part of the danger of it is it's a lot easier to leave. And so part of what we are so unscathed, we are so unscathed,

filled by is we actually think we think conflict is dysfunctional or like, you know, there's so much group drama and, you know, I'm saying that in quotes, or why, you know, good, again, good groups don't fight. Oh, we are so dysfunctional. I hear that when I get a phone call. There's some reckoning or just a moment of change in a group or organization. I'm sorry, we're so dysfunctional, right? There's so much shame. And yet, if you look at group theory, groups can't form without a fight. Because the fight helps them determine what they are about. Yes. What is the common denominator? Who are we? How do we do this? What are we about? Do we meet on Thursdays or Wednesdays? That's, in a lot of groups, by the way, reckonings happen when someone tries to change the schedule

because they think it's just a small logistical thing. But actually, it has to do with, one, everyone else's schedule, people can actually leave. But also, time. impacts identity. Or time is power. Whoever decides about... Time is power. I love the work of Howard Markman. And what he looks at is the hidden agendas.

And so he said at one point, it's not so much what you're fighting about, the time, but what you're fighting for. And he has about seven categories, but three of them, to me, are really... In most relational systems, I work with those will take me a long way. people fight for power and control.

Whose decisions matter most? Who gets to make the decision? Whose priorities go first? People fight for care and closeness. Trust. Do you have my back? Can I rely on you? Will you stand up for me?

And people fight for respect and recognition. Do you value me? Do I matter? And they can be fighting about 20 other things. I'm smiling because everything you said, power, interests, priority, relevance, trust. That is why there's so much conflict in gatherings. Because weddings, wedding planning, big 30th anniversary of companies, right? Funerals brings all of this up.

Who should we invite? What is this about? Who gets stage time? What is the story of our company over the last 25 years? Who sits next to who? Who sits next to who? Who's coming closer to the table of honor? And people often ask.

Who gets to do a speech? Yes. Who's giving the toast? Who's a bridesmaid? Who's a grooms person? Did you get invited to her 60th? Did you get invited to 75th? Oh, right?

And so people often say, you're a conflict resolution facilitator. Why are you so interested in gatherings? Or what's the relationship between the art of gathering? Because gatherings bring up all of the unresolved. stuff that becomes further for the conflict. And gatherings and the planning of gatherings force us to have conversations we often avoid

because they're forcing mechanisms. And I talk about this in the art of fighting. Often in groups, it's actually moments of joy that bring up conflict. Weddings, the first baseball game of the season, the lineup for the opera, who's first chair. Why are we fighting? It should be such a great occasion.

A happy moment. We have to take a brief break, so stay with us. And let's see where this goes. Support for where should we begin comes from Nutrafol. Nutrophol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand, and it's the number one hair growth supplement brand personally used by dermatologists.

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Because when caring for a baby comes with so many little decisions, you need products you can trust. Your peace of mind starts with Honest. Shop Honest on Amazon, Walmart, and Target. So I want to do one thing just because I think it'll be so. interesting. Like you, I get a ton of letters and people asking me questions and wanting to know what do I do. And so I picked a couple and I thought, because my first thing when I receive a question is, what catches my attention? What am I noticing here? So this is a where should we

begin listener from Quebec. We are two women who've known each other for more than 15 years. one of us, actually it's written in the third, so I'm going to read it to you as is. One repeatedly reaches out. The other says she wants the friendship too, but often disappears for months, sometimes even a year. Eventually, the first woman sends an angry voice message and now both feel hurt and misunderstood. I did years of where should we begin, couples without thinking about friendship pairs. And then I began with the friendship of two young men, and then I did a whole series. Because in effect, you know, your friends will accompany you often for many more years than your romantic partner.

Yes, yes. They're deeply precious relationships and more and more. When we also choose who we spend time with friends, friends from most people, friendships are more important than in centuries past. It's also the first free choice relationship for any child. So with, with, you know, dear listener, first, when I was doing research for this new book about fighting, one of the things I found that was so interesting to me was one of the most important elements of all group life and all long-term friendship is perceived reciprocity. and explain so that we at least perceive that there's shared weight in this friendship, there's shared joy, there's shared labor.

And in groups of friends or in groups of any kind, the groups that last for a long time, and this is from small group dynamics, are the groups where every member feels like they're meaningfully contributing to it. And the group is giving to them. Exactly. And if we take that and distill it down to a friendship, the same is true. And so you are going to come to don't feel badly about saying something. At some level, at some time, you can think about how you said it, but at some time someone's got to give.

Because relationships where there's not shared reciprocity don't last. And so it was an act of connection, invention, inventing. invitation to say something. And the invitation becomes, how do you say it in a way that is hearable to her? And to become curious about why it is that she may disappear for years at a time. And if you can get to a place where you can have a conversation and really hear her, that doesn't mean that you are willing to then hold her not, hold her disappearing for a year. You then have to have an opportunity to either say, I need more, and she has an opportunity to alter herself for you, or this doesn't work for me in this way. And there might be a loosening

of the friendship. There might be an ending of it. But just like couples have the DTR, that define the relationship, you and your friend are unstable because you are not carrying weight. It doesn't have to look the same, but you're not carrying weight. You're not both carrying water in this relationship. I actually would like to add another word. Please. It is love. Because not in all groups do you need love. You need companion compatibility. You need cooperation. You need companionship. But friendship involves love. and the reciprocity that I care about you more than you care about me. You matter to me more in my life than I seem to matter in yours. But I had an interesting moment of this recently where a friend of mine has been a little bit more out of touch.

And I thought, you know, I've had such a hard year. I thought you could call me a little more often. And then I kind of said, you know, we haven't had much contact in the last months, but I'm looking forward to seeing you when I travel soon. And then she said, I've had something happen to me with such and such. And I just thought to myself, you know, you never know. We're all over the center of our own stories. I'm thinking, oh, I'm feeling a little rejected.

But then I realized maybe I'm not the only one who's gone through something. Exactly. That is reciprocity too. It is reciprocity. And listening and then widening ourselves for each other. And I also think, you know, they're in modern life. you can kind of theoretically keep having other friends, like there's always other people out there. But that in and of itself also gets very lonely. And so I would also say, go for it. Go for the

conversation in part because every relationship is messy. And you, you know, friendship shouldn't be a net drain. If you're always in a fight that's probably also a sign that this may not be the right fit in this moment. But finding a way to see if you can come together ideally in person or on the phone, not over text, to talk and listen to each other. When this woman sends a message that is angry, it almost feels to me that she's helping herself leave. I mean, part of a fight, that is something that we, and I say we, I'm thinking about primarily couples therapists, pay attention to is that it's easier to leave someone you're angry at. Absolutely. Than to leave someone when you are in touch with how much you miss them. That's a different concept of the fighting.

It's a fighting as a distance instigator. One of the concepts I have at the last third of the art of fighting is how to leave and also. So when do groups die? Yes, yes. And I write about... It's a great chapter. Thank you. I write about what I call the connected goodbye.

Yes. And it's exactly the idea. It's so easy to slam the door. But there are so many opportunities to actually say goodbye while holding hands metaphorically. The connected goodbye is conscious uncoupling. Yeah, it is. It's really... It's the other term for the same, which is we end,

but we're not going to shit on everything that preceded because it's going to make it look like none of this mattered, mattered in the past. None of this had any meaning for you that you, instead of, I leave, it reached an end, but I take with me that which it was and what it gave to all of us. This mattered, you matter. This is a parallel process between groups. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And when you don't have a moment to say goodbye, you actually sort of drag it with you. It allows, it creates space, not unlike a romantic relationship. It creates space for new relationships. new friendships, new jobs, new positions in your life. In dating life, it creates a space for not meeting someone and telling them all the horrible things about your ex. Exactly. Here's the thing.

This is a very good book, first of all. It has so much of what we're talking about and so much more. And there is not a person that has not experienced conflict. Between us and others and internally. We didn't even talk that much about internal conflict. between the generations. And one thing specifically that you highlighted that I really want to speak to,

even though we won't dig into it, is that something fundamental has changed in relationships that is changing conflict, which is that for most of history, we lived in relational systems that were deterministic. We didn't choose them. We were part of them.

Yes. For be it religion, community, ethnic, group, family, you went in, and relationships were tight knots. Yes. You couldn't get out. Yes. So when you can't get out, the culture finds a system to have a release valve. Yes.

It creates times and places for people to come clean, to be accountable, for their debts to be excused, for apologies to be made, for Majlis to be created, where we settle dispute and we come to reflect for Yom Kippur to exist, where we make amends to be. today the burden is on us. It is. And we have the choice to be in and out of relationships. We've gone from tight knots to lose threads, but we don't have the skills.

Or the rituals or the shared rituals. That's correct. That's correct. Thank you. Thank you. To do that. And I think that your book enters into that gap. I hope so.

You know, of what we don't have that is not transmitted to us. You get it. Intergenerational and culturally. and that we have to decide to do ourselves. How do I have this conversation? Yes. And how do we have these conversations? We are in the midst of our session.

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Go to MyAloy.com and use the code Esther to get 20% off your first order. Your menopause specialized doctor will help you build a skincare plan for your needs. Plus, you get $0 unlimited messaging with your doctor. That's M-Y-A-L-L-O-Y.com with code Esther to get 20% off your first order. This code is valid on products only. These are compounded products not subject to FDA approval. So I want to read the last sentence from your book because I have another thought. Because I thought it was just so beautiful. I don't even know in what chapter it was. But it says like this. The artful fighter, first of all, it's beautiful. An artful fighter

pays close attention to the need of the group and formulates the right question to help the clouds, pregnant with rain, release and water the earth. The right question asked and answered in each other's presence helps a group, and I will add a relationship, a couple of family, metabolize itself. I think that any true experts is an expert on questions, often more than on answers. That's what I think you are.

And then I thought, since I am the couples therapist. And I know that you have a very charismatic, assertive husband. And you are both publishing books at the same time. We are. We are. Now you're really raising the heat. Do they need my help?

Can I be part of the reciprocity? Wow, wow, wow. I mean, absolutely. And I thought, you know, let's call Anna. Wow. And, you know, this is where should we begin? Just between us. Monsieur Anand.

Wow. Wow. Wow. You thought you could only get one side of the story. I said, I saw him perform a bit of jealousy. And I thought it can't just be a performance only. Wow. So I thought, since we've been talking for an hour about conflict,

and the timeliness of a book about conflict at this moment, at a time when so many of us often just flake out rather than take on the matters and show how much we care, can I be of any help to the two of you? I know you, I love you dearly. You know, two books at the same time may create some kind of conflict, even if it's a mixture between compersion and the joy for each other's successes and jealousy or envy.

And I thought, let me just ask you. How can I be of service, as they say? I have no idea what you're talking about. Only completely and unreservedly. Sorry, let me read the statement more closely. Priya, can you email me the statement again? It is, look, it is such a funny situation. Yeah.

Because it is literally, I think for both of us, the situation in which we are the most. most happy for the other, not just this one, but any time you are putting something out in the world. And we are such, you know, some couples live very separate work lives at least or very separate all kinds of lives. But we are really enmeshed in each other's work. I think what I write would be very different without Priya's influence and feedback and rounds of edits and whatever else. I think she would probably say the same. Deeply.

And at the same time, we. We did end up in this slightly awkward situation, or very awkward situation, where we have these twin books coming out in the same month. It was not our plan. Our publisher thought it was originally giving the same day. Oh, my God. Yeah. That was the first fight. We fought and used all of our clout and power.

Priya writing some very strong art of fighting informed emails to get them separated by three weeks. Separate us. You must separate us. Man in the mirror and the art of- And I'll tell you how I feel about it in a second, but I think, because I do know where I am. But what was really interesting when we actually were trying to even just get them separated or maybe by a longer period was we were quite aligned on why and how, you know, how demanding it is when you create something that like a family is putting something in the world. Our kids are part of putting this in the world in a way. And we think of it that way.

I know you and Jack think of your creative projects that way. And part of what came back to us is how many people don't see it that way in the world? That's so true. Right? How many people really kind of view you or view people as kind of these individual market nodes? Or how much they saw it as a power maneuver of which book is more important, which author deserves more rather than an attempt by two people to create. differentiation so that each can get the attention that they deserve.

And yes, and honestly, it was not each of us trying to get maximize attention. That's not the constraint. Not from the outside, from each other and from your family. Exactly. Yes, exactly. And it was how many, how demanding are we being on our friends? Like you, I think of you very much like this, we are people who I think give a lot to our community.

And then at certain moments, we ask a lot about community. and we think that's what community is. And so how many times in a month are you asking your friends to do some outlandish thing for you? I'm not concerned about like both of us being on CBS this morning. But it was sort of haunting, I think, both of us.

I was just like, are we going to be people who are just like draining our community and begging for too many things from people we care about who love us but maybe won't love us at the end of this fall? So that was the feeling. Now, you know, I think what's really interesting is we really do have a lot of compersion that I love that word for each other's success in this way. I once had a friend asked me like, it must be hard for you, you know, seeing Priya do so well.

And I was like so confused by the question. I didn't understand. It just didn't track for me. But I think there are moments when, you know, in the last few months of just putting. all of this together. Like, I got, we got a few, I got a few emails, Priya may have gotten some, like, we can't have you on the show, but, you know,

but at least we had Priya or, like, hopefully having Priya as a consolation prize. And so what's, again, interesting is, wow. We are, we are two people. Sometimes a publisher will say, well, you're your own people, you know. And then sometimes a show might say,

well, we've had you so we can't have the other. The world has a very confused attitude to what a couple is. And the last thing I'll say is, I think what, obviously in the history of the world, the couple where two people were engaged in the world in this way and both doing things is a relatively new invention. Can I ask you a question, Anna? Yeah. What's one thing that you have learned from Priya or by living with Priya about the way you handle conflict? Many, many, many things.

I think at an instinctual level I have more of an orientation of, I'm not connected to Italy by ancestry, but I have a little more of a Sicilian kind of orientation, right? That I will do anything for people I consider my people to ends that are completely not helpful to me or even... But one should not be on your bad side. Yeah.

And that and that, And that's true for me. That's true of people who are unkind to people I care about. It's certainly true by kids. I think Priya's brain, partly because of her upbringing, goes to the place of let me think about the story of why that might be plausible for that person or why that might make sense for that person.

It is always looking for, you know, that story. Translation. Translation. And I think that makes us sometimes better and worse situated or positioned for different things that come up in life. It may sound to the listener like prayers approaches the more humane, wonderful, and it is. It is. I'm willing to concede that.

But, you know, sometimes you're in a situation that actually is a protection situation. Yeah. You know, sometimes you're in a situation that is an understanding situation. And I think, you know, I understand the world, process the world, as, you know, a lot of what goes on is not, Fair and just. Yeah. You know, it's interesting.

When you were talking, I thought, what are the words that are coming up for me as I listen to you? And if we had one more hour, you know, I would be talking about vindictiveness, vengeance. We had the word grudge. There are all parts of conflict life, you know, that you see in groups, in families, in friendships, in personalities, restitutive justice, retributive justice, you know, all, it's like such a vast world when you look at the world of conflict, which is related to the world of connection and disconnection. But it's a, this thing of don't mess with me, I am, because the don't mess with me is often on the other side, fiercely loyal, like what you will do for your people, that, but one should not be on your bad side,

because then you get the flip side of that. And I think all of that to me is in my world part of conflict. I mean, absolutely. I think what's also interesting about both Anand De Nye and I in different ways is, I mean, most people don't know we're married. I mean, they now do because of you. But most people don't know we're married. And most people would think that our work is very different,

but the people who really know actually realize that Anand Denei have shared questions. And there is such complimentary. in the way that you are approaching those questions. And as I listen to even the words you're using around conflict, his book, his new book, is a book about conflict and about belonging, man in the mirror. It's literally called Man in the Mirror

after a Michael Jackson song that because it's a story of a black, mentally ill, homeless man who entered a subway screaming threats and a white former Marine who took out his earpots. stood up, put him in a, like a, what's the word? A chokehold.

A chokehold and killed him. And that case became a war shack test for America. What do you see in that moment? And Man in the Mirror is a narrative nonfiction. It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of work that asks these questions of what happens in a city and what are all of the things that are not happening? to allow for a moment a tragedy like that on the subway. And so much of what Man in the Mirror is, I mean, in a way, man in the mirror, he is,

it's a 10-week court trial that Onond is in as a journalist every single day to look at what should justice be, who decides, what are our collective rituals, what should be done with mental illness, what should be done with homelessness. And so in many ways, I mean, part of the reasons why we wanted the book separated is because both of them are entire worlds unto themselves and men in the mirror is also deeply about conflict and belonging. So I want to say something as a parting word. It's interesting. I once wanted to write an article about creative couples, not stable couples, not lasting couples, creative couples. Don't worry, so we're not stable or lasting, but we are creative.

There is a third door. Not fine. And then I interviewed like almost a hundred people. And I never wrote the piece, actually. But I have all the notes. But two of the main things that kept coming back was creative couples are couples where there is a deep sense of admiration. Not respect only, but admiration.

Because admiration involves a certain kind of idealization. you look up to someone that you admire. And in that sense, each person is kind of able to see the otherness and appreciate that otherness. It's not just, you know, compersion. I mean, it involves that, but it involves difference in its midst, which is what conflict tries to address. It addresses difference.

And then the second part was the celebration of the other person's freedom in order to be able to be invested in something that is entirely there. there needs to be a space, a freedom for that person to engage in that. Beautiful. And I just want to leave you with that because I felt both of those things right now. And one of the things for me that always highlighted that is that if I meet a couple, and instead of talking about themselves, the person actually talks about the work of their partner, the work, the accomplishment, the merit, something that they admire that, you know,

you're meeting me, but you should meet. my wife or you should meet my partner, that that is one of those signs where you recognize that you're in that realm of the creative pair. So you have for me that. I feel that way. And I really, I, one of the great things that happened in my life is meeting Priya and knowing within approximately three hours that I wanted to marry her, which was a pretty fast thing. And part of why I knew that, I didn't know so much about it. I didn't know, you know, one percent of what I know now. But I did know something that has to do with this conversation about, I don't know, there was something about a way of looking at people and situations that granted them a kind of humanity that a lot of

people don't. And I think that has been a through line of Priya's life. I think she had no choice at a certain point in life, but to behave with really exaggerated granting a faith in people.

And that has become, for some people, that kind of bad situation just remains a bad situation or a trauma. I think for Priya, it became a superpower. And And, you know, I'm not embarrassed to say.

I think one of the biggest differences between us is at the heart of what the art of fighting is arguing, which is sometimes for me when I feel really hurt by someone or I feel like there's not reciprocity or all the things that happen. I'm just ready to say, you know what, maybe it's not meant to be. Maybe we don't need to, you know. And there's a lot of fish. to see, that kind of thing. And Priya, really, not just in a book, not just in a thesis, Priya really tries with people.

She really, really tries with people. She doesn't roll over for them, but she tries to talk. She tries to understand in her own head. She tries to ask. She tries to have the conversation. She just, I think, at some level, deeply believes in trying,

and look, the art of gathering helped a lot of people do a lot of things, some trivial, some very important, and everything in between. But I think this is on a different level. This is about, to me, given what I work on, I would say this is about whether we can do a society or not. Yeah, I know you were going to say that. Anand, I was holding Priya's hand because I wanted her to receive what you We're just saying.

And she's often in the giving role and in the doing role. So I think it's a beautiful thing for her to just sit and have her eyes wet and have you lavish on her. See you soon. See you. Bye. Where should we begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Neurrell.

Newsom, Destri Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julianette. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of where should we begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul. This family is on the brink of Civil War. Mobland. The hit original series is now streaming on Paramount Plus. We are the Hurricanes.

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