Esther Perel Interview | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast) | Transcription

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Introduction

Intro (00:00)

At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I answer your personal question? No, I want to see an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal entoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Zip Recruiter. You may have heard them everywhere. They're growing like crazy. They're an innovative platform for doing several things, but especially improving the hiring process. Making it slick and elegant and easy. One of the hardest parts of running any business, growing any business, is finding and hiring the right team. I've seen this first hand in close to a hundred startups now. God, I'm getting old. From all over the world at different stages of growth. And nothing can quite drain your resources and cost you time and money like making mistakes in hiring. 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So if you're thinking of hiring somebody, you need to find an executive assistant, you need to find a developer, whatever it might be. Try it out. Just visit ziprecruiter.com/tim. And you can experience just how Zip Recruiter has been used by businesses of all different sizes to find the most qualified job candidates. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/tim. Check it out. Give it a spin. This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. It comes with me everywhere on my telephone in my pocket. I love audiobooks and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time more than that. To indulge myself, to educate myself with time that would otherwise go to waste in some respects. When I'm taking walks, when I'm cooking, cleaning up the house, on the road for travel, whatever. In those in-between spaces. Or as a secondary activity, I love using Audible to help me transform my downtime in a way. And it's allowed me to consume more books, many more books than I would otherwise. You can access an unbeatable selection of bestsellers, mysteries, thrillers, and anything you could possibly imagine, really. I have two to recommend right off the bat. One, and I recommend this even for non-fiction purists. This is a fiction book, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Alright, that's read by Will Wheaton. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Check it out. The reviews are bonkers. This has a cult following. Check it out. And then, very selfishly, I'll mention one that I put together with one of you guys. With actually a listener of the podcast who is also a huge fan of Seneca. So the book is Tao of Seneca. T-A-O. Tao of Seneca. S-E-N-E-C-A. Subtitle, Practical Letters from a Stoic Master. And this is effectively an introduction to what I view as the ultimate operating system for thriving in high stress environments. That is stoicism. It's become very popular among top athletic coaches, CEOs of fast growing companies. So check it out. That is for non-fiction folks who must read or listen to non-fiction. Tao of Seneca, Practical Letters from a Stoic Master. And as a listener of the Tim Ferriss show, you have access to a 30 day trial and your first audiobook is free. So why not go grab one of those? Ready Player One or Tao of Seneca. Go to audible.com/tim to start downloading now. Membership includes one free audiobook every month. Exclusive sales, such as 30% off all regularly priced audiobooks. And unlike streaming, you own your books once they have been downloaded. And I like to listen often times when I'm offline. So you have that benefit as well. You can't make more time folks. Just not manufacturing anymore. It's out of print. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it. So turn your travel, commute, dog walk, whatever into something more with a free trial at Audible. Go to audible.com/tim to learn more and start now. Hello boys and girls. Sasquatches and squirrels. If that's a thing, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. And I am sitting, listening to people whack mitts and banana bags. I'm imagining doing muay thai while I have positioned myself in what's known as the cat room. Meow. With red padding over all the walls on its headquarters here in Austin, Texas. Check out on it. Onnit.com. Not a paid mention. Just a thank you and hat tip to Mr. Aubrey. Thank you sir for lending me your space for recording. This episode is a much requested follow up with Esther Perel. @EstherPerel. E-S-T-H-E-R-P-E-R-E-L on Twitter. Who has been called the most important game changer in sexuality and relational health since Dr. Ruth. And since I first met Esther I've spent more and more time with her. And the more time I've spent with her the more impressed I am. She is the real deal. And very very insightful. Her TED talks on maintaining desire and rethinking infidelity have at this point probably more than 20 million views. And she's both seen and tested everything imaginable. First hand with couples in 34 years of running her private therapy practice in New York City. Esther is the author of the international best seller Mating in Captivity. You've probably heard of it. Which has been translated into 26 languages. She is fluent in 9 of those languages. I've heard her in person use them. And as a Belgian native she now brings her multicultural pulse to a new book. Which I highly recommend checking out. The State of Affairs. Subtitle. Rethinking Infidelity. Her creative energy is currently also focused on the creation and hosting of an Audible original audio series. Where Should We Begin? But the State of Affairs is worth checking out. In this episode Esther answers your most upvoted questions. Including how to foster relationship or marriage longevity. The most effective ways to improve communication in relationships. How to deal with criticism. Letting go of emotional baggage from past relationships. How to know when to move on from a relationship that just doesn't seem to be working. And much much more. If you like Esther you're going to love this. And her episode is one of the most downloaded of all time previously. So here is more of the good stuff. Please enjoy this wildly interesting, in my opinion, Q&A from your questions with Esther Perel. Hi, I'm Esther Perel. Thanks for sending in your thoughtful questions.

Discussion On Long Term Relationships And Romance

How can I foster a long marriage? (08:00)

And let's dive in. So this is a question from Gregoire Fiffre via Facebook. Would love to ask her how to foster marriage longevity. Any exercises, routines or habits would be great. Especially around fostering deeper emotional relationships. There is the first basics. Appreciation. Just simply saying a lot of nice things. Not taking things for granted. Not forgetting to say thank you and please just because it's the person that you live with. Making compliments. Holding hands. Kissing. Stroking. Sending sweet notes. Buying flowers. Preparing breakfast. Bringing the coffee to bed. All those sweet things that people do that basically let you know that they live inside of you. That you're thinking of them even when they're not there. These daily appreciations, they go a long way and it sometimes is a really diligent effort to keep doing them. And then I am a strong fan of letter writing. I think that when you fly away, when you're away, when you're sitting in a cafe, when you just have a moment, to drop a note that is not just on the birthdays and on the anniversaries. Just kind of your own musings about your life together, your dreams, where you're going, how you met, what you remember, what you fancy. That is actually very much the kind of telling of the story, you know, the story of the couple. There's a lot of intimacy in there. Touch is a major experience of intimacy. I think when you do that, humor and things that kind of really encourage the other person in which you recognize them at their most authentic. Go do this thing. This is really something you really like. Take a few more days. You know, you wanted to always take this class. Go take this class. Kind of ways in which you encourage the other person to be the best version of themselves and vice versa. Be the best version of yourself with them. It's really basic what makes a relationship sustain itself and be more nurturing.

Marriage Arguments (10:16)

Next, Alicia Tenea Eichelberger via Facebook asks, "How to lessen arguments in your marriage?" Look, I think it's all about the art of speaking and listening. You know, there was a sculpture a few years back by Bruce Newman. And it was a world peace project. And he had 23-inch monitors with faces of the most diverse group of people, diverse races, ethnicities, gender, ages, all of it, and every single person, every face was saying, "I'll talk, and you'll listen. You'll talk, and I'll listen. They'll talk, and we'll listen. You'll talk, and we'll listen." And it just showed you the robustness of this most difficult art, which often I would say listening is harder than speaking. But then for some people, maybe speaking actually becomes the hardest thing. In a relationship, you can often get the daily hassles in which you are grinding at each other and in which there's a friction going on. Don't sweat the small things. It's probably really important in terms of how people deal with arguments in a relationship. I would say don't complain. Ask. Behind every criticism, there's often a wish. Because if you believe that your partner has done something wrong, that they didn't pay a bill on time or anything, and you wish that they had done it right, but instead of asking them to correct it, you basically tell them that they can never do it well, that they're doing this on purpose, that just ask them to do it better next time rather than, "Would it kill you?" Something simply, "Do you think that next time you could set a monthly alert so that you don't forget?" It's a very different tone. It's a very different way of relating to the person. There's no contempt in that one, which we know from the research of John Gutmann is one of the Four Horses of Apocalypse. Actually I'm going to give you the Four Horses, because they're really important. One is criticism, contempt, stonewalling, and defensiveness. Those four are pretty much the killers in the land of arguments and relationship decline. Try not to talk with categoricals of always and never, all or nothing. That probably is one of the most important changes in vocabulary. Banish them. "I always have to ask you. You never do this?" No. The moment you say, "You never do," the other person is going to come up with the one time that they knew and that they've done it so that they can defeat your argument rather than really understand that you're asking them to do it more often, which is exactly why I say, "Ask, don't complain." Add some humor. "Add some humor." There's nothing that's going to diffuse your arguments more than just putting some perspective into it and not take yourself so seriously. Show empathy. At the end of the day, assume that your partner has the same interests as you to solve the stresses in your relationship. For that to happen, it's important that both of you understand and appreciate the other person's point of view. Do you really think that the other person wants you to purposefully be annoyed or hurt you or let you down? Probably not. It's all of that shift that takes you out of relationships that are mired in bickering, chronic low-intensity warfare, or high conflict because there's a range there. Imagine I ask you, "Has your arguing turned toxic?" As in, "Does your partner keep telling you that you can never do it right or that they can never do it right by you? That every little convo about who should set the table will end up in a blowout about how dysfunctional your relationship is? Or that two minutes into a fight, one of you is saying, 'We should get a divorce or we should break up?'" That's what I'm calling a high-conflict couple. The opposite of the arguments is you come in and you say, "I want to listen to what you have to say. I want to apologize. What can I do to make this better?" And not, "What can you do to make this better?" Shift it around and you'll have magic happening.

Jealousy (14:29)

Okay. Next. A question from Ben Altman about jealousy, how the majority of non-exclusive relationships I've seen seem to get done in by one of two parties feeling possessive. How do we rid ourselves from these negative emotions? Ben, I think that jealousy is intrinsic to love. I don't think of it as a negative emotion. It is part and parcel of the experience. I think that sometimes it's an interesting experience, particularly in the U.S., where people often will say, "I'm not jealous because I'm angry," as if jealousy is a feeling that is politically incorrect. It doesn't have much popularity these days. Jealousy is an erotic rage. Jealousy is the feeling you have when your partner takes their love, their desire, their excitement to someone else and you want it more directed toward you. It is thwarted away from you. So I don't suggest that you rid yourself from that emotion. I suggest that you integrate the emotion. It tells you something. It generates action. It generates conversations. And it is not the same as possessiveness. They're related, but they're not the same. On the other end, here is a simple formula for possessiveness. If you love someone, set them free. If they love you, they'll come back.

Moving On After Divorce (15:53)

Joseph DiBernardo posted this question on Twitter. Esther, what is the best way to move on after divorce and deal with post-marriage depression sadness, especially for men who find it difficult to speak about their inner pain of the divorce and the lack of connection? Joseph, I'm going to tell you something. Men have a much harder time post-divorce emotionally and physically than women, maybe not financially, but in every other respect, they do. They suffer much more. They're more at risk for accidents, for drinking. They take a hit because they need women, even though they want to pretend that they don't. It goes against the cultural narrative. I think that what you have in this moment is two things. One, you absolutely want to reach out. And I think if you have friends that you can talk to, that would be great, male or female friends. But if you want to go to a men's retreat, to a men's group, there is nothing comparable to it at this point than groups where guys come together to talk about their inner life, what's going on with them. It's empowering. It builds solidarity. It takes you out of the loneliness, out of the shame, out of the isolation, out of the feeling of failure, all of it, all of it. There's nothing more powerful than a group of people that come together and hold one person while that person can't hold themselves. It's a spiritual challenge. It's not just a relationship challenge. So you need to go get energy. You're depleted. And one of the ways that you get energy is by going to do something for others. Go help others. The research is very clear. The most powerful antidepressant is doing for other people. It puts things in perspective. It makes you feel like you have something to offer. It makes you feel appreciated by the people whom you're helping. It changes the entire equation of what's going on inside of you. Right. I think journaling is an important part of mourning. On occasion, if it works out, it may be a good thing to have a final conversation with your ex a bit of time later where you kind of clear things and you try to have a different conversation than the ones that you had when things really tanked. I think that it's also useful on occasion to go to your family and to ask a little bit about what has been the history of relationships in the family so that you get to learn a little bit as well. What are some of the unknown legacies that you carry inside of you? The main thing is don't isolate yourself. That's it. And you will see that when you start to talk, people generally appreciate it. They don't know to do it themselves, but they like it when they feel that they have something to offer, when they're made to feel significant because someone else opens up to them. It's the opposite sometimes of what we anticipate.

Getting past the anger of being cheated on (18:50)

Okay. Good luck to you. The real Josh Gill asks on Twitter, "I'd love to hear her talk about letting go, moving past the anger from being cheated on, the anger towards the partner that cheated, the friends that seemingly abandoned the one that was cheated on, and the anger towards the self for not seeing the relationship falling apart sooner and trying to fix it." A lot of self-blame here, right? A lot of self-blame and a lot of anger at the other people for not being there for you. You know, often when people are cheated on, the first thing is to say, "What's wrong with me? What am I missing? Why am I not enough? Or why didn't I see it?" But sometimes there is a reason that people engage in trauma denial that people don't want to see. Because when we don't see, it protects us. It preserves a certain coherence to our life. It's not just because we are fools and idiots and easily duped. So be careful about not pouring all kinds of self-loathing onto you. What kind of an idiot are you? How could you not know it? What kind of a guy lets himself be walked on like this? You should have known, you should have seen, you should have done more. Ask yourself these questions, but from a place of responsibility, not from a place of beating yourself down and blaming yourself, because then you can't think. If you put yourself that much down and you feel so terrible about yourself, you cannot really think. All you can do is just protect yourself from getting the blows. Now there are phases in the recovery as well. The first thing is just simply the hurt, the anger, the confusion, the disbelief, the disorientation, the loss of the predictable future, the idea that whatever you thought your life was going to be, it isn't going to happen, all of that. And you need to really respect that. All these feelings are going to hit you all at once. And it's going to be an avalanche of all this maelstrom. And that's normal. It's in the nature of the beast. It's really, really normal. Then gradually, on occasion, you will mourn this and you will think, "It wasn't good anyway." And at other times you will say, "I could have continued this way. How could she destroy all of that?" And then you can ask your friends, talk to them. Did you see things? Did you try to warn me? Did I not listen? Were you equally as surprised as me? But you need to know that there are phases of recovery. I've written about it extensively in my new book. You go from the crisis, then you go and you move into the inside phase where you start to make sense of all of this. Why did this happen? What can I learn from this? What does it say about our relationship? What does it say about me? What does it say about her? And then there is the, "Where does this take me now? What are my lessons? Where am I going to go with that?" And try not to have this just become a script for anger and bitterness. I think that when you're very angry all the time, you basically also protect yourself from not being too sad, from not being hurt, from not feeling vulnerable. It kind of props you up to be angry and it gives you a sense of righteousness. But behind the anger is often a real sense of collapse. And let yourself go there. It's okay. It really hurts. To just be angry isn't going to make it for you. And how to allow yourself that by being with people who you trust, next to whom you can fall apart, who won't judge you for it, who understand heartbreak. It is a human emotion. It's one of the oldest experiences we've had and it's part of our humanity. You won't avoid it. You won't avoid it. Let yourself feel the pain and the hurt and the sadness and cry and then you'll come through it. You know, I'm thinking about a guy that I wrote about in my book who was actually his brother who cheated on him with the girl that he used to date. And for years, for years, every time a girl liked him, he thought, you know, whose else is hiding here behind that I'm not seeing? He really carried it with him for a long time. It takes a while till you begin to trust again, till you begin to feel good about yourself again, till you feel that you are able to be loved and lovable. It really goes very deep, this experience. It taps into our sense of self-worth, all of that. And I hope that the stories that I wrote about in the book will help you with that. They were meant for that.

Does age matter when looking for love? (23:26)

They were meant to help you. Okay, thank you. Ranjani86 writes on Twitter, "Is it harder to find true love as you get older and progressively more intelligent? Do you have to be young and stupid to find love? Do most people in search of a partner settle at some point?" I'm glad you're back, but I'm going to challenge the premise of your question a little bit. What does it mean that you're going to settle? I think the main thing is this. When you are younger, you allow yourself the experience of meeting someone, seeing where it takes you, unfolding with the story, and embracing the surprise of where this thing is going that you didn't expect. But when you're looking for a relationship as an adult and you come with your expectations, you often torch the possibility for a story to unfold and to surprise you, because you're sitting there with an inventory and you're not really allowing for the unknown to open itself up to you and to take you on a ride that you didn't see coming. I think most of the dating that involves a checklist is doomed. That's the best way I can say it. It's anti-romance, it's anti-story, and stories are the way we live our lives. It's a list of items. And often you will find that people match all the items on your list and the feeling isn't there, because a feeling is something that emerges that develops through interaction, through shared experience, through the creation of a shared story together. And I don't believe that that is any less possible as an adult. In fact, when you are older, you are clearer about what you like, what you resonate with. You know yourself better. And from that place, you are more able to appreciate the person that is in front of you. But it's not like you have to be young and foolish to fall in love. No, absolutely not. There is no age for it. People fall in love at any age at this point. People have the opportunity for the first time in history to actually start entire new lives. In their 50s, 60s, 70s, love doesn't have an age to it. We love differently because we are more mature, because we accept certain things more, and because we accept other things less. And we don't necessarily call that settling. Settling means what? I only found six items on my list out of the 10. That's not the way we do it. We make a choice, and a choice always involves a loss. And at some points, we make certain choices that are maybe more rational or more forward-looking. We understand that there are certain things we need in order to live with someone, and that there are certain people with whom we could have a fantastic love affair and a fantastic adventure, but maybe not necessarily build a whole life together. And in that sense, we are able to hold more elements at the same time and make a decision that embraces ambivalence. It's something that I call maturity, not settling.

When is a relationship done? (26:27)

Davilina asks through Twitter, "When do you know a relationship is done?" That is such a powerful question. It's really, "But what do we mean by done?" That you don't like who you have become, that you don't like what you're doing, that you don't like how you're being reflected back, that the relationship has lost itself, its sense of aliveness and vitality, or that it has become toxic and is dying on the vine. What do we call done? I think that the main element that is really for me the kiss of death, the end of a relationship is contempt, because it really involves a profound sense of dehumanization. When that tone that just says, "Look at you. Come on. What is this? You call this a relationship." That sense of self-loathing and contempt, it's very hard to come back from that. You can fight. You can be critical. You can complain. You can be volatile. You can have a lot of things in a relationship, because from there you can always come back into sweet, repair, tender, connecting, etc. And you just go through the cycles of connection, disconnection, and repair, which is the triad of relationships. But contempt is a real tough one. The belittling, the infantilizing, the demeaning, the degrading, all these categories of relationships, which basically amount to abusiveness. To me, that is a moment when a relationship really is done, because what it means is that in order to protect oneself, one needs to leave, unless you're the one doing it. And then in order to protect yourself and the other, you need to change. Thank you. Kelsey Hellman asks on Facebook, "How does she handle her critics?"

When is a relationship done? (45:22)

I want to add a piece to Kavilina's question, when do you know that a relationship is done? Kavilina, I was talking about the four horsemen of apocalypse that a famous researcher on relationships, John Gutman, talks about. And I wanted to expand a little bit on that. One is criticism. It's quite easy, right? It's complaining, it's picking at the other person. It's seeing what you do as circumstantial and seeing the other person as characterological, right? If you're in a bad mood, it's because you had a tough day. But if the other person doesn't act very nicely, it's because they're actually generally a mean person, you know, or a bad-tempered person rather than they too may have had a bad day, right? So all the elements that have to do with criticism, the way that people just gnaw at the other person and just go and circle around the same grievances over and over again, that's the piece that he's talking about. Stone-walling is silent treatment. It's basically, you know, withdrawing, removing oneself and letting the other person stand out there and talk to the walls. That's another major horseman of apocalypse. Defensiveness. The fact that you can't bring anything up without the other person instantly rejecting, defensive, going nature instead of just saying, "Yes, thank you for telling me. Let me think about this." Or simply, "Aye, that doesn't feel good, but you know, probably I do. Yes, I do do that. I don't mean to, but I do." Or it's an old bad habit of mine or something that acknowledges that stands accountable, that doesn't answer to, "Yeah, but you," and then says, "You did worse," and then starts to pile up. And for everything you said, the other person counters right away with something worse so that they never have to look at the thing that you said yourself. "Yeah, but yesterday, you," all of that. That defensiveness.

How do you handle critics? (28:19)

Oh God, that is a wonderful question. "Does she read and comment on the internet trolls for her book reviews, podcasts, etc. How does she deal with the people who think they know more about relationships than her?" So I love this question, because it allows me to say something. You know, I am often considered a thought leader or an expert. I actually see myself much more as a student and as a person who is avidly curious and continues to learn on a daily basis, rather than as someone who positions herself as knowing. I think about these things a lot. I often can sound very confident, but I'm sure of nothing. One thing I can say is that nothing I say is made up, but that doesn't mean it's true. I also don't think there is one truth. And I think that I am a person who continuously seeks to be challenged. I go and then check with other people. Am I missing something? Is there something I didn't think about? Is there validity in the criticism? I invite conversation, dialogue, confrontation, and disagreement. Where it hurts, where I find myself at a loss, is when people are taking one thing I say, completely distorting it, caricaturing me, or what I say. When I try so hard to embrace complexity and nuance and kind of feel completely flattened by a complete misunderstanding of what I say, often to the extent where I wonder if the people actually really read my work, engaged with me. And I wish that the critics actually came to me and asked me and engaged with me and challenged me rather than just trash me. I generally try not to read too much of it because it hurts and because I don't feel that there is an invitation for the dialogue. Whoever comes to me directly, respectfully, and says, "I disagree. I think you're wrong," etc., etc., I will speak with. Whoever is avoiding me and just going behind my back and using the internet to anonymously or not anonymously trash, I think is participating in the same culture and in the trashing culture of the moment and with all the consequences that we all know are involved in this. So that's my relationship to criticism. I welcome it when it's done humanely, when it's done respectfully.

The right context to discuss everything (30:52)

@sabfrank1 asks on Twitter, "We often hear communication is key in a relationship, but as I believe she has mentioned in her book, too much can hinder desire. What then is the juste milieu?" Okay, listen. Can you make me think of a song by Carly Simon, "No Secrets," in which she has a line, "Sometimes I wish I didn't know those secrets of yours." I think that the free love of the '60s came with a view of honesty and transparency and letting it all hang out there. And while it kind of came with the rise of individualism as everything that a person experiences is at the center, it matters. It needs to be met. I also think that the other side of this kind of wholesale sharing is an ethos of candor like that, is that there needs to be consideration, politeness. And I find that those two qualities are often in short supplies in contemporary relationships. There's this notion that we expect the partner to just hold on to all of our feelings and make us feel better rather than engage a little more in our own self-soothing and in our own self-regulation and in going and venting to others. It actually has always been the case that people vented to people outside of the relationship in order to be able to sustain what happened on the inside. But it's about kind of don't let your emotional hemorrhoids bleed like that inside your house all the time. We don't know that this is always the best. We of course want communication, we want exchange, we want deepening and real meeting with the other. But I'm not sure that the kind of all out there is the only model. And what you're going to hear from me always is that there isn't one way only. There isn't one size fits all. And so while I answer you in one way, I may answer someone else differently. And I think it's that richness that I want us all to hold here. On occasion, let it be. You don't have to react to everything. Not everything is a 10. Certain things are just a 2. They're not really that important. That's another song that I think we really need to be able to hum on occasion. And in terms of the not tending everything on the desire, it's really this. The questions, the interests that you want to keep for your partner or vice versa are a way in which you remain curious, interested, engaged with the other person as a person. The way that we often are in the beginning where we are just interested in who is this person. And what happens over time is that people often feel that they know their partner as if they belong to them, as if they're just an extension of them. And that's naturally a contrived illusion of safety. It's not true. In the face of the unknown, which exists right in our midst, there is that mystery of the other. And the mystery of the other is simply available once you continue to be curious about them, rather than assume this kind of familiarity. That's what I'm trying to say about the connection to desire. Because if desire exists in that space of exploration, of discovery, of curiosity, once you remain curious to your partner, once you continue to think of them as a person, not just as your partner, the desire can continue to thrive as well. The next question you're asking is what, according to her observations and experience, are the essential blocks to build a strong foundation between partners? And what is essential in the relationship to maintaining longevity?

What are the essentials of an enduring relationship? (34:31)

There are many, many pieces that I think are part of thriving relationships, but I'll give you a few, just the ones that come up now. And then if we meet again, you'll ask me again and I'll give you a few others. Yes, I'll go on number one. Not everything must be said. I think that in light of the culture that we live in today, I will probably say not everything must be said. If we were talking and meeting in other parts of the world, I would say the exact opposite. More things need to be spoken sometimes. Okay? Just so you understand, these things, these answers are always taking place in a context and specifically in a cultural context. The second thing, I think one of the most important combinations in a relationship is the combination between empathy and responsibility. It's your ability to continue to see your partner from their own point of view, is to enter the shoes of the other. And on the other side, your ability to take responsibility for that which is yours. Your own contribution, your mistakes, your flaws. Just I'm sorry I did this. Next time I'll do it differently. I own it. I own it. The minute you can own something, it gives you freedom rather than thinking that all problems and all changes actually belong to the other person. And the next piece that is really essential to the balance in a relationship is the ability to navigate separateness and togetherness. To have space, to have individuality, to have self-expression, to have your own friends, to have your own experiences that are not all related to the couple. And then also to have very strong things that belong to the couple. But some couples have a tiny overlap of the concentric circles and some couples have a complete overlap. So there's a range. Some people love to just have a big, big, big togetherness and a small separateness and others the other way around. But it is that negotiation and it changes over life. It's not one and the same when you meet and then 15 years later. The next thing for a long relationship is flexibility. It's adaptability. It's your ability to say, you know, we used to do it like this. This worked for 10 years. It doesn't work anymore. Change. And that are things that people are much more able to do in their companies and in their workplaces than they are willing to do at home. This is often a real static attitude towards the relationship. We met a certain way. We set it up a certain way. My role, your role, my responsibilities, your responsibility. And it goes on like that for 35 years, you know, and then we collapse. So the ability to just come together and say, I need something different. Let's change this. I love couples who have an annual summit and kind of review their relationship. Where's it going? How are we doing? You know, or even monthly. Just because it shows intentionality. It shows attention. It shows care. The same way that you water your plants, you know, rather than a kind of letting it go and this for a long time on end. That kind of diligence makes a big difference. And then the last one, I will say for longevity and for thriving relationships, because so many of you had the question about what makes a relationship last is engaging with new experiences. Not just comfortable and pleasant experiences. Those make for real familiarity and security and stability in the couple. But what really makes it thrive, what brings it the liveness and vitality is the engagement with new experiences outside of the comfort zone, because they breed new cells. And all the research is confirming that at this point. Novelty breeds testosterone. And it's not novelty of sex positions. It's really different ways of being with oneself in the relationship and with each other. So all of that combined, you have a good chance to go for quite a while.

Why smartphones stifle romance (38:31)

Alex Sandalis on Twitter and Aspen Jenay Mulkahi on Facebook are asking, how do millennials bring back romance and emotional intimacy? What do you see are the biggest flaws of young men in their 20s and how they communicate with women? What advice do you have for them? I'm going to divide this in two. Look, there isn't much romance when people make dates on text all the time. On occasion today, romance will be a phone call. In the past, romance was a card. It's like, who still gets picked up at the door? Who still gets brought back at the door? Who gets a cold the next morning? It's all these things that are often seen as kind of passe and an old century. But in fact, I don't think the repertoire has particularly changed. A text doesn't go very far in terms of flattery, does it? Something that goes beyond the bare minimum is romance because romance is pining, romance is seduction, romance is flirtation. And that is a cultivated art by which you are gradually making the other person melt in your arms. But for that, you have to be able to say, I want you. And that means you have to experience the vulnerability of putting yourself out there. And it seems that these days, too many young people are quite reluctant to experience the vulnerability and the uncertainty of not knowing, of making that phone call and hoping that somebody is going to answer and it won't be her dad. And that butterfly thing has kind of been done away with. The stuff is way too much immediate gratification. So there is no space in between to still experience the excitement of the anticipation and the uncertainty. But all of that was part of romance. That was the romantic plot. The romantic plot, it plays itself out in the will it happen, won't it happen. The denouement is irrelevant. A romance novel is 300 pages for the last piece and the last piece is only one page. It's 300 pages of will it or will it not. And that's romance. Now in terms of the question of what to do, take the risks. Take the risks. Don't just go in a bar. It's not just a booty call. Put yourself out there and say, I want you and I'll take the time. I coached this guy recently and it was very sweet. Woman basically calls it off seven o'clock Friday night. Not a very nice thing to do. She's busy, she has a meeting, whatever. And he goes into a hole. Shall I wait? Does that mean she's not interested? She's interested. I just said, look, text her back and say, I understand. But twice as much time for tomorrow, please. Come back with something that is funny, but that breeds confidence and that is assertive and that says, I'm still very interested and you owe me a double dose. She liked it. She liked it. If she has no interest in him, then she will tell him at that moment, please don't bother. But if she has a slight interest in him, he will gain a lot of points with one of those things. I've done more and more coaching people lately, just looking at their Tinder feeds, just the kind of exchanges. Not only do they like romance, they like anything that says to people, you're interesting to me and I would like to meet you. It's really thin.

Romance (42:14)

So there is the issue of romance, but there is the broader question simply of how do people these days literally turn each other on with their minds, not just the other ways. There's a beautiful book by Rob Garfield called Questioning the Mailcode, which I recommend for many of you. But the mail code often comes with a fix-it attitude and fix-it is, I have an answer, I have a solution and it is part of the making of masculinity, competence, performance, problem solving. So unfortunately in the relationship with women, fix-it doesn't often work because many times she wants to only talk and she wants to share the experience. She doesn't really want to be told what to do. She's quite competent. She quite knows what to do. And if you give her unsolicited advice, she'll experience it as patronizing. So the flip side of fix-it is empathy, is two things. Tell me more. Tell me more. The main side, that's all you need to do. You don't have to solve it. You just have to ask her if she wants to continue to talk about it. And you want to engage in empathic murmurings. Oh, really? Oh, that's tough. Oh, wow. You know, that kind. That says I'm listening. It is most of the time what she needs. If you want to give advice, ask her if she wants to hear it and otherwise wait till she asks for it. The fear that people have sometimes that guys have when they say tell me more is that she's going to start and it will never stop. So if she says we have to talk, he says how long? And in fact, when you say tell me more, the answer will be much shorter than if you don't and she still isn't sure that you really get it. So that's really the main piece in terms of men in communication. And I'm not so sure that it is different for young guys or for even men, my generation boomers. It's really, you don't have to have an answer. And you don't have to feel like you make the need to solve the problem or make the feelings go away. You actually need to do less. And your challenge is to still feel competent even if you do less, but you will be much more appreciated actually. I had one other little thought that when we talked about the things for longevity and the things for deepening the intimacy and all of these things, which I didn't talk about, which is people sitting in the morning and having breakfast, watching outside the window, listening to music together, dancing together for a moment. You know, the average pop song is 2.3 minutes. If you just do that, it doesn't take a long time. People sometimes think it's so much work to maintain this intimacy. It's 2.3 minutes to listen to some of the most beautiful love songs ever written and reconnect with that feeling between the two of you. So I hope that I've given you some ideas, inspirations, food for thought in the pursuit of your own loving and thriving relationships.

Guidelines For Relationships And Sexuality

When is a relationship done? (26:27)

Davilina asks through Twitter, "When do you know a relationship is done?" That is such a powerful question. It's really, "But what do we mean by done?" That you don't like who you have become, that you don't like what you're doing, that you don't like how you're being reflected back, that the relationship has lost itself, its sense of aliveness and vitality, or that it has become toxic and is dying on the vine. What do we call done? I think that the main element that is really for me the kiss of death, the end of a relationship is contempt, because it really involves a profound sense of dehumanization. When that tone that just says, "Look at you. Come on. What is this? You call this a relationship." That sense of self-loathing and contempt, it's very hard to come back from that. You can fight. You can be critical. You can complain. You can be volatile. You can have a lot of things in a relationship, because from there you can always come back into sweet, repair, tender, connecting, etc. And you just go through the cycles of connection, disconnection, and repair, which is the triad of relationships. But contempt is a real tough one. The belittling, the infantilizing, the demeaning, the degrading, all these categories of relationships, which basically amount to abusiveness. To me, that is a moment when a relationship really is done, because what it means is that in order to protect oneself, one needs to leave, unless you're the one doing it. And then in order to protect yourself and the other, you need to change. Thank you. Kelsey Hellman asks on Facebook, "How does she handle her critics?"

When is a relationship done? (45:22)

I want to add a piece to Kavilina's question, when do you know that a relationship is done? Kavilina, I was talking about the four horsemen of apocalypse that a famous researcher on relationships, John Gutman, talks about. And I wanted to expand a little bit on that. One is criticism. It's quite easy, right? It's complaining, it's picking at the other person. It's seeing what you do as circumstantial and seeing the other person as characterological, right? If you're in a bad mood, it's because you had a tough day. But if the other person doesn't act very nicely, it's because they're actually generally a mean person, you know, or a bad-tempered person rather than they too may have had a bad day, right? So all the elements that have to do with criticism, the way that people just gnaw at the other person and just go and circle around the same grievances over and over again, that's the piece that he's talking about. Stone-walling is silent treatment. It's basically, you know, withdrawing, removing oneself and letting the other person stand out there and talk to the walls. That's another major horseman of apocalypse. Defensiveness. The fact that you can't bring anything up without the other person instantly rejecting, defensive, going nature instead of just saying, "Yes, thank you for telling me. Let me think about this." Or simply, "Aye, that doesn't feel good, but you know, probably I do. Yes, I do do that. I don't mean to, but I do." Or it's an old bad habit of mine or something that acknowledges that stands accountable, that doesn't answer to, "Yeah, but you," and then says, "You did worse," and then starts to pile up. And for everything you said, the other person counters right away with something worse so that they never have to look at the thing that you said yourself. "Yeah, but yesterday, you," all of that. That defensiveness.

What Is The Best Thing People Can Do To Lessen Arguments In A Relationship (47:39)

It's very rich defensiveness, but it basically leaves you without the feeling that you ever can bring something up and that it will be responded to for its own sake. And then contempt. That's the one that I think is the final killer for a relationship. That one I already detailed for you. I wanted you to have a sense about this is for your question actually about the relationship being done, but also the question that was asked by Alicia, asked about how to lessen the arguments in your relationship. So the opposite of these four killers of relationship have to do with how do people stay connected in the midst of disagreement. And I think the most, and this is something I wanted to expand more for Alicia's question, is that you really need to know something about arguing in a relationship. It often has very little to do with the content of the argument itself.

The Real Truth About Conflict In Relationships Is (48:42)

When couples enter into a vicious cycle and they are reactive and they escalate and they bicker and they fight, it doesn't really matter the subject anymore at a certain point. If it's the kids or the car or the money or what they were going to do for Christmas, it all is going to sound the same. And what you're going to hear is that people end up being in an interaction where they don't feel acknowledged, they don't feel validated, they feel dismissed, they feel that the other person competes with them, that they are outmaneuvered. And it doesn't matter what they talk about. So the real truth about conflict in relationships is that the form precedes the content. The way these arguments unfold is one and the same. If it is this or if it is about Greenpeace in South Korea, it makes no difference. It's no longer about the issue itself. And once you know that, then you have to go out to form. And the form is what the people are doing to each other while they say the things they say. And what they're doing is this long list I've just gone through. The opposite of dismissing and disqualifying and invalidating is acknowledging and recognizing and validating and empathizing. And that doesn't mean you don't agree. So there's a very, very good method developed by Howard Markman. It's called PrEP. And it's a book, Fighting for Your Marriage. It's actually quite good. And in PrEP, basically, they tell you in negative communication, you pretty much have 10 seconds before you get ready for the rebuttal. That's about as much as you can listen to something that your partner says and that you disagree with. And 10 seconds is three sentences. So the way you minimize the arguments is by beginning to practice reflective listening. It's tedious, it's annoying, but it's highly effective. What I'm hearing you say and you repeat, is there more? And you repeat and vice versa. And then when you talk, you do X, Y, Z statements. When you do X in situation Y, I feel Z. When you don't even look up when I walk into the house because you're busy at your computer the whole time and I am trying to make a connection with you, I feel like I don't matter and you don't love me. Something like that. That is very different from you couldn't give a f*** about me and anytime I come home, you on purpose pretend like you didn't hear it. That's an attack. From that attack, all you're going to get is a defense. And the defense can be a counter attack or a stonewalling or a defensiveness or a criticism or a contempt. Here you have your four horses. The sentence is broken down in such a way that if I have an experience of what you do, that is not the same as my defining that this is what you do. It says that when you do this, I experience it in a certain way and that's my feeling and you can't argue with the other person's feeling. You can argue with another person trying to define you and to define you negatively. That XYZ is intensely transformative when people really begin to practice it. That's one way out of the little hell of chronic arguments. Okay, let me take a few other questions that I haven't spoken about.

How Can Men Effectively Handle Their Sex Drive (52:21)

How can men effectively handle their sex drive asks the V. Weinstock. Look, I don't know exactly what you mean by effectively handle their sex drive. If you're asking what do men do when they are horny and they want to have sex but they don't have partners available or they have a partner who is not there at that moment or not interested, I think one of the things that I would say is this. Sex for men is very much connected to what goes on inside of them. If they're angry, if they're happy, if they're anxious, if they're depressed, if they feel good about themselves and if they don't. Some men turn to sex to soothe themselves when they're anxious, besides when they feel good. That's a given. Some men experience sex as the one and only language through which they can experience emotional intimacy. Some men experience sex as the only language through which they can feel tender, soft, connected. It won't be the first time that you will hear women describe guys who open up who they feel are truly there, who are really intimate with them only in sex because it is the sanctioned language for guys to experience what otherwise are often forbidden emotions for men.

How Can Sex Be Effectively Utilized To Create Intimacy For Men (53:20)

So that's for me when you ask about effectively handling sex drives. It has to do with that. It has to do with being not just monolingual, having many languages available, having many ways to take care of our needs, of our feelings, and not just one. That's the effectiveness of sex, is to not have it be the only thing available. For the rest, I'm not sure that there is a unique way to effectively deal with drives. But one thing you need to know, sex is not a drive. You don't die from not having sex. You die from not being touched, but you don't die from not having sex. It's a motivational system. It's not a drive. It's not the same.

How to establish healthy non-monogamous relationship boundaries (54:22)

Ebing is asking, "What are some of the suggestions and resources that she has for couples who want to explore having a more monogamish relationship, not poly, but more flexible than traditional monogamy, especially when it comes to navigating boundaries, emotions, and sexual health?" It's a beautiful question. So first of all, there's the movie that comes out right now, Tauras Poly's movie called Monogamish. It's premiering in New York actually this week. So that would be a very nice movie to see together because it really opens up the conversation. And for me, the open relationship is less about what people actually do than the openness of the conversation itself. Many people don't nearly want to do as much as they want to do that they could if they wanted. They don't want to feel that they live with the restrictions of the boundaries. And then it's a conversation. What is it that you miss? What is it that you feel drawn to? What would you like to experience? Do you want to experience it alone? Do you want to experience it together? Do you want me to know about it? Is it a turn on for you if I tell you or do you actually not want to know about it? And often you'll find you have one of each in a couple. Is it something that you want that is fleeting, that if you meet someone you want the possibility of letting something unfold and see where it takes you? Is it when you travel because you're often away? Or is it that you have been with me since you are 17 and you want to know other partners because you've never known others beside me? It's this whole conversation and not to take it immediately as something is missing. I can't give you everything. I should be everything for you. If you have any other interest, it must mean that I'm not enough. It's really that conversation. And what you will find is that the couples for whom this is an adjoined interest, the conversation itself is often very enlightening, very vibrant, and very, very intimate because the possibility of talking to your partner about your longings for that which takes place outside and to have it be recognized and accepted is a deeply intimate conversation. The recognition of your freedom, of your erotic freedom, on which you may not act but that it exists even in fantasy, even in curiosity, in longing, in interest is profoundly intimate for couples.

Non-Monogamous Relationships, Self-Acceptance, And Recommendations

Maintaining equality in non-monogamous relationships (56:34)

And then you talk about, "Do I want to know what do we tell each other? Do we notify in advance? Do we tell after it has happened?" What is it that you want to know? And understand that you don't have necessarily a symmetric need. One of you may want to know more. One of you doesn't. One of you likes to share. One of you doesn't. You don't have to be one and the same. And then you come back and you examine. It works for us. It doesn't work for us. It brings us closer. It makes us too nervous. Now in the end, it's not a good thing for us. Or not right now because we have young kids and we're not equal or because one of us is not working and we're not equal or because one of us has been sick and we're not... By definition, there needs to be a certain level of equality in the relationship for the conversation to not be a power maneuver. Both people need to have the same possibilities. They may not both want to act on them, but they need to both know that they could if they wanted and if that's part of the agreement. And then you come back and you examine. Is this good for us? Does this work? When I say work, meaning do we feel enriched by it or do we feel like it's depleting us, that it's taking away from us, that it ultimately... We thought it would be a good idea, but it's not really. Or this has actually opened up things between us. We've had a whole different level of honesty between us, a whole different depth of communication that never existed before. We bring back different parts of ourselves. The reunions are beautiful. We make love before we go off to meet someone else. We only accept it when one of us is traveling. It's a very rich conversation and it's often many, many conversations before anybody even acts on any of this. That's how this process goes.

Book recommendations that challenge monogamous ideals (58:40)

Then you can read some books. You can read Taohmino's book, Open. You can read Sex at Dawn. You can talk to other people who actually practice consensual non-monogamy, varieties thereof and how it works for them. You get ideas. But often people don't tell you that that's what they do because it's so negatively judged. So it's not like you can go and ask them, "How do you raise your children?" Because I'm looking for some ideas. But you will find people who are willing to talk and have experienced it for years. So they practice that. That doesn't mean it's what works for you, but it inspires you. It gives you what you should be thinking about.

Tips on achieving self-acceptance after a big mistake (59:21)

And that's how I would start this thing. The last question I will do. How do I help people come to terms and come to accept themselves? For me, self-acceptance is really a process of maturation. I don't expect people in their 20s to easily accept themselves. So I do put this on a spectrum of time. But I think the fundamental experience of accepting yourself is that you accept that you are flawed. You accept the things that are beautiful about you. And you begin to feel that I'm good enough. That's the essence. It's not, "I'm perfect." It's, "I'm good enough." Or I'm flawed and I make mistakes, but they don't thank me. I don't feel instantly massively embarrassed and ashamed about them. I'm able to look at them and just say, "Okay, I'll do better next time. I'll do it differently next time. I'll learn from this." It's that process that is self-acceptance. I remember making mistakes and then not sleeping for three weeks at a time, and churning and obsessing about it and replaying it in my head. Today I do some of these mistakes and I just think, "Okay, I know that mistake and I don't like it. It doesn't feel good, but it doesn't cripple me anymore in the same way." I think that's the level of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is also knowing what you want and feeling okay about it, not feeling like you have to continuously justify, explain, apologize. It's what I call the healthy sense of entitlement, not a grandiose sense of entitlement. Self-acceptance is self-confidence. Self-acceptance is also the ability to live with your lack of confidence and your insecurities and your uncertainties. To say, "This is an area where I feel deeply insecure and it's part of who I am. I have it all the time." All of this is self-acceptance. It's your ability to live with your sense of ambivalence, the things about yourself that you like and that you don't like, the things that you feel really good about and the things that you are very troubled by. The ability to live with ambivalence about oneself is an essential ingredient of self-acceptance. It's all of that. For me, it's a process of maturation over life. This is not something you just one day have. It grows on you slowly, physically, emotionally, in terms of lifestyle. You know what you like, you accept it. You don't force yourself anymore to be who you're not. You're okay in your skin. I often say, "If I had the confidence of today with the looks of then." When I was young, I didn't have the confidence. It's an interesting thing that has a lot more to do with life experience than with any actual trainings that you're going to have. Voila! That's my suggestions for self-acceptance. Goodbye. Thank you very much. I hope we talk again soon. I hope that you can draw from some of these answers and feed on them for a while until the next meal, as we say. Bon appetit.

Outro (01:02:46)

Bye. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off.

The legendary Five-Bullet Friday... (01:02:52)

Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. It's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. If you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out. Just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. If you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

Audible! (01:03:49)

This episode is brought to you by Audible, which I've used for many, many years. It comes with me everywhere on my telephone in my pocket. I love audiobooks and they are one of my favorite ways to pass the time more than that, to indulge myself, to educate myself with time that would otherwise go to waste in some respects. When I'm taking walks, when I'm cooking, cleaning up the house, on the road for travel, whatever, in those in-between spaces, or as a secondary activity, I love using Audible to help me transform my downtime in a way. It's allowed me to consume more books, many more books, than I would otherwise. You can access an unbeatable selection of bestsellers, mysteries, thrillers, and anything you could possibly imagine, really. I have two to recommend right off the bat. One, and I recommend this even for non-fiction purists. This is a fiction book, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Alright, that's read by Will Wheaton. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Check it out, the reviews are bonkers. This has a cult following. Check it out. And then, very selfishly, I'll mention one that I put together with one of you guys, with actually a listener of the podcast who is also a huge fan of Seneca. So the book is Tau of Seneca, T-A-O. Tau of Seneca, S-E-N-E-C-A, Subtitle, Practical Letters from a Stoic Master. This is effectively an introduction to what I view as the ultimate operating system for thriving in high stress environments. That is stoicism. It's become very popular among top athletic coaches, CEOs of fast growing companies. So check it out. That is for non-fiction folks who must read or listen to non-fiction. Tau of Seneca, Practical Letters from a Stoic Master. And as a listener of the Tim Ferriss show, you have access to a 30 day trial and your first audiobook is free. So why not? Go grab one of those. Ready Player One or Tau of Seneca. Go to audible.com/tim to start downloading now. Membership includes one free audiobook every month, exclusive sales, such as 30% off all regularly priced audiobooks and unlike streaming you own your books once they have been downloaded. And I like to listen often times when I'm offline. So you have that benefit as well. You can't make more time folks. Just not manufacturing anymore. It's out of print. You can't make more time but you can make the most of it. So turn your travel, commute, dog walk, whatever into something more with a free trial at Audible. Go to audible.com/tim to learn more and start now.

Sponsor And Outro

ZipRecruiter (01:06:36)

This episode is brought to you by Zip Recruiter. You may have heard them everywhere. They're growing like crazy. They're an innovative platform for doing several things but especially improving the hiring process, making it slick and elegant and easy. One of the hardest parts of running any business, growing any business is finding and hiring the right team. I've seen this firsthand in close to 100 startups now. God, I'm getting old. From all over the world at different stages of growth. And nothing can quite drain your resources and cost you time and money like making mistakes in hiring. Zip Recruiter developed their own system and their own platform for helping you to solve two of the biggest problems and bottlenecks for employers. Posting jobs easily and then making it even easier to find the best candidates. Unlike other job sites, Zip Recruiter does in effect the opposite of what you'd expect. So they do not depend on candidates finding you. Their technology finds the right candidate for you. And in fact, more than 80% of the jobs posted on Zip Recruiter return a qualified candidate based on your criteria that you select in just 24 hours. So no more juggling email reviewing hundreds of unqualified candidates. I've been there, done that, don't recommend it. We're dealing with calls to the office, etc. None of that. Simply screen, rate and manage your candidates all in one place on Zip Recruiter's dashboard. And as a listener of the Tim Ferriss show, thanks for that, Zip Recruiter wants to allow you to start posting jobs and trying their services for free. So if you're thinking of hiring somebody, you need to find an executive assistant, you need to find a developer, whatever it might be. Try it out. Just visit ziprecruiter.com/tim and you can experience just how Zip Recruiter has been used by businesses of all different sizes to find the most qualified job candidates. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/tim. Check it out. Give it a spin.