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Jay Shetty PodcastEsther Perel ON: Finding Love & the Real Reason Couples Break Up
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Why relationships define the quality of our lives
Jay Shetty introduces Esther Perel and asks when she first noticed that relationships shape our lives. Perel traces it to her parents' community, the sole survivors of World War II and the Holocaust, and to the absence of connection she grew up around.
- •Perel says the absence of connections after her parents' losses showed her how much connection matters
- •Conversations in her childhood were about rebuilding trust, play, love and community after dehumanization
- •She says money and education matter less than the people who would make the eulogy rather than the CV
- •Jay says purpose can be born out of pain and challenge
How lockdown accelerated and strained relationships
Jay asks what the biggest relationship challenges of quarantine were. Perel describes lockdown as a relationship accelerator that heightened beginnings and endings, removed the air that desire needs, and stifled novelty and the erotic.
- •Disasters put us in touch with mortality and push people to rearrange priorities
- •Couples lost the accordion rhythm of leaving and returning, so there was no air
- •Security and stability dominated while novelty, risk and exploration were shut down
- •Prolonged isolation brought loneliness and touch hunger whose long-term effects are not yet understood
Boundaries, routines, rituals and kindness under pressure
Asked how to approach a relationship under pressure, Perel says the answer is not perfection and cites her lockdown couples season. She lists boundaries, routines, rituals and kindness as the things that helped people.
- •Perel says the goal is to be civil and kind, not perfect
- •Boundaries recreate structure when all roles collapse into one space
- •Routines give continuity, and rituals turn a routine into something special between the couple
- •Appreciating the partner as a person, not a function, matters when one person has to replace a community
Why difficult conversations and boundaries build strength
Jay shares how he and his wife reset expectations about tidiness and work areas, then asks why people see such conversations as weakness. Perel explains that these talks create awareness of the other and keep the balance between holding onto yourself and holding onto your partner.
- •Jay and his wife agreed to keep spaces tidy and gave each other separate work areas
- •Perel says getting through hard conversations makes you more trusting and confident
- •Only a baby is guessed for, and the rest of life is a dialogue
- •The shoes and laptop represent awareness of the other and where each person stops and starts
When your partner is unresponsive: change yourself first
Jay raises the case of someone doing everything right while their partner doesn't respond. Perel says the temptation is to blame, and advises starting with the one thing you control, making a request that doesn't turn into a protest.
- •Couples have another person to blame, and people often arrive in therapy wanting the partner fixed
- •Perel says that if you want to change the other, change yourself
- •Criticism and accusation provoke defensiveness and tit for tat
- •Tell your partner what you want without implying they're failing
- •Jay adds that you can also meet your needs through family and friends
Re-entry anxiety and the skills we lost and gained
Jay asks about re-entry anxiety and the skills lost and gained in the pandemic. Perel describes the range of reactions, from the shock of real voices to the question of whether you are huggable, and says social muscles have atrophied but can be rebuilt.
- •Isolated people heard only their own echo, and others reduced their circle to a few ties
- •Re-entry raises questions about hugging, protocols, trust and being embodied again
- •People want deeper conversations than small talk, and many have experienced losses of all kinds
- •Perel describes social atrophy that loosens and strengthens with use
The Where Should We Begin? game of stories
Jay asks Perel to describe her game. She explains it grew out of missing dinner parties, walks through its prompt and story cards, coins and deeper levels, and says it will be released in June as a re-entry game for connecting.
- •Perel playtested it with a pod of friends she has known for 25 years
- •Prompt cards set an emotional lens and story cards are put in front of the storyteller
- •Coins let players push someone to answer a question they want to evade
- •Levels range from lighter prompts to dreams, blind spots and sexuality
- •The game, A Game of Stories, comes out in June and will be available through her website
Boring questions, curiosity and objects that tell stories
Jay shares how a question about the coolest thing he'd done made him feel alive and how asking about a client's paintbrush opened a conversation. Perel says boring questions make people seem boring, and that objects are catalysts for stories about sex, death and money.
- •Perel says if you ask boring questions you will feel that people are boring
- •Jay's questions about a client's paintbrush led to stories about first jobs
- •Perel asks clients to bring objects for what to keep and what to let go
- •At her conference on sex, death and money, money was the biggest relationship, with shoes, checkbooks and rings telling generational stories
- •Sourdough baking was a way of creating something from nothing, which she called an antidote to death
Love is a verb: the mindset for seeking a partner
Jay asks what mindset to bring to seeking love, noting that friends fall in love fast and it ends fast. Perel says love is a verb that must be cultivated, and that being the right person matters more than finding one. She adds that feelings are only one of several dimensions, alongside actions, thoughts, values and the spiritual.
- •Perel says love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm and a love story is different from a life story
- •A life involves building, burying, migrating and weathering illness together
- •Jay questions whether always asking how you feel is the right question, and says showing up builds things
- •Perel says feelings sometimes follow actions, as with going to the gym
- •She says emotional truth shouldn't be the only truth, since values, morality and the spiritual also count
The root reasons relationships fail: the four horsemen and complacency
Asked for the deepest reasons relationships fail, Perel first stresses that her answers are thoughts, not certainties, then draws on Gottman's four horsemen: criticism, stonewalling, defensiveness and contempt. She adds complacency, and Jay describes checking in with his wife about their relationship.
- •Perel says behind criticism is a wish, so ask for the wish
- •Stonewalling makes the other person feel they don't exist, and contempt takes away their meaning
- •Complacency and lack of curiosity drain life from a relationship; people give clients more than partners
- •Jay notes that behind each behavior there is often a deeper desire
- •Jay regularly asks his wife how she thinks the relationship is going, and Perel says couples rarely do status updates
Understanding infidelity and what an affair means
Jay asks how people who have been cheated on should decide what to take personally. Perel says about 85% of people are affected by infidelity, explains why it feels so shattering in modern love, and says her work focuses on the meaning of an affair rather than the facts.
- •Infidelity touches children, cheaters, the betrayed, third persons and confidants
- •Perel used it to understand modern love, where the partner is expected to be a soulmate
- •Some affairs express a troubled relationship, while others are about seeking a lost self
- •Her work focuses on what the affair means and whether the couple can learn, grow or leave
- •She says there are ways to heal and rebuild trust, even maybe better than before
When to leave and when to stay
Jay asks for the signs that it's time to break up versus keep building. Perel responds that knowing the signs doesn't mean you're ready to act, and that people leave when they have prepared internally and externally.
- •People often say they stayed too long, but Perel tells them they left when they were ready
- •Knowing for two years can still require preparing to face an empty house or less time with children
- •Preparation can involve work, identity and accepting a new partner in children's lives
- •Seeing this preparation closes the gap between 'I knew it' and 'it took me so long'
Fill in the Blanks and the Final Five
Jay runs two rapid segments. Perel completes sentences on love, partners, conflict and couples therapy, then gives short answers on best and worst advice, what is true about relationships, her lesson of the year and the law she would create.
- •True love is living with the differences you think you can never tolerate
- •Great partners are funny and know how to bring in humor at the right moment
- •Best advice: it's fine to go to sleep angry; worst: you have to tell your partner everything
- •She says to ask whether something is wise and kind, not just true
- •Repair is possible when it feels like mission impossible, and she would make a law of decency and respect for others' humanity
Perel turns the question: Jay's first encounter with purpose
Jay asks if there is anything she wants to add, and Perel turns the question around, asking where Jay first thought about purpose. He describes meeting a monk at 18 who was happy and purposeful, and Perel connects that to the longing people bring to relationships.
- •Jay assumed life was school, a job, marriage and golf until he heard the monk speak
- •The monk had given up wealth to serve humanity and seemed truly happy and purposeful
- •Perel asks what made Jay receptive, pointing to a space waiting in him
- •She says people often bring childhood wounds that they need to set aside to create a different script
- •She says purpose is a story and relationships are stories too
Publisher timestamps
- 0:00Intro
- 2:17The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives
- 4:37Relationship challenges while in quarantine and lockdown
- 8:55Approaching a relationship at times of pressureRead this chapter
- 13:26Resetting expectations of ourselves and boundaries of our spaceRead this chapter
- 18:23When you’re putting an effort but your partner is unresponsiveRead this chapter
- 22:14Skills we lost in the pandemic and the skills we gainedRead this chapter
- 27:47Playing the ‘Where Should We Begin?’ game
- 33:58Asking boring questions makes you feel that people are boringRead this chapter
- 36:48Relationships about death, sex, and money
- 39:48The intention or mindset one should approach love and relationships when seeking out a partner
- 42:57From feeling madly in love to then feeling out of love, when they weren’t truly in love
- 45:36What are the deepest, truest root reasons that relationships fail?
- 52:00Have you been affected by the experience of infidelity in your life?
- 57:21When to break up and move, when to stay and hold onRead this chapter
- 59:55Fill in The BlanksRead this chapter
- 1:01:30Esther on the Final Five
- 1:06:30Meeting people who are truly happy and purposefulRead this chapter
