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Lewis HowesThis Is Why 80% Of Relationships DON'T LAST (Fix This Today!) | Esther Perel
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Chapter summaries
Choosing Your Response to Suffering
Lewis asks whether we can choose to be free of suffering even in terrible conditions. Esther Perel answers that it is both/and, drawing on Viktor Frankl's logotherapy and cautioning against saying people choose their pain.
- •Frankl could not change the camp conditions but kept sovereignty and dignity through the meaning he gave events
- •Telling people at the Mexican border they chose their prison is indecent
- •Small acts like singing to a child or writing a letter can bring a sense of freedom
- •Choosing one's pain deserves discernment
Why Suffering Is Part of Life and Why We Need Others
Perel explains that religion has long dealt with the unexplainable, suffering and evil, and that no one has an answer, only ways to live with them. She says suffering doesn't lessen but changes, and the key is not being alone.
- •Religions never promise you won't suffer; they offer ways to live with it
- •Loss, disappointment, heartbreak and death are inevitable
- •You don't suffer less, you suffer differently
- •Not being alone and knowing others have come through it brings hope
Forgetting Pain and Resilience
Asked when she last suffered deeply, Perel says it has been a while, apart from the nearness of illness in people close to her. She likens remembered pain to a healed wound and says nobody is immune.
- •She hasn't had loss since her parents died
- •Without the story, we remember pain but can't feel it
- •This separation is a resilient quality
- •Anyone who thinks they are immune is grandiose
Why Relationships Are Harder Today
Lewis asks why relationships are so hard. Perel describes the shift from codified traditional societies to loose network societies where every role is negotiated, producing what she calls the identity economy and a fragile self.
- •Traditional societies fixed roles, obligations and belonging
- •Everything that was a rule is now a negotiation
- •The identity economy: constantly asking who am I
- •The self has never been more fragile
- •Community and not being alone help with suffering
Love and Work Now Carry Spiritual Expectations
Perel says we now expect from love and work what we once expected from religion and community. Work has become an identity economy, and soft skills have become the new hard skills.
- •We want relationships to be transformative, meaningful, erotic and purposeful
- •Work now has to give identity and meaning, not just a paycheck
- •Transparency, belonging, trust and psychological safety entered workplace vocabulary
- •Work has changed and become interested in what she has done for decades
How Many Couples Thrive? Expectations and Eli Finkel's Research
Lewis asks what share of couples are truly happy. Perel says happiness must be seen cross-culturally and, citing Eli Finkel, that the best modern marriages are better than past ones but rare. She names calibrating expectations, diversifying them and doing new things.
- •Definitions of happy and thriving differ across cultures
- •We ask one partner to be a whole village
- •Few people can name couples who still have the spark
- •Finkel's three things: calibrate expectations, diversify them, do new things together
- •Change enough to avoid fossilizing but not so much as to become chaotic
Love Story vs. Life Story: Choosing a Partner
Responding to a question about women in their 30s, Perel critiques the idea of fixing yourself before a relationship. She distinguishes a love story from a life story and discusses the values that matter in a life partner.
- •You learn to love yourself in the context of relationships
- •Ask who you will be as a partner, not only who to find
- •Many people you love aren't those you build a life with
- •Key values include relationship to others, travel and curiosity, religion, children and a shared outlook on life
- •Look at the belief behind behavior, as with her husband who had never left the US
Disappointment, Repair and Taking Responsibility
Perel explains that expectation creates dependence and power, so disappointment is inevitable, and a relationship rests on repair. She cites Gottman's bids for connection and says taking responsibility is the ultimate freedom, distinguishing 'I messed up' from 'I'm messed up.'
- •Expectation creates dependence, and dependence creates power
- •What matters is what you do with the disappointment
- •Gottman: repair is often a bid for connection, not a mea culpa
- •Taking responsibility is freedom without shame
- •Saying 'I messed up' differs from 'I'm messed up'
Acknowledging the Good and Signs of a Distressed Relationship
Lewis describes feeling one mistake overshadowed his good actions. Perel says acknowledging the positive is a mandate and that in distressed relationships the negative is highlighted and the positive disregarded, with negative attribution error. They extend this to acknowledging team members at work.
- •Acknowledgment of the good is a must, not an 'at least'
- •In distress, good is chance and bad is character
- •Mine is circumstantial, yours is characterological
- •Needing to demand to be seen as a whole person signals a bad dynamic
- •Lewis's team does acknowledgments in every meeting; Perel links this to being raised for autonomy
Lewis's Business Partnership Breakdown
Lewis tells of the company he started with a friend he'd known six months, the resentment over unspoken expectations, and a heated argument in Times Square. He explains how healing past trauma let him approach his partner with gratitude and sell him the company.
- •They never discussed expectations or exit terms
- •Lewis felt he did 90% of the sales work while splitting 50/50
- •He reacted with dismissiveness and distance instead of hard conversations
- •Healing past trauma changed how he approached the conflict
- •Opening with gratitude made a deal possible
How's Work? and the Invisible Resume
Perel says Lewis's story could be an episode of How's Work?, because he had to deal with his relationship history to deal with his co-founder. She cites a statistic that 65% of startups fail because of co-founder relationships, and describes the show's sessions with co-founders.
- •The invisible resume of past hurts shows up at work
- •Cited Harvard statistic: 65% of startups fail due to co-founder relationships
- •Lewis did gratitude plus reality testing, acknowledging the partner's contribution without giving up his wish to leave
- •Acknowledging first lowers the other's defensiveness
- •Examples include two firefighter pilots and two British college friends
Perel's Three Truths
Lewis asks for the three truths she'd leave the world. Perel names the link between relationship quality and life quality, being remembered with a smile, and daring to try a lifelong dream.
- •The quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life
- •Invest in relationships; nobody dies wishing they'd worked more
- •Live so people smile when they remember you
- •If you have a dream that's doable, dare to try it
Where to Find Esther Perel's Work
Lewis thanks Perel and asks where people can follow her. She mentions her podcasts, monthly newsletter, books, a training platform for therapists and coaches, and a course for couples.
- •Where Should We Begin? season four is coming soon
- •How's Work? is available on all podcast platforms
- •Monthly newsletter and blog at estherperel.com
- •Books: Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs
- •Sessions with Esther Perel and Rekindling Desire
