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

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

The modern philosopher of love- His goal-

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.

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

What we need is...

Let's talk about sex.

Goodness me, does it cause problems.

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

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.

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) 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?

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 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?"