The Love Expert: The REAL Reason We’re Lonely, Loveless, Depressed - Alain De Botton, School Of Life

1. 0:00 – 2:17

   Intro

   1. ABAlain de Botton0:00

      These are very valuable lessons that we need in our relationships, so lesson one. Alain de Botton. Best-selling author-

   2. SBSteven Bartlett0:07

      The modern philosopher of love- His goal-

   3. ABAlain de Botton0:09

      To help you live a better, more meaningful life. The average human has 70,000 thoughts a day. The problem is that we don't know how to use them. For example, we tend to believe we'll find the one, but that belief has led to more rage, more disappointment 'cause we're not free to love just anyone. What's problematic is that we're drawn to love stories that are echoing our childhoods, and this is something that troubles so many people, because our past was not necessarily happy. We are all confused about love. The, the most romantic sentence that people will say is, "I met this person and we didn't even need to speak. We just felt on the same page." Well, this leads to a catastrophic outbreak of sulking. They say to you, "Is anything wrong?" Of course there is, but you're not gonna tell them. And the reason is that you're a romantic and you believe that your partner should have alien capacities to look into your wounded soul to understand what the upset is, but, of course, they can't because they're just human.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:04

      So what would you say are the core habits of two people who have a really successful relationship?

   5. ABAlain de Botton1:10

      What we need is...

   6. SBSteven Bartlett1:12

      Let's talk about sex.

   7. ABAlain de Botton1:13

      Goodness me, does it cause problems.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett1:16

      26% of people in relationships are having sex less than ten times per year.

   9. ABAlain de Botton1:21

      So, the question is, what are we getting wrong? One of the leading answers that neither party knows is there is that... ding-ding. That's normally a sign of a problem.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett1:33

       Quick one. This is really, really fascinating to me. On the backend of our YouTube channel, it says that 69.9% of you that watch this channel frequently over the lifetime of this channel haven't yet hit the subscribe button. I just wanted to ask you a favor. It helps this channel so much if you choose to s- subscribe. Helps us scale the guests, helps us scale the production, and it makes the show bigger. So if I could ask you for one favor, if you've watched the show before and you've enjoyed it and you like this episode that you're currently watching, could you please hit the subscribe button. Thank you so much, and I will repay that gesture by making sure that everything we do here gets better and better and better and better. That is a promise I'm willing to make you. Do we have a deal? (instrumental music plays)

2. 2:17 – 4:48

   What Mission Are You On?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:17

      Alan, you write about so much. You produce content about so many different subject matters, but what is the overarching mission that you are on?

   2. ABAlain de Botton2:29

      I'm trying to look, almost systematically, at a variety of causes of unhappiness created by the world we live in. Um, you know, obviously the world we live in has solved many, many problems, but it's also generated, in a host of areas, particularly, um, difficult challenges that have not really struck humanity before, and I like to think, both personally and on behalf of others, um, about what those problems are and how we might steer through them. The average human has 70,000 thoughts a day, right not huge, elaborate ones, but just stray, little fragmentary thoughts, 70,000 of them pass through consciousness every day, and the problem is that we don't know how to process them or use them. It's part of the reason why we end up with such, you know, busy and troubling minds. We haven't stepped back in order to ask ourselves, at the end of the day, some of those questions that can calm us down like, you know, who am I angry with? Who, what am I excited by? What's really happened today? You know, we let experiences rush past us, and then, of course, experiences that haven't been digested properly have a nasty habit of coming to sting us in the tail, um, and I think you can look at a lot of mental troubles as essentially the outgrowth of unprocessed emotion. Um, you know, depression is often sadness that hasn't understood itself. Anxiety or irritability is worry that doesn't know its own cause. And so often what we need, particularly in the modern world, is occasions on which we can get to know our own minds. It's a, it's a, it's a strange thing. Surely we know our own minds. Surely we know... No. No. The way that we're built is obviously not prioritizing a full awareness of ourselves. We're outward-facing creatures. We're action-focused creatures, which is all to the good and has many advantages, but because of the way we live now, more sedentary lives, lives that call upon us not merely to be active, but also to be fulfilled, um, those lives require periods of introspection that our routines often don't

3. 4:48 – 8:25

   Mental Illness & Where It Comes From

   1. ABAlain de Botton4:48

      allow for. So I'm always trying both with myself and advising others, you know, take that time in the evening and just sit down in a semi-darkened room and just ask yourself, "What's coming up for me? What's really happened inside me?" Because it can take a little while to realize what you're really upset by, what you're really excited by, et cetera. We're not obvious to ourselves, and as I say, so many of things that we call mental disorders or mental illnesses are really stored emotion that hasn't found a way out. Emotions that haven't been acknowledged have a nasty habit of, um, stirring our conscience, demanding to be heard. They might want to tell our spines. They might want to tell our stomachs. You know, and again, a useful exercise so as not to be struck by so many of these psychosomatic disorders is to ask the body what it's trying to tell you so that it doesn't need to tell you in the more dramatic forms that end up as illnesses. So again, if you, you know, if you lie down and you simply say to yourself, "If my back could speak, what does it want to tell me? If my shoulders could have their say, what are they trying to say? If my stomach could have a voice, what might it be trying to utter?"

   2. SBSteven Bartlett6:06

      Can you apply that same rationale to things like anxiety?

   3. ABAlain de Botton6:09

      Absolutely. You know, if you think of ... Take something like insomnia, right? You wake up at 3:00 in the morning. The way I like to think of it is insomnia is, if you like, a kind of revenge for all those thoughts that you were so careful not to have in the day. You very carefully schemed not to have those thoughts in the day. Because of our emotional conscience, they want to be heard, and if you're not hearing them at 3:00 PM, you're gonna be hearing them at 3:00 AM. And so, you know, one of the best ways to sleep is to make sure you're having a little bit more of an in-depth conversation with yourself before you enter sleep, because that will allow you that kind of deeper rest. So, as I say, w- we have this emotional conscience that requires that the key things about us have a chance to be heard. And, look, let's not forget, I mean, this is the whole theory of trauma. You know, what psychotherapists have very usefully over the last 20, 30 years informed us about is that, um, events in our past, especially in our early childhood, that we have not had a chance to properly understand ... And how much can a three, four, five, six-year-old understand? Events that we can't understand, um, it doesn't mean that they haven't registered. They've registered all the more deeply, and they haven't had a chance to be processed. You know, I- I was thinking, a friend of mine recently lost a parent. He's in his 50s, well-educated, got resources, got friends, spouse, et cetera. He was telling me he was laid low by depression, just couldn't get out of bed, completely stunned by his loss. And I was thinking, in a way, he's lucky, because he's got all those resources of adulthood. Imagine a five-year-old child who suffers a bereavement. They've got no friends that they can have that sort of dialogues with. They've got no books that they can r- read about this. They've got no capacity to process it. They've got no understanding of time, et cetera. Um, emotions that can't be had lodge themselves in us and gum up our systems, and, um, I think so much of the work that we need to do on ourselves is to process pain that has not been properly understood, not because anyone's evil, but because we've lacked the resources to do so.

4. 8:25 – 14:14

   Is Happiness Something We Be Should Chasing?

   1. ABAlain de Botton8:25

   2. SBSteven Bartlett8:25

      You got me thinking about this concept of happiness as you were speaking and whether it's a natural thing for our species to be aiming at, or whether it's a new, more modern thing that we've decided to focus upon, and are we causing ourself immense distress in this pursuit of this thing that maybe our ancestors didn't- didn't ever think about? This whole ... You know, we think about self-actualization, and they were probably thinking about survival and reproduction more.

   3. ABAlain de Botton8:50

      Look, these all belong to the sort of paradoxes of modern times. Modern times have obviously brought us enormous advantages, but they've also brought us particular complexities that I think we'd be wise to- to realize, and one of them is the disappearance of religion. I mean, we are still among the first generations in many parts of the world to be, um, trying to live good lives without the support of religion. Think of how religions structure time and human experience in time. As a religious person, you immediately feel the present moment is not as important as 100, 200, 2,000 million-year history that has come before and that will continue after. The present moment is a speck in time, and- and there's a whole narrative of which you're part of that immediately diminishes you in scale. Now, nowadays, all of us want to be rather large, don't we? We want to be big, big people. We wanna make a big impression. But, um, arguably, this is a fast route to mental illness, because the graceful acceptance of your minuscule position in the cosmos is the gateway to calm and harmony. And when people say, you know, "I went into this hotel. You know, the person made me feel small," that's a bad way of being made to feel small, but there's a good way of being made to feel small. Pick up an ancient text. Read words that were written by someone in a f- foreign tongue 3,000 years ago. That'll make you feel small. Go into the desert. Notice the- the age of the rocks inscribed in, you know, time inscribed in sand. That'll put you in your place. Um, spend time with an animal that has no concern for your status, your sense of importance, your foiled narrative of your own success. All these things that drive modern humans mad, these are not present in an older kind of religious sphere, and a- a- as I say, what religions do is they tell us you're part of a bigger story. They also tell us, many faiths tell us that life, and you particular, are imperfect, um, you know? Think of Catholicism and its notion of original sin. Now, lots of, lots of bad stuff associated with original sin. I'm not, you know, a huge fan from many aspects, but let's look at the good side, right? What it, what Catholicism tells us is everybody's broken. Everybody is flawed. It's quite a helpful starting point, right? Because, um, if you think, "Well, all right, I'm a bit broken, but so is somebody else, so is somebody else, so we're all doing our best," that's the gateway to vulnerability, to friendship, if you like.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett11:22

      Lower expectations.

   5. ABAlain de Botton11:23

      Lower expectations, but also to- to connection with others, you know? So often, people who become successful find it really hard to make friends. Why? Because they associate success with invulnerability, and the more successful they get, the harder it is for them to admit to the real truth about being human, which is that we're all helpless children some of the time, at least, frightened, helpless children. And it becomes harder to make, to keep up the contact with that, let alone admit that to somebody else. So again, religions handily reduce our expectations and our sense of ourselves. We are merely flawed humans. There is a perfect world. It doesn't exist in Beverly Hills. It doesn't exist in, you know, the- the fancy parts of Singapore or- or Sydney. It exists up there in a- in another world. In other words, ...... um, the human realm is inherently imperfect. Quite a good starting point. I mean, even if you went on a date, right? Imagine two characters you might go on a date with, right? First one tells you, "Yeah, I'm kinda perfect and I'm achieve- I'm aiming to achieve total perfection." You think, "Wow, good for them, but slightly scary." Next is somebody else who goes, "I'm kind of flawed, but I'm sort of managing my flaws and I'm interested in how to get to know my flaws and work with them." Instantly, one thinks, "Hmm, life might be easier around such a person." There's- there's something about the pursuit of perfection which makes day-to-day life extremely hard. And religions, slightly by the by, tick that box. They were able to reduce us in our own eyes while raising us in the eyes of, you know, a divine being. Um, and, uh, and that has helped us to have an e- that helped us to have an easier relationship with, with ourselves. And, and the notion also was you cannot perfect this life, you know? Life becomes perfect in another realm. We'll build Jerusalem somewhere else, not on this Earth, in the next world. Again, it takes the pressure off us. We moderns, we modern people, we think the present moment is supremely important, now is important, everything that's going on right now is supremely important. Doesn't matter 100 years ago or a thousand years ago, now is the only criteria of time. You are perfectible, right? So if there's something wrong with you, you're failing against an ideal of perfection. Again, very, very hard. Um, and that you are made, I mean, the- the biggest, the biggest challenge of all, you're made to be happy, as you suggested, that the true goal of every human is happiness. Not fulfillment, not, uh, you know, the realization of a grand scheme, not living for others, your own happiness. And again, it's a beautiful idea, but goodness me, does it cause problems? Goodness me. You know, think of Émile Durkheim. Beginning of the 20th century, French sociologist writes this book, um, s- contrasting the differences between ancient societies and modern

5. 14:14 – 21:04

   How The Modern World Is increasing Suicide Rates

   1. ABAlain de Botton14:14

      societies, and he identifies one troubling difference between ancient societies, pre-modern agricultural village-based societies where religion plays a role, and modern urban technologically-driven success-oriented individualistic societies, and that's the suicide rate. He realizes in his book On Suicide published in 1900 that modern societies, for all their advantages, leads their members, uh, a share of their members, often the most ambitious of their members, to take their own lives. Why? What's going on? And this becomes, well, it's the birth of modern sociology really. It's- it becomes a major inquiry into what modern times does to the soul, and I'm deeply fascinated by that. I can't let that one go because what's this paradox? What's this paradox of suffering amidst plenty, of regress amidst progress? This fascinates me.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett15:15

      I spoke to the CEO of CALM, Campaign Against Living Miserably, Simon Gunning, and he shared some stats with me about exactly what you're talking about, about suicide. He said someone dies by suicide in the UK every 90 minutes. Si- 76% are male. There's 25 attempts for every death. Um, the single biggest cause of death for men under 45 is suicide. Single biggest cause of death for 15 to 49-year-olds is suicide. The 19 to 35-year-old category are twice as likely to report being in crisis than any other group. And 16 to 24s is the fastest growing group in history to exhibit suicidality. And more recently, there's a big conversation emerging now around young women and suicidality, which is, um, a fairly recent, unfortunately exploding trend, this trend of young women now experiencing suicidality.

   3. ABAlain de Botton16:04

      And look, people don't just commit suicide when things are bad. People commit suicide when things are bad and they think, it's a delicate point, they think it's their fault. They cannot disassociate the trouble they feel from an intense sense of responsibility, which then also entails shame. Now, what's going on there? You see, when I say we live in a individualistic world, what that really means is we live in a world where people feel that they control their own narratives, that- that what happens to them is very tightly a reflection of who they are and what they've done. And this was not always the case. You see, for long periods of history, um, people were not necessarily tightly held to the observable outcomes of their lives. This happened with money, for example. Um, in old English, a poor person was known as an unfortunate, right? Um, what is an unf- let's unpack that word, unfortunate. There's the word Fortuna in there. What was Fortuna? For the Romans, Fortuna was the goddess of luck, the goddess of fortune. And the Romans were there for all the time sacrificing things to the goddess of fortune as a way of saying, "Please, it's not me, it's, you know, this outside agency." Nowadays, this sounds completely weird. I mean, what do we call, in the most individualistic country in the world, United States, what are poor people called? It's not a nice term. They're called losers, right? You say, "That's a loser." So we've gone from unfortunate to loser. That's a trajectory of 400 years. What's happened in that time is a story about who's responsible for people's fate. And nowadays, and if I said to you, "See, things have not been going so well for me. I- I've just been sacked. Uh, you know, my- my book hadn't sold, you know, etc. But it's not me, I've just had a bit of bad luck." You, very nice person, but a modern person, side of you would be thinking, "Hmm, he must have done something wrong," right? You'd be thinking, "He must have done something wrong," because that's how we think. We don't allow people the-... benefit of luck, right? Similarly, if you said to me, "Oh, uh, you know, m- my podcast will be doing brilliantly. We've now got 8,000 million, million, billion su-..." How many have you got nowadays?

   4. SBSteven Bartlett18:27

      Big numbers, yes.

   5. ABAlain de Botton18:27

      Um, um, and y- and you said, and you said to me, "Oh, I, it's just, just a bit of good luck, right?" I think, "Oh, Stephen's really, you know, he's very modest." But, you know, it's not true. He's done something. We believe that people do things and that that action leads to results or failures. And that's why people take their own lives because, uh, in extremists, people think there is nothing other than me to explain what happens to me. Of course, the reality is much more complicated. I'm not saying that's the truth, but that is the perceived truth. You know, look, we live in a world that is meritocratic, right? That word meritocracy is on everybody's lips. If you po- take politicians left and right in the United States, all over the world, everybody wants to create a world that is meritocratic. Some people think we've already got there.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett19:15

      What does that word mean? I don't know.

   7. ABAlain de Botton19:17

      Meritocratic is, the concept of meritocracy is a, a world in which, um, people's outcomes are dependent on their merit rather than on who their parents were, um, some corrupt class in society, the influence of whatever. So, you know, a left-wing politician and a right-wing politician say, "We wanna make a meritocratic world where your kids will go to where they deserve, where if you work hard, you can get there. And, um, you know, where everyone has a chance to succeed." W- you know, you know that kind of rhetoric.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett19:54

      Yeah, yeah.

   9. ABAlain de Botton19:55

      It's, it's the rhetoric of modern times. Now, it sounds great, and in many ways it's an enormous advance. But again, let's just focus on the psychological toll of that because if you really believe in a world in which those who get to the top deserve to get to the top, by implication, you are also positing the existence of a world in which those who are at the bottom deserve to be at the bottom. In other words, a meritocratic worldview turns success and failure from chance to a necessary fate. And that's why it makes the winners quite hard, potentially, quite heartless, because they're thinking, "Well, I got there on my own, you, you know?"

   10. SBSteven Bartlett20:42

       Mm-hmm.

   11. ABAlain de Botton20:42

       "Don't need to thank anybody. Might not need to pay m- many taxes. Why, why pay taxes? You know, it's, it's fine." And similarly, those at the bottom are kind of crushed. So we've, we've created this very complicated ideology where, um, there's a hidden toll.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett21:01

       What is love? Let's, if we're talking about...

6. 21:04 – 21:07

   The Modern World Is Shining A Light On Our Own Wrong Doings

   1. SBSteven Bartlett21:04

      Let's talk about romantic love.

   2. ABAlain de Botton21:05

      Mm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett21:05

      What is that?

7. 21:07 – 26:18

   What Is Romantic Love

   1. SBSteven Bartlett21:07

   2. ABAlain de Botton21:08

      Well, can I just first start by saying we're a bit confused about it? And, and so I can't give you an immediate answer, but I want to register that not just me, but the whole of the current world is confused about love. And I think we've been confused for about 200 years. And, and let's, let's go easy on ourselves here because the way in which we approach love now is a never before, um, approached philosophy. You know, for about the last 250 years, we've been loving under the aegis of a philosophy we could call romanticism. And romanticism is, is a vision of love with very particular assumptions. Let me run through a few of them. Um, there's one soulmate for everybody. You're gonna find this soulmate. Um, you're gonna find them through slightly mysterious ways, possibly through almost something almost quasi-divine. Like, you'll feel pulled. You'll meet them at the supermarket checkout line, the nightclub, and without even knowing too much about them, you will sense that they're your destiny. So you'll feel impelled towards somebody that you don't necessarily know too much of. A, a, a force will pull you and you will feel this is the one, and they will be an angel, literally a sort of descended being from, from another, another world. Um, the romantics were very, very keen on the notion that you didn't have to know someone too well to understand them. Even speaking not very much, the connection will be even deeper. Um, the romantics also thought that love and sex absolutely belonged together and that, that, that you couldn't have a millimeter of disjuncture between the two. Love and sex had sometimes drifted apart in the old world, and that'd been sometimes a problem, but it became a tragedy. So adultery moved from a difficulty to a tragedy. That's why all modern novels and films are all about the tragedy of, of adultery. So look, these are some of the difficulties that the modern world has created. We, we tend to believe nowadays that love is an emotion that we should feel, never a skill that we should learn. You know, for example, if I said to you, "We should probably study love. We should probably go to a school of love." You go, "That's not very romantic." Now, every time, every time that someone says, "That's not very romantic," ding ding, that's normally a sign of a problem. Like most things that don't sound very romantic are a good idea, and most things that are romantic, like marrying in Vegas after you've met someone for five minutes, is not so great. Now, what are we getting wrong? One of the things we're getting wrong is this whole business of instinct, right? So we tend to believe that love will pull us instinctively towards marvelous people that will be correct for us. You know, the old world, people were set up in relationships, "You'll marry this person because of this reason. You know, that person goes well with, with my family, blah, blah, blah." In other words, nothing to do with you. You're, you're put together with somebody. Nowadays, we're nominally free to choose anyone. Hooray, fantastic. Aren't we gonna make great choices? Uh, no. Why don't we make great choices? 'Cause we're not free. Why are we not free?... we need to go to a psychotherapist to tell us why we're not free. We're not free to love just anyone. We love in tracks laid down for us by our childhoods. Adult love sits on top of tracks and a script laid down for us in childhood. You might go, "What's wrong with that? So what?" Well, what's problematic is that many of us have childhoods in which affection was mixed in with more problematic dynamics, that maybe in order to derive love in childhood, we also had to encounter somebody who was in a rage, someone who was violent, someone who was depressed, someone who put us down, someone who preferred another sibling, whatever it was. And we go into adulthood, and we find that we're drawn to love stories that feel familiar because they're echoing some of our childhood dynamics, but they don't necessarily, for that matter, lead to happiness. And you know, sometimes we have situations where, uh, you set up a friend, let's say. You got a really good friend and you know another friend, you think, "Those people would really go well together." Set them up on a date, and then you call them up afterwards, you say, "So how did it go? You know, it must've gone really well." They say, "I'm not sure. Maybe something was lacking, a little spark." What they're really trying to get at is, they're not gonna put it this way. "Your friend, this date, did not show me signs that they would make me suffer in the way that I need to suffer in order to feel I'm in love." In other words, "This relationship threatened to be happy. That's why I had to go away." So, we are paradoxical creatures. Because our past was not necessarily happy, we're not necessarily that happy that our future romantic lives should be happy either. And this is something that, you know, they- they weren't thinking about that when love was, uh, reinvented 250 years ago.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett26:13

      When people say they have daddy issues-

   4. ABAlain de Botton26:15

      Mm.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett26:15

      ... things like this, are you saying

8. 26:18 – 29:57

   Why People Have Daddy Issues

   1. SBSteven Bartlett26:18

      then that there's often truth in that? Because they had a early experience with a father figure, a male figure in their life that might have left them or might have, you know, created a anxious attachment style or something, so they then end up pursuing dysfunctional men and relationships because that's the suffering that they associate with love?

   2. ABAlain de Botton26:39

      Sure. I mean, we repeat what we don't understand. And so long as we're unaware of the stories that we've grown up with, we will enact them in our adult lives. So we're not compelled to do this forever, but a- and- and look, I- I think a lot of us have a desire to give the stories of our childhood a different ending. Our father might have been a distant and, you know, mean-spirited creature, but also had some good qualities. The dream is to find somebody a bit like that, but to make sure that the story has a good resolution. So it's not merely a desire to repeat, it's a desire to repeat and give a better ending. But frequently, you know, we don't get there. And I think that... Look, the thing about psychology is we see all around us people doing so-called crazy things, you know, falling in love with people who are not gonna make them happy, sabotaging their careers, not able to open up to people, and we think we can step back and go, "Why are they doing that stuff? What's going on?" Now, one way to look at it, and it's a kind of compassionate way to look at it, a lot of the stuff that looks crazy now once made a lot of sense. It was once probably a really clever thing to do. If you were growing up, let's say, in an environment in which, let's say, a parent was suicidal, right, a parent was suicidal, and you shut down your emotions totally and decided you would never trust anyone, fantastic. That's a fantastically clever thing to do when you're five years old and you got a suicidal parent, right? Because that will get you through to the next stage of life. If you open your heart at five and there's a parent who's suicidal, it'll tear you apart. So good for you. You- you're doing something brilliantly clever, right? Or imagine somebody who, um, is a- becomes a clown as a child because there's a very sad atmosphere and there's a depression, and all they can have time for is jokes. They're just a manic joker, right? Brilliant. What- what a fantastic thing for a kid to work out, that they need to be quite a, kind of, manic joker. But what happens 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later is that what used to be a fantastic defense against an intolerable situation has turned out to more or less ruin people's chances. Because the person, you know, with that difficult father will end up never being able to open their heart to anyone, even a very safe person. They won't even know their heart's closed. But they will be acting out the same defensive strategy. Or the person who, you know, it was a great idea to be a bit of a joker early on, but now they have no time for anything serious and their friends feel that they're a slightly plastic person, can never connect with them. That's a real toll in- in- in the- in the adult world. So, you know, very often what we need to do is to say thank you to our younger selves for having devised strategies that really were clever. But at the same time say, "Thank you. It's enough. I wanna- I want to live in a different way. That was a fantastic strategy then. It may no longer be the right way for me to live now."

   3. SBSteven Bartlett29:52

      I was thinking as you were speaking about that, that there's kind of two groups of people. I was bouncing through different p-

9. 29:57 – 37:56

   How Do We Become Aware Of Our Own Destructive Cycles?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett29:57

      people that I know to see how it fit with them, and I identified in my mind that there's basically two p- groups of people there. The ones that are aware of their cycle, you know, and whether they've acted to change it or they're just reliving it, who knows, and the ones that are totally unaware that they're in this cycle and they just think, "Oh, God. The- my luck." You know? They say phrases like that, "Just my luck." How does one increase their awareness of their own cycle? Do you think there's a way?

   2. ABAlain de Botton30:23

      Yes. Um...... so much that can be done. L- let's imagine the very simplest exercise. Psychologists have these things called sentence completion tests, where you start with a stub of a question and then you end it with an ellipsis, a dot, dot, dot. And you say to somebody, "Don't think too much, just finish the sentence." And typical ones are, "Men are... Women are... I am... Life..." Now, if you give somebody that sheet of paper and say to them, "Don't think too much, just, just write it down," all right? Amazing things bubble up. "Men are, you know, authoritarian villains." Wow. Whoo. Where did that come from? Right? You're carrying out, you know, "Women are..." you know, whatever it is. Life, you know, "I am, you know, a nobody who deserves to be stamped..." Did you know a minute ago that you have that in you? Not necessarily. In other words-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett31:20

      Hmm.

   4. ABAlain de Botton31:20

      ... sometimes you need these little levers to shine a light. Now, the thing that really helps, and I'm not, you know, for your viewers, um, many therapists, many psychotherapists are not what they should be, uh, but some are great. If you find yourself with a good psychotherapist, they can also increase your level of self-awareness. I think that's what we're talking about-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett31:43

      Mm-hmm.

   6. ABAlain de Botton31:43

      ... increasing level of self-awareness. And, and the reason is very simple. You know, there's stuff that we all do. Let's imagine, I don't know, when you're around a man, you think, "That person's judging me, therefore I'm gonna withdraw and not enter into competition with them." I'm around a woman, I think, "I'm gonna have to, you know, I'm going to be treated badly, therefore I'm..." you know, whatever it is. Something from your past is projected onto it. You end up in a therapy room with a man or a woman, and lo and behold, what do you do? You bring out that thing, and you bring out that thing that you're doing normally. Except this time, you're not doing it in the office, you're not doing it in a relationship, you're not doing it in a context where people are busy and have got their own stuff going on and doing their own games. You're doing it with somebody, a trained professional, in a quiet room, and they can see. It's like a Petri dish. They can see the stuff that you're doing. And so suddenly, you'll be saying to your therapist, "I know you hate me." And the therapist will be going, "I, I really don't think so, but I'm interested that you have that conviction that you do." Um, or someone will be going to the therapist, "I need to look after you. I think you're quite tired, and I really, you know, y- you've been doing such great work, I feel I wanna look after you." Maybe you've been doing that all your life and the therapist will be going, "You don't need to look after me, but was there someone in your past that you needed to look after and that made you feel guilty? And that has meant that every time you're with somebody, you feel that their needs are more important than your needs?" And there's a chance, therefore, to see more clearly than ever before, outside of the kinda hubbub of relationships or office life, the kind of stories that you're projecting onto reality, to your huge cost.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett33:27

      So, I'm now aware of my cycle that originates from my childhood. The next step is doing something about it. How do I overpower that sort of hardwired urge to repeat the cycle that comes from my childhood?

   8. ABAlain de Botton33:43

      Well, look, Steven, let's not minimize, that's already an enormous achievement.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett33:47

      Yeah (laughs) .

   10. ABAlain de Botton33:48

       You know what I mean? I mean, that's, that's-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett33:49

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   12. ABAlain de Botton33:49

       ... if, you know, if you're there, that you have a handle on... Look, we don't need people to be perfect, right? We don't need p- people to be perfect. At best, we need people to know how they're imperfect and that they can have a chance to warn us of their imperfections, in good time, before they've done too much damage. There's an enormous difference. I mean, look, again, take the, take the dating idea. Let's imagine, you know, I, I often say, don't do this to me 'cause we're not, um, we're not on a date, but, um, but a great question to ask somebody on a date is, "How are you mad? How are you mad?" Right? If the person says, "I'm not mad, I'm completely sane," run away, because s- you know, everybody has folly inside them. And we're approaching a measure of everyday tolerable sanity when we've put some flags in the areas of our madness. So, total sanity is not a possibility for any human being. Um, but the awareness of where the insanity lies and a little bit of warning and prompt apology, you know, after, um, an incident goes a huge long way. You know, people often say, "I'm looking for a partner with a good sense of humor." No one needs jokes. It's not, it's not about jokes. It's really about modesty about oneself, right? Somebody who's able to go, "I think..." I mean, look, take the other thing. If you meet somebody who thinks they're easy to live with, run away. N- no one's easy to live with. And someone who thinks they're easy to live with is really trouble. So, somebody could put up their hand and go, "You know what? Yeah, I'm a bit o- I'm, I'm pretty tricky to li- to, to live with." Great. That person is safer. Not necessarily totally safe, but they're safer because they've started on the road to self-awareness. And so ultimately, the best we can do in this world is self-awareness-

   13. SBSteven Bartlett35:38

       Mm-hmm.

   14. ABAlain de Botton35:38

       ... prompt apologies when we slip up. Um, yeah.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett35:42

       And a genuine an intention to, uh, make progress, I guess. Is that, is that important as well? So like, me being aware that, um, I have certain habits in my relationship is one thing, but then I think my partner would like to know that some of the destructive cycles I might have, I'm working on them. I'm tr- I'm tr- I'm at least trying to (laughs) make forward motion.

   16. ABAlain de Botton36:07

       Yeah, totally. I mean, I think one of the most destructive ideas in the modern world is the idea that true love means accepting somebody for who they are in all of their, y- y- you know, all of their good and bad sides. It's a, it's a lovely dream. And you know, sometimes when you hear of breakups, they'll go, "You know, my ex, you know, they just didn't accept me for who I was." And everyone will go, "Oh, yes, God, what a terrible person. You know, how awf-" But, you know, politely one wants to go, "Hang on a minute."... do any of us really deserve to be loved for the whole of who we are? Is that really a fair expectation? Or isn't, as you suggest, isn't it fair to suppose that all of us are works in progress and that, you know, there is nothing contrary to the spirit of love in a desire to improve? The ancient Greeks had this right. You know, for the ancient Greeks, Plato saw love as a classroom. Beautiful idea. That love is a classroom in which two people, in a spirit of generosity and kindness, I mean, we're not talking about shouting here, we're talking about generosity and kindness. Two people endeavor to help each other to become the best version of themselves, of, of each other, right? That, that, that love is, is geared towards progress and working on yourself. That sounds very odd nowadays. You know, if you, if you went around saying, "I read some Plato and, uh, he's kinda guiding me towards, uh, the idea that love is a classroom, so therefore, I'm gonna give you a 40-minute lecture on some of your flaws and then I'd like you to give me a 40-minute lecture on some of my flaws." This would be considered, ding, ding, ding, unromantic, right? That's not very romantic, is it? Doesn't mean it's a bad idea. As I say, love is a skill to be learnt, not just an emotion to be felt. And some of that means that we might need to go back to school.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett37:50

       I, I've been thinking more recently that most relationships, the success of most relationship

10. 37:56 – 40:49

    Conflict Resolution

    1. SBSteven Bartlett37:56

       comes down to this idea of, like, how good you are at conflict resolution. Because I've had a previous relationship where, um, uh, we, we both can take the, the blame per se. We were just not good at conflict resolution. And then I've had a more recent relationship where we're very... we seem to be much better, not perfect-

    2. ABAlain de Botton38:12

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett38:12

       ... but much better at conflict resolution, and it makes all the difference.

    4. ABAlain de Botton38:16

       And it... But I think it's even, you know... It's not... I- if you were bad at conflict resolution, it's not just your fault. It's, it's partly the way our society works. Come back to the idea of Romanticism, right? Romanticism gives us this extraordinary idea that love is something that should be felt and communicated without words, right? So the, the, the most romantic people thing, uh, uh, the most romantic sentence that often people will say is, "I met this person and we didn't even need to speak. We just felt on the same page." Everyone goes, "Oh, how romantic." Ding, ding, danger.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett38:49

       (laughs)

    6. ABAlain de Botton38:49

       Um, because it's, you know... Well, this leads to a catastrophic outbreak of sulking, right? What, what is sulking, right? A s- w- what is a sulk? A sulk is a fascinating pattern of behavior where you get very angry with someone because they have not understood you without... even though you haven't said anything. They've not understood you, and you get offended because you think, because you're a romantic person, you think, "They can't possibly love me because true love means understanding somebody, you know, intuitively, um, wordlessly. And therefore, I'm not gonna speak." And so, you know, you're coming back from a party with your, with your partner and, uh, they say to you, "Is anything wrong, darling?" And you go, "Mm-mm." Of course there is, but you're not gonna tell them. And then they start saying, "Come on. You can tell me. What, what's wrong?" And, and the sulking person goes, "No, no." And this can go on and on and on. I mean, you know, we're all, we've all been at it sometimes.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett39:42

       (laughs)

    8. ABAlain de Botton39:42

       You know, you, you go home. Uh, you, you go straight upstairs. You go to the bathroom, you shut the door, and then your partner's kind of knocking at the door going, "Please, darling, just, just tell me what's wrong." And you go, from behind the door, "No." And, and the reason is that you're a romantic and you believe that your partner should have miraculous, almost alien capacities to look through the bathroom door into your gnarled and wounded soul to understand what the upset is. But, of course they can't because they're just human. You know, takes us a long time to realize that other humans are not mind readers. You know, one of the first things we should always ask is, "Have I told them this? I, I know I'm upset, but did I tell them this?" And so often the answer is, "Not quite," because we're romantics. And so we have to do that really... I mean, you know, we can accept it's really boring. We've got to use words. We've got to painfully stack up words and go, "Ahem, the reason that I'm getting a little tetchy is because..." And you've got to explain yourself. It's not very romantic, but that is normally a sign it's a good idea.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett40:44

       So honesty. I, (sighs) I've struggled at times to be completely honest in

11. 40:49 – 42:17

    True Love & Total Honesty

    1. SBSteven Bartlett40:49

       my relationships when I felt like the honesty might hurt them. So can we have true love and total honesty?

    2. ABAlain de Botton40:59

       I believe that the, the wish to tell someone absolutely everything is, is both beautiful and ultimately utopian I- in a problematic way. Because we, all of us, have within us ambivalences, doubts, um, unfaithful thoughts, et cetera, and it isn't the work of love to rub your partner constantly up against the most troubling, disturbed sides of your psyche. Now, we're not talking... This is not an advocacy for sort of total mendacity and lies, but it is an advertisement for editing. You know, we should hope that we don't meet the fullest version of each other all the time. You know, I know it sounds romantic, but sometimes it's... You know, as parents know, is it, is it that great as a parent to tell your child absolutely everything about what's going through you? Well, sometimes. You know, is there a role for saying, "I'm just gonna edit myself." Not in the name of subterfuge or deceit, but in the name of love. That love could be compatible with an editing of certain aspects of your reality.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett42:13

       One of the areas where a lot of editing happens is in the bedroom,

12. 42:17 – 46:12

    Sexless Relationships & How To Navigate Them

    1. SBSteven Bartlett42:17

       in relationships, in sex, in sexless relationships. Um, I was looking through some statistics earlier on because I know that you've talked quite, um, extensively on relationships and sex and sexless relationships, and I found this stat that says, "A 2022 study by Relate, a UK-based, uh, counseling network, found that 26% of people in relationships were having...... sex less than 10 times per year and 8% were having no sex at all. This is a stark rise from 2018, um, where the numbers were quite significantly lower than that. It seems like, as a society, we're getting increasingly sexless.

    2. ABAlain de Botton42:58

       Yeah. So the question is, where's the problem? Is the problem in the body or is the problem in the mind? Now, you know, being the kinda guy I am, I'm gonna shift this to the mind. I'm sure sometimes there are bodily issues and, you know, they deserve attention too. But if I can talk about the mind, um, why is it that sex is easier at the beginning than in a long-term relationship? One of the leading answers is anger. It's not very easy to have sex or want sex with someone that you're angry with and in many relationships, there's a lot of stored anger that neither party knows is there, and that anger has come from micro incidents of disappointment. Someone didn't quite call when they said they would. Someone didn't laugh when they might have done. Someone didn't show generosity when it might have been required. Um, and these things get stored up and the result of too much of this is that you don't want someone going anywhere near you.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett43:56

       Contempt.

    4. ABAlain de Botton43:56

       Because you- because you're furious. You're essentially furious. But in the way of these things, you don't know you are. You don't know you're furious. Again, as it- you know, the mind is not obvious to itself. So, you know, if you want to have more sex, don't just invest in candles and fancy linen. Um, a quite useful thing to do is to go and have dinner with your partner and say to them, "We're both gonna ask each other how we've annoyed each other 'cause we have annoyed each other, not because we're evil people but because we're human and we're in a relationship and no relationship could survive more than an hour without a buildup of frustration. And the more we can let out that frustration at the dinner table, the more it won't, you know, create a blockage in the bedroom." And so the chance to discharge frustration... And, you know, often the reason why we don't tell our partners what our frustrations are is that they sound ridiculous.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett44:48

       (laughs)

    6. ABAlain de Botton44:48

       It's like, "Well, hang on. You're upset with me because I used the word really in what you thought placed too much emphasis on the why when I was speaking to your mother. Are you crazy?" Right? You could- you are laying yourself open to your partner pointing at you going, "Are you crazy?" But I think that we're all, in love, very small children, at least a small part of us is. And, um, as we know, small children get upset about really weird tiny things. You know, you, you'll move a button and they start wailing and you go, "What's happened?" And they go, "You moved the button." And you go, "I did? Uh, uh, why does that matter?" But, but for them it matters. Or, you know, a pencil has slightly changed direction. So we should learn, we should remember what it felt like to be a child and we should acknowledge that there remains, even in an adult who's very competent in all sorts of areas, a small child who is liable to be getting very upset about small things.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett45:39

       Triggered.

    8. ABAlain de Botton45:39

       Triggered. But because they're an adult... This is the problem. We, we think, "Well, an adult can't possibly ha- be having such childish reactions." Again, we need to just, um, cast aside our fears of shame and say, "You know what? Yes, an adult can get very upset about tiny things. An adult probably is upset about tiny things and we're doing ourselves an honor when we can dare to reveal this to our partner and they can do likewise."

    9. SBSteven Bartlett46:07

       So if I'm- if- if I'm someone listening to this now and I'm in a relationship where

13. 46:12 – 52:26

    Why Does Sex Matter?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett46:12

       I don't think... 'Cause it's- it's interesting, even when I say, "I don't think I'm having enough sex," the idea of how much sex is enough sex has probably come from movies, which is a bit of a trap as well, right? Um, but if I'm in a relationship and we are in a sexless relationship w- by whatever definition, solution one you've presented there is try and resolve the anger, the underlying contempt. Um, are there anything else that you think is effective ways of solving for that?

    2. ABAlain de Botton46:38

       Look, I think we- I think one useful thing to do is to go, "Why does sex matter? What is this thing called sex? Why- why does it matter?" And when people get very upset, I think the answer tends to be that sex is a symbol of something very poignant and very delicate, which is, "My partner loves me." And they ca- The reason why it becomes such an acute issue is that they cannot hold onto the idea that the partner might love them and might not want sex. Th- this is psychologically impossible. Now, it is important to say it is possible. It is possible that your partner both loves you and doesn't want to have sex. There could be other reasons. They're feeling unwell, da-da-da. So... And- and then we can ask ourselves, what does sex really aim at? Sex aims at intimacy. You know, e- even, we'll say, they, you know... In- in- in- in, people, sort of, polite language, they'll say, "They became intimate," which means they had sex. So what- what we know about sex is that the really exciting thing about sex is not the sex bit, it's the intimate bit. Um, it's the idea that someone is without their guard. You know, most of the time we approach other people with our guards on, and, um, in this very rare and unusual thing we do, we meet another human being in a vulnerable state. And this is such a relief from the normal limitations of life. And there are other ways of doing this. You know, sex is not the only way of doing it. So by understanding better what sex is, we can also have a chance to get some of what we get in sex in things that are not sex, if that makes sense.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:11

       I had Tracey Cox on the podcast, and she said something to me which really stuck with me because I hadn't noticed it until she said it, which is this idea, I believe she called otherness, which is when your partner almost becomes like a family member or you start seeing them as, like, a- a sibling because they are in their sweatpants around you. And she made the claim, which I think I've read in your books as well, that in many respects, that's the very opposite of the...... the spice that makes sex so appealing in those early days, when it's new and novel and risky.

    4. ABAlain de Botton48:46

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett48:46

       You know? And so she kind of alluded to the fact that love and sex were actually sit on two different ends of a pole.

    6. ABAlain de Botton48:52

       Right. And again, to come back to my theme, um, what does a romantic say? A romantic, romanticism tells us sex and love belong entirely together. But I think what you're saying and, uh, you know, what many of your viewers will know is that the relationship is, is trickier. And again, let's not torture ourselves about this. Let's, let's get curious and then let's communicate a- about this. Um, and I think that, look, a growing child has a paradox to deal with, and this is what Freud famously ... it doesn't matter what you think of Freud, it's a very useful, uh, observation really, that, um, the child experiences love in the first instance, at the beginning of life, we all experience love, um, at the hands of people who, if everything's gone right, we will have no sexual connection with. Right? So given the debt that adult love owes to childhood, um, that sets us up with a problem. When we as adults start to fall in love with people and start to build up relationships, which is that the more we get cozy with someone, the more we feel like we did a little bit with our parents when things were really cozy, which is oddly why, um, people like going to hotels. Why do people like going to hotels to revive a relationship? It's 'cause the furniture doesn't remember you. The curtains don't remember you. You are, you're allowed to be, for a, a chosen moment, somebody without the history, and it's the history that is making intimacy hard because that history, while it's knitting you together and making you emotionally close, is also rendering sexual freedom problematic. And I think it's just, we need to go very easy on ourselves for the fact that this happens and, um-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett50:45

       What do we do about it though?

    8. ABAlain de Botton50:46

       ... um, well-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett50:47

       Do I need to book a lot of hotel rooms? Do I need to spend a lot of time away from my partner?

    10. ABAlain de Botton50:51

        I notice even that you're laughing, you're smiling as you say that. And I think that's partly the clue. You know, when we come up against the hardest conundrums in, in life, um, having the tolerance of a sense of humor, a shared sense of humor. You know, if a couple can turn the sexual challenges from a tragedy into something, you know, closer to, um, a, a comedy, it's an enormous achievement. Think of, you know, think of teasing, right? There are sides of couples that they find really, really hard. Isn't it wonderful when a couple learns, with affection, to tease one another? They go, "Oh, Stephen, yeah, there's that thing that you do." Gives you a little nickname, calls you whatever it is, you know, a little affectionate nickname. That's a wonderful moment because it means the irritation has been sublimated into tender, compassionate understanding for why someone is as difficult a- as they are. So the best thing we can do with our irritations with our partners is to be able to tease our way out of them. Um, and we may need to do this in troublesome areas like, uh, like sex. It's an enormous achievement if your partner can call you, you know, can go from thinking that you are an idiot to smiling at you and thinking, "You're a lovable idiot." Right? We're all, in the end of the day, a lovable idiot. We don't need to believe in God, but if God was watching us from up there on the space station, um, we are all, you know, eight billion lovable idiots. And once we can have that sort of compassionate relationship to ourselves, that's the beginning of a big pit of the, big bit of the solution.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett52:21

        I often think, you know, I've been in my relationship now for a couple years, I h- think, "How do

14. 52:26 – 55:19

    How Do We Stop Our Partners Getting Bored Of Us?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett52:26

       I stop my partner getting bored of me?"

    2. ABAlain de Botton52:28

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett52:28

       Will there become a day... Sometimes it does cross my mind, like, "Is she just gonna get, like, bored of me?" And also, you know, vice versa, you think of being with someone for like 40, 50, 60 years, I'm sure some people listening have been with their partners for multi-decades, is there a risk of us getting bored of our partner and then seeking the sort of, you know, the novelty in affairs, and how-

    4. ABAlain de Botton52:48

       Mm-hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett52:48

       ... do we prevent that?

    6. ABAlain de Botton52:50

       Okay. Well, look, here's one suggestion. Um, the thing that becomes very boring in all relationships is when people cease to listen to each other. Now, you know, when you m- when you say the word listen, you kinda think, "Oh yeah, yeah, I know what that means." Hang on, let's complicate this issue a little bit, usefully. Um, to r- you know, most of us have never been listened to properly. It's not something that normally we know how to do. We know how to speak, you know, there are, there are, there are lessons in how to become a good public speaker. Not very many lessons in how to become a good listener, right? So that te- is telling us something. Um, so what is it to listen? Imagine a situation where someone says something to you and rather than you jumping and going, "Oh, that reminds me of, you know, something that happened with my auntie," or, "That reminds me of a..." Or, you know, starting to give advice and going, "The thing that you need to remember is one, two, three, four." Right? Which is normally what we do when people speak. It's to simply hold back - and therapists are good at doing this - and simply do what they call reflexive listening. So, you know, you say to somebody, um, "I'm really annoyed. I've had such a difficult day at work. This happened, that happened, that happened." And then you simply repeat back to them using slightly different words the essence of what they've said, and you say, "I'm hearing that life's quite difficult for you at the moment at work and that you, you know, are coming under pressure from your boss." And the person, you know, it'll be ... Try it, because the person will immediately feel, "I'm being heard." And then they will have, they will feel more, they understand more about themselves. You know, why is it that in the company of some people we feel really interesting and have lots to say, and in the company of others we kind of feel a bit bored, we don't, we don't have anything to say? We're the same people. It's because we feel, we intuit that we're in the presence of a listener. And the best way to listen is literally to not give advice, not, um, give anecdotes, but repeat back to somebody what they've said in slightly different words. And I mean, you know, parents, bless them. I've been a parent, we've all been parents, many of us have been parents. Um, parents are often quite bad at listening to their children. They think they're listening. I, I was in a, um, holiday resort-... a, a few months ago and there was this kid. Little kid, must have been three or four, and it was having a bad day. It was really screaming. And the parent, the mother, was say- might, might have been the mother, someone, was saying, um, "What's, what's wrong?" Um, and the kid was saying, "I hate it here. The whole place smells. Um, it's a poo and I wanna be back home at kindergarten." And the caregiver said, "Don't be so silly, darling.

15. 55:19 – 1:05:08

    Core Habits A Long Last Relationship Needs

    1. ABAlain de Botton55:19

       We're on holiday. Holidays are fun, and what's more, this hotel has cost a lot of money." And you wanna go, okay, I get it. This woman was trying to help. She was trying to, you know, calm down this, this distressed child. Was she listening? Not really. 'Cause basically what the kid was saying is, "I'm having a really bad day. Everything feels absolutely disastrous. Help me. Ah." Right? And we're all... We all have a version of those days and we don't wanna be told, "Come on, you're living in really wonderful times. The sun is shining, you know, uh, there's lots to celebrate." We want someone to go, "I hear things are bad for you. I'm hearing things are bad for you. Um, I'm hearing you're not coping very well and you're pretty sad." If you do that, don't rush them, don't give advice (laughs) don't give, you know... You will get a great response back. We can put money on it.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett56:15

       Listening. What are the, um, the other core components then? 'Cause I really wanna close off this topic on love and sexless relationships.

    3. ABAlain de Botton56:22

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett56:22

       What would you say are the core components or the core habits of two people who have a really successful, long-term, enduring sexual and romantic relationship? If we just focus on the, the s- the sex side of things first-

    5. ABAlain de Botton56:37

       Mm.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett56:37

       ... what are those core habits? So, I guess, communication's one that's come through quite loudly.

    7. ABAlain de Botton56:43

       Look, I, I, I'd start a little bit further upstream-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett56:45

       Okay.

    9. ABAlain de Botton56:45

       ... and go, like, overall, what do these guys need to do?

    10. SBSteven Bartlett56:48

        Mm-hmm.

    11. ABAlain de Botton56:48

        And I think overall they both need to acknowledge that they are frail, fragile, slightly crazy people because, not because they are them, but because they're human and there's no other option for a human being than to be slightly crazy. And nevertheless against that background they're attempting to do their best, right? So that the combination of an acknowledgement of their fallible nature mixed in with, um, a dedication to trying to understand it through broadly therapeutic means. So, this is a very crucial thing. The other absolutely crucial thing is an acknowledgement that a lot of what people will be getting up to in relationships will have nothing to do with the person in front of you, that you will be importing from different periods of your life scenarios and assumptions that owe nothing to the here and now and owe quite a lot to mom, dad, caregivers, and other scenarios. And the capacity to acknowledge that with grace, to say, okay, I'm sorry, I'm, you know, I'm getting confused about who's in front of me, right? I am importing into this situation an energy that doesn't belong there. We all do this. The whole basis of attachment theory, let's remind ourselves, is that your attachment style is governed by your first attachment, the attachment that you had with a parental figure. And therefore, you know, you will be, let's say insecurely preoccupied, a- attached to somebody, um, not because they deserve that quality of attachment, because your early caregiver did. That's, that's what they mandated through their own behavior. But your partner may be someone completely different, is someone completely different. So, if I can put it this way, getting on top of your projections. We project wildly as human beings, and being able to have at least a sense that the person in front of you may not be entirely who you think they are and that reality in the here and now may be slightly more innocent. Um, and I think, you know, you owe it to yourself, it's... Look, it's so boring. I'm sorry, Steven, I'm sorry to your listeners. You have to get on top of your childhood. It's so boring to be told this. To be, to be 30, 40, 50, 60, and to be told that you have to get on top of your childhood. I mean, my goodness. This is not a nostalgia fest. The only reason is so you can put the damn thing to bed and never have to think about it again. But it's gonna be rattling around unless you have done so. And I think it's so... Look, think of language. All of us, when we were kids, we were put in an environment where without us doing anything, we learnt an entire language with syntax, grammar, a complicated vocabulary, et cetera. And this happened while we were doing handstands in the garden, drawing buttercups in the kitchen, et cetera. We absorbed an entire language and we had no idea. The same thing was going on emotionally. We learnt an emotional language. Not a language about grammar and vocabulary, but a language about trust, a language about self-esteem, a language about who we are, a language about what will happen to us when we trust someone, a language about whether it's safe to go with someone, to be ourselves, et cetera. We learnt that whole language and we have no idea we learnt it, just as we had no idea we ever learnt our language of birth. It just happened. But it's inside us, no less than the grammatical language. And what we have to do, and it's just as difficult as learning in adulthood, you know how difficult it is. Imagine if I said to you, "Learn Finnish now. Now you're gonna learn Finnish." Or, "Next week, we're gonna go off and we're gonna learn, you know, uh, I don't know, Korean." Right? You'd be like, "In a week?" Uh, well, it's gonna take a long time, isn't it? We're gonna have to do this for a long time.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:28

        Do you know what I'd say? There's two things I'd reply if you told me to learn Finnish.

    13. ABAlain de Botton1:00:31

        Mm-hmm.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:31

        First one is... Oh, God, that's gonna... This is what I think. That's gonna take forever. And the second one is, what's the point?

    15. ABAlain de Botton1:00:38

        But I'd also say, let's say we're not trying to learn Finnish, we're trying to learn trust. Let's say we're not trying to learn Korean, we're trying to learn the lesson of vulnerability, safe vulnerability, right? These are very valuable lessons. ... very valuable lessons that we need in our relationships. And-

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:54

        I say that because I, I point at the childhood patterns that you're talking about. And I think one of the reasons why people don't open up that closet and do the work there is because they don't realize that that is the puppet master dictating their career, relationships, and everything in between. So, I think step one is, like, them understanding the impact that that childhood narrative is having today.

    17. ABAlain de Botton1:01:13

        Yup. And, and then also realizing, you know, this is where language can be a useful metaphor, is, is about time. 'Cause sometimes people say, "Okay, so, I, I understand. I, I, I saw, uh, listened to podcasts, uh, great, great guy. Um, Stephen, you know, really g- gets on top of it. Listened to many of his podcasts. Problem is, after three podcasts, I'm not healed." And you wanna go, "Look, how many lessons of Finnish or Korean did you do? Oh, three. Are you fluent? Uh, not quite. I might need another 150, right?"

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:41

        Yes.

    19. ABAlain de Botton1:01:41

        So, in other words-

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:41

        You need 150 more. (laughs)

    21. ABAlain de Botton1:01:42

        Well, in other words, we need to take it slowly, and we need to repeat these things. You know what? We were talking about religion earlier. One of the things about religions is they understand that our minds are like sieves. You know, take Islam. Islam wants us to remember their god three, four, five times a day. In many religions, you're on your knees constantly because they know, these religions know that it goes in one ear, it goes out the other. It comes out... You know, th- that we're not very good at holding onto the, even the truths that we are most attached to. And I think part of the problem with the modern world is we tend to think, "I'll just listen to that idea once. I'll just read an interesting book. Hmm, said, said something new once, and, and I'm gonna change my life." You wanna go, "No, no." You know, again, think of the holy books. How many times are you supposed to read the Bible, the Quran, let's say, Buddhist text? Every day. Because we're not very good at holding on, even to the things on which our lives depend.

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:32

        Is there a risk, though, in this sort of healing culture, where we're all just healing forever?

    23. ABAlain de Botton1:02:38

        (laughs)

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:38

        And we're all kinda, like, broken and trying to recover from (laughs) our early years where someone snatched candy out of our hands or something. Is there... I read an article a couple of weeks ago, and it said there was a bit of a, bit of a risk to this long-term ongoing healing mentality that we're...

    25. ABAlain de Botton1:02:54

        Look, I, I sense your frustration, and I share it. It would be so nice if we could just get on with life without having to bother with all this stuff. I, I, I understand. But I think, Stephen, the thing you have to bear in mind is, we are no longer merely trying to survive. We're trying to thrive, right? The age of survival is behind us. Y- you know, we're not just looking to reach the age of 30 and then collapse into bed and thinking, "You know, it's been fantastic, life. I've not been butchered by an enemy," right? You know, we want to reach 80, 85, and we want not just survival, we want fulfillment. And if we want that, we're going to have to pay attention to things that previous generations didn't. Again, let me use another metaphor, right? Um, for most of human history, people... Here I am drinking a glass of water, right? Um, people didn't pay much attention to water. If it looked like there wasn't anything actively floating in it, like a frog or something, they'd think it was clean water, right, and just gulp it back. And through such nonchalance, if I can put it that way, millions of people died, okay? And then towards the end of the 19th century, at about the very same time that Sigmund Freud in Vienna was getting going, helping us to think about certain things in the psyche, various people got very interested in water supply. And all the main cities, Paris, London, New York, got a complete overhaul of their water supplies because it was suddenly discovered that microscopic organisms could kill hundreds of thousands of people. In a glass of water, looked completely clear, you might have enough to kill a city, right? And this is deeply perplexing. You think, "Hang on a minute, it's just a glass of water. Must be fine." And, you know, I don't wanna be hard on you, but in that tone of like, "Really? Is it... Can we be bothered with our old childhood stuff? Why don't you just get on with it?" You wanna go, "Unfortunately, we have to take care, because there are macrobiotic organisms, as it were, in our lives that are gumming up our capacities for fulfillment." And it's not th- it's not necessarily they're gonna kill us, but they will hamper our capacity to be... You know, to exploit our full potential. And after all, you know, this is what this podcast is about, this is what many people are concerned about, and it's going to require work.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:02

        Can we ever truly heal from those things? Can... Or, or will they always be there in the back room, just exerting

16. 1:05:08 – 1:07:18

    Can We Ever Truly Heal From Our Traumas?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:08

       less power over us?

    2. ABAlain de Botton1:05:10

       Um, look, wonderful German philosopher Schopenhauer, he says that, uh, the goal of life is to turn tears into knowledge. Wonderful progress. Tears? What, what are you gonna do with those? They just end up in your pillow. They might end up, you know, being, uh, things you can learn from. So, I think the best we can do is to learn to turn so many of the troubles that afflict us. You know, no life is without affliction. But that moment when we go, "You know what? I've learned something from this torment. This was a total nightmare, but I've pulled out of it something about myself, about human nature, about psychology," then we're really learning. Then we're really on the path to a good life. Because a good life is not a problematic-free life. It's a life in which we found a way of learning from our inevitable pains.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:55

       "You will never find the right person." I read that sentence, and that sounded a little bit, um, negative. I think I read it in your book. "You will never find the right person."

    4. ABAlain de Botton1:06:06

       Well, I was teasing, gently, our old friends, the romantics, who tell us that, of course, we will find the right person. And the belief in the right person has led to more rage, more disappointment, more frustration than any other. You know, if you tell people, "You will find the right person," if you build up a model of what it will mean to find the right person, you will be dooming people to disappointment if, for example, they meet somebody who's really good, many ways, very, very good, but they've had an argument with them. "Well, oh, I'm not supposed to argue with somebody that is the right person. We're supposed to be bliss- blissful." So, I'm teasing, really, the concept of rightness. Rightness can include a lot of wrongness. And that's why, you know, wonderful English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who came up with this phrase-... a- a good enough, he applied it to parenthood. He, he argued that no child needs a perfect parent. Indeed, quite dangerous to have a perfect parent 'cause you never leave home.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:01

       (laughs)

    6. ABAlain de Botton1:07:01

       Quite good to have a parent who causes you a few frustration. It'll- it'll get you out there. Um, but he argued no one needs a perfect parent. No one needs a perfect lover. They need a good enough parent, a good enough lover.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:12

       Do you think, um, that people that are in relationships, romantic relationships, should spend time apart?

17. 1:07:18 – 1:11:54

    The Power Of Distance In A Relationship

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:18

       Do you think that's healthy for the stuff we've talked about with sexlessness and stuff? 'Cause I think I t- I tend to get more excited about sex with my partner when she's been away for a while and-

    2. ABAlain de Botton1:07:28

       (sighs)

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:28

       ... there's a real novelty to it.

    4. ABAlain de Botton1:07:30

       Yes. Look-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:31

       (laughs)

    6. ABAlain de Botton1:07:31

       ... I think one of the things that distance can do is to remind you that there is no preordained reason why someone should be with you. I mean, it's one of the most miraculous things that anyone should choose to be with anyone, because anyone is a quite complicated proposition. And some of the mystery of that, um, can kind of, you know, a- achieve its necessary force after a- a- a period away. Look, it's like being very ill. Imagine being ill for a while. You've been, you've not been in the world for very long, um, f- f- for a while. Suddenly, you're feeling better. You go out into the world. You go to the park. And suddenly, oh my God, there's this thing called a tree. It's amazing. It's got leaves. There are some bugs crawling all over it. There's things called grass. There's a brick wall. You are suddenly like a three-year-old, full of appreciation and wonder. And one of the great challenges of life is how to keep being people who have wonder in- in their life, because habit swallows everything up. You go, "Oh, yeah, tree. Yeah, yeah, I- I- I know what those are. I know what a tree's like." That's why we need art, you know, for example. I mean, what's the point of art? Small topic. Let's bite that one off too. What's the point of art? Well, one of the things that happens when you go to one of these places called galleries or museums is they're full of paintings by people who look at the world as tho- they've never seen it before. Maybe it's their wife or husband. They look at their wife or husband as though they've never seen them before. And lo and behold, quite an amazing thing. Wow, it's kind of amazing. It's full of tenderness and beauty and compassion and interest. Wow, I could, you know, I could like this person. They look at a tree. They look at a cloud. They look at the grass. And you know, we are... Part of what makes children, small children, so fascinating but also frustrating is you suggest a walk to the park. It takes them an hour and a half to go to the park. Why? Because everything's interesting. What have we done with those layers of interest that we also used to possess? We think we know what's going on. But we don't. Um, and one of the wonderful things that children can remind us is the foreignness, the true foreignness of a world that we feel we know, we feel we've seen, but we haven't actually looked at.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:37

       You say on page 75 of that book that the solution to long-term sexual stagnation is to learn to see our lover as if we had never laid eyes on him or her before. Feels so natural though that through this process of sort of habituation, everything in our lives becomes less, uh, yields less joy than it once did. And I, and I- I often fight with that because as, you know, as things get financially more, uh, as you get more financially free in life, you're able to experience the ver- the, you know, the nice restaurants and the nice things and the nice holidays and the nice planes, all those kinds of things. Um, but with that, the awe and the surprise escapes you, so-

    8. ABAlain de Botton1:10:14

       Absolutely. And I think we need to work at it. The Buddhists were onto this. Um, the wonderful Buddhist scroll from the M- Middle Ages, medieval scroll, uh, six persimmons. You know, persimmon, a kind of fruit. Um, it's kind of a bit like an apple. Um, uh, and it's just six persimmons on a, on a canvas. Beautiful rendition. And the idea is that the Buddhist sage is meant to look at those six persimmons for an hour. The true one could- could keep going for even a day, right? Just six persimmons, right? You might go, "Hang on a minute. Can I change the channel, please? Can I look at something else?" The capacity to stare intensely at something and draw benefit from it is absolutely something that we lose as, especially as life gets more, more dizzying. The- the thing to bear in mind is life can ever only be so exciting. It's not by more stimulation that you'll ever... If your senses are wrecked, if you're unable to draw benefit from one lemon, having a thousand lemons or a sports car isn't gonna make you more of an appreciator. The goal is to learn to appreciate more of what we've already seen. And that is, you know, we talk about gym and exercises and- and- and, uh, workouts. It's something we need to do. I mean, it's- it's literally learning to see and to appreciate is a skill. Um, and you can dial it up or dial it down. And as I say, one of the good things about works of art is they are records of careful looking by people. They might not be looking at things you're looking at, but it's less about what you're looking at that it's a method of looking that you can learn from.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:49

       (paper rustling) As you'll know if you've listened to this podcast before, I'm an investor in a company called Huel. I'm on their board and they

18. 1:11:54 – 1:12:47

    Ads

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:11:54

       sponsor this podcast. And I have a very exciting announcement to make. This product called Daily Greens is one of the most highly requested products at Huel, but it's never been sold in the UK before, until now. It's often difficult to get all of the greens into our diet that we need to have a healthy gut microbiome and a healthy body. And with Huel's Daily Greens product, with one scoop every morning, a very, very delicious scoop, you can get 91 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced nutrients into your diet. The most important point here is I genuinely believe it tastes delicious. It's maybe my favorite Huel product ever for all the reasons I've described. So if you want access to this product, you can sign up right now. The link is in the description below. It launches in the UK in January. Because of the demand, I'm pretty sure it's gonna sell out. (paper rustling) A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from The School of Life, the Sunday Times best-selling author of The School

19. 1:12:47 – 1:20:44

    Why Did You Write A Book Called The Therapeutic Journey

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:47

       of Life. I've seen this book everywhere. Um, I walk into bookshops all the time, and I just wish my book had the prominence (laughs) -

    2. ABAlain de Botton1:12:54

       Oh, the sleuth.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:54

       ... and the shame. (laughs)

    4. ABAlain de Botton1:12:55

       (laughs) It does.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:56

       No, I- I saw it and I, yeah, I was in a Foyles the other day, and I think you've got some signed copies in there.

    6. ABAlain de Botton1:13:00

       Might do.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:01

       I picked up one, yeah. Um, why- why did you write a book called A Therapeutic Journey?

    8. ABAlain de Botton1:13:06

       Um-

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:06

       'Cause I have to say-You, you have written...

    10. ABAlain de Botton1:13:13

        Lots, lots. A bit too much.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:15

        ... a lot of books. I mean, this is not even half of them.

    12. ABAlain de Botton1:13:17

        No.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:17

        There's about 70 of them.

    14. ABAlain de Botton1:13:18

        Yeah. This book, A Therapeutic Journey, um, it's really following the arc of what one could call mental breakdown, or, uh, mental, a, a mental crisis from the moment of its inception, the moment it strikes us, through to the moment of recovery. And then I go into lots of byways and lots of, uh, you know, lots of digressions. But essentially, it's saying how can we keep our minds safe? How can we help them to heal? Um, what can we do when we are in a mental crisis? It's written in a tone, I hope, of sympathy, um, of kindness, and also trying to give people a sense of, "What's happening to me?" 'Cause very often, you know, when, when there is a breakdown, we don't know what on earth is going on. You know, yesterday we were happy-go-lucky. Now, we can't get out of bed. Yesterday, we were able to hold it together. Now everything that comes out of our mouth makes no sense. So, I think that the, um, uh, it's, it's, it's supposed to be a companion through what might be some of our loneliest hours.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:19

        Why do we need this book right now, do you think, in society?

    16. ABAlain de Botton1:14:23

        I think because... Look, I hope that people will think, "Hmm. Okay, this is written from a place of somebody who probably gets what, what they're saying and what I'm feeling." I think we need companions through things that probably feel very personal, but are actually, this is the good news, very general. But I think, you know, at The School of Life, we see so many people who are going through these things. And the thing that each one thinks is, "I'm alone." And the best thing you can say to people is say, "No, you're not." And the reason they think they're alone is that, you know, it's a paradox of human beings. We only know people from what they choose to tell us. But we know our own minds from introspection. And so, there's a massive sort of cognitive gap between self-knowledge and knowledge of others. And in that gap, shame develops, right? And, um, there's so much shame around mental illness because it's still, as we know, so rarely spoken about. And so, the book aims to rehabilitate, to educate, and to comfort.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:25

        This is a book about getting unwell, imagining that we have let everyone down, and losing direction and hope. It's also a book about redemption, about regaining the thread, rediscovering meaning, and finding a way back to connection, warmth, and joy. What are the ways in which we're unwell...

    18. ABAlain de Botton1:15:46

        (sighs)

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:46

        ... increasingly?

    20. ABAlain de Botton1:15:47

        Well, you know, it's very hard. When your mind is operating well, you almost don't notice what it's doing because it's doing so many things to keep you feeling, you know, even though that word normal, right? You know, "How do you feel?" "I feel normal. You know, that's, that's my baseline. That's just, that's just how I am." It's, it's the result of, we could call it gifts, because when those gifts are taken away, goodness me, do you notice, right? So, for example, there's something in our mind, in a well-functioning mind, that more or less keeps us on our side, right? There would be so many reasons for all of us to despair of who we are. You know, "Why would I be on, why would I be on my side? I've made mistakes, I'm not perfect," et cetera. But most of us, you know, on a, on a good day, you just even will go, "Well, look, I'm not perfect, but you know, I'm okay. I can keep going." When you're mentally unwell, that, that faculty breaks down, and suddenly, you can't abide your own self. You can't forgive yourself, you know. There are people who are unwell who will say, "17 years ago, I said something to someone and I can't forgive myself." And you wanna go, "That's 17 years ago. It's okay," and they can't let it go. That's what illness is. Illness is not being able to let go of an argument against yourself because you have turned into your own worst enemy. Um, the other thing that, that people manage to do, um, in a, in a healthy mind is bracket things so that not all the things that could be in your mind are active in your mind at any point, right? So, you're able to sequence thoughts. So, you think, you know, "Well, you know, I've got this to do. I'm, I'm interviewing this guy now. Tomorrow, I'll be in New York. Uh, there's also a thing with my granny, and there's also a thing with a friend," et cetera. But those thoughts are sequenced. You're able to line them up in, in a coherent order. When health breaks down, all of these things come at all angles. There's no order anymore. There's no hierarchy. So, something that happened 10 years ago is expressing something that's happening right now. Um, something that's deeply urgent collides with something that, you know, by rational means is not that urgent, but it seems as urgent. And so, everything coherent breaks down. You can no longer order things. There are voices that start coming in, not friendly voices. All of us have voices in our minds, not necessarily, you know, they're not, I'm not talking about psychotic voices, but there are voices, voices of encouragement often, "You can keep going. Just, just, you know, do it." Or, "It's okay. You could dare to take that risk," often kindly voices that we've incorporated from kind people around us. When mental health breaks down, we can only hear the worst voices, the voices that are telling us, "You don't deserve to be here. You made a mistake, and we don't want you here anymore. Better thing would be if you didn't exist." Those voices, and those voices don't let up, and then we're in trouble. And we need to raise the white flag because things are not well, and sometimes, we keep going. We're so good at keeping going that it's terrible. Half the problem is that we keep going so well. You know, we're, we're half dead before we realize there's a problem, right? And so, the ability to go, "Hang on, hang on. I can't take it anymore," that is the beginning of being, knowing how to get help, because when the mind is in trouble, what it most needs is another mind. It's like calibration, right? When you've lost the correct calibration, you need somebody else to go, you know, when you go, "Everyone hates me, and it's all terrible, and nothing I've done is of any value," just have another mind that says, "Okay, I know how you feel. Let's think about this. Is, is that, is that really who, who you are? Who that, that is?" And then, you know, gradually, with love...And l- let's remember, people always get mentally unwell because of love. I don't mean romantic relationships. But all mental unwellness stems somewhere, if, if you s- scroll back, there's always a deficit of love. Always. There's always an experience of cruelty in some way that breaks the mind. And when people get well, there is also always an experience of love that heals. And it could be love, you know, I'm not talking about romantic love. Love from a friend, love from a therapist, love from professionals. But it's essentially an act of love. An act of love saves us, redeems us.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:19:55

        So the problem and often the antidote is love. Or at least the cause and the antidote is often love.

Episode duration: 1:29:30