ESTHER PEREL: The Hard Truth! Love Can’t Exist Without This

1. EPEsther Perel0:00

   We put the focus on you choosing bad people, you always fall in love with the wrong guy. What does it say about you?

2. JSJay Shetty0:06

   [instrumental music] What do you think about people having a list of everything they want in a person?

3. EPEsther Perel0:11

   Love will laugh at you.

4. JSJay Shetty0:13

   Is love enough?

5. EPEsther Perel0:15

   No.

6. JSJay Shetty0:16

   Should love be hard?

7. EPEsther Perel0:17

   There is no love story that isn't overcoming obstacles. Attraction plus obstacle equals excitement, love, desire. [instrumental music]

8. JSJay Shetty0:31

   Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Today, I'm joined by one of the most influential voices on love and relationships in the entire world, Esther Perel. Esther is a renowned psychotherapist and the mind behind the groundbreaking book, Mating in Captivity. And as the book celebrates its 20th anniversary, we explore why Esther's insights on love, desire, and intimacy remain just as true today. Please welcome back to the podcast one of my favorite guests, and yours, Esther Perel. Esther, it is so great to have you back.

9. EPEsther Perel1:10

   It's really nice to be back.

10. JSJay Shetty1:11

    Our last conversation was super viral, millions of views. People loved seeing us together. They loved hearing your direct, no BS, breaking down this therapy TikTok language that we constantly hear. And today, I really wanted to dive into what I believe is the need of the hour, what I believe is the urgent, imminent challenge that we're facing right now. Gen Z is dating significantly less than other generations. What has changed?

11. EPEsther Perel1:40

    I ask a question, uh, in all my audiences at this moment, "Did you grow up playing freely on the street?"

12. JSJay Shetty1:47

    Mm.

13. EPEsther Perel1:48

    The parents of Gen Z will raise their hands and say, "We did." And then I ask, "Do your children or do you know children who are playing freely on the street?" And you get a few hands. That's it. That's the Gen Z. If you don't play freely on the street, you basically are missing out on an entire ground for social negotiation, where you learn to play together, to make rules, to break rules, to have wars, to make peace, to create alliances, to make up. The whole thing. If you don't practice those muscles, where you come up to strangers and you ask them to play with you, and then you meet somebody else, and then you join people together, you really are practicing relationships. All of that precedes dating. If you don't have that, then dating becomes the, the first time that you have to actually learn to speak to someone, God forbid if it's even in person, and look into their eyes and look at their body, because so much of our life at this point is completely disembodied and we don't ever see people move.

14. JSJay Shetty2:58

    Wow, never even thought of that.

15. EPEsther Perel2:59

    So dating becomes this Olympus that you have to climb, this whole mountain, and it's very anxiety-provoking, and that is one of the main things. So when we say Gen Z doesn't date as much, Gen Z doesn't socialize in person, Gen Z doesn't have that many parties, what a waste. What a pity to not have dance parties and, and just hang together. Um, it's not that they don't socialize, but it's a different kind of socialize. "I spoke to so and so" means I texted them.

16. JSJay Shetty3:28

    Mm.

17. EPEsther Perel3:29

    No, I didn't speak. I didn't hear the voice. If you don't hear the voice, you're missing out on the entire oxytocin attachment hormone that gets produced while you're hearing the voice. The voice is the first thing you hear when you are in utero. So you say you spoke, but you didn't. You connected, you had contact. And at every level, you see an atrophy of the social skills, which creates a real sense of bracing myself, "I'm going out to date," which I don't like because it's not fun.

18. JSJay Shetty4:01

    You're so right, and you're opening up my mind to so many different things that I don't think we're thinking about. This idea of being disembodied, we're only looking at FaceTime.

19. EPEsther Perel4:11

    And not just that. Now I look in your eyes, you look in my eyes, and we have mirror neurons firing at each other. We are really connecting. Voice, sight, b- breath, I mean, the, the, all the senses are involved. On Zoom or on, on any screen, we think we're looking at the other, but we actually are not making eye contact.

20. JSJay Shetty4:32

    Mm.

21. EPEsther Perel4:32

    So this-

22. JSJay Shetty4:34

    That's so true

23. EPEsther Perel4:34

    ... pseudo experience, as if I am looking at you and you're looking at me, but in fact we don't, means that neurologically none of this is actually happening.

24. JSJay Shetty4:43

    Wow. Yeah, you're so right, and most of us on Zoom are just looking at ourselves. [laughs]

25. EPEsther Perel4:47

    Yeah. [laughs]

26. JSJay Shetty4:47

    I've tried to hide myself from you because I just realized that you're just looking at yourself and you're looking at your reflection so much. We're, we're overexposed to our own reflection-

27. EPEsther Perel4:56

    Yes

28. JSJay Shetty4:56

    ... which is why we're so critical of ourselves and we're so eval- we're evaluating and analyzing ourselves all the time. But you're absolutely right that even if you look at someone else through a screen, you're not making the quality of contact we feel.

29. EPEsther Perel5:09

    No, you don't.

30. JSJay Shetty5:09

    And there's a reason I, I actually feel that. I feel exhausted on Zooms and exhausted on digital contact.

Episode duration: 1:27:57