What Your Love Life Can Teach You About Work Relationships with Esther Perel | A Bit of Optimism

1. EPEsther Perel0:00

   I'll give you an, a, a little anecdote. I don't think anecdotes de- describe the full reality, but it was a moment for me that was very interesting. My younger son was in kindergarten. He had a very c- best friend. I was convinced he would go into first grade with that same friend. No. I went to the principal. I said, "Why did you separate them? They were getting so along. It was such a beautiful friendship that could become, you know, my childhood friend like I have from, from age six." She said, "They need to learn to make new friends each time." I said, "He's not being trained for mobility. He's a five-year-old who is being trained for long-term relationships. It's not the same." And it was really cl- that was the idea. The idea is not how do you continue a long-standing friendship, it's how do you make new friends all the time? [laughs] I thought that was just-

2. SSSimon Sinek0:46

   Oh, it's, so, so-

3. EPEsther Perel0:47

   ... an amazing cultural encounter.

4. SSSimon Sinek0:49

   Wow. So, wow. So we're actually training our young to suck it up and get over it and move on. [laughs] The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives. This is an idea that Esther Perel has been trying to instill in us for decades.

5. EPEsther Perel1:08

   I imagine a world where people can experience a sense of aliveness and vitality in their relationships.

6. SSSimon Sinek1:16

   She is the guru of human relationships, and she's been trying to teach us in all of her work how we can have successful romantic relationships. I've known Esther for years, and candidly, when we've gone out for dinner, I have definitely taken advantage of our friendship and asked her for relationship advice, and it's always been amazing. And we agree on so many things, which is why I was so excited to have her on the podcast. Our work overlaps so much. We both believe that the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives in our personal lives and the quality of our lives at work. Esther believes it so much she's just launched a new product, a set of question cards called Where Should We Begin? At Work. So we go deep. We talk about relationships, happy relationships, struggling relationships, all the kinds of relationships, and how we learn to navigate relationships, how it will benefit us in our personal lives and in our professional lives. This is A Bit of Optimism. [upbeat music] Esther.

7. EPEsther Perel2:21

   Yes. [laughs]

8. SSSimon Sinek2:21

   You know you're, you know you're one of my favorite people in the world, right?

9. EPEsther Perel2:24

   [laughs] It is a mutual experience. [laughs]

10. SSSimon Sinek2:29

    You're one of those friends that I... You and I have known each other a long time. Um, I saw you a lot when I lived in New York. It's been more difficult since I've moved to LA. But you're one of those people, you're one of those friends that we don't talk as often as people think we do, but every time we talk, we pick up where we left off.

11. EPEsther Perel2:47

    That is true.

12. SSSimon Sinek2:47

    It's as if no time has passed, every single time. And this is no-

13. EPEsther Perel2:51

    Actually, before we talk, we look at each other and we smile. [laughs] A kind of a smile of recognition and complicity. [laughs]

14. SSSimon Sinek2:58

    You're right. Every time I see you, whether it's at an event or even just on the screen, you're absolutely right, my first, my first reaction is a smile. It's like a, it's like a, a baby being shown a toy.

15. EPEsther Perel3:10

    [laughs]

16. SSSimon Sinek3:10

    [laughs] I was thinking this morning as I was getting ready, what, like I, I... There's actually a very genuine question that I have for you that pretty much you and only you could answer. Um, you've been doing what you do for a long time, which means you have been doing, helping couples and helping people in relationships and overcome difficulties that they have through many changes of culture and politics and world events. I'm so curious what the dynamic of relationships has changed over the course of a career.

17. EPEsther Perel3:50

    Um, I mean, the arc is, is very, um, full of changes.

18. SSSimon Sinek3:57

    Yeah.

19. EPEsther Perel3:57

    So, um, I arrive in the United States in '83, and we are talking about just a few years since divorce has been legalized, no-fault divorce. That in itself is an enormous change to the structure of marriage and family life, um, because the rate of divorce increases dramatically, primarily spurred by women. Women are enough often economically independent, even at on every level of the scale, to decide that re- relationships and marriages in particular need to be emotionally fulfilling because m- it's not a, just a material reliance. Contraception has been democratized, um, so child con- you know, reproduction is now controlled. You, and reproduction can be, um, technologically assisted, and it can be technologically stopped. So on both, on both sides-

20. SSSimon Sinek4:59

    Mm-hmm

21. EPEsther Perel4:59

    ... sexuality fundamentally changes its meaning from the sole domain of biology to now becoming socialized and becoming a property of the self, something that you define your sexuality, not just a part of your condition.

22. SSSimon Sinek5:12

    Mm-hmm.

23. EPEsther Perel5:13

    Um, people go from five, six, seven children to one, two potentially, or even the choice of none. Um, sexuality shifts from a marital duty, and has already been, but now even more, to a marital, to, to a sexual duty, uh, to a sexual ple- uh, um, desire, sorry. From duty to desire. So that's, that's just a few small things in the, in the romantic realm. Work at that time is shifting from, you know, it's basically in the midst of what we call the service economy, from the production economy of the land and the agriculture to now a service economy. And by the way, so is marriage. Marriage becomes a service economy too. We want affection, we want trust, we want... things that have to do with the quality of the, of the emotional connection between the people. And from there, gradually, these two units, which are really going parallel but also cross, we kind of have a dual revolution taking place at the same time. Work goes from s- production to service to identity, an identity economy in which we turn to work for a host of existential needs that used to be part of our religious lives and our communal lives-

24. SSSimon Sinek6:33

    Yeah

25. EPEsther Perel6:33

    ... that now become part of work: purpose, meaning, belonging, community, [chuckles] things that had nothing to do with why, what we-

26. SSSimon Sinek6:41

    You and I have both talked about this, how we used to get purpose from church, we used to get community from our neighbors. We had bowling leagues for our friends. How all of tho- you know, church attendance declines, bowling leagues disappear, and now we demand that work fulfill all of those needs.

27. EPEsther Perel6:56

    And we deferred relat- marriage, per se, marriage or committed relationships by 10 years. So work is the primary hub for-

28. SSSimon Sinek7:05

    Right

29. EPEsther Perel7:05

    ... your social connection and for all these other needs. It's an amazing thing to, to, to observe.

30. SSSimon Sinek7:10

    Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:02:31