How To Find THE PERFECT RELATIONSHIP | Esther Perel & Lewis Howes

Why do

relationship

s seem so difficult for so many people when it's what we need most to feel alive, happy, and connected? This is the one million question. I have been a

relationship

therapist for over 35 years. I work with people. in your romantic relationships family relationships friendships co-founders colleagues co-workers so love and work the two pillars of our life as freud said and um if you could say why the simple feeling of loving or caring is not enough because the whole human drama is really complex in the same way that nature is complex, so is human nature and I spent my entire career studying what is changing in relationships, you know why they are more complicated today, they are more painful today, you know, our expectations changed and there are Isn't that what I have answers for?

I have no answers to why is this? Because you know it? But I know. Is it more complicated now? Relationships Yes, fifty years ago, yes, absolutely why, that's why for a very simple reason. For a long time we lived and still live in many parts of the world in traditional societies where relationships are clearly codified there are clear rules there are roles there are obligations there is a strict structure that you cannot leave but it tells you clearly who you are, where you belong, where you are. ingrained and what is expected of you and you don't have too many questions about whose career matters more and who will wake up to feed the baby and who has the right to demand sex and what and everyone, every husband knows exactly what he can ask of his wife and the wife knows exactly what not to say to her husband and children know their place and adults can interact too.

All of this was super regulated. You know exactly that on Sunday you are going to visit your family and that you have to call your grandmother and that and no one came by and you go to church or go to any other religious institution where you are going to pray to be with the community etc. and you know what that no one needed to explain to you why it's important you went because I said so and because that's what you do that's what we do and that's what we don't do because what will the neighbors say and there is a community that takes care of you all the time and the streets They're that close and everyone knows what's going on at the neighbor's house right now.

Your best friends could be breaking up and you didn't even see it coming. Nobody knows what is happening at the neighbor's house. That's where we should start. I think so. Powerful, it gave you insight into what's really going on in other people's lives so you're not alone wondering: Am I the only one going through all this? This narrow structure of our society has moved to what we today call network societies. Network societies are not tight knots, they are loose ends, they are loose threats with a commitment that can be revoked at any time. That's why your women write to you constantly.

I thought we had something and the next day it disappears. I thought we had to develop a sense of trust, you know. where is the care, where is the loyalty, where is the continuity, all these things that are not fixed now, they all have to be negotiated, everything that was a rule is now a negotiation, a conversation about who is going to go to work, who Are we moving you to the west coast or are you moving with me to the east coast? Are we going to have children? Are we ready to have children? How many children do we want to have?

You know, over and over again. Am I happy at work? Oh, I could do better. Should I stay a few more months? I should be going? Know? Is this what I really want to do is this who I really am is this my passion is this my passion you know this identity The search all the time is this, who I want to be is this and all these questions are quite new questions, why, because in the past or in other parts of the world today you know who you are, seriously, you are someone's son. even if you're someone's son, start with that Ben, you know, and you'll probably even do what your father did if you're a man and maybe don't do too much outside the house if you're a woman or We can start a work course away from home and all these things are very, very normative and now it's different, we don't have any of that right now, I basically call it the identity economy and we spend our time trying to figure it out.

find

out who I am, we have a huge self-help industry, you know, with this belief that we are self-made, that we can have selfies, that we take care of ourselves, it's this self that is so focused, that is the center of all.

And so fragile, the damn me has never been more fragile. We're constantly making sure that it doesn't get overwhelmed, that it doesn't get triggered, that it doesn't get breached, that it doesn't get torn apart because it just sits there. just like the little Dutchman with his finger trying to hold back the dam, you know, and that's the moment I think we're in right now and there's the waters, I think you swim in them, sure, well, I think there It is where the suffering comes, the inner suffering. From the surface it's when you obsessively think about yourself when you're obsessively thinking self-centeredly all the time trying to improve yourself and feeling like you're not good enough, right?

I think that's the combination comparing now, I don't know about those people. They didn't compare when they all went and stood on the church steps one Sunday morning. I think in communities people have always compared themselves, but there was a lot, there was a different type of social control than we have on social media. Today social control has always existed, you know, so suffering is part of community life and not being alone is what helps us with all our experiences, definitely with suffering. I look at the disappointments of relationships and the struggles we have, why are they so challenging? the challenge, what you can do about it, when you are the one who can do something and when you have to realize the limitations that what you will do will not necessarily change someone else, when it does and when it doesn't, and how this manifests itself.

At work and at home you ask me how relationships have changed. I think that we have never had so many expectations of love and work as we have today. I think that today we expect many things from love and work that we previously expected from religion and community. that we want our relationships to be transformative transcendent meaningful spiritual with purpose passionate erotic and we want it at home and we want it at work we also want it at work oh because we want work to have a purpose today we want to work for you know, to give myself a sense of identity of meaning of personal fulfillment of development not only do I want to go to work just for the paycheck I need the paycheck but I also want the paycheck to be meaningful to me work has become an economy of identity not it's just what I'm going to do is who I'm going to be and um and it's parallel it's parallel you know what we talk about at work transparency belongingness authenticity trust psychological safety I mean, when did all the emotional vocabulary come into the workplace to such an extent? point that soft skills what they used to be called, which are emotional and social skills, relational skills that used to be seen as feminine skills and feminine skills that you can't idealize them in principle, but ignore them in reality and these soft skills have very quickly become the new heart skills and that's why I'm working in the workplace it's not because it's changed and I'm certainly interested in the work it's because the work has changed and I'm suddenly interested in what I've been doing for decades I love this I'm going to ask you a question that may be difficult to answer, maybe it's easy, but you've had, you've seen many intimate relationships work and fail for over 35 years, right, yeah, how many of the relationships?

What is the percentage of people in your mind who are in long term intimate relationships, marriages are not married but together they are happy most of the time, they thrive beautifully, I'm sure there are challenges but they are able to overcome them with semi-ease, how many relationships in your mind are super. happy and prosperous after decades of changing times society work family all the dynamics that happen in life so I have two ways to answer yes the first is cultural your definition of happy and prosperous and fulfilled is probably very different from many other cultures where to be healthy have enough to eat have children have grandchildren have good jobs be respected in the community he is happy and prosperous he is happy and prosperous it's not about you and I'm talking on the couch and I'm pouring my heart out to you and you telling me that I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you in your life and that's all good, so that's one version: you have to look at the word happiness and really thrive in a cross-cultural context because many of us By the way, those who have the new definition They have parents who think about marriage and what a happy marriage is with the other definition and I wonder: do you know that maybe we are so unhappy because we want many other things that maybe we are not? part of a high speculation marriage has super high expectations I want we want everything we want a couple to be an entire community my best friend my trusted confidant my passionate lover my intellectual equal my co-parent and on top of that I want to deal with you with all the physical aspects of everyday life and all we need to get to all that and then we should also be passionate, great lovers, fantastic travelers exactly, you know, and very few dancing every week, yeah, so Eli Finkel has the best answer for you.

That's fine, he's a marriage researcher and basically what he says is that good relationships today are better than relationships in history, but they are very few because the good, what you call happiness, is at the top. of Olympus, is climbing. mountain and at the top of the mountain the view is fantastic but the air is also thinner and not everyone can climb the mountain the people who reach the top its top is probably better than the tops of the past and now what is the top I used to being that marriage was for survival, then it became a romantic enterprise and became what I call the service economy, from the production economy to the service economy.

You want children, but not just eight anymore, so you only want two, so sexuality becomes pleasure and connection so that it becomes a service economy, it is no longer a production and then from there you move on to identity, which is what I want to become the best version of myself and you are going to help me do it, that is the identity story of marriage and that goes up Maslow's ladder now if I ask the question differently, I wrote. I actually wanted to write that same article about 10 or 15 years ago. I decided to write in peace what creative couples are and do you know?

Because creative was the word that interested me. not so much happy passionate but creative meaning not stable not solid but what is this creativity the spark and I went and asked almost 100 people do you know couples who inspire you do you know couples who you think still have that spark and the The scary thing was that most people sometimes came up with one, maybe two, and that was it, you know, they knew people who were very good at renovations and people who were great parents together and people who were great business partners together, but all that.

You talk about how there were very few of them and I thought it's very sad because here we are, we want something. I mean, if I say good business partners or business leaders, would you give me 10 people that you think inspire you to run a company or authors or. musicians or we all have a long list who can say which is your favorite musician I mean most of us have more than one when it comes to intimate relationships people have very few role models now maybe it's because what they want is so high that there are very Actually, there are few models and that's probably the challenge of intimate relationships today, so how do we

find

how do we create that in an intimate partner or is it setting a lower expectation for what we want so that it's not both? , believe?

Sometimes if you lower your expectations, it's certainly much better to calibrate, so let's go back to Eli Finkle's research, calibrating expectations is probably one of the top three things for what he calls successful relationships and calibrating doesn't necessarily mean lower your expectations. but you also diversify them, you don't ask one person to give you what the whole town should really give you, well, that was the first thing, the second thing, you said there are three, so one is the calibration of the expectation, two is the diversification and three, which is what speaks to me a lot is um doing new things with your partner that if you do the things you enjoy it is very nice it is comfortable that is cozy that solidifies the friendship but if you want to create intensity it requires risk taking doing new things outside of your comfort zone a little more on the edge how often we should do new things with our intimate partner.

I think so often, I mean, look, the answer to this is very simple quite often, but not too often. you become chaotic and deregulated right now you are asking me a systemic question this is true for an individual, a relationship or a company, if you do not change or grow you will becomeYou fossilize and die, if you change too much, too quickly, there is no stability. they become chaotic and dysregulated, so how often depends on where you are in your life? Are you two there? Do you have children? Do you have little ones? Do they have elderly parents?

Are they taking care of someone? What else is going on here? We will tell you if this is a period where you need more stability or if this is a period where it is time to go and be curious and explore and discover and go out into the world and launch yourself well if you are a young woman in your 30s , I get this all the time from a lot of women who reach out to me, who are either ending relationships that were really stressful for them or have been single for years and are trying to figure out how to find the right person or how to create the right relationship for them. who will be a long-term partner if you are a woman in your 30s, what should you think about?

Should they focus on growing themselves first or what are the things they should look for in the right place? I just wrote my current blog. which is a bit of a criticism of taking care of yourself first, okay yeah, so because you learn to love yourself in the context of your relationships with others, you know with this idea that you're going to work on yourself first. here and then. you put together this nice little package and take it into relationships, that's completely out of character, it's actually interactive, you need a good amount of self-awareness, but you also need to be in relationships because it's the people who help you become. more conscious practicing it practicing it but other people let you see who you are it is by being with others that you get to know who you are and not just by sitting there alone and saying who am I, who am I, but this is a relational perspective in life and I will stick firm in that, reading the newsletter, I really dedicated myself to that because I'm a little tired of this, no, what can I tell you, I'm tired of going to get you ready first and then go in. a relationship relationships help you become who you are that's what happens between children and their caregivers next thing is instead of constantly thinking who is the right person I'm going to find out why don't you ask yourself who you want to be who If the other It's no, maybe it's to sometimes ask who I will be as a partner.

Who I have been so far in my relationships. How did I appear? What do I not know? Just, you know, finding the right person. That's now. Does it mean finding the right person? And there I will say that the simplest way to see it is this. There are many people you will love and they are not necessarily the same people you will make a life with. Are you looking for a love? story or you are looking for a life story that is good, you understand, yes there are many people with whom I have had love stories, this is a completely different story, I never thought for a minute that I would live with these people, it would take something more to have a life partner with whom you are going to go through the pains, the sufferings, the challenges, you know, all that, so you have a life partner and you still have a love story, of course, of course you want the life partner be a love story.

Also, but love stories per se are not life stories, they are different ingredients, they are different values, there are some things that you don't need to have a beautiful love story with someone, you live in its summarized version on its own, no. you are thinking. Can I do this with you? Can I grow old with you? Can I take you to my parents? Know? We share similar things. It's about values, life, not just feelings. So when you're looking for the right person, it's not just what you're attracted to. is who you can build a life with if you want to know the secrets to becoming more attractive, watch this powerful video with relationship expert stefan speaks in most situations where it takes months not to fall in love, you have learned to tolerate them. you've grown up wow, okay