Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - You're Inching Me Out

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

This is a classic session, from the first season of How's Work? They were mates in university before co-founding a successful communications company. They still work together from different coasts, but they barely speak. One wants to move on; the other is grasping for his former friend. Neither can find the words to talk about it. Esther’s two new courses on desire are now available inside The Desire Bundle. Go to https://www.estherperel.com/course-bundles/the-desire-bundle to learn more about Bringing Desire Back and Playing with Desire. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you are about to hear is a classic session of Howe's Work with Esther Perel. Howe's Work is a one-time unscripted counseling session focused on work. For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names, employers, and other identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices and their stories are real. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Klaviyo. Klaviyo powers smarter digital relationships. You know that feeling when your favorite brand really gets you,

when each product they unveil makes it feel like they were really listening. You can deliver that feeling to your customers every time. Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more. Over 150,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers.

Make every moment count with Klaviyo and learn more at klaviyo.com. I think the sort of hilarious irony really is that for two people who run a communications company, we are both like drastically terrible at communicating. They had been together for 13 years as business partners, as close friends that I had met in college, that stumbled upon this new idea that turned into a very successful business that is on a number of continents and bi-coastal. And the business is actually doing really well and the relationship is sinking. The kind of the single most stressful thing in my working life, if not life,

are the challenges with our relationship. I just feel continually undermined. The job has always been that place where I've been needed and I feel important. A lot of the people that work for me are like an extension of my family. There's no doubt that your emotional and relational dowry comes with you to work. Imagine going to work every day in a really busy place

and no one will make eye contact with you. I mean, it feels like a breakup. It doesn't feel. It is. So, how's work? Four years they've been sitting with this. And so the ask was big. It was A, about just opening up the conversation, B, about what actually needed

to be talked about, and C, what was a potential resolution that they could both engage in. But the conversation was so hard for them that I understood why it took them four years. And it wasn't just hard for them. It was hard for me as well, because they kept unconsciously saying, we need to talk about this, but then did everything possible to not talk about this. There's sort of two aspects to it for me. One is the relationship,

and then the other is the sort of the business and what we both, our roles and what we both bring to the business. I'd like to be able to get to a point where we can have a way of being able to... Which one keeps you awake at night? I mean, a couple of months ago, it was kind of quite bad. But which one? The business or the relationship?

Well, the business is fine, really. So I'd say it's probably... That's one thing you agree on, is that both of you are preoccupied by the fissures of your relationship. Yeah, I'd say when I look at what we've achieved together and I look at where we've come from, it seems so sad that we can't see eye to eye. I think, you know, at the times when we've been most aligned, I've been most happy in the business,

and I felt most sort of confident in myself as someone operating the business, and just generally in life, because business does flow into so many other aspects of the way that you feel about yourself and think about yourself. And I read, so yesterday, it was just by chance, I read that Carl Jung said, loneliness is not an absence of people, it's an absence of genuine understanding. And I was just like, or feeling genuinely understood.

And I think if I could sort of put my finger on like a key fissure between the two of us, it's like I don't, I haven't always felt supported. Because there is a fissure, because there was a challenge there in our relationship, which had been there for years. And it is? Name it.

I, it's getting quite big quite quickly, but I. You're doing good. The challenge, I think, is. Is it okay that I. Of course. Be GPS? You can GPS. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's probably just for the best. You know, throughout that entire period of building the company, you know, when we won lots of awards and things, you know, I was always really keen to make sure that we shared the stage together. And, you know, I feel like that, you weren't quite as willing to share the stage with me and like and and that led to some of the decision-making that I that you know so when you were like look you know you have to let all these people go or you

have to do this or that it was it it wasn't necessarily coming you know even today you know we're looking at the marketing and, you know, I feel like you're quite sort of anti-marketing. But part of the reason I think you're anti-marketing, frankly, is because I think you think you see it as something that I'm doing. And so if we can kind of, like, if it could, you know, if we can show that marketing fails as a thing for us to do, then that will somehow diminish me, rather than that was definitely the thing that we needed to do. Does that make sense? What do you hear?

Yeah. Just repeat it. Okay. So that we get a sense, because you said a lot. Yeah. So what I hear is that there's a kind of emotional response to a lot of the decisions that we've had to take as a business. For me, I kind of think... No, but before you rebuttal, what did you hear him say?

He said something extremely important. That it was about doing it together and sharing the stage? No? Yes, but that's not what... Look, we tend to be able to repeat things quite easily when it's stuff we have no problem listening to. What's extraordinary is how hard it is. And generally we can probably handle 10 seconds, which is three sentences. But before you answer,

you have got to just say, this is what I'm hearing. And then instead of shaking your head, you can say you heard a piece of it, or that's part of it, but there's more. So that we first establish, I will tell you what I heard, but it's also to be checked.

It's not because... At this this point we have reached a place where there is a confusion between you're disagreeing with an idea versus you're disagreeing with me. And it becomes essentialized. It's not about marketing, it's not about this or that. It ends up being about me and I feel that on some level I'm undermined. And then I have to prove myself and I'm being tested. And if it's something that I want,

by definition you won't want it, but not because of the idea, but because it's coming from me. And that's how the waters have gotten muddled. Is that? Yeah. Okay.

It's okay to say, I don't, you know, I'm not sure I really understand what you're saying, but if you don't listen, it's because you're busy with the rebuttal. Yeah. So you got to slow it down and anchor yourself first and foremost into the listening. That's the essence of the communication. It's actually not the talking. It's the listening. He gave you the opening line, right? There's a loneliness in not being understood.

That in itself is a loneliness. And you are, do you still see each other outside of work? Do you still have a friendship? Sometimes. A bit. Do you still talk about anything besides the shop? Yeah. Okay.

Do you still go out just to hang and be with each other for the company of each other? Well, we've lived in different places for five years. Yes. Do you still text each other stuff that is not about work? As the way that you bring each other into each other's lives? Not really. Not really. Okay.

Is that a loss? Do you care about it? Are you so fixated on the shop and the business that the friendship is no longer on the menu? No, I mean, I'd quite like it there. I sort of would quite like to not have the business in the way and just be able to be friends outside of that. The thing that's quite marked is like, we're lucky enough to have built a company of people who we get on really well with um no no i understood the people in the company are rather

happy it's just the two co-founders that are not particularly happy with each other yeah with each other yeah and at this point they can't discuss an idea because an idea becomes the representation of a person and when it becomes essentialized this way you no longer know if you're discussing I don't like the idea or I don't like you. Right and that's where potentially that's where I get very frustrated because… So does he? Yeah. So first answer him.

I mean answer him doesn't mean argue with it. It's just repeat now that I said it. Just repeat it again. What do you think he was talking about? What did you hear? That when I object to an idea, he sees that, you see that as somehow a rejection of you or a way of sort of me somehow proving a point. For the first hour of this session, they've told me what they want to address and they've shown me how they will do anything possible never to talk about what they came to talk about. They avoid conflict, they avoid pain, they avoid the inevitable,

they avoid having to face each other and say those things to say, I don't want to continue with you. And I'm actually actively trying to push you out. This is not an uncommon story among co-founders, in which one often may find that there is one person whose primary paradigm continues to be the relationship and the friendship, and the other one who's more mercenary and whose primary paradigm becomes business first. So, after an hour, my frustration has been mounting

and I feel for them because I realize that they're desperate to engage in a conversation and they have no idea how to do it and they'll do anything not to do it because it is about to show the sad sides and the not nice sides that each of them carries. When we first set the company up, we talked all the time. I mean, like, just daily, several times.

Because it was always like, oh, we can do this, and we can do that, and we can do, you know. And I think as the business developed, you know, we just talked less. And then the less you talk, the less you sort of get that genuine level of communication. Yeah, it's like a relationship. Yeah, who knew? Who knew?

In the beginning, you don't stop. I think also just, I think kind of trying to unpick it a bit as well, like that whole period in London. In terms of letting people go. That's where I feel like let down by you in that, like it stopped becoming a partnership there because I was doing everything I could to try and support you and to help make these difficult decisions to the point where I actually came back and did some of it but you there was a kind of unwillingness to listen to to those very practical suggestions and solutions. And that led to immense frustration on my side, which I know had an impact on a personal level.

And that's kind of where it really got difficult. I mean, that was extremely damaging. I think we just both have very different narratives about what happened from when you moved to the US on. I think we came here, it was, admittedly, it was something that you really drove, and we moved over here, and we basically gutted the UK business to make New York into the biggest opportunity that we could. You know, you just said something that I want to pick up on for a second, if you'll allow me.

We have different narratives. Give me just a sense. What kind of relationship cultures you come from and you grew up in? When it comes to talking about difficult subjects, being direct with people that are close to you, managing conflict, expressing certain feelings or not, or other feelings but not those.

What kind of relationship cultures did you grow up in? What's your, I call this the relational dowry. The stuff that we bring with us to work and does not stay at the door. I mean for me we didn't talk about feelings a lot at home. It was a very loving environment and very happy with my upbringing. But there wasn't my dad's English and didn't talk about emotions very much. And your mum? My dad's English and didn't talk about emotions very much. And your mum? My mum, German, very direct.

So I sort of got some of that directness, I think, from her. How did people handle disagreement, conflict? Yeah, we're not a sort of big talky emotional family. I'm not good at vocalising my feelings, I know that. I've been told. And I think that then I have very high expectations of myself and therefore other people and can not verbalise that kind of stuff. So I think there are, I recognize there are times where I just expect people to get things

and expect them to, you know, yeah, just have high expectations. And I think that then, when that doesn't happen, I then get annoyed. And how do you show annoyance? Passive aggressive, I think. What you want? I either withdraw, I'll just kind of go very quiet. Yeah, I normally just do that and just keep it inside.

Good old British portrait. Yeah, but there's an art to passive aggressive. So what's your particular craft? I think just point. I can ask you too. We know the guy. We've known him many years. Yeah. And you may be better off at doing each other than yourself.

Yeah, probably. I mean, very similar vibe for me too. Either rolling your eyes or I find you lick your teeth to me quite a lot. I find that quite, which is a very sort of animalistic sort of fight mechanism. Not necessarily. I don't know if you notice that, but you do it to me all the time. You know, I think the sort of hilarious irony really is that for two people who run a communications company,

we are both like drastically terrible at communicating, which is probably why we're sitting here. Well, or the reverse. The fact that you're here, I always take as there's a longing underneath. There's a wish for something better. You may not know how to do it, but you at least have a desire to want to do it.

And that speaks volumes. So I don't think that the fact that you're here is because you're worse than others. Quite to the contrary. But I do want to know, how does conflict get managed? How does appreciation get expressed? How does disagreement come out? How does sadness get expressed?

I mean, there's a wide vocabulary. So what's the vocabulary you come with? Bottle it up and don't deal with it and then go to the pub. Probably why I'm still really caught up about my dad dying when I was 10. Not that it has anything to do with this really but like inability to deal with challenges or emotional challenges, sorry, is an issue. I don't think people deal particularly well with communicating unhappiness. And that's where you are. You are rather unhappy with your relationship with your co-founder and your friend, and you are rather unhappy as well so that is actually the thing that you're in

the midst of at this moment not the direction of the company that is actually unfolding quite well and part of what you're doing about your unhappiness is you're fortifying the troops. You're building a case for leaving, but of course with the fantasy that he would do the leaving, so you don't even have to take responsibility for that. That's passive aggressive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? And he feels it.

And he even feels it. Mm-hmm. And he even says it. You know, you're inching me out. So far, so good? Yeah. All right, continue. I just, I feel continually undermined. We had a thing on Friday where we have a deck that we send out. I want you to try and do that thing that you just said is so hard.

Yeah. I'll be with you. I'll help you. Thank you. I just feel continually marginalized. A company that I've loved and given my all and given countless late nights and weekends and hours and hours and weeks of lost sleep, I just feel like my joy and desire to do it is just crushed,

like over and over. And every time we're on a call and, I mean, it doesn't necessarily need to be where I go off on one. Like quite often you just roll your eyes at the things I say or, you know, like finding the deck with my name excluded. This is the moment when you want to check if he's listening. With my name excluded. The reason I got so upset about that on Friday was because that was just the clearest possible manifestation of the way I feel. So that was just a slide of the company and it had everyone in the

company on it except I just literally just didn't feature. So it was like a sort of hierarchy of the company with one person missing and the one person missing with me. And that just, you know, now hurt that hurt but it hurt because I've had that feeling for years you know that first year when we entered loads of we went to these big awards but you see you're thinking and you're oozing feeling okay Okay. You tell him that hurts. Yeah. And now... Just shut up. You sit with it.

Yeah. The problem is that you talk to flatten whatever you feel. Yeah. And you go numb. And when you go numb... He goes numb. Yes. Yeah.

Fair. That is fair. I guess... That's it. Now go back to him. Sit and let him react. Yeah. I get it. I guess, you know. That's it. Now go back to him. Sit and let him react. I get it. It's an awful thing.

You build this thing, they put a slide up, you're not even in it. Yeah. That's a clear feeling. Yeah. It sucks to be edited out. You feel excluded and hurt. Period. Yeah.

Shut up. Me shut up up not you shut up i know i know it's not shut up it's you don't allow yourself to feel it yeah and i it hurts it feels awful but by continuing to talk you don't allow yourself to actually feel it. Well, you dilute what you're saying. That's right. Yeah. I realized in listening to the session that I actually ended up doing with him what he was doing with his partner. I was trying to help him to actually just sit for a moment with the

load of emotion that was coming up as he was describing how he had been rendered invisible. But instead of saying, just sit with it for a moment. Where in your body are you feeling this? And then just watch the wave come over him and just say, stay with this. Let it come out. I ended up saying to him, you're not letting yourself feel rather than helping him to actually feel it.

And let the other person see the consequences of his actions. So I missed it. So the only thing you turn to him and you say, do you get it? Do you understand? We're not solving the business problem at this point. So we're just in this conversation. Do you

understand what I'm saying? Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. How would you like it to be? That's a very good question. I guess I'd like to just put a lot of that animosity behind us. There's a lot of water under the bridge. I understand that. I want us... I want to feel like you've got my back.

Yeah. like you've got my back. Yeah, which I totally understand. And for me, it's about kind of, I guess, finding a way back to, you know, the first few years of the company and how that worked. But part of that is around the roles, I think. And that's where I kind of keep coming back to. I listen to him say, I want you to have my back. I want to feel that you still care about me. I want to feel like we're still in this together.

And the other one answers from the place of, structurally, I think we need to redefine the roles here in the company. But emotionally, he kind of is gone. And this discrepancy is something that i really have witnessed so many times in romantic relationships when one person is still fighting for the relationship and the other person basically just came to drop this one off and said see you later i'm gone i'm on my way out um and it is basically, you cannot work on a relationship if one person is gone. You need two people. We have to take a brief break.

Stay with us. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Clayview. Clayview powers smarter digital relationships. It doesn't matter what your product is, there's a story behind it. How did you come up with the name? Where were you when you first came up with the idea? What are the hundreds little steps that you took to get your product out into the world? Whether your product is a can of artisanal hand-packed anchovies from the coast of Spain, or a smart and innovative carry-on bag that uses magnets to let you zip it with one hand, there is a story behind your business and your product waiting to be told. Tell your customers your stories and let them tell you theirs with Klaviyo. Klaviyo turns your customer data into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count.

Stay tuned later in the episode for the real-life tale of a brand that uses Klaviyo's tools to share their stories with the world. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com. Yeah, I get it. Like from a sort of emotionally supportive perspective, I definitely can do more. Do you think there is validity in what he describes when he says, I feel undermined, you don't have my back? You translate this as he wants me to agree with him. So your next thought is, how can I have his back and not agree with him? The only way he will feel supported is if I say yes to what he says and I don't agree with it. Yeah.

All right, speak up. Yeah, I mean, yeah, because I think that kind of is, you know, I think from a work perspective, I do have doubts, you know, that's kind of where it comes from. I just kind of do sort of worry about the role and what you're going to be doing and where that's best placed. And that's where I think, to a certain extent, I don't have your back, you know. From a business perspective, obviously from a, you know, I don't want you to be happy. And I'm, yeah, kind of happy to, yeah, I see what you mean. I sort of say, yes, I'm happy to help you get that, but I am kind of saying on my terms, so I do recognize that that's

not the right way to do it really. So in terms of kind of supporting but not agreeing what does that look like? I think the first thing you may want to say to him is I don't know how to do it with you. You know, part of the stock is that at this point, if you don't agree with him, he can't hear what you say either because he instantly feels rejected or undermined. So he's into his wound. He's into being hurt. He's not able to actually hear that maybe there's this different point of view. Everything's muddled. A thought is a feeling and a feeling is hidden.

By the way, if you ever say, I feel that, what follows is never a feeling. What follows is a thought. The injunction that moves us into a thought. And generally it's a thought about what the other person is doing. I feel hurt is a feeling. I feel that you're undermining me is a statement about him. Yeah. It's just clumsy language. Of new vocabulary that you want to learn. in the company is gonna have to do it anyway Because these are normal feelings in the company. Mm-hmm Being hurt feeling ejected feeling excluded feeling not included all of these things, you know Yes in a polarized system every person basically ends up defending themselves.

And there is a lack of accountability that just says, what you are describing about me, I did do. That said, there is more. When you did it, I didn't react in the same way, or I totally see that I almost tanked the ship. In this situation, everyone is only referencing half of the story. And it's the other person who then highlights the part that each one is not acknowledging. That's what happens in a polarized system, is that everyone is actually saying the part

that they wish the other one was saying but is not. Meanwhile, I don't know anything about this slide, but that's hostile. It's aggressive. Is somebody owning that? I mean, it wasn't me that put that slide together, but I guess I could have. Well, you did bring it up about six months ago, and I did create a new slide with all of us on there, and I have a version of it, which I've been sending out to clients, which does have you on it. So that was just cut and dry.

It was just the clearest possible manifestation of something which I've raised in the past. You know, it's also not like it was a mistake that happened and then it was rectified and, you know, all was fine and dandy. It was a mistake that happened. I raised it and sort of said, there is another person in the company. We agreed to fix it. And then six months later, it's not been fixed. I'm not saying that is directly your fault at all, but it's a manifestation of something that's far more,

that I feel on a basic level on every single call that we do with the management team and every single document that gets sent out, every single email, slightly overstating it, but it's a background feeling that is always there. Where do you think that comes from? I think it comes from... Good. It was very good. I think it comes from a real desire that this is just your company and that I wasn't part of it. I mean, that's very interesting, but I've never had that feeling.

And I've been in a position where I felt completely like I have no role and sails the wind in the early years a lot. You were the guy that had the filmmaking ability. What was I doing? I was just sort of hanging around. But I supported you then. Now the shoe is on the other foot. It's not even that I'm not getting that support back. I feel like actively you're using the fact that I am in not quite such a defined role to marginalise me. Yeah, I mean, I understand why you would feel that. My kind of response is it's come from a sort of business reason.

Like there's sort of... But back then I could have gone, you know what? I don't see the value that you're bringing. There's such a discrepancy in the value that we're bringing to the company. Not only was I making the film, I was also a new business director. So I was making all the calls to all the agencies that then blew the company up. I could at any point then have gone, what exactly is he doing? And I didn't. I stood

by you. And I always made sure that we shared the podium. And when we had the challenges in the UK and you were over here, at board level, across, you know, you used the fact that we had low sales in the UK to completely commandeer the control of the board to ostracize me. And, you know, we know, like, companies go through sales cycles where, like, sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. We had a sales squeeze last year in New York, which we came through. We had the challenges with the office refit. I've stood by you. I could have used any of those things as leverage, but I didn't. I get it. I understand the sort of... I know it was difficult and it felt very hard at the time,

but the way the UK business was structured at the time was... That's not what he's talking about. I know, I know. So don't deflect. From my point of view, there was a very strong business case to the point where that business nearly folded. And if I hadn't come in and made those decisions at that time, it probably would have done. And it wasn't about some sort of personal power struggle. It was about trying to save the UK business.

Yeah, I mean, you know, over the period from when you left to now, we've left, we let 27 people go in the UK to turn that business around. Right? We had already let a number of people go before that. We you know, you came over and basically just said, right, we have to do it like right now. Right? I'd waited. I'd, you know, seen it coming for a while anyway. If you go in this direction, you will do an interesting comparative study of the narratives.

And that's irrelevant, because you're not busy trying to really understand each other's narratives. When one person keeps repeating the same thing over and over again, it's easy to get frustrated. Can you finally talk about something else? But the fact is that we repeat because we are still waiting for the other person to actually acknowledge that which we are saying. So we're holding up the flag, not just because we are stubborn and a one-note person,

but because we are signaling to the other person, I need to know that you see what I see before I can move on to the next thing. We are in the midst of our session. There is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break. So stay with us. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content brought to you by Klaviyo.

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And you're saying, I value our relationship, but not at the expense of the whole business. And I needed to do certain things, which you still haven't recognized because you're busy with your wounds. I think that's fair, yeah. Yeah? Yeah. All right. Let's move there then. Otherwise, you will leave and you'll continue what you're doing. What he needs to know is, have you given up on us? Has the business really become more important? Then we

will discuss it. Either he gets a certain role or you get bored out or do you have a partnership agreement or none no nothing probably should get that yeah and how old were you when you started this whole thing so you were the friends sort of cookie you know he's still into that you know you're my friend you're my buddy you're my partner um and we do this together and we waver and we have all the ups and downs together and you're into the you know the business comes first and you're in my way basically yeah i think that's a fair assessment yeah you're in my in my way, and he knows it. You want to make the decisions. You want to be the CEO.

You want to, you know, you're actually no longer talking in partnership terms. And he's in a completely different storyboard. Yeah, I mean, I think that is true. And I do, that is the way I see it. I do, I see it as a business. I see my responsibility towards the board, the shareholders, the employees, the clients. I don't think the company kind of defines everything about me. I see it as a...

It's become an amazing thing, but I don't think it's going to be the only thing I'll ever do. I hear you. I don't think it's going to be the only thing I'll ever do. I hear you. I don't agree with the classification of this difference that I don't care about the company. Of course not. And I'm not interested in the success of the company. Sorry, that I put the relationship first. The reason I think the relationship is important is because without the relationship, the company tears itself to pieces. And that's why I'm willing

to overlook things which on the face of it seem extremely damaging to the company. Yeah, it's not some sort of like, oh, you know, this is our amazing, exciting adventure and we have to stick together and, you know, damn the consequences as long as we're together. It's that the value to the company that we're able to offer is drastically enhanced when you combine our two skill sets. He no longer thinks that. No. two skill sets he no longer thinks that no I know you think that but he no longer thinks that that's where you actually are parting

yeah and he hasn't thought that for a while and because of that you are spinning your wheels i am saying it for you because you're not being direct and you know if you leave here but you have to be yeah at this point you have to be out of sheer respect for him yeah no you're right because otherwise you will leave more convinced with what you already came in. Yeah. And you're going to continue to do more of what you did in a more blatant way. And it's hostile. Yeah. Maybe he should continue the company.

Since for you, you know, if you sell cars or if you sell movies, it's not fundamentally different. You like the selling. You like the structure. You like the business piece. And so, you know, who knows whose company it will be. Or maybe he does take a certain role or he takes a new division

that is not about corporate or whatever you choose to do but you first and foremost it's a terribly painful thing to do it like this but it's the respectful thing to do

yeah and it's why you came it is It's the respectful thing to do. Yeah. And it's why you came. It is. Let him do it. Just say that. Whatever you're going to say, I don't know what, but... Yeah, I mean, I think we have had the we have had the conversation but it would be useful to for both of us to really think about what we want to do and yeah and what that looks like

I agree I think think, if I may, the reason you've lost so much confidence in me is that you really struggle almost to the point of not seeing the benefits and the things that I've done for the company. We've got this absolutely thriving culture in the UK. That was because, well, in part, I'm amply supported by the rest of the team. I made turning the culture around in that business

the number one priority. And we've done that, and it is absolutely thriving, and it's thriving to the point where neither of the founders need to be there. Now, you have real difficulty attributing that to anything that I did. But, like, who else did it? Yeah, I do. I mean, yeah, just the sort of value conversation is often on quite intangible things. And I just, I think, you know, with my sort of business head on, yeah, I do find that difficult to sort of put a value on because it's often the stuff that's kind of out there a little bit.

I mean, I guess, you know, the tangible aspect of it is the sales and the profit that we're making in the UK. Like, that is extremely tangible. I mean, the other thing is, you know, our Brooklyn refit, which you oversaw, ended up costing at the last count $350,000, which, you know, we originally signed off $80,000 to do that. Now that was entirely on your watch, right?

You know, if we're being completely harsh and the business does really come first, there could have been quite a different outcome from that. Sure, you know, I'm happy to, like, again, I don't want to sort of get into the specifics and the context around that because it's not really about that, but I'm happy to put my case forward and take it to the board or, you know, if we can't agree between ourselves. No, as in I'm happy with my response to it, I think.

But your response is this. I'm not going to argue with what he says about London. The fact is I hold him responsible for London. When it doesn't go well on his side, he's responsible. When it doesn't go well on my side, there are a lot of other circumstances. Mine is circumstantial. His is personal. It's classic. You want to leave or you want to part. Why do you need to destroy him first? As a way to justify your wish to go. I mean, you are entitled to go. For whatever reason that you choose, you're entitled to go.

Then you'll decide how you want to divide and part and all of that. But you're entitled to go then you'll decide how you want to divide and part and all of that but you're entitled to do to want that and you don't want him to leave so you're you're groping that that's i guess groping is not yeah sure sure sure i i bring imagery from other relationships grasping grasping that's actually different. Go ahead. Yeah, look, yeah, I recognize that I can be very difficult in that sense. That's got to be really hard. You're locked because you have a certain desire for whatever reason and everything gets measured vis-a-vis that. I mean, if I have a wish for you, it's that you would live with one

new thought, but it's not happening. What's happening is a reinforcement of every thought you already have. It brings up culture. You say, once again, he brings up culture. We've already talked about culture, him and his culture. You know, it doesn't occur to you to say, of course you had something to do with it, because there probably is something he had to do with it.

Maybe not as much as you think, but you're not going to give him an inch. Right. Yeah, that's fair. Because you're pissed. I don't know why you're pissed, but you're pissed. You're in an ante and he knows it. So he's trying to justify himself. He's trying to prove to you that he's capable of something.

And the more he's trying to prove and the more you think he's pathetic. But you don't realize that you're putting him down the whole time because you give him nothing you know you're entitled to say i don't want to continue together that's a fair wish but what you're doing is is aggressive it's hostile you know I had something to do with it and you say well I'm not going to get into it because you know I have a very different understanding

of what really actually happened and you know there is no value to this what the hell is this because I'm sure that tomorrow you're going to make a speech at your company about culture and how important it is because everybody does these days I'm sure that tomorrow you're going to make a speech at your company about culture. And how important it is.

Because everybody does these days. So you must be doing that too. But when he brings it up, you think it's woo-woo. That's what I mean. Woo-woo. You're the hardcore. You're the, you know, you're the hard skills. You're the hardcore.

You're the number. But when it's your numbers, then it's circumstantial and then you say I'm happy to bring the board you know to do what? arbitration? which story is the board going to believe?

should not have you know when you say you lost trust in me or you it's what's tracking to me more is to watch

how you lost trust in you yeah I mean it's it's what's tracking to me more is to watch how you lost trust in you yeah i mean it's painful to watch yeah i can only imagine that it's painful to to experience it yeah you absolutely correctly identify i just get in this kind of like mindset of like this is this is the business this is how things should be run this is how we you know resolve problems but you have a confirmation bias everything you hear or everything he says gets interpreted vis-a-vis yeah your main idea yeah it's like you never change perspective. Au contraire, it gets more and more rigid.

Yeah. No, yeah, for sure. Okay. You stuck. Yeah. Yeah. With that, you stuck. Yeah.

At the end of the session, there was no master game plan of how they were going to proceed henceforward. But so much had been said that they had been avoiding for four years. From the acknowledgement publicly about the difference between one holding the business and one holding the relationship, to neither one of them being able to actually acknowledge anything that the other one is saying about them,

and therefore being stuck in highly differentiated and entrenched narratives, to blaming the other for the specific mistakes and blaming circumstances for their own mistakes. And so while I said, I wished you had left with something and I'm not sure we're leaving with anything new, I'm not so sure that they didn't leave with anything new. you just heard a classic session of housework with esther perel we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network

in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. To apply with your partner for a session on the podcast, for the transcripts or show notes on each episode, or to sign up for Esther's monthly newsletter, go to estherperel.com. Esther Perel is the author of Mating in Captivity in the State of Affairs. She also created a game of stories called Where Should We Begin?

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