Esther Perel's Blog, page 8

This piece is for anyone who has ever loved.

There is one simple transgression that can rob us of our relationship, our happiness, our very identity. Poorly understood, this act is nonetheless extremely common: an affair.

At this very moment, in all four corners of the world, someone is either betraying or betrayed, thinking about having an affair, listening to someone who is in the throes of one, or the lover who completes the triangle. No aspect of a couple’s life elicits more fear, gossip or fascination than an affair. Adultery has been legislated, debated, politicized and demonized throughout history. Yet it has existed forever.

For most of history, men cheated because they had the sanctioned power to do so with little consequence. The double standard is as old as adultery itself. I doubt King David considered the state of his marriage for even one moment before he seduced Bathsheba.

Now, our cultural bias is to individualize and pathologize sweeping social realities like infidelity. But can we truly explain it — as ubiquitous as it is — as simply a product of individual shortcomings?

I want to introduce a new conversation about affairs: why they happen, what they mean, and what can be done once they are exposed.

I lecture around the world on the subjects of love and sex. When I first became interested in the topic of infidelity, I used to ask audiences if anyone had ever experienced an affair. Not surprisingly, no hands went up. There are not many people who will publicly admit to being unfaithful or being deceived. At one time divorce was freighted with shame; today it’s infidelity that carries the new stigma.

Bearing this in mind, I changed my question to, “How many of you have been affected by infidelity in your lives?” Suddenly, the hands went up en masse. A woman sees a friend’s husband having an intimate conversation with a beautiful woman on the train and wonders whether or not she should tell. A young man describes the infidelity that preceded his parents’ divorce. Another young man was himself the “love child” of his own parents’ affair, and tells of growing up with a set of half-siblings who related to him on a spectrum from envy to resentment. An older gay man is in heavy discussions with his lesbian best friend who suspects her partner may be having an affair with an ex-girlfriend. A pair of long-married parents are refusing to let their daughter’s unfaithful husband attend their 60th anniversary party. And a young fiancé wonders if he’s done the right thing by disinviting one of his groomsmen—a known player—at his bride’s request.

As I listen to these accounts, it confirms for me that an affair is a collective event whose cast of characters includes family, friends, colleagues and neighbors, to name but a few.

Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships — what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They open the door to a deeper conversation about values, human nature and the fragility of eros, and force us to grapple with some of the most unsettling questions: How do we negotiate the elusive balance between our emotional and our erotic needs? Is possessiveness intrinsic to love or an arcane vestige of patriarchy? Is it really so that what we don’t know doesn’t hurt? How do we learn to trust again? Can love ever be plural?

Infidelity is a window into the complex landscape of relationships and the lines we draw to bind them. As a therapist, my role is to help contain volatile and opposing forces of passion: the lure, the lust, the urgency, the impossibility, the relief, the suspicion, the entrapment, the guilt, the dire consequences, the tragic denouement, the sinfulness, the surveillance, the madness of suspicion and the murderous urge for vengeance.

My work is about generating conversations about all the things we don’t like to talk about, and I have now spent years developing ways to help us all talk in depth about adultery. I work all over the world, I speak nine languages and I am continuously reminded of the multiple cultural and religious nuances that permeate every layer of this experience. My goal is to help people feel less hurt, less angry and more understood. Infidelity is still such a taboo, but we need to create a safe space for productive conversation, where the multiplicity of experiences can be explored with compassion.

It might be uncomfortable, but ultimately that will strengthen relationships by making them more honest and more resilient.

The post We Need to Start a New Conversation About Infidelity appeared first on Esther Perel.

This piece is for anyone who has ever loved.

There is one simple transgression that can rob us of our relationship, our happiness, our very identity. Poorly understood, this act is nonetheless extremely common: an affair.

At this very moment, in all four corners of the world, someone is either betraying or betrayed, thinking about having an affair, listening to someone who is in the throes of one, or the lover who completes the triangle. No aspect of a couple’s life elicits more fear, gossip or fascination than an affair. Adultery has been legislated, debated, politicized and demonized throughout history. Yet it has existed forever.

For most of history, men cheated because they had the sanctioned power to do so with little consequence. The double standard is as old as adultery itself. I doubt King David considered the state of his marriage for even one moment before he seduced Bathsheba.

Now, our cultural bias is to individualize and pathologize sweeping social realities like infidelity. But can we truly explain it — as ubiquitous as it is — as simply a product of individual shortcomings?

I want to introduce a new conversation about affairs: why they happen, what they mean, and what can be done once they are exposed.

I lecture around the world on the subjects of love and sex. When I first became interested in the topic of infidelity, I used to ask audiences if anyone had ever experienced an affair. Not surprisingly, no hands went up. There are not many people who will publicly admit to being unfaithful or being deceived. At one time divorce was freighted with shame; today it’s infidelity that carries the new stigma.

Bearing this in mind, I changed my question to, “How many of you have been affected by infidelity in your lives?” Suddenly, the hands went up en masse. A woman sees a friend’s husband having an intimate conversation with a beautiful woman on the train and wonders whether or not she should tell. A young man describes the infidelity that preceded his parents’ divorce. Another young man was himself the “love child” of his own parents’ affair, and tells of growing up with a set of half-siblings who related to him on a spectrum from envy to resentment. An older gay man is in heavy discussions with his lesbian best friend who suspects her partner may be having an affair with an ex-girlfriend. A pair of long-married parents are refusing to let their daughter’s unfaithful husband attend their 60th anniversary party. And a young fiancé wonders if he’s done the right thing by disinviting one of his groomsmen—a known player—at his bride’s request.

As I listen to these accounts, it confirms for me that an affair is a collective event whose cast of characters includes family, friends, colleagues and neighbors, to name but a few.

Affairs have a lot to teach us about relationships — what we expect, what we think we want, and what we feel entitled to. They open the door to a deeper conversation about values, human nature and the fragility of eros, and force us to grapple with some of the most unsettling questions: How do we negotiate the elusive balance between our emotional and our erotic needs? Is possessiveness intrinsic to love or an arcane vestige of patriarchy? Is it really so that what we don’t know doesn’t hurt? How do we learn to trust again? Can love ever be plural?

Infidelity is a window into the complex landscape of relationships and the lines we draw to bind them. As a therapist, my role is to help contain volatile and opposing forces of passion: the lure, the lust, the urgency, the impossibility, the relief, the suspicion, the entrapment, the guilt, the dire consequences, the tragic denouement, the sinfulness, the surveillance, the madness of suspicion and the murderous urge for vengeance.

My work is about generating conversations about all the things we don’t like to talk about, and I have now spent years developing ways to help us all talk in depth about adultery. I work all over the world, I speak nine languages and I am continuously reminded of the multiple cultural and religious nuances that permeate every layer of this experience. My goal is to help people feel less hurt, less angry and more understood. Infidelity is still such a taboo, but we need to create a safe space for productive conversation, where the multiplicity of experiences can be explored with compassion.

It might be uncomfortable, but ultimately that will strengthen relationships by making them more honest and more resilient.

The post A new conversation about affairs appeared first on Esther Perel.

What is the difference between love and desire?

Love and desire relate and conflict:

Love is: When you care, worry, feel responsible for someone. You want to minimize threats, reduce the distance, and nurture them.

Desire is: an expression of freedom and autonomy. Many can feel freer with people they are less emotionally involved in. Why do women like the bad boys? You don’t have to worry about him – don’t’ feel safe with him, but it’s freeing in terms of desire.

Sometimes the very care, worry, feeling of responsibility we feel for our beloved is what stifles the unselfconsciousness and freedom necessary for desire. What nurtures love is not necessarily what fuels desire and what turns us on sexually isn’t always what is emotionally safe.

But most long term relationships involve responsibility by design… indeed women find it much harder to give themselves he permission for pleasure, sometimes any pleasure such as sitting down when drinking their coffee. When they are organized around attending to the needs of others they can easily forego their own. The first need to go for some of these woman is their erotic needs.

For women, they loose themselves because they can’t sustain desire when the nurturing starts. We choose love over desire because that’s what we feel we should do. Men and women trade off the adventure for the predictability. They trade their erotic needs for security needs.

In a long term, committed relationship, how do love and desire coexist?

We like the unexpected at first – allow the unexpected to be part of the relationship. Break the routine – what you talk about, activities, how you react to each other. Bring vitality back – shake things up! Fire needs air, couples need to fan the flame. The excitement is rooted to uncertainty—keep mystery and adventure alive by alternative between what makes us feel safe and secure and by allowing the unpredictable and the unexpected to jolt us out of the flattening habits.

The post How to Distinguish Between Love & Desire appeared first on Esther Perel.

Isn’t space the opposite of what marriage is about?

Eroticism occurs in the space between self and other.

It isn’t always the lack of closeness that stifles desire, but too much closeness. And while love seeks closeness, desire needs space to thrive. That’s because love is about having, and desire is about wanting.

Space invites otherness and differences. Between me and the other lies the erotic élan. In order to have wanting, we need the sense of mystery, a bridge to cross and someone to visit on the other side.

How do you bring mystery to a relationship that’s quite established?

When you ask people when they are drawn to a partner, they say, “when I see him or her from a distance… when he plays with he kids, when he surprises me, he is different.” “When she is on stage, doing something she’s passionate about, when we are at a party and I see her talk to hoer and hold court,” etc. In none of these situations are we caretakers, the perfect anti-aphrodisiac, and that person is momentarily less familiar and again mysterious. We make our partners into something knowable. The big illusion is that you actually need to know that person.

But certainly, after spending day after day with someone, there aren’t too many surprises. You must know that built in to your mate is someone you don’t know. You hear your partner talking to someone else about new things…you find that there are things you don’t know about them.

How do you take the steps to create mystery and space?

Be more independent. Have your own friends, see the movie you want to see, cultivate your own interests. Reach out to your partner–the way you would to a friend. Listen to them as a separate person, separate from you. Be curious! Invite them to an evening at the museum instead of he usual movie. It shows that you’re still looking to please, impress, surprise – all erotic elements.

What if, by attempting to create this space, your mate becomes threatened?

Ask what they are worried about, reassure them. Indeed, space must be balanced with security. Discovery and exploration rely on a good dose of trust. Indeed some of us are afraid and so we ask our partners to forego their freedom to ensure our security, but does that ever make us really feel secure?

Is there a risk to allowing someone too much space?

Fusion is a fake notion of security – there is just as much risk when keeping someone too close. I find that those who leave a relationship are often suffocated. When you feel you have easy movement, and you show your partner you trust them, both parties stay willingly. Yes, there is a danger that some people abuse the freedom (no doubt) or that when they move away the other barely notices it. Too much closeness may be a problem, but too much distance is as well.

The post How to Put a Healthy Dose of Space & Mystery into Your Relationship appeared first on Esther Perel.

Does infrequent sex equal a failing relationship?

No! Complainers sometimes want more, but they always want better. They want to reconnect with the poetics of sex. There is a real pressure to have sex in a measurable way. It used to be that you were ashamed because you had too much sex before marriage, now you are ashamed because you have too little, too much pressure. People will experience that desire ebbs and flows, but it’s important to focus on how to bring it back. How do you engage each other erotically? There are plenty of warm, affectionate relationships and if the sexlessness is mutually accepted, then there is no problem.

So the quality is more important than the frequency?

Yes, people want to feel alive. If there is a spark between you but it only happens every few weeks, that’s okay. The renewal, the connection, the playfulness is what most people are longing for.

When do you know if you are in trouble?

If it’s months, or when you say, “I’m living with my brother,” or, it’s like, “I’m married to my best friend who I’m not attracted to,” then the way you perceive your partner has become desexualized. When you feel this couple has become family and the desexualization is not about tiredness or stress. When the gaze is never on you. When you go for months and you never think of it except to hope your partner does not think of it either.

Must both partners agree to the amount of sex?

Yes – If both people are fine with the frequency of sex. What is the erotic connection between two people? If the passion is there, infrequency is only a problem when it becomes active avoidance. Desire discrepancy is often a problem, but it is not the difference between the partners as much as how it is deal with.

The post How Infrequent Sex Can Still be Good appeared first on Esther Perel.

Tomorrow is Valentines Day. In advance of the holiday, The Tech Times has put together a list of the best nine TED Talks about love. 

1. John Hodgman – “Aliens, love — where are they?”

2. Amy Webb – “How I hacked online dating”

3. Andrew Solomon – “Love, no matter what”

4. Helen Fisher – “Why we love, why we cheat”

5. Hannah Brencher – “Love letters to strangers”

6. Stefana Broadbent – “How the Internet enables intimacy”

7. Al Vernacchio – “Sex needs a new metaphor. Here’s one…”

8. Parul Sehgal – “An ode to envy”

9. Esther Perel – “The secret to desire in a long-term relationship”

Watch them all here.

The post Best TED Talks About Love appeared first on Esther Perel.

“Holidays force us to mark time and acknowledge something,” Perel says. “We can be cynical and talk about commercialization, but every holiday is commercialized. We don’t stop doing Christmas. It’s a good idea, on occasion, to celebrate your relationship and who you love.”

So, if you were veering towards just going through the motions this Valentine’s Day or, worse, dismissing it altogether, don’t be such a whatever-the-Valentine’s-equivalent-of-Scrooge-is. Perel has a few common sense tips that will remind your partner why they fell so hard for you that procreation seemed like a good idea in the first place.”

CLICK HERE for the full article, including a few good gift ideas.

The post Valentines Day Gift Ideas – Keep it Simple appeared first on Esther Perel.

I think we’ve always equated longevity with good and successful marriages, but plenty of people who stayed “till death do us part” were absolutely miserable with each other.

It’s important to recognize that some relationships can end with dignity and integrity, and be appreciated for what they were without being viewed as a failure. Couples raised their children together, bought a home together, buried their parents together, helped each other through cancer spells together. It’s cruel and shortsighted to say that if it ends, then it’s a failure.

I think marriages sometimes just pass their shelf life, but the partners still stay connected because they have children and experience divorce as simply a reorganization of the family. More and more, I help couples who choose to end their marriage take with them the richness of their relationship and what they created, rather than just see the whole thing as a calamity.

 

The post Just Because a Marriage Ends Doesn’t Mean it’s a Failure. appeared first on Esther Perel.

A man’s sexuality is integral to everything he does. It’s reflected in how he lives, how he approaches his work and recreation, and how he meets—or dodges—challenges. In the consulting room, I simply mirror that integration, introducing the subject of a man’s sexuality, his sexual practice, his approach to sex, and its place in his life in an effortless, organic way.

Watch this two and a half minute clip of demonstration and you can incorporate my insight and practical approach into your own work right away.

order soma online

 

The post Therapists: How To Talk About Sex With Men appeared first on Esther Perel.

Just two weeks ago in Pakistan, 145 children and teachers were lost. More than five-times the number of victims of the tragic Newtown shooting in 2012.

Global tragedies in recent weeks have reminded me, yet again, that we are living in a time of uncertainty. Even when we think that everything is in our control, the unpredictability of world politics affect our lives. Wherever we are, safety is often only a contrived illusion.

We are surrounded not only by our own uncertainty, but also by the one that reaches us from all over the globe. We are connected to the Grand Uncertainty of our world. When children get killed in Peshawar, I go to my sons and hold them tight. In that moment I am acutely aware of their presence, of the fragility of life, of the terror of losing them, and the inability to imagine the crater in me were something to happen to them. When we lose a child, it shocks the entire family system, in space and in time. It has ripple effects to the entire community and it becomes etched in our memory, a trauma that will be transmitted across generations.

Here is a little morbid exercise for you: Imagine that something horrible happened. Think back on the last thing you said to your partner or child, mother, father or friend. Would you feel at peace, or would you be churning in guilt and regret?

Ours is a society where we are constantly urged to speak our mind – expressing ourselves is the societal norm, and sharing our feelings is our birthright. But I would like to suggest that we also censor ourselves, just a bit. It’s equally important that we know what to keep to ourselves and when to find a different outlet. Wholesale sharing is not without a price.

During this time of self evaluation and goal setting, I encourage you to reflect about the relationships in your life. Have you committed a random act of kindness? Has it been beyond your inner circle? Have you made someone feel important and supported? If you haven’t added these things to your end of the year checklist, maybe it’s time to do so.

Take a moment to check in with these three essential human qualities below. Personally and on an interpersonal level, how are you doing in each of these departments?

DECENCY — Graciousness, civility, correctness, and morality.
COMPASSION — Empathy, kindness, concern, care, and emotional intelligence.
PRESENCE — The ability to be open to your interior life as well as available to others, receptive, in the moment, focused, and attentive.

In a time when we can feel so easily disposable, friendless, and unfriended, remind someone in your life that they have significance. Connect with the people who are important to you.

I leave you with a little piece of wisdom from my colleague Tony Robbins: The quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships. I couldn’t agree more.

Wishing you a compassionate 2015,

Esther

The post 2014 in Review appeared first on Esther Perel.