Speaker 1: The following episode is a rerun in celebration of our
Speaker 1: first year anniversary with Stitcher. It's one of our favorite
Speaker 1: episodes from the past year, and we really hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation with a Stair Parrell. Astaire is a
Speaker 1: psychotherapist and a New York Times bestselling author recognizes one
Speaker 1: of today's most insightful and original voices on modern relationships.
Speaker 1: In this episode, I talked to Estaire about love and relationships,
Speaker 1: especially in the age of a global pandemic. Estaire also
Speaker 1: offers her perspective on how to keep passion alive during
Speaker 1: your marriage, as well as affairs getting to the root
Speaker 1: cause of why people cheat. We also tackle the essence
Speaker 1: of the words ros and freedom, and we touch on
Speaker 1: the topics of soulmates, masculinity, and Estaire's practice as a
Speaker 1: cross cultural therapist. I've been looking forward to this conversation
Speaker 1: with Astair for years, and I'm delighted to finally be
Speaker 1: able to bring it to you all. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: I bring you a Stare Parrell started so great to
Speaker 1: chell you today. I've been looking forward to this for years. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure to be here. You're patient You've been
Speaker 1: very patient. I have been, and you know, my mom
Speaker 1: told me patience often pays off. So I'm very excited
Speaker 1: to chat with you, wise woman. I remember the American
Speaker 1: Psychological Association conference. We were also captivated by your keynote.
Speaker 1: We were at the front row and we we came
Speaker 1: up to you afterwards this couple of years. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you remember this, and we're so you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't expect, you know, you'd actually show up or like,
Speaker 1: you know, for our arts thing, and then you came in.
Speaker 1: I think with your you believe that you your you
Speaker 1: came in with your husband, and we're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: is there to our to our social So I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for your graciousness over
Speaker 1: the years. I'm very happy when I make the right
Speaker 1: decisions at a certain point and someone reminds me and
Speaker 1: it was just like a smart thing to do that
Speaker 1: other people remember. So I like when I thought, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: really really made our lives. So thank you. So I
Speaker 1: want to start off by asking, you know, really, how
Speaker 1: are you? You know, how are you during this pandemic?
Speaker 1: How's it affected you as a therapist, as a human.
Speaker 1: I think the best way I can answer you is
Speaker 1: to tell you that when I was looking for the
Speaker 1: topic of our annual Sessions Life Virtual Training conference, which
Speaker 1: is our fifth and I was thinking, what is on
Speaker 1: the mind of therapists today, mine and everybody else. I'm
Speaker 1: a practitioner, I'm you know, I am leaving the parallel
Speaker 1: experience that a lot of my clients are experiencing. And
Speaker 1: I really thought, here it is the great adaptability. How
Speaker 1: can we stay grounded when the ground is moving? And
Speaker 1: the we is how can therapists and clients stay grounded
Speaker 1: when the ground is moving? Because I was feeling well, okay, fine,
Speaker 1: but unmoored. I felt like the structure of my life
Speaker 1: has so fundamentally changed and it ain't going back. I
Speaker 1: felt that by not being able to go home for
Speaker 1: two years to Europe, you know, so many things have happened.
Speaker 1: I felt that parts of me that come alive in
Speaker 1: those other languages when I am in the other parts
Speaker 1: of my life have been completely dormant. And I thought,
Speaker 1: what is my adaptability? You know, how do It's no
Speaker 1: longer coping just coping and waiting and adjusting to the
Speaker 1: It's really what is adaptability going to look like? For
Speaker 1: me and for my field and for all people working
Speaker 1: in the field of relationships and well being for that matter.
Speaker 1: So that's how I am doing. I'm thinking about adaptability.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about mass mutual reliance. Who have I reached
Speaker 1: out to? Who has been a part of my circle?
Speaker 1: And what has happened to so many that I have
Speaker 1: not been in touch with? And I'm thinking about the
Speaker 1: concept of post traumatic growth. At what point we do?
Speaker 1: What do we learn from here? And how will it
Speaker 1: actually strengthen me and strengthen my children, my partner. So
Speaker 1: that's how I am doing. I translate often what is
Speaker 1: happening to me, and then I look, am I alone?
Speaker 1: Or is this actually quite reflective what many many friends
Speaker 1: and colleagues are going through? And then I name it
Speaker 1: in my professional life, but in fact it's a reflection
Speaker 1: of my own internal life as well. Yeah, wonderful. Just
Speaker 1: wandering from a therapy perspective with relationships and working with couples.
Speaker 1: Have you how's the nature of some of your ideas
Speaker 1: you talked about in the past kind of need to
Speaker 1: be adapted for pandemic error where couples are together so
Speaker 1: much that it's hard to get that mystery that you
Speaker 1: talk about in your books. You know, that excitement, that unpredictability.
Speaker 1: So what do we have right now? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm going to continue it in the framework of the
Speaker 1: conference because I literally had to articulate it for myself,
Speaker 1: that very question that you're asking me. Right. So, social
Speaker 1: connection at this moment, it's three parts. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: intimate relationships because that is the essence of my work,
Speaker 1: the relationship between the client and the provider, the practitioner,
Speaker 1: the therapist of all sorts. And the relationship of the
Speaker 1: therapists in their own personal life with their partners, with
Speaker 1: their romantic partners or with their friends, family, etc. So
Speaker 1: it is a triad going on. You know, there's eighteen
Speaker 1: months of prolonged uncertainty, mixed with grief, mixed with loss,
Speaker 1: mixed with a fundamental shift that we have to make
Speaker 1: away from silo driven lives approaches in therapy for that matter, too,
Speaker 1: to a collective perspective, to a pluralistic perspective. And pandemics,
Speaker 1: like all disasters, are relationship accelerators. They basically put you
Speaker 1: in touch with mortality. You're in touch with an existential fragidity,
Speaker 1: the fact that life can change at any moment, your
Speaker 1: house can burn, your land can be flooded, your health
Speaker 1: can be destroyed overnight. And when you are in touch
Speaker 1: with mortality, you say life is short. And when you
Speaker 1: say life is short, you say what is important to me?
Speaker 1: What do I want? And what do I no longer
Speaker 1: want to live with, to endure, to tolerate, to do
Speaker 1: in my life, etc. And so that's what happens to relationships.
Speaker 1: At the same time as people have spent more time
Speaker 1: with their families and partners than they ever have in decades.
Speaker 1: And at the same time that I say that you
Speaker 1: cannot ask one person to give you what an entire
Speaker 1: village should provide, that's exactly what happened. People were home
Speaker 1: with one person that was supposed to replace everybody. And
Speaker 1: there is a lot of upheaval going on in relationships
Speaker 1: at this point, for those who have been together the
Speaker 1: retrofit and for those who are just starting out and
Speaker 1: trying to understand. So it's a very interesting thing. At
Speaker 1: the same time as we have this enormous uncertainty and
Speaker 1: overlapping global crisis, we also have glimmers of clarity about
Speaker 1: what really matters for us in life. At this point
Speaker 1: and what we need to do to protect our relationships,
Speaker 1: to invest and replenish our relationships, and to stay connected.
Speaker 1: It is what occupies me on a personal level at
Speaker 1: this moment. It's what occupies me with sessions live at
Speaker 1: this moment, kind of in the thralls of this because
Speaker 1: I think that is so much going on relationally speaking
Speaker 1: in light of what we are going through. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And I really like this that you mentioned that our
Speaker 1: priorities have shifted in a lot of cases. You know,
Speaker 1: in your book Meeting in Captivity, you ask the question
Speaker 1: can we desire what we already have? And it seems
Speaker 1: like this question takes a different a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different flavor during the pandemic, because we might have
Speaker 1: a lot more gratitude for what we have in a
Speaker 1: way that we never had before. Maybe we realized we
Speaker 1: took for granted our relationships. Right. So the second part
Speaker 1: of that sentence in Mating in Captivity was to say,
Speaker 1: you never have your partner. It's an illusion to think
Speaker 1: that they belong to you. At best, they are on
Speaker 1: loan with an option to renew if you act towards
Speaker 1: you partner. You know, so in this moment, some people
Speaker 1: are more grateful and realize you know you're here today.
Speaker 1: I want to savor I want to savor us, my family,
Speaker 1: what we have created together, et cetera. And in some
Speaker 1: other situations it is there is a deadness that and
Speaker 1: languishing the name that the word that Adam grants so
Speaker 1: put back in the public space here that I can
Speaker 1: no longer tolerate. There's a what I call the death
Speaker 1: of eros, the death of the energy that fuels us
Speaker 1: with the liveness and vibrancy and vitality, and first that
Speaker 1: it has to do with playfulness and curiosity and imagination
Speaker 1: and meaning and the poetry that comes in our relationship.
Speaker 1: When that whole thing is gone and people start to
Speaker 1: feel like I'm just a function, what do we have together?
Speaker 1: I don't exist for you as a person. There's a
Speaker 1: lack of care, there's a lack of fundamental interest in
Speaker 1: who I am, and vice versa. So you have both
Speaker 1: things going on in this moment. It's not just I'm
Speaker 1: grateful for what I have. It's also I realize what
Speaker 1: I don't have and what I no longer can want
Speaker 1: to live without. Sure both are possible, even simultaneously. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got a push pull and you know, like I
Speaker 1: love you, but I also missing out on all this
Speaker 1: other stuff. So you've mentioned that the erotic is the
Speaker 1: antidote to death. That's a really profound statement that I
Speaker 1: want to unpack a little bit, especially in the pandem
Speaker 1: my kind of situation. What does the erotic mean? I
Speaker 1: get a sense, you know, you're using it in a
Speaker 1: sense that's broader than just penetrative sex. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a it's a whole spirit, it's a whole
Speaker 1: way of being, in a kind of humanistic psychology or
Speaker 1: from sort of era kind of way. So I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear some of your thoughts that. So when I
Speaker 1: think of my definition, or not my definition, when I
Speaker 1: think about the way I define the erotic, I think
Speaker 1: about the Zohar, the Jewish Kabbalah. I think about the
Speaker 1: mystic sense of the word. I think about Audrey Lord
Speaker 1: and her writings about what it means to reclaim, a
Speaker 1: process of reclamation of one's ability to experience pleasure and
Speaker 1: dignity and connection and control. I am really not talking
Speaker 1: about it in the most narrow sexual sense that modernity
Speaker 1: has given the word. It's a word that really needs
Speaker 1: to be resuscitated in its full meaning, us is life force.
Speaker 1: Heros is what makes you feel alive. You know, if
Speaker 1: you want to look at it from the sexual point
Speaker 1: of view, people can have sex and feel nothing. Doing
Speaker 1: it doesn't tell you anything about the experience. But the
Speaker 1: quality of the experience, the poetics that you're attached to it,
Speaker 1: that is what makes it erotic. That aliveness, that feeling touched,
Speaker 1: you know. So this is true in marriage too. You
Speaker 1: can have a marriage that isn't dead, and you can
Speaker 1: have a marriage or a relationship that is alive. And
Speaker 1: that aliveness has to do with how people preserve a touch,
Speaker 1: a contact with curiosity, exploration. It is the antidote to
Speaker 1: death because when you are curious and exploratory and discovering
Speaker 1: and playful and imaginative, you feel like there is still
Speaker 1: so much to learn, to discover and to live. That
Speaker 1: makes it the antidote to death. Death is when there
Speaker 1: is nothing more. Heros makes you feel like there's so
Speaker 1: much to live, to breed, to connect with people, et cetera.
Speaker 1: The notion that eros is an antidote to death or
Speaker 1: deadness is that you feel in touch with the erotic
Speaker 1: when you experience whatever it is that you do with
Speaker 1: what is called flourishing or flow or aliveness or radiance.
Speaker 1: All these words you know, and they have to and
Speaker 1: they come with power and dignity and self love and
Speaker 1: connection to others. They are quite all encompassing. And so
Speaker 1: that's what I talk about when I talk about how
Speaker 1: do we connect to the erotic? How do you take
Speaker 1: a routine and turn it into a ritual. How do
Speaker 1: you take a touch that is just a touch and
Speaker 1: you turn it into a touch that comes with pleasure
Speaker 1: and joy? That is the switch from ordinary to erotic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love this. I love the way you situate it
Speaker 1: with an idea of vitality, but also imagination, the human imagination.
Speaker 1: This is an area of mutual interest of Ourns and
Speaker 1: I really love the humanistic psychotherapist role mains work. In
Speaker 1: his book Love and Will You Know, he talks about
Speaker 1: errors in love and will is the human imagination such
Speaker 1: as a part as part and parcel of that. You know, sex,
Speaker 1: he said, pulls us, but erros allows us to think
Speaker 1: more forward looking. We're the ones that are kind of
Speaker 1: moving looking forward and with hope and vitality. Whereas sex
Speaker 1: and lust is we often feel like we're being driven
Speaker 1: by it, you know, So I just always really resonate
Speaker 1: with that kind of distinction. Have your past. The Mexican
Speaker 1: essayst also says, you know, sex is the pivot, it's
Speaker 1: the natural instinct. But eroticism is sexuality that is socialized
Speaker 1: and transformed by the human imagination. Now you ask about
Speaker 1: this in relation to the pandemic, I would say this
Speaker 1: freedom in confinement comes through our imagination. When you see
Speaker 1: children play during this pandemic, and at some point they
Speaker 1: take out big boxes of Amazon and these boxes become hots,
Speaker 1: and then they take books, and these books becomes rocks
Speaker 1: in the river. And now they're going and their playing,
Speaker 1: their imagination has taken them out of the lockdown. When
Speaker 1: you can't leave physically, you can leave with your mind.
Speaker 1: This is what I learned from my own parents, who
Speaker 1: spend years in concentration camps during the Holocaust, and I
Speaker 1: understood that idea that you lift yourself out, you liberate
Speaker 1: yourself through your imagination. Poetry is to prose the way
Speaker 1: that eroticism is to sex. I love that well. I
Speaker 1: find a lot of your writings is very poetic, even
Speaker 1: just in the kind of cadence and upon which you
Speaker 1: write it's beautiful. Thank you. The trauma, loss, and uncertainty
Speaker 1: of our world have let many of us ask life's
Speaker 1: biggest questions, such as who are we? What is our
Speaker 1: highest purpose? And how do we not only live through,
Speaker 1: but thrive in the wake of tragedy, division, and challenges
Speaker 1: to our fundamental way of living. To help us all
Speaker 1: address these questions, process what this unique time in human
Speaker 1: history has meant for us personally and collectively an emerge whole,
Speaker 1: I've collaborated with my colleague and dear friend, doctor Jordan Feingeld,
Speaker 1: MD to bring you our forthcoming book. It's called Choose Growth,
Speaker 1: a Workbook for transcending trauma, fear, and self doubt. It's
Speaker 1: a workbook design to guide you in a journey of
Speaker 1: committing to growth and the pursuit of self actualization every day.
Speaker 1: It's chock full of research from humanistic psychology, positive psychology,
Speaker 1: developmental psychology, personality psychology, cognitive science, and neuropsychology, so lots
Speaker 1: of themes that you hear about on this podcast, and
Speaker 1: it's aimed to help us all integrate the many facets
Speaker 1: of ourselves and co crete our new normal with a
Speaker 1: renewed sense of strength, vitality, and hope. Whether you're healing
Speaker 1: from loss, adapting to the new normal, or simply looking
Speaker 1: ahead to life's next chapter, choose Growth will help steer
Speaker 1: you there to deeper action to your values, your life vision,
Speaker 1: and ultimately your most authentic self. Choo's Growth will officially
Speaker 1: hit the shelves September thirteenth, and you can order your
Speaker 1: copy or the audiobook in the US now on Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound, and all major retailers. If
Speaker 1: you're in the UK and Commonwealth, you can voter now
Speaker 1: at bookshop dot org dot UK. We truly hope this
Speaker 1: book helps you grow and thrive and become your best self. Okay,
Speaker 1: now back to the show. Can we double click on
Speaker 1: the word freedom? This is a very interesting word because
Speaker 1: I think a lot of things that people in relationships
Speaker 1: think will bring them freedom. Once they try these things,
Speaker 1: they actually they wonder why am I not free? Why
Speaker 1: do why do I not feel free? You know? So,
Speaker 1: some people with like avoidant attachment style, for instance, may
Speaker 1: fear a relationship or fear anything that makes them feel
Speaker 1: like they're boxed in in any sort of way because
Speaker 1: they'll say it'll takes away my freedom. But you know,
Speaker 1: often a lot of people the avoidant attachment style feel
Speaker 1: a report for lonely and not always and I wass
Speaker 1: in the case, but sometimes they report feeling only in
Speaker 1: report feeling, well, you know that I still don't feel free.
Speaker 1: You know I still don't feel compully free. So what
Speaker 1: are some misconceptions about this idea of freedom and relationship?
Speaker 1: Like you know a lot of people have these kind
Speaker 1: of misconceptions that you're only free if you know you
Speaker 1: can sleep around with as many people as possible, or
Speaker 1: you're only free of X y Z. What are some
Speaker 1: kind of misconceptions about that. It's a complex question, you know.
Speaker 1: I think that the best way I can answer this
Speaker 1: is to go back to the spine of the book
Speaker 1: Mating in Captivity, because what it really looked at and
Speaker 1: I borrowed it from loads of people, but in particular
Speaker 1: I was very much influenced by the writings of Steven
Speaker 1: Mitchell Can Love Last, But so as rolland bart so
Speaker 1: where a few others. But we have two fundamental sets
Speaker 1: of human needs all of us. We have a need
Speaker 1: for grounding and we have a need for travel, or
Speaker 1: we have a need for security, safety, predictability, and we
Speaker 1: have a need for exploring novelty, change, curiosity, freedom. All
Speaker 1: of us have both, but some of us come out
Speaker 1: of our childhood wanting more protection and more commitment, and
Speaker 1: some of us come out of our childhood wanting more
Speaker 1: space and more freedom. We tend to partner with somebody
Speaker 1: whose proclivities match our vulnerabilities, so that the solid will
Speaker 1: often meet the liquid. The structured, the grounded, the anchored,
Speaker 1: you know, will be drawn by the curious, the traveler,
Speaker 1: the ulysses, and then the ulysses will find that there
Speaker 1: is something very reassuring being with someone who is structured,
Speaker 1: who is reliable, responsible, et cetera. And when this works
Speaker 1: in a complementarity, it's a beautiful fit. Often it becomes
Speaker 1: challenging as well in many relationships. So freedom is, you know,
Speaker 1: the dance between autonomy and togetherness, between separateness and connection.
Speaker 1: You need both. You need to feel a modicum of
Speaker 1: groundedness and something to come back to the safe harbor
Speaker 1: in order to be able to leave and to feel free.
Speaker 1: But the freedom is not believing the freedom, and this
Speaker 1: is the important freedom in the realm of sexuality and
Speaker 1: desire that I was trying to articulate. The freedom is
Speaker 1: that while I'm away, I'm not busy worrying about you,
Speaker 1: being anxious for you, constantly fretting about how you're going
Speaker 1: to be when I come back. It's not hard to
Speaker 1: leave physically while you take inside of you an entire
Speaker 1: worry machine. You know. The freedom is to know that
Speaker 1: you are okay while I am doing my thing. That's
Speaker 1: a freedom in relationship that I don't have to give
Speaker 1: up chunks of me in order to reassure you, because
Speaker 1: my freedom is your insecurity. What happens a lot these
Speaker 1: days in our field is the focus went from the
Speaker 1: humanistic work after the war that was very much focused
Speaker 1: on looking at freedom, freedom in the existential sense of
Speaker 1: the word that came with responsibility, that you know, freedom
Speaker 1: was never a carelessness. And then we went and we
Speaker 1: put an entire focus on the attachment. And the notion
Speaker 1: was that a secure attachment will create the ability to
Speaker 1: experience separateness. But separateness is what will create the ability
Speaker 1: to experience an ability to surrender to one's desire. The
Speaker 1: interesting thing is that you cannot. It's a real contradiction.
Speaker 1: How at the same time, freedom implies responsibility, and at
Speaker 1: the same time, a certain kind of freedom implies a
Speaker 1: freedom and a release of the responsibility. It's both. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's really true. And bringing this idea of this
Speaker 1: idea that this romantic notion that love should not require work,
Speaker 1: that if it's meant to be, it shouldn't require work, well,
Speaker 1: I think Role Made did a good job dispelling that.
Speaker 1: And love and will that the human will does is
Speaker 1: an important part of it. And I read somewhere that
Speaker 1: you said you've been married for thirty years. At this
Speaker 1: point it's more than thirty years, and it's still has
Speaker 1: taken a lot of work, right, I mean, there's been
Speaker 1: moments where you know you have to you know, you show,
Speaker 1: you have to reveal that you know, there's the imperfections
Speaker 1: of each other. I mean there's and I think what
Speaker 1: I really liked about when Roll we talked about, he said, well,
Speaker 1: that's you know you need in order for erros to happen,
Speaker 1: you need to give it time for those things to
Speaker 1: be resolved, for there to be unveiling, a real revealing
Speaker 1: of each other's real self, or else you know, erros
Speaker 1: doesn't develop. And I was just wanting to, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of riff on that idea a little bit, to
Speaker 1: play piano. You will continue to practice playing piano. You
Speaker 1: can call it practicing rather than working at it. You know,
Speaker 1: the English American English is often talking about the word
Speaker 1: work because it's very Protestant influenced in that sense. This work,
Speaker 1: you could call it creative work. You could call it
Speaker 1: active engagement. You can call it investment. You can call
Speaker 1: it pruning, caring, watering. Basically, it's paying attention, it's nurturing it,
Speaker 1: it's feeding it. It's not letting it just die there
Speaker 1: and agonize, you know, in a complete dry land or
Speaker 1: in a pool, you know, in a cesspool, one or
Speaker 1: the other. So there is not another area in life
Speaker 1: where people don't think that in order to stay nimble
Speaker 1: at something, it demand's paying attention, bringing new things, refresh, renew, reset,
Speaker 1: except in love, because this notion of which it just
Speaker 1: should happen is part you know, there are two main
Speaker 1: approaches that justin Li Miller was talking to me about.
Speaker 1: One is the destiny model of relationship. It's meant to be.
Speaker 1: It's kind of falling from the heavens, you know, divine intervention.
Speaker 1: It just is I don't have anything to do with it.
Speaker 1: It's so. But then when it doesn't go well, then
Speaker 1: you say just the opposite. It wasn't meant to be.
Speaker 1: It's fate, it's destiny. That's very different from the growth model.
Speaker 1: The growth model is I make it happen. We make
Speaker 1: it happen, and sometimes we fuck up, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: just let it become lazy and complacent and we forget
Speaker 1: about each other. And every relationship is going to go
Speaker 1: through dips at some point. The only difference is that
Speaker 1: some of us kind of get in gear and start
Speaker 1: to resuscitate, to infuse it back with life, with joy,
Speaker 1: with laughter, with attention, with good food, good relational food.
Speaker 1: So it's very very interesting, and it goes together this
Speaker 1: idea about it doesn't it shouldn't be work, It should
Speaker 1: just be an error, should just flow from the heavens,
Speaker 1: you know, like while you're folding the laundry for that matter. Right,
Speaker 1: goes hand in hand with the search today of what
Speaker 1: we call the soul met your partner in many circles
Speaker 1: today is seen as a soul mead, a saltmate that
Speaker 1: you find of course on an app And what's so
Speaker 1: fascinating about that. The younger analyst Robert Johnson talks about
Speaker 1: it very beautifully. He says, there is a kind of
Speaker 1: a confluence between the religious and the relational. Today we
Speaker 1: look in relationships for ecstasy, transcendence, wholeness, meaning that we
Speaker 1: used to look for in the realm of the divine.
Speaker 1: A soulmate used to be God, not a living human being,
Speaker 1: you know, And so we're looking two relationships what we
Speaker 1: usually used to look for in religious life. And once
Speaker 1: you have that relationship with the soul mad you think
Speaker 1: that it should that soor maid knows you inside that
Speaker 1: you don't have to explain anything. You know, that's all
Speaker 1: made is an extension of you, is you know, spiritually
Speaker 1: connected to you. And you know that is not what
Speaker 1: goes on in most relationships. That's just a fiction. So
Speaker 1: why do people in happy marriages, why do people still cheat?
Speaker 1: Why do people in relationships that are deeply nurturing and
Speaker 1: satisfying continue to long for other things? Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great question. If you change the word cheat for a moment,
Speaker 1: you see, you know, cheat is what they do to
Speaker 1: the relationship and to their partner. If you talk about
Speaker 1: what it does for themselves they will talk about. At
Speaker 1: the heart of infidelity, you will find lying, duplicity, betrayal, cheating.
Speaker 1: But you will also find in those relationships that you
Speaker 1: just mentioned, specifically in what we call the happy marriages,
Speaker 1: longing and loss and yearning. And I think that the
Speaker 1: best sentence I could come up with when I talked
Speaker 1: with so many people who said I love my partner.
Speaker 1: This is ten years of research with people who kept
Speaker 1: saying I love my partner, that I am very happy here,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go anywhere else. I bought and
Speaker 1: now came. The second part is that they didn't want
Speaker 1: to leave the person that they were with, but what
Speaker 1: they really yearned for was to leave the person that
Speaker 1: they had themselves become. Wow, And that it wasn't that
Speaker 1: they were looking for another person as much as they
Speaker 1: were looking for another self or other parts of themselves
Speaker 1: that they had completely left aside for decades. The majority
Speaker 1: of these people had been faithful for twenty years easily.
Speaker 1: So these are not cheaters. These are people who crossed
Speaker 1: the line that sometimes they themselves never thought they would cross.
Speaker 1: And so then you ask for a glimmer of what
Speaker 1: why would you risk losing everything that is so dear
Speaker 1: to you for what and what? And that is back
Speaker 1: to your question about eros. Is that the most common
Speaker 1: answer I get People write to me from all over
Speaker 1: the world. And this is not to promote or to
Speaker 1: justify or to minimize the effects of infinitelity on a relationship.
Speaker 1: I want to be really clear, but I had to
Speaker 1: understand why people did this. It's not just to understand
Speaker 1: what it does to the people who are hurt by it.
Speaker 1: I felt alive. I felt alive. I felt aliveness I
Speaker 1: hadn't felt in years. I didn't know this still could
Speaker 1: happen to me, and it had happened. Not much to
Speaker 1: do with sex. They may have been sex involved, but
Speaker 1: sometimes there was no sex involved at all. There was
Speaker 1: a sense of a liveness, of touching the essence of things.
Speaker 1: It was a real existential quest. Actually, it had very
Speaker 1: little to do with the partner and very little to
Speaker 1: do with the relationship. This is one particular type of
Speaker 1: affairs that is very different from the multitude of others.
Speaker 1: But if you ask me about affairs in happy relationships,
Speaker 1: this is probably one of the more accurate descriptions I
Speaker 1: have gleaned from my conversations. Kind of keeps all roads
Speaker 1: keep going back to arrows there and that vitality. In
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Speaker 1: for your help. In what ways do you think an
Speaker 1: affair can be good for a marriage? Maybe by helping
Speaker 1: people reclaim their sense of errors itself. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not the affair itself. Sometimes it's the affair itself. A
Speaker 1: person suddenly is walken up again and just you know,
Speaker 1: come and brings that energy into the relationship. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen always or often. For that matter. It's the aftermath.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an affair is not good for a relationship,
Speaker 1: but good can come out of an affair. Let's put
Speaker 1: it this way, okay. And what it does is it
Speaker 1: topples the scorecard in the relationship, because basically, an affair
Speaker 1: is a resounding no, I don't want to go on
Speaker 1: like this, this for the rest of my life, this
Speaker 1: for another twenty five years, no more. And sometimes it
Speaker 1: relieves the other person to say, I want more too.
Speaker 1: You think I'm just happy like this with the life
Speaker 1: we live. I think I didn't want to re experience ABCD,
Speaker 1: you know. So it topples the scorecard and it allows
Speaker 1: people to do a massive It allows people very very often.
Speaker 1: That I can say is often to have conversations with
Speaker 1: the level of truth and honesty that they haven't had
Speaker 1: in years because the whole thing that they were trying
Speaker 1: to protect has fallen apart anyway, so now they can
Speaker 1: finally dig It allows people to reconnect with their sense
Speaker 1: of desire and they're real wanting to connect with the
Speaker 1: other person rather than complacency. It jolts them out of
Speaker 1: their complacency and they realize what they can lose and
Speaker 1: that they're going to have to really become much more
Speaker 1: active participants if they want this thing to remain alive.
Speaker 1: So all of that it allows people to change fundamental
Speaker 1: roles and inequities in the relationship that we're no longer tolerable.
Speaker 1: It allows a reset of the power dynamic, because it's
Speaker 1: not just that the person who hasn't cheated is the
Speaker 1: good partner just because they haven't cheated. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of other relational betrayals in relationships. I think we have
Speaker 1: to really not just look at this as you know,
Speaker 1: this is the good person and this is the cruel, wrong,
Speaker 1: liar cheater. You know, that is a version, But the
Speaker 1: majority of the time in most relationships, there are there
Speaker 1: is resentment, there is contempt, there is neglect, there is violence,
Speaker 1: There is a lot of other relational betrayals that the
Speaker 1: non cheater doesn't can't really claim moral superiority because of that.
Speaker 1: If we are really honest, when you are in the
Speaker 1: muck of things and you talk with thousands of couples
Speaker 1: who are grappling with this infidelity, so what other goods
Speaker 1: can come out of it? You know, I've been trying
Speaker 1: to tell you something for a long time, and this
Speaker 1: is the first time you're actually listening. Because it's often
Speaker 1: easy for us to say to the person, why didn't
Speaker 1: you talk about them this? Why didn't you bring it up?
Speaker 1: You think people haven't brought things up for decades, but
Speaker 1: the other person wasn't interested in changing. I thought you
Speaker 1: were scolding me. Tell me, I'm channeling every conversation that
Speaker 1: I've heard. You know, it's like and I hear it's
Speaker 1: like you know, no, I did try to tell you
Speaker 1: and this. It took this for you to actually listen.
Speaker 1: You know, you haven't touched me in fifteen years. I'm
Speaker 1: not talking having sex. You haven't touched me. Put your
Speaker 1: hands in my hair, stroked me, caressed me, held my hand,
Speaker 1: gently kissed me, looked at me in the eyes. You know, now,
Speaker 1: you may be a very nice person, and you may
Speaker 1: be a responsible provider, and you may, but I am
Speaker 1: dying inside and I just couldn't believe that I would
Speaker 1: live for another twenty years and never be touched again.
Speaker 1: You don't see me. I walk around you in every
Speaker 1: attire possible. You don't see me. And there is no
Speaker 1: orientation and no gender who can claim priority on this one.
Speaker 1: These are collective statements. So it's that kind of yearning.
Speaker 1: And those people don't necessarily want a divorce. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's easy to just say why don't you leave? Then
Speaker 1: they don't want to leave because there are other parts
Speaker 1: in the relationship as well. But someday this part comes
Speaker 1: out and says, I can't continue like this. So when
Speaker 1: these conversations come out and the other person and can
Speaker 1: hear it, and when the person who has hurt can
Speaker 1: really show the remorse and take the responsibility and reinvest
Speaker 1: in the relationship. There are the ones who have been
Speaker 1: able to really make good of it, will tell you
Speaker 1: that their relationship is better than it was. They wish
Speaker 1: they didn't have to go through this, but they definitely
Speaker 1: feel like this took them to a place that they
Speaker 1: would otherwise not have gone. Post traumatic growth, you know,
Speaker 1: really need to coin something post infidelity growth. There we
Speaker 1: just coined something. So, yeah, that's wonderful to hear you know,
Speaker 1: your own stories and experiences people. And then you also
Speaker 1: have this podcast where people can listen in to live sessions. Boy,
Speaker 1: that is such a great idea. Where did you get
Speaker 1: that idea? My mentor Salvador Minuccin said to me, there
Speaker 1: is no better theater than couple's therapy. And he wanted
Speaker 1: to try to write plays about couples and it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: In the end, he didn't write those plays, but I
Speaker 1: felt the same. I just thought, this is the truth
Speaker 1: behind closed doors. There's never been more expectations about romantic
Speaker 1: life than we have today. And couples have never been
Speaker 1: more isolated than they are today. And your best friends
Speaker 1: can divorce and you never saw it coming, and nobody
Speaker 1: and people wonder all the time. You know, am I alone?
Speaker 1: Is this happening to other people too? And talk about infidelity?
Speaker 1: Nobody will talk about it, and talk about sex and
Speaker 1: nobody will talk about it. So you never know what
Speaker 1: happens behind closed doors. And I just knew I couldn't
Speaker 1: work with patients. I could bring patients to conferences, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't. So when Audible approached me, they originally wanted
Speaker 1: me to do a kind of a he said, She said,
Speaker 1: similar to the Showtime series The Affair that I had
Speaker 1: been a consultant for. And I said, but that's not
Speaker 1: how couple's therapy works, at least not in my office.
Speaker 1: It's not a he she or a he he. It's
Speaker 1: not that binary like that. It's much more feedback loop.
Speaker 1: It's what one person says that brings the other person
Speaker 1: to do something that then makes them reacting that figure
Speaker 1: eight like that. And I said, I really would like
Speaker 1: you to watch, to watch, to listen actually to a session,
Speaker 1: and you tell me. But I think that these are
Speaker 1: some of the most powerful stories one can tell. Relationships
Speaker 1: as stories. Part of my work is to help people
Speaker 1: write a new story together and then to edit often
Speaker 1: what they are writing. And we did one episode and
Speaker 1: we are now and it became where should we begin
Speaker 1: live couples Therapy one time three hour sessions with an
Speaker 1: anonymous couples that will never be my patients. And we
Speaker 1: are now in production of season five and a number
Speaker 1: of these episodes do touch on the subject of infidelity,
Speaker 1: but not only really covers a wide range. This week,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my first episode on friends who were a
Speaker 1: straight so I'm interested in other pairs. And then I
Speaker 1: decided that I would do how It Work, which was
Speaker 1: the same model, but instead of just looking at romantic pairs,
Speaker 1: I would take colleagues, co workers, family members who work together.
Speaker 1: Same model, intensive three hour, one time session and it
Speaker 1: became you know this, it was the first of its
Speaker 1: kind and went all over It became a public health
Speaker 1: campaign for relationships. It became a democratization of couple's therapy
Speaker 1: for people who can't afford, don't have access, and are
Speaker 1: in all kinds of parts of the world where none
Speaker 1: of this happens. And it became an educational technology on
Speaker 1: relationships of one model. You know, it's just this one
Speaker 1: therapist here doing her best. It sounds Spotify, it's anywhere
Speaker 1: where people listen to podcasts, and it really distigmatized therapy
Speaker 1: and especially couple's therapy as well. It really it created
Speaker 1: a conversation in the society at large, and then came,
Speaker 1: you know, with the pandemic and teletherapy. All of this
Speaker 1: now is then can the couple's therapy showtime series? Now
Speaker 1: is scenes of a marriage? I mean, you can see
Speaker 1: that people are deeply interested in this unit called the
Speaker 1: couple that is meant to accomplish so much and is
Speaker 1: often under resourced, and in the United States of America
Speaker 1: it also is meant to be a welfare state of too. Well,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. Let's let's double quick on this idea
Speaker 1: of monogamy. For a second. Some people say it's just
Speaker 1: it's not natural. It's just, you know, from an evolutionary
Speaker 1: point of view, and a lot of people are experimenting
Speaker 1: with alternative things, open marriages, polyamory. Personally, I'm a big
Speaker 1: believer in whatever works, you know, for a couple, if
Speaker 1: it works for both of them, or more than a couple,
Speaker 1: whatever works for whatever number of people are in a
Speaker 1: polyamorous relationship. I'm just wondering, you know, some of your
Speaker 1: thoughts and some of these altern marriage have you seen
Speaker 1: them really work in great beautiful ways? Have you were
Speaker 1: some challenges you've seen in these kinds of lifeles that
Speaker 1: come to your practice. So maybe a place to start
Speaker 1: is to say that I don't think as in monogamous
Speaker 1: and then non monogamous or polyamorous. Polyamorous is a whole
Speaker 1: range of different relational arrangements too, and monogamous are often
Speaker 1: proclaimed monogamy and clandestine adultery. So I think that we
Speaker 1: have to really unpack a little bit. Marriage has changed
Speaker 1: throughout history. Marriage has always been an economic enterprise. It
Speaker 1: was primarily monogamy was an imposition on women so that
Speaker 1: the men would know who are the children that they
Speaker 1: need to feed, and who will get the cows when
Speaker 1: they die, or the goats or the camels. You know,
Speaker 1: all over the world, monogamy had nothing to do with love.
Speaker 1: Monogamy was an economic arrangement, and since we didn't often
Speaker 1: know paternity, it was a way to ensure no knowledge
Speaker 1: of paternity. Monogamy has always been one person for life,
Speaker 1: and today monogamy is one person at a time. So
Speaker 1: the word monogamous has fundamentally changed meaning too. I think
Speaker 1: that when we bring a more sociocultural understanding to these words,
Speaker 1: it changes the way we practice, you know, So we
Speaker 1: ask people what is your arrangement? How do you define
Speaker 1: loyalty and how do you define fidelity? Because you can
Speaker 1: be loyal and not faithful. You can be loyal, faithful
Speaker 1: and non exclusive. So what have been your definitions around
Speaker 1: these words. In the past, they were defined by the
Speaker 1: constructs of primarily religious institutions. Now people need to define
Speaker 1: these by themselves, so it demands a conversation. Unfortunately, in
Speaker 1: many couples, particularly in heterosexual couples, monogamy is discussed only
Speaker 1: after there has been a big crisis. Monogamy has defined
Speaker 1: as sexual exclusivity because can be defined in various other
Speaker 1: ways too, So when you say alternative, it's alternative to what.
Speaker 1: This invites a lot of assumptions about very defined concepts.
Speaker 1: We are today exploring multiple new models of relationships. We
Speaker 1: have not eight to ten children, we have one to
Speaker 1: three to none. That is a very new relationship. You know,
Speaker 1: when you are farmers with eight kids for which you
Speaker 1: needed to have ten because you didn't survive, that made
Speaker 1: for a very different marriage. When we have contraception, that
Speaker 1: makes for a very different marriage. When we make for
Speaker 1: women who work outside the house and are also material providers,
Speaker 1: that changes the gender roles. When we have queer marriages
Speaker 1: who can also have children. So I look at the
Speaker 1: whole question of boundaries and sexual boundaries and emotional commitment
Speaker 1: inside marriages as part of this greater exploration in which
Speaker 1: people want commitment and they want freedom. This is the
Speaker 1: fundamental thing that has happened today is that we want both.
Speaker 1: We want the stability of committed relationships, the continuity, the
Speaker 1: sense of belonging, the rootedness, the loyalty, the reliability. And
Speaker 1: we also have redefined sexuality that is no longer for
Speaker 1: many people. Just a pro creative model of sexuality, but
Speaker 1: it is sexuality as a property of the self, as
Speaker 1: an expression of lifestyle and forms of connection. And from
Speaker 1: that place one wants to negotiate that sexuality is not
Speaker 1: just going to take place with one person, or even
Speaker 1: that love is going to be more communal, and we
Speaker 1: are going to create new forms of extended family and
Speaker 1: communal living that we call polyamorous. When we look at
Speaker 1: it from that angle, we are much less judgmental, We
Speaker 1: are much more curious, and probably we are more helpful
Speaker 1: with many of our patients because it invites to tell
Speaker 1: us the truth so that we can actually work with them.
Speaker 1: So when you ask me, can they work? Yes? But
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is one doesn't ask does monogamy work?
Speaker 1: Or do traditional marriages work? You know? Do they work
Speaker 1: so well? You know? And what do we mean by work?
Speaker 1: They lasted for thirty years? And does lasting just mean
Speaker 1: the only marker of success longevity? Or are we looking
Speaker 1: at the quality of the relationship? So what makes relationships
Speaker 1: work is the same everywhere. Respect dignity, the ability to
Speaker 1: listen to the other person, to value the other person,
Speaker 1: to feel valued in a relationship, to experience growth and
Speaker 1: hopefulness together, to be able to deal with the crisis
Speaker 1: and the losses of life together. And it has no
Speaker 1: difference if you are doing this within a context of
Speaker 1: monogamy or sexual exclusivity, or if you're doing it within
Speaker 1: the context of a long distance relationship, a single parent family,
Speaker 1: an accordion family, a blended family, a queer family, or
Speaker 1: a polyamorous family. Excellent point. Excellent point. I have some
Speaker 1: friends in the polyamory community and they really wanted to
Speaker 1: please ask you this question. Please ask you this question
Speaker 1: because but I'm not an advocate. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: like when you say this, it means like you're pro
Speaker 1: or against or another. I'm just saying there is no
Speaker 1: one size fits all. And if we are going to
Speaker 1: be therapist of the moment, and and therapy is meeting
Speaker 1: the moment, this great adaptability that we are talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at what has happened to relationships when
Speaker 1: people had to really be you know, resources could bring
Speaker 1: in the grandparents, couldn't bring in childcare, couldn't bring in friends,
Speaker 1: couldn't bring in all the people within that context. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, what makes for a good relationship,
Speaker 1: what makes it work, what made it work? In this moment,
Speaker 1: what do we need at what will change? I think
Speaker 1: that therapists sometimes it would be very good to be
Speaker 1: in conversation more with sociologists and anthropologists and theologians. You
Speaker 1: need to bring back the world into the conversation and
Speaker 1: not just I'm going to stop you. I love what
Speaker 1: you're saying. You know, you have described yourself once as
Speaker 1: your therapy approach is akin to that of an anthropologists
Speaker 1: and explore, So it sort of is how you see yourself?
Speaker 1: Can you kind of unpack why both an anthropologist, athropologisan
Speaker 1: and explore. I'm a systemically trained therapist, and I may
Speaker 1: have been trained. I was strained psychodynamically as well, but
Speaker 1: I arrived in America in the heydays of systemic family
Speaker 1: therapy and kind of found myself there. If I had
Speaker 1: come years later, I may have been, you know, inducted
Speaker 1: into IFS or into EFT or any of the other
Speaker 1: schools that proliferated later. But what I do know is
Speaker 1: I'm a cross cultural therapist. I mean it's not just
Speaker 1: that I speak nine languages. I do different therapy in
Speaker 1: the different languages as well. I talk differently about the
Speaker 1: same topics. There are different values that people bring as
Speaker 1: they talk about relationships, parenting, children, death, money, illness, communication, closeness, transparency.
Speaker 1: All these words are culturally embedded. They have cultural resonance,
Speaker 1: and with culture comes class and race and history, etc.
Speaker 1: And therapy that was systemic invited that, like today, you
Speaker 1: cannot do therapy without thinking about the racial reckoning, about
Speaker 1: the public health crisis, about the climate, despair, about the
Speaker 1: economic behaviors. I mean, if you just stick to the
Speaker 1: brain and you don't bring in the larger, overlapping global
Speaker 1: crises that are affecting people's life and sense of hopefulness.
Speaker 1: When we work these days, we are working a lot
Speaker 1: about hopefulness and anxiety and despair. These things are not
Speaker 1: just happening because people inside are feeling low self esteem
Speaker 1: or just because they've had trauma. It's because the world
Speaker 1: they're living in is scary, and so that's the anthropological
Speaker 1: perspective it's bringing back. This is what my whole training
Speaker 1: on sessions is about. It's a salon. I bring sociologists, clinicians,
Speaker 1: trauma experts so that we have a conversation that is
Speaker 1: broad enough that it can help us meet the moment,
Speaker 1: rather than coming from one particular approach. What I probably
Speaker 1: say when I do the anthropological view is to challenge
Speaker 1: the individualistic, silo driven therapeutic approaches. I think that that's
Speaker 1: where today maybe it's very very important, but we need
Speaker 1: the other view too. This is not that or that
Speaker 1: is that we need a therapy that encompasses, you know,
Speaker 1: the issues and if you work with refugees, and if
Speaker 1: you work with trauma victims, and you know, if you
Speaker 1: work with the large things that are entering our office
Speaker 1: at this moment, you need to have a cultural framework
Speaker 1: and an anthropological framework absolutely. I mean I was really
Speaker 1: interested to see that you started off in immigration, studying immigration,
Speaker 1: very interested in identity of identity. I was worrying how
Speaker 1: you brought some of that earlier expertise to the work
Speaker 1: you do today. I mean, you talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about that already. I'm glad you're asking. So I started
Speaker 1: out looking at cultural transition. What I was fascinated was
Speaker 1: how do people experience cultural transition? And I looked at
Speaker 1: the two groups that move the most these days, refugees
Speaker 1: and internationals, forced migration and voluntary migration. And then I
Speaker 1: looked at mixed couples, interracial intercultural, inter religious couples and
Speaker 1: families of all orientations, you know, who also are in
Speaker 1: cultural transition, but it lives in their own living room.
Speaker 1: And then I looked at technology, and that is another
Speaker 1: cultural transition, relationships mediated with technology, and so I'm very
Speaker 1: interested in how that changes the way we think about ourselves,
Speaker 1: the way we think about how we connect to others,
Speaker 1: the way that we straddle the continuum between autonomy and interdependence,
Speaker 1: between self reliance and loyalty, between an an individual oralistic
Speaker 1: orientation and a more collective orientation and more interdependent, which
Speaker 1: is what we really are looking at right now. We
Speaker 1: have a whole day at a conference that's about mass
Speaker 1: mutual reliance. How do you make that shift? And that
Speaker 1: shift has to take place in therapy as well. When
Speaker 1: people talk about resilience, they have to be able to
Speaker 1: talk about what is collective resilience? What is collective trauma
Speaker 1: that mandates collective resilience that goes along with mass mutual reliance.
Speaker 1: That's a real different paradigm shift than the way that
Speaker 1: we have developed, you know, And these two conversations are
Speaker 1: happening side by side in our field at this moment.
Speaker 1: So I have been a translator. I have often thought
Speaker 1: that when I would write about a subject, I should
Speaker 1: start to go and see how do other disciplines write
Speaker 1: about it. When I do supervision groups people from every discipline,
Speaker 1: there are multidisciplinary groups so that we continuously have one case,
Speaker 1: five approaches. And that has to do with the cultural transition.
Speaker 1: It's really to know that there is never just one way.
Speaker 1: Once you've traveled one time to another place, you know
Speaker 1: that there is another way to do things everything. There's
Speaker 1: another way to deal with the babies, the food, the job.
Speaker 1: That multiplicity of perspectives is something that really came from
Speaker 1: looking at these cultural transitions and how we interact with them.
Speaker 1: Why did you start working with couples? Like, when did
Speaker 1: that transition happen? I started with groups. I totally started
Speaker 1: with groups. I started with groups before I came to
Speaker 1: the United States. I was doing what at the time
Speaker 1: was called you know, interracial groups into cultural groups, race relations,
Speaker 1: you know, political groups that came to get the conflict
Speaker 1: resolution all of that. And then when I and then
Speaker 1: when I came here, I had looked at cultural, racial,
Speaker 1: and religious identity and somebody said, would you like to
Speaker 1: come work at a ninety second Street, why we have
Speaker 1: a whole program for mixed couples. Basically what they were saying,
Speaker 1: would you like to look at diversity in the bedroom?
Speaker 1: And it made total sense for me. So I was
Speaker 1: training in family therapy. Couples therapy at that time was
Speaker 1: not really central. It was a little bit a stepchild
Speaker 1: of family therapy. And I began to be interested in
Speaker 1: couples because I began to see that couples was becoming
Speaker 1: the most important unit of the family. In the traditional world,
Speaker 1: the family is more important than the couple, which is,
Speaker 1: by the way, part of why infidelity does not necessarily
Speaker 1: become a leading cause of divorce, because preserving the family
Speaker 1: is more important than your individual response to a couple's crisis.
Speaker 1: As the couple became more important, and as you can
Speaker 1: literally say that the survival of the family today in
Speaker 1: the West depends on the relative happiness of the couple,
Speaker 1: nothing else, not even the kids. Kids may delate, but
Speaker 1: that's it. Couple's therapy became like, this is the central
Speaker 1: unit to work with, and it is very difficult and
Speaker 1: challenging and fascinating and endlessly renewing. I mean you you,
Speaker 1: it keeps you very humble. It does absolutely. Have you
Speaker 1: done any readings of Irvan Yaham's books and his stories
Speaker 1: World Rescuers? Yeah, yes, yes, yes, He's very close to
Speaker 1: my heart. He was on this podcast recently as well,
Speaker 1: and I see some some commonalities and formative books for me. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: both of your sort of this great gift. You have
Speaker 1: to tell stories and in ways that really resonate with him,
Speaker 1: with the deep humanity and all of us. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: There's another topic I want to talk about as we
Speaker 1: near the end of our conversation. You've about masculinity, and
Speaker 1: there's misconceptions about what it means to be a man
Speaker 1: in a relationship, and I'm wondering if you could kind
Speaker 1: of spell some of those misconceptions. You know, what do
Speaker 1: you sort of see the men that come into your
Speaker 1: practice and how that might differ from some of the
Speaker 1: cultural stereotypes that exist. Maybe it's a place to start
Speaker 1: with be to say that it's not just in my practice.
Speaker 1: I have actually had the privilege of being the only woman,
Speaker 1: if I may say, or the only identified woman to
Speaker 1: join men's groups for quite a while. I have spent
Speaker 1: retreats of three days where I am like an anthropologist.
Speaker 1: I'm a guest, I'm a witness to men's groups, so
Speaker 1: it's much more than just you know, I do have
Speaker 1: a very heavily male practice, and have had for more
Speaker 1: than twenty years. I'm practicing twenty five. But it's the
Speaker 1: groups where I really have been very, very interested in.
Speaker 1: And I did a whole conference with sessions live on
Speaker 1: masculinity years back because I, well, because me too, brought
Speaker 1: all of that, of course in the open and mandated
Speaker 1: us to once again really discuss this, but also because
Speaker 1: I think that the lives of women will not change
Speaker 1: until the men come along and are given some of
Speaker 1: the same opportunities to rethink their condition, their expectations, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And because I often think that we put a lot
Speaker 1: of focus on male power and that in fact, I
Speaker 1: think we have more to learn when we look at
Speaker 1: what happens with men's fear of powerlessness. We never have
Speaker 1: to hear women be losers. Losers doesn't exist in the feminine.
Speaker 1: Neither does emasculated exist in the feminine. We never have
Speaker 1: to tell a woman be a woman, show me that
Speaker 1: you're a woman. We tell men all the time to
Speaker 1: man up. I think that you know, what strikes me
Speaker 1: at this time when everybody is talking about masculinity from
Speaker 1: pop culture to politics, and question what masculinity means and
Speaker 1: how it affects and what are the roots of masculinity
Speaker 1: and how does it shape individuals and cultures and how
Speaker 1: has it changed across generations. For me, there's five dimensions
Speaker 1: masculinity that I've been interested in identity, intimacy, sexuality, power,
Speaker 1: and trauma. And you know, a colleague of mine once said,
Speaker 1: if the twentieth century is the century where women made
Speaker 1: major changes, the twenty first century will be the one
Speaker 1: where the men adapt to the changes that the women
Speaker 1: have made. So it's an interesting thing to know that
Speaker 1: the feminist literature is unified by its sense of moral
Speaker 1: outreach over historical subordination and exploitation of women by men,
Speaker 1: But the men's literature is unified by a sense of
Speaker 1: a crisis and of ontological anxiety. So when I try
Speaker 1: to understand what really is is the thing that I own,
Speaker 1: I would say this, probably historically people have never really
Speaker 1: questioned masculinity. Men was a given. You know, women were
Speaker 1: seen as basically men with genitals on the insight until
Speaker 1: very late, you know, But what we do know is
Speaker 1: that masculinity is often a goal and a duty and
Speaker 1: an objective in most societies for boys and adolescents. We
Speaker 1: talk about masculinity as a man date, as an imperative,
Speaker 1: you know, be a man, man up, and you have
Speaker 1: rituals in every society for men to go and prove
Speaker 1: their manliness. And if we're constantly encouraging and exhorting men
Speaker 1: to demonstrate manliness, then maybe it isn't as natural as
Speaker 1: we that would like to think. Even in the absence
Speaker 1: of femininity, one doesn't doubt the identity of women, but
Speaker 1: that's not the case for men. Being a man requires
Speaker 1: an effort that doesn't necessarily translate to the life of women.
Speaker 1: Women rarely here be a woman. The female is seen
Speaker 1: as kind of natural and unavoidable, and masculinity is seen
Speaker 1: as something that is hard to develop and easy to lose.
Speaker 1: And so that's why I'm interested in the feeling of powerlessness,
Speaker 1: in the loss of identity, in the fragility of masculinity,
Speaker 1: rather than just focusing in the obvious privilege and power
Speaker 1: of masculinity that such a good points. I love it.
Speaker 1: You know, this idea of impotence in men doesn't just
Speaker 1: exist in the bedroom, but you know the feeling of
Speaker 1: impotence in one's a man's own personal life, and the
Speaker 1: pressures they may have to succeed and dominate the competition.
Speaker 1: You know, not just in the bedroom, but you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of competition. I just love what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I love it so much, so important. Let me end
Speaker 1: this interview today with a question for you, a personal question.
Speaker 1: If you were to imagine telling your own story of
Speaker 1: the Great Adaptation to your great great grandchildren, what would
Speaker 1: you share. Learning to live with uncertainty or accepting the
Speaker 1: uncertainty of life is something that I probably grew up
Speaker 1: with and that I think my kids may have true
Speaker 1: epigenetics really absorbed. You know. I do come from a tradition,
Speaker 1: from a family history where we you know, where my
Speaker 1: family lost everything, everything and everyone from one day to
Speaker 1: the next. And so the notion of entitlement of this
Speaker 1: is mine, of this is going to be here forever.
Speaker 1: I never grew up with those ideas. I always thought
Speaker 1: that whatever you have today can disappear any moment. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, I think it has given me a
Speaker 1: sense of dread and existential anguish that I've had to
Speaker 1: learn to live with. On the other end, it has
Speaker 1: made me very adaptable. I am sure you know. I
Speaker 1: don't just speak the languages, many of them because I
Speaker 1: love languages, it's true, but also because in a way
Speaker 1: it allows me to enter different places and to blend
Speaker 1: and to be a part of even if I don't belong,
Speaker 1: I can be a part of. And I think that
Speaker 1: all these messages of the great adaptation of how you
Speaker 1: look around, you ground yourself in the context. You get
Speaker 1: a sensus to what is the lay of the land.
Speaker 1: You don't stay focused on your siloed views of what
Speaker 1: is normative. You think in plural terms. You become a
Speaker 1: bridge person. You see who you can say what too,
Speaker 1: and parts of you will live with different people and
Speaker 1: in different situations. I think that that's how I would
Speaker 1: describe the great adaptation. And with that, when you live
Speaker 1: with uncertainty, the fact is you can't do it alone.
Speaker 1: That by definition, uncertainty mandates mass mutual reliance and interdependence
Speaker 1: and collective resilience, which are ideas that I live in
Speaker 1: my personal life. Ideas that a part of my family life,
Speaker 1: they're part of my professional and intellectually interest because I
Speaker 1: think that this is not the first time. You should
Speaker 1: not pretend that this is the first time. The world
Speaker 1: is in an upheaval and we don't know where we're going.
Speaker 1: I think we were maybe a bit yubris to think
Speaker 1: that we did know where we're going. I probably would
Speaker 1: say that my great adaptation is often build in within
Speaker 1: uncertainty that this is a given. It's a given in relationships,
Speaker 1: it's a given in life. Security is often an illusion.
Speaker 1: Now that is a worldview. You aspire to it, but
Speaker 1: you know that it fundamentally exists, but can also disappear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've seen that so clearly this past year and a half.
Speaker 1: So delightful to chat with you. I'm so glad we
Speaker 1: finally got a chance to have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Which want to wish you well with all the many
Speaker 1: exciting things you're doing and your podcast, your book, and
Speaker 1: just want to thank you for your existence in this world.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at Thusycology
Speaker 1: podcast dot com or on our YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast.
Speaker 1: We also put up some videos of some episodes on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page as well, so you'll want to check
Speaker 1: that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of
Speaker 1: the show, and tune in next time for more on
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.