Speaker 1: Hey everyone, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. I'm especially
Speaker 1: excited for today's episode. For one, we are relaunching the
Speaker 1: podcast with Stitcher. They are one of the leading podcast
Speaker 1: networks and we're really looking forward to working with them
Speaker 1: to bring the podcast to the next level. Second, I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about our guest today is Staire Parrell. Astaire
Speaker 1: is a psychotherapist and a New York Times bestselling author
Speaker 1: recognizes one of today's most insightful and original voices on
Speaker 1: modern relationships. In this episode, I talked to Astaire about
Speaker 1: love and relationships, especially in the age of a global pandemic.
Speaker 1: Astaire also offers her perspective on how to keep passion
Speaker 1: alive during your marriage, as well as affairs getting to
Speaker 1: the root cause of why people cheat. We also tackle
Speaker 1: the essence of the words arrows and freedom, and we
Speaker 1: touch on the topics of soulmates, affairs, masculinity, and Estaire's
Speaker 1: practice as a cross cultural therapist. I've been looking forward
Speaker 1: to this conversation with this Stare for years, and I'm
Speaker 1: delighted to finally be able to bring it to you all. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, I bring you a Stare Perrell. Start
Speaker 1: It's so great to chalt you today. I've been looking
Speaker 1: forward to this for years. Actually, it's pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: You patient. You've been very patient. I have been, and
Speaker 1: you know, my mom told me patience often pays off.
Speaker 1: So I'm very excited to chat with you. Why is woman?
Speaker 1: I remember at the American Psychological Association conference, we were
Speaker 1: also captivated by your keynote. We were at the front row,
Speaker 1: and we we came up to you afterwards this couple
Speaker 1: of years. I don't know if you remember this, and
Speaker 1: we're so we you know, we didn't expect, you know,
Speaker 1: you'd actually show up, but we're like, oh, we just
Speaker 1: wanted to invite you to our our division ten social,
Speaker 1: you know, for our arts thing. And then you came in.
Speaker 1: I think with your you believe that you're you're you
Speaker 1: came in with your husband, and we're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: is there to our to our social You You made
Speaker 1: our lives. So I just want to thank you so
Speaker 1: much for your great viciousness over the years. I'm very
Speaker 1: happy when I make the right decisions at a certain
Speaker 1: point and someone reminds me and it was just like
Speaker 1: a small thing to do that other people remember so
Speaker 1: I like when I thought, well, yeah, I really really
Speaker 1: made our lives, so thank you. So I want to
Speaker 1: start off by asking, you know, really, how are you?
Speaker 1: You know, how are you during this pandemic? How's it
Speaker 1: affected you as a therapist, as a human? I think
Speaker 1: the best way I can answer you is to tell
Speaker 1: you that when I was looking for the topic of
Speaker 1: our annual Sessions Live Virtual Training conference, which is our
Speaker 1: fifth and I was thinking what is on the mind
Speaker 1: of therapists today, mine and everybody else. I'm a practitioner,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I am leaving the parallel experience that
Speaker 1: a lot of my clients are experiencing. And I really thought,
Speaker 1: here it is the great adaptability. How can we stay
Speaker 1: grounded when the ground is moving? And the way is
Speaker 1: how can therapists and clients stay grounded when the ground
Speaker 1: is moving? Because I was feeling well, okay, fine, but unmoored.
Speaker 1: I felt like the structure of my life has so
Speaker 1: fundamentally changed and it ain't going back. I felt that
Speaker 1: by not being able to go home for two years
Speaker 1: to Europe, you know, so many things have happened. I
Speaker 1: felt that parts of me that come alive in those
Speaker 1: other languages when I am in the other parts of
Speaker 1: my life have been completely dormant, and I thought, what
Speaker 1: is my adaptability? You know, how do It's no longer
Speaker 1: coping just coping and waiting and adjusting to the It's
Speaker 1: really what is adaptability going to look like for me
Speaker 1: and for my field and for all people working in
Speaker 1: the field of relationships and well being for that matter.
Speaker 1: So that's how I'm doing. I'm thinking about adaptability. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about mass mutual reliance. Who have I reached out to,
Speaker 1: who has been a part of my circle? And what
Speaker 1: has happened to so many that I have not been
Speaker 1: in touch with? And I'm thinking about the concept of
Speaker 1: post traumatic growth. At what point we do? What do
Speaker 1: we learn from here? And how will it actually strengthen
Speaker 1: me and strengthen my children, my partner, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's how I am doing. It's a I translate often
Speaker 1: what is happening to me, and then I look, am
Speaker 1: I alone? Or is this actually quite reflective what many
Speaker 1: many friends and colleagues are going through? And then I
Speaker 1: name it in my professional life, but in fact it's
Speaker 1: a reflection of my own internal life as well. Yeah, wonderful,
Speaker 1: you know. My author Jordan Feigel and I wrange a
Speaker 1: book on those traumatic growth right now, we're going to transcend.
Speaker 1: We're actually we're actually undercut, you know about transit. We're
Speaker 1: actually have a contract to write a workbook which will
Speaker 1: be out next year on the post pandemic growth. That's
Speaker 1: a follow up. And so this topic is right on
Speaker 1: fresh in my mind, and well it's on the stress
Speaker 1: on everyone's minds right now. And you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: wondering from a therapy perspective, you know, do you with
Speaker 1: relationships and working with couples, have you how's the nature
Speaker 1: of some of your ideas you talked about in the
Speaker 1: past kind of need to be adapted for pandemic eraror
Speaker 1: where couples are together so much that it's hard to
Speaker 1: get that mystery that you talk about in your in
Speaker 1: your books, you know, that excitement, that unpredictability. So what
Speaker 1: do we have right now? Right? I mean, I'm going
Speaker 1: to continue it in the framework of the conference because
Speaker 1: I literally had to articulate it for myself, that very
Speaker 1: question that you're asking me. Right, So, social connection at
Speaker 1: this moment, it's three parts. I'm thinking about intimate relationships
Speaker 1: because that is the essence of my work, the relationship
Speaker 1: between the client and the provider, the practitioner, the therapist
Speaker 1: of all sorts, and the relationship of the therapists in
Speaker 1: their own personal life with their partners, with their romantic partners,
Speaker 1: or with their friends, family, etc. So it is a
Speaker 1: triad going on. You know, there's eighteen months of prolonged uncertainty,
Speaker 1: mixed with grief, mixed with loss, mixed with a fundamental
Speaker 1: shift that we have to make away from silo driven
Speaker 1: lives approaches and therapy for that matter too, to a
Speaker 1: collective perspective, to a pluralistic perspective, and pandemics, like all disasters,
Speaker 1: are relationship accelerators. They basically put you in touch with mortality.
Speaker 1: They put you in touch with an existential fragidity, the
Speaker 1: fact that life can change at any moment. Your house
Speaker 1: can burn, your land can be flooded. Here you know,
Speaker 1: your health can be destroyed overnight. And when you are
Speaker 1: in touch with mortality, you say life is short. And
Speaker 1: when you say life is short, you say what is
Speaker 1: important to me? What do I want? And what do
Speaker 1: I no longer want to live with? To endure, to tolerate,
Speaker 1: to do in my life, etc. And so that's what
Speaker 1: happens to relationships at the same time as people have
Speaker 1: spent more time with their families and partners than they
Speaker 1: ever have in decades. And at the same time that
Speaker 1: I say that you cannot ask one person to give
Speaker 1: you what an entire village should provide, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: People go home with one person that was supposed to
Speaker 1: replace everybody. And there is a lot of upheaval going
Speaker 1: on in relationships at this point, for those who have
Speaker 1: been together the retrofit and for those who are just
Speaker 1: starting out and trying to understand. So it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting thing. At the same time as we have this
Speaker 1: enormous uncertainty and overlapping global crisis, we also have glimmers
Speaker 1: of clarity about what really matters for us in life
Speaker 1: at this point and what we need to do to
Speaker 1: protect our relationships, to invest and replenish our relationships, and
Speaker 1: to stay connected. It is what occupies me on a
Speaker 1: personal level at this moment. It's what occupies me with
Speaker 1: sessions live at this moment kind of in the thralls
Speaker 1: of this because I think that is so much going
Speaker 1: on relationally speaking, in light of what we are going
Speaker 1: through Yeah, for sure. And I really like this that
Speaker 1: you mentioned that our priorities have shifted in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. You know, in your book Meeting in Captivity,
Speaker 1: you ask the question can we desire what we already have?
Speaker 1: And it seems like this question takes a different little
Speaker 1: bit of a different flavor during the pandemic, because we
Speaker 1: might have a lot more gratitude for what we have
Speaker 1: in a way that we never had before. Maybe we
Speaker 1: realized we took for granted our relationships right in some ways.
Speaker 1: So the second part of that sentence in Mating in
Speaker 1: Captivity was to say, you never have your partner. It's
Speaker 1: an illusion to think that they belong to you. At best,
Speaker 1: they are on loan with an option to renew if
Speaker 1: you act towards your partner. You know. So in this moment,
Speaker 1: some people are more grateful and realize, you know, you're
Speaker 1: here today. I want to savor I want to savor us,
Speaker 1: my family, what we have created together, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: in some other situations it is there is a deadness
Speaker 1: that and languishing the name that the word that Adam
Speaker 1: grants so put back in the public space here that
Speaker 1: I can no longer tolerate that. There's what I call
Speaker 1: the death of ros, the death of the energy that
Speaker 1: fuels us with the liveness and vibrancy and vitality and
Speaker 1: life force that it has to do with playfulness and
Speaker 1: curiosity and imagination and meaning and the poetry that comes
Speaker 1: in our relationship. When that whole thing is gone and
Speaker 1: people start to feel like I'm just a function, what
Speaker 1: do we have together? I don't exist for you as
Speaker 1: a person. There's a lack of care, there's a lack
Speaker 1: of fundamental interest in who I am, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: So you have both things going on in this moment.
Speaker 1: It's not just I'm grateful for what I have, it's
Speaker 1: also I realize what I don't have and what I
Speaker 1: no longer can want to live without. Sure both are possible,
Speaker 1: even simultaneously. Yes, yeah, yeah, you've got a push pull
Speaker 1: and you know, like I love you, but I also
Speaker 1: missing out on all those other stuff. So you've mentioned
Speaker 1: that the erotic is the antidote to death. That's a
Speaker 1: really profound statement that I want to unpack a little bit,
Speaker 1: especially in the pandemic kind of situation. What is the
Speaker 1: erotic mean? First of all, you know, I get a sense.
Speaker 1: You know, you're using it in a sense that's broader
Speaker 1: than just penetrative sex. You know, there's a there's a's
Speaker 1: a whole spirit, it's a whole way of being, in
Speaker 1: a kind of humanistic psychology or from sort of era
Speaker 1: kind of way. So I'd love to hear some of
Speaker 1: your thoughts that so. I you know, when I think
Speaker 1: of my definition or not my definition, when I think
Speaker 1: about the way I define the erotic, I think about
Speaker 1: the Zohar, the Jewish Kabbalah, I think about the mystic
Speaker 1: sense of the word. I think about Audrey Lord and
Speaker 1: her writings about what it means to reclaim, a process
Speaker 1: of reclamation of one's ability to experience pleasure and dignity
Speaker 1: and connection and control. I am really not talking about
Speaker 1: it in the most narrow sexual sense that modernity has
Speaker 1: given the word. It's a word that really needs to
Speaker 1: be resuscitated in its full meaning. Heros 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 still
Speaker 1: so much to live, to breed, to connect with people,
Speaker 1: et cetera. The notion that the eros is an antidote
Speaker 1: to death or deadness is that you feel in touch
Speaker 1: with the erotic when you experience whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you do with what is called flourishing or flow or
Speaker 1: aliveness or radiance. All these words you know, and they
Speaker 1: have to and they come with power and dignity and
Speaker 1: self love and connection to others. They are quite all encompassing.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I talk about when I talk
Speaker 1: about how do we connect to the erotic? How do
Speaker 1: you take a routine and turn it into a ritual.
Speaker 1: How do you take a touch that is just a
Speaker 1: touch and you turn it into a touch that comes
Speaker 1: with pleasure and joy, that is a switch from ordinary
Speaker 1: to erotic. Yeah, I love this. I love the way
Speaker 1: you say situated within the idea of vitality, but also imagination,
Speaker 1: the human imagination. This is an area of mutual interest
Speaker 1: of ourns and I really loves the humanistic psychotherapist role
Speaker 1: mains work. In his book Love and Love and Will
Speaker 1: You Know, he talks about errors in Love and will
Speaker 1: is the human imaginations, such as a part as part
Speaker 1: and parcel of it. You know that we can kind
Speaker 1: of you know, sex, he said, pulls us but imagine,
Speaker 1: but erros allows us to think more forward looking. We're
Speaker 1: the ones that are kind of moving looking forward and
Speaker 1: with hope and vitality, whereas sex and lust is we
Speaker 1: often feel like we're being driven by it, you know.
Speaker 1: So I just always really resonate with that kind of distinction.
Speaker 1: Have your past. The Mexican essayst also says, you know,
Speaker 1: sex is the pivot, It's the natural instinct. But Eroticism
Speaker 1: is sexuality that is socialized and transformed by the human imagination.
Speaker 1: Now you ask about this in relation to the pandemic,
Speaker 1: I would say this freedom in confinement comes through our imagination.
Speaker 1: When you see little children play during this pandemic, and
Speaker 1: at some point they take out big boxes of Amazon
Speaker 1: and these boxes become hots, and then they take books,
Speaker 1: and these books becomes rocks in the river. And now
Speaker 1: they're going and their playing, their imagination has taken them
Speaker 1: out of the lockdown. When you can't leave physically, you
Speaker 1: can leave with your mind. This is what I learned
Speaker 1: from my own parents, who spend years in concentration camps
Speaker 1: during the Holocaust, and I understood that idea that you
Speaker 1: lift yourself out, you liberate yourself through your imagination. You know,
Speaker 1: poetry is to prose the way that eroticism is to sex.
Speaker 1: I love that well. I find a lot of your
Speaker 1: writings is very poetic, even just in the kind of
Speaker 1: cadence and upon which you write. It's it's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can we can we double click on the word freedom.
Speaker 1: This is a very interesting word because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of things that people in relationships think will bring
Speaker 1: them freedom once they try these things, they actually they
Speaker 1: wonder why am I not free? Why do I not
Speaker 1: Why do I not feel free? You know? So some
Speaker 1: people with like avoidant attachment style, for instance, may fear
Speaker 1: a relationship or fear anything that makes them feel like
Speaker 1: they're boxed in in any sort of way, because they'll
Speaker 1: say it'll, you know, takes away my freedom. But you know,
Speaker 1: often a lot of people the avoidant attachment style feel
Speaker 1: report feeling lonely, and and some not always and I
Speaker 1: was in the case, but sometimes they report feeling lowly
Speaker 1: and report feeling well, you know that I still don't
Speaker 1: feel free, you know, I still don't feel completely free.
Speaker 1: So what are some misconceptions about this idea of freedom
Speaker 1: and relationship? Like, you know a lot of people have
Speaker 1: these kind of misconceptions that you know, you're you're only
Speaker 1: free if you know you can sleep around with as
Speaker 1: many people as possible, or you're only free of xyz.
Speaker 1: What are some kind of misconceptions about that. It's a
Speaker 1: complex question, you know. I think that the best way
Speaker 1: I can answer this is to go back to the
Speaker 1: spine of the book Mating in Captivity, because when it
Speaker 1: really looked at and I borrowed it from loads of people,
Speaker 1: but in particular I was very much influenced by the
Speaker 1: writings of Steven Mitchell. Can love Lass, but so as
Speaker 1: rolland Bacht, so you know a few others. But we
Speaker 1: have two fundamental sets of human needs all of us.
Speaker 1: We have a need for grounding, and we have a
Speaker 1: need for travel or we have a need for security, safety, predictability,
Speaker 1: and we have a need for exploration, novelty, change, curiosity, freedom.
Speaker 1: All of us have both. But some of us come
Speaker 1: out of our childhood wanting more protection and more commitment,
Speaker 1: and some of us come out of our childhood wanting
Speaker 1: more space and more freedom. We tend to partner with
Speaker 1: somebody whose proclivities match our vulnerabilities, so that the solid
Speaker 1: will often meet the liquid, the structured, the ground that
Speaker 1: the anchored, you know, will be drawn by the curious,
Speaker 1: the traveler, the ulysses and you know, and then the
Speaker 1: ulysses will find that there is something very reassuring being
Speaker 1: with someone who is structured, who is reliable, responsible, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And when this works in a complementarity, it's a beautiful fit.
Speaker 1: Often it becomes challenging as well in many relationships, so
Speaker 1: freedom is, you know, the dance between autonomy and togetherness,
Speaker 1: between separateness and connection. You need both. You needed to
Speaker 1: feel a modicum of groundedness and something to come back
Speaker 1: to the safe harbor in order to be able to
Speaker 1: leave and to feel free. But the freedom is not
Speaker 1: the leaving. The freedom and this is the important freedom
Speaker 1: in the realm of sexuality and desire that I was
Speaker 1: trying to articulate. The freedom is that while I'm away,
Speaker 1: I'm not busy worrying about you, being anxious for you,
Speaker 1: constantly fretting about how you're going to be when I
Speaker 1: come back. It's not hard to leave physically while you
Speaker 1: take inside of you an entire worry machine. You know.
Speaker 1: The freedom is to know that you are okay while
Speaker 1: I am doing my thing. That's a freedom in relationship
Speaker 1: that I don't have to give up chunks of me
Speaker 1: in order to reassure you, because my freedom is your insecurity.
Speaker 1: What happens a lot these days in our field is
Speaker 1: the focus went from the humanistic work after the war
Speaker 1: that was very much focused on looking at freedom. Freedom
Speaker 1: in the existential sense of the word that came with responsibility.
Speaker 1: That you know, freedom was never a carelessness. And then
Speaker 1: we went and we put an entire focus on the attachment,
Speaker 1: and the notion was that a secure attachment will create
Speaker 1: the ability to experience separateness. But separateness is what will
Speaker 1: create the ability to experience an ability to surrender to
Speaker 1: one's desire. The interesting thing is that you cannot. It's
Speaker 1: a real contradiction. How at the same time freedom implies responsibility,
Speaker 1: and at the same time, a certain kind of freedom
Speaker 1: implies a read them and a release of the responsibility.
Speaker 1: It's both. And yeah, that's it's really true. And just
Speaker 1: you know, bringing this idea of this idea that this
Speaker 1: romantic notion that love should not should not require work,
Speaker 1: that if it's if it's meant to be, it shouldn't
Speaker 1: require work. Well, I think role Made did a good
Speaker 1: job just spelling that. And and love and will that
Speaker 1: the human will does is an important part of it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I read somewhere that you said you've
Speaker 1: been married for thirty years and or at this point
Speaker 1: it's more than thirty years, and and and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's still has taken a lot of work, right, I Mean,
Speaker 1: there's been moments where you know you have to you know,
Speaker 1: you show, you have to reveal that. You know, there's
Speaker 1: the imperfections of each other. I mean there's you know,
Speaker 1: and and I think what I really liked about when
Speaker 1: Rol we talked about is he said, well, that's you know,
Speaker 1: you need in order for errs to happen, you need
Speaker 1: to give it time for those those things to be resolved,
Speaker 1: for there to be an unveiling, a real revealing of
Speaker 1: each other's real self or else, you know, errors doesn't develop.
Speaker 1: And I just want to know Clorf on that idea
Speaker 1: a little bit. If you want to play piano, you
Speaker 1: will continue to practice playing piano. You can call it
Speaker 1: practicing rather than working at it. You know, the English
Speaker 1: American English is often talking about the word work because
Speaker 1: it's very Protestant influenced in that sense. It's work. You
Speaker 1: could call it creative work. You could call it active engagement.
Speaker 1: You can call it investment. You can call it pruning, caring, watering.
Speaker 1: You know, basically, it's paying attention, it's nurturing it, it's
Speaker 1: feeding it. It's not letting it just die there and agonize,
Speaker 1: you know, in a complete dry land or in a pool,
Speaker 1: you know, in a cesspool, one or the other. So
Speaker 1: it's there is not another area in life where people
Speaker 1: don't think that. In order to stay nimble at some
Speaker 1: it the man's paying attention, bringing new things, refresh, renew, reset,
Speaker 1: you know, except in love, because this notion of which
Speaker 1: it just should happen, it's part. You know. There are
Speaker 1: two main approaches that Justin lie Miller was talking to
Speaker 1: me about. One is the destiny model of relationship. It's
Speaker 1: meant to be. It's kind of falling from the heavens,
Speaker 1: you know, divine intervention. It just is, I don't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with it. It's so. But then when
Speaker 1: it doesn't go well, then you say, just the opposite,
Speaker 1: It wasn't meant to be. It's fate. It's destiny. That's
Speaker 1: very different from the growth model. The growth model is
Speaker 1: I make it happen. We make it happen, and sometimes
Speaker 1: we fuck up, and sometimes we just let it become
Speaker 1: lazy and complacent and we forget about each other. And
Speaker 1: every relationship is going to go through dips at some
Speaker 1: point the only difference is that some of us kind
Speaker 1: of get in gear and start to resuscitate, to infuse
Speaker 1: it back with life, with joy, with laughter, with attention,
Speaker 1: you know, with good food, good relational food. So it's
Speaker 1: very very interesting, and it goes together this idea about
Speaker 1: it doesn't it shouldn't be work, it should just be
Speaker 1: and errors should just flow from the heavens, you know,
Speaker 1: while you know, like like while you're folding the laundry
Speaker 1: for that matter, right, goes hand in hand with the
Speaker 1: search today of what we call the soul meat. Your
Speaker 1: partner in many circles today is seen as a soul meat,
Speaker 1: a saltmate that you find, of course on an app
Speaker 1: And what's so fascinating about that? The young analyst Robert
Speaker 1: Johnson talks about it very beautifully, says, there is a
Speaker 1: kind of a confluence between the religious and the relational. Today.
Speaker 1: We look in relationships for ecstasy, transcendence, wholeness, meaning that
Speaker 1: we 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 to relationships what we
Speaker 1: usually used to look for in religious life. And once
Speaker 1: you have that relationship with a soul mad, you think
Speaker 1: that it should that sort maid knows you inside out.
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 are people still cheat?
Speaker 1: Why do people in relationships that are deeply nurturing and
Speaker 1: satisfying continue to long for other things? If you change
Speaker 1: the word for a moment, you see, you know it
Speaker 1: is what they do to the relationship and to their partner.
Speaker 1: If you talk about what they do for themselves, they
Speaker 1: will talk about at the heart of infidelity, you will
Speaker 1: find lying, duplicity, betrayal, cheating. But you will also find
Speaker 1: in those relationships that you just mentioned, specifically in what
Speaker 1: we call the happy marriages, longing and loss and yearning.
Speaker 1: And I think that the best sentence I could come
Speaker 1: up with when I talked with so many people who
Speaker 1: said I love my partner. This is ten years of
Speaker 1: research with people who kept saying I love my partner,
Speaker 1: that I am very happy here, I don't want to
Speaker 1: go anywhere else. But and now came the second part
Speaker 1: is that they didn't want to leave the person that
Speaker 1: they were with, but what they really yearned for was
Speaker 1: to leave the person that they had themselves become wow,
Speaker 1: and that it wasn't that they were looking for another
Speaker 1: person as much as they were looking for another self
Speaker 1: or or other parts of themselves that they had completely
Speaker 1: left aside for decades. The majority of these people have
Speaker 1: been faithful for twenty years easily. So these are not cheaters.
Speaker 1: These are people who cross the line that sometimes they
Speaker 1: themselves never thought they would cross. And so then you
Speaker 1: ask for a glimmer of what, why would you risk
Speaker 1: losing everything that is so dear to you for what?
Speaker 1: And what? And that is back to your question about
Speaker 1: heros Is that the most common answer I get people
Speaker 1: write to me from all over the world, And this
Speaker 1: is not to promote or to justify or to minimize
Speaker 1: the effects of infidelity on a relationship. I want to
Speaker 1: be really clear, but I had to understand why people
Speaker 1: did this. It's not just to understand what it does
Speaker 1: to the people who are hurt by it. I felt alive,
Speaker 1: I felt alive, I felt un aliveness I hadn't felt
Speaker 1: in years. I didn't know this still could happen to me,
Speaker 1: and it had had not much to do with sex.
Speaker 1: They may have been sex involved, but sometimes there was
Speaker 1: no sex involved at all, there was a sense of
Speaker 1: a liveness of touching the essence of things. It was
Speaker 1: a real existential quest. Actually, it had very little to
Speaker 1: do with the partner and very little to do with
Speaker 1: the relationship. This is one particular type of affairs that
Speaker 1: is very different from the multitude of others. But if
Speaker 1: you ask me about affairs in happy relationships, this is
Speaker 1: probably one of the one of the more accurate descriptions
Speaker 1: I have gleaned from my conversations. Kind of keeps our roads,
Speaker 1: keep going back to errors there and the vitality in
Speaker 1: what ways do you think an affair can be good
Speaker 1: for a marriage? Maybe by helping people reclaim their sense
Speaker 1: of errors. I mean, it's not the affair itself. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's the affair itself. A person suddenly is woken up
Speaker 1: again and just you know, come and brings that energy
Speaker 1: into the relationship. But that doesn't happen always or often
Speaker 1: for that matter. It's the aftermath, you know. It's an
Speaker 1: affair is not good for a relationship, But good can
Speaker 1: come out of an affair. Let's put it this way, okay,
Speaker 1: And what it does is it topples the scorecard in
Speaker 1: the relationship because basically, an affair is a resounding no,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go on like this, this for
Speaker 1: the rest of my life, this for another twenty five years,
Speaker 1: no more. And sometimes it relieves the other person to
Speaker 1: say I want more too. You think I'm just happy
Speaker 1: like this with the life we live. I think I
Speaker 1: didn't want to re experience ABCD, you know. So it
Speaker 1: topples the scorecard and it allows people to do a
Speaker 1: massive reset. It allows people very very often that I
Speaker 1: can say is often to have conversations with the level
Speaker 1: of truth and honesty that they haven't had in years
Speaker 1: because the whole thing that they were trying to protect
Speaker 1: has fallen apart anyway, so now they can finally dig
Speaker 1: It allows people to reconnect with their sense of desire
Speaker 1: and they're real wanting to connect with the other person
Speaker 1: rather than complacency. It jolts them out of their complacency
Speaker 1: and they realize what they can lose and that they're
Speaker 1: going to have to really become much more active participants
Speaker 1: if they want this thing to remain alive. So all
Speaker 1: of that, it allows people to change fundamental roles and
Speaker 1: inequities in the relationship that we're no longer tolerable. It
Speaker 1: allows a reset of the power dynamic, because it's not
Speaker 1: just that the person who hasn't cheated is the good
Speaker 1: partner just because they haven't cheated. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: other relational betrayals in relationships. I think we have to
Speaker 1: really not just look at this as you know, this
Speaker 1: 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 non
Speaker 1: cheater you know does can't really claim moral superiority because
Speaker 1: of that if we are really honest, when you are
Speaker 1: in the muck of things and you talk with thousands
Speaker 1: of couples who are grappling with this infidelity, so what
Speaker 1: other goods can come out of it? You know, I've
Speaker 1: been trying to tell you something for a long time,
Speaker 1: and this is the first time you're actually listening. Because
Speaker 1: it's often easy for us to say to the person,
Speaker 1: why didn't you talk about them this? Why didn't you
Speaker 1: bring it up? You think people haven't brought things up
Speaker 1: for decades, But the other person wasn't interested in changing.
Speaker 1: I thought you were scolding me. Tell me, I'm channeling
Speaker 1: every conversation that I've heard. You know, it's like and
Speaker 1: I hear it's like you know, no, I did try
Speaker 1: to tell you and this. It took this for you
Speaker 1: to actually listen. You know, you haven't touched me in
Speaker 1: fifteen years. I'm not talking having sex. You haven't touched me.
Speaker 1: Put your hands in my hair, stroked me, caressed me,
Speaker 1: held my hand, gently kissed me, looked at me in
Speaker 1: the eyes. You know. Now, you may be a very
Speaker 1: nice person, and you may be a responsible provider, and
Speaker 1: you may, but I am dying inside and I just
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that I would live for another twenty years
Speaker 1: and never be touched again. You don't see me. I
Speaker 1: walk around you in every attire possible. You don't see me.
Speaker 1: And there is no orientation and no gender who can
Speaker 1: claim priority on this one. These are collective statements. So
Speaker 1: it's that kind of yearning. And those people don't necessarily
Speaker 1: want a divorce. It's you know, it's easy to just
Speaker 1: say why don't you leave them? They don't want to
Speaker 1: leave because there are other parts in the relationship as well.
Speaker 1: But someday this part comes out and says, I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't continue like this. So when these conversations come
Speaker 1: out and the other person can hear it, and when
Speaker 1: the person who has hurt can really show the remorse
Speaker 1: and take the responsibility and and reinvest in the relationship,
Speaker 1: there are the ones who have been able to really
Speaker 1: make good of it will tell you that their relationship
Speaker 1: is better than it was. They wish they didn't have
Speaker 1: to go through this, but they definitely feel like this
Speaker 1: took them to a place that they would otherwise not
Speaker 1: have gone. Post traumatic growth. You know, we need to
Speaker 1: coin something post in fidelity growth there we just coin something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's it's wonderful to hear you know, your own,
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 never saw it coming, and
Speaker 1: nobody and people wonder all the time, you know, am
Speaker 1: I alone? Is this happening to other people too? And
Speaker 1: talk about in fidelity? Nobody will talk about it and
Speaker 1: talk about sex and nobody will talk about it. So
Speaker 1: you never know what happens behind closed doors. And I
Speaker 1: just knew I couldn't work with patients. I could bring
Speaker 1: patients to conferences, but I couldn't. So when Audible approached me,
Speaker 1: they originally wanted me to do a kind of a
Speaker 1: he said, She said, similar to the Showtime series The
Speaker 1: Affair that I had been a consultant for. And I said,
Speaker 1: but that's not how couple's therapy works, at least not
Speaker 1: in my office. It's not a hehi or a he he.
Speaker 1: It's not that binary like that. It's much more feedback loop.
Speaker 1: It's what one person says that that brings the other
Speaker 1: person to do something that then makes them reacting. You
Speaker 1: know that Figure eight like that, and I said, I
Speaker 1: really would like you to watch, to watch, to listen,
Speaker 1: actually to a session, and you tell me, But I
Speaker 1: think that these are some of the most powerful stories
Speaker 1: one can tell. Relationships as stories. Part of my work
Speaker 1: is to help people write a new story together and
Speaker 1: then to edit often what they are writing. And we
Speaker 1: did one episode and we are now and it became
Speaker 1: where should we begin live Coppos therapy one time three
Speaker 1: hour sessions with anonymous couples that will never be my patients.
Speaker 1: And we are now in production of season five and
Speaker 1: a number of these episodes do touch on the subject
Speaker 1: of infidelity, but not only it really covers a wide range.
Speaker 1: This week I'm doing my first episode on friends who
Speaker 1: were estranged, so I'm interested in other pairs. And then
Speaker 1: I decided that I would do how It Work, which
Speaker 1: was the same model, but instead of just looking at
Speaker 1: romantic pairs, I would take colleagues, co workers, family members
Speaker 1: who work together, same model, intensive three hour, one time session.
Speaker 1: And it became, you know, it was the first of
Speaker 1: its kind and went all of it became a public
Speaker 1: health campaign for relationships. It became a democratization of couple's
Speaker 1: therapy for people who can't afford, don't have access, and
Speaker 1: are in all kinds of parts of the world where
Speaker 1: none of this happens. And it became an educational technology
Speaker 1: on relationships of one model. You know, it's just this
Speaker 1: one therapist here doing her best. Yeah, well sounds Spotify,
Speaker 1: it's anywhere where people listen to podcasts, and it really
Speaker 1: distigmatized therapy and especially couple's therapy as well. It really
Speaker 1: it created a conversation in the society at large, and
Speaker 1: then came, you know, with the pandemic and teletherapy. All
Speaker 1: of this now is then can the couple's therapy showtime series?
Speaker 1: Now is scenes of a marriage? I mean you can
Speaker 1: see that people are deeply interested in this unit called
Speaker 1: the couple that is meant to accomplished so much and
Speaker 1: is often under resourced. And in the United States of
Speaker 1: America it also is meant to be a welfare state
Speaker 1: of too. Well, this is interesting. Let let's let's doublequick
Speaker 1: on this idea of monogamy for a second. You know,
Speaker 1: some people say it's just it's not natural. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, from an evolutionary point of view, and and
Speaker 1: a lot of people are experimenting with alternative things, open marriages, polyamory.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I'm personally I'm I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in whatever works, you know, for a couple, if it
Speaker 1: works for both of them, or 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 alternate marriage have you seen
Speaker 1: them really work in great beautiful ways? Have where some
Speaker 1: challenges you've seen and people who are in these kinds
Speaker 1: of lifestyles that come to your practice these sorts of things.
Speaker 1: So maybe a place to start is to say that
Speaker 1: I don't think as in monogamous, and then non monogamous
Speaker 1: or polyamorous. Polyamorous is a whole range of different relational
Speaker 1: arrangements too, and monogamous are often proclaimed monogamy and clandestine adultery.
Speaker 1: So I think that we have to really unpack a
Speaker 1: little bit. Marriage has changed throughout history. Marriage has always
Speaker 1: been an economic enterprise. It was primarily monogamy was an
Speaker 1: imposition on women so that the men would know who
Speaker 1: are the children that they need to feed and who
Speaker 1: will get the cows when they die, or the goats
Speaker 1: or the camels. You know, all over the world. Monogamy
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with love. Monogamy was an economic
Speaker 1: arrangement and we didn't since we didn't often know paternity,
Speaker 1: it was a way to ensure no knowledge of paternity.
Speaker 1: Monogamy has always been one person for life, and today
Speaker 1: monogamy is one person at a time. So the word
Speaker 1: monogamous has fundamentally changed meaning too. I think that when
Speaker 1: we bring a more socio cultural understanding to these words,
Speaker 1: it changes the way we practice. So, you know, so
Speaker 1: we ask people what is your arrangement? How do you
Speaker 1: define loyalty and how do you define fidelity? Because you
Speaker 1: can be loyal and not faithful, You can be loyal,
Speaker 1: faithful and non exclusive. So what have been your definitions
Speaker 1: around these words. In the past, they were defined by
Speaker 1: the constructs of primarily religious institutions. Now people need to
Speaker 1: define these by themselves, so it demands a conversation. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: in many couples, particularly in heterosexual couples, monogamy is discussed
Speaker 1: only as there has been a big crisis monogamy has
Speaker 1: defined as sexual exclusivity because monogamy can be defined in
Speaker 1: various other ways too. So when you say alternative. It's
Speaker 1: alternative to what This invites a lot of assumptions about
Speaker 1: very defined concepts. We are today exploring multiple new models
Speaker 1: of relationships. We have not eight to ten children, we
Speaker 1: have one to three to none. That is a very
Speaker 1: new relationship. You know, when you are farmers with eight
Speaker 1: kids for which you needed to have ten because students survive,
Speaker 1: that made for a very different marriage. When we have contraception,
Speaker 1: that makes for a very different marriage. When we make
Speaker 1: for women who work outside the house and are also
Speaker 1: material providers, that changes the gender roles. When we have
Speaker 1: queer marriages who can also have children. So I look
Speaker 1: at the whole question of boundaries and sexual boundaries and
Speaker 1: emotional commitment inside marriages as part of this greater exploration
Speaker 1: in which people want commitment and they want freedom. This
Speaker 1: is the fundamental thing that has happened today is that
Speaker 1: we want both. We want the stability of committed relationships,
Speaker 1: the continuity, the sense of belonging, the rootedness, the loyalty,
Speaker 1: the reliability. And we also have redefined sexuality that is
Speaker 1: no longer for many people just a pro creative model
Speaker 1: of sexuality, but it is sexuality as a property of
Speaker 1: the self as an expression of lifestyle and forms of connection,
Speaker 1: and from that place one wants to negotiate that sexuality
Speaker 1: is not just going to take place with one person,
Speaker 1: or even that love is going to be more communal,
Speaker 1: and we are going to create new forms of extended
Speaker 1: family and communal living that call polyamorous. When we look
Speaker 1: at it from that angle, we are much less judgmental,
Speaker 1: We are much more curious, and probably we are more
Speaker 1: helpful with many of our patients because it invites them
Speaker 1: to tell us the truth so that we can actually
Speaker 1: work with them. So when you ask me, can they work? Yes?
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is one doesn't ask does monogamy
Speaker 1: work or do traditional marriages work? You know? Do they
Speaker 1: work so well? You know? And what do we mean
Speaker 1: by work they lasted for thirty years? And does lasting
Speaker 1: just mean the only marker of success longevity or are
Speaker 1: we looking at the quality of the relationship. So what
Speaker 1: makes relationships work is the same everywhere. Respect, dignity, the
Speaker 1: ability to listen to the other person, to value the
Speaker 1: other person, to feel valued in a relationship, to experience
Speaker 1: growth and hopefulness together, to be able to deal with
Speaker 1: the crisis and the losses of life together, and it
Speaker 1: has no difference if you are doing this within a
Speaker 1: context of monogamy or sexual excs u civity, or if
Speaker 1: you're doing it within the context of a long distance relationship,
Speaker 1: a single parent family, an accordion family, a blended family,
Speaker 1: a queer family, or a polyamorous family. Excellent point. Excellent point.
Speaker 1: I have some friends in the polyamory community and they
Speaker 1: really wanted to please ask this question. Please ask this
Speaker 1: question because I'm not an advocate. I mean, it's gonna
Speaker 1: It's like when you say this, it means that you're
Speaker 1: pro or against or not. I'm just saying, you know,
Speaker 1: in the there is no one size fits all. And
Speaker 1: if we are going to be therapists of the moment,
Speaker 1: and we're and therapy is meeting the moment, this great
Speaker 1: adaptability that we are talking about. You have this conference
Speaker 1: that I'm planning that is now in November. It is
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 you know, with in
Speaker 1: that context, let's talk about you know what makes for
Speaker 1: a good relationship, What makes it work? What made it
Speaker 1: work in this moment? What do we need at you know?
Speaker 1: What will change? You know, I think that therapists sometimes
Speaker 1: would would it would be very good to be in
Speaker 1: conversation more with sociologists and anthropologists and theologians. M you know,
Speaker 1: you need to bring back the world into the conversation
Speaker 1: and not just you know, I'm going to stop here.
Speaker 1: I love what you're saying. You know, you have described
Speaker 1: yourself once as your therapy approach is akin to that
Speaker 1: of an anthropologists and explore, So it sort of is
Speaker 1: how you see yourself. Can you kind of unpack why
Speaker 1: why both an anthropologists anthropologisan explore. I'm a systemically trend therapist,
Speaker 1: and I may have been I was strained psychodynamically as well,
Speaker 1: But I arrived in America in the heydays of systemic
Speaker 1: family therapy and kind of found myself there. If I
Speaker 1: had come years later, I may have been, you know,
Speaker 1: inducted into IFS or into EFT or any of the
Speaker 1: other schools that proliferated later. But what I do know
Speaker 1: is I'm a cross cultural therapist. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: just that I speak nine languages. I do different therapy
Speaker 1: in the different languages as well, I talk differently about
Speaker 1: the same topics. There are different values that people bring
Speaker 1: as 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, et cetera.
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 beheavors. 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 perspective.
Speaker 1: It's bringing back this is what you know. My whole
Speaker 1: training on sessions is about it's a salon. I bring
Speaker 1: sociologists clinicians, trauma experts, so that we have a conversation
Speaker 1: that is broad enough that it can help us meet
Speaker 1: the moment, rather than coming from one particular approach. What
Speaker 1: I probably say when I do the anthropological view is
Speaker 1: to challenge the individualistic, silo driven therapeutic approaches. I think
Speaker 1: that that's where where today. Maybe it's very very important,
Speaker 1: but we need the other view too. This is not
Speaker 1: that or that is that we need a therapy that encompasses,
Speaker 1: you know, the issues and if you work with refugees,
Speaker 1: and if you work with trauma victims, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you work with the large things that are entering
Speaker 1: our office at this moment, you need to have a
Speaker 1: cultural framework and an anthropological framework absolutely. I mean I
Speaker 1: was really interested to see that you started off in immigration,
Speaker 1: studying immigration, very interested in identity, issues of identity. I
Speaker 1: was worrying how you brought some of that earlier expertise
Speaker 1: to the work you do today. I mean, you talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about that already, and glad you're so.
Speaker 1: I started out looking at cultural transition. What I was
Speaker 1: fascinated was how do people experience cultural transition? And I
Speaker 1: looked at the two groups that move the most these days,
Speaker 1: refugees and internationals, forced migration and voluntary migration. And then
Speaker 1: I looked at mixed couples, interracial, intercultural, inter religious couples,
Speaker 1: and families of all orientations, you know, who also are
Speaker 1: in 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
Speaker 1: interdependent dance, between self reliance and loyalty, between an an
Speaker 1: individual oralistic orientation and a more collective orientation and more
Speaker 1: interdependent which is what we really are looking at right now.
Speaker 1: We have a whole day at a conference that's about
Speaker 1: mass mutual reliance. How do you make that shift? And
Speaker 1: that shift has to take place in therapy as well.
Speaker 1: When people talk about resilience, they have to be able
Speaker 1: to talk about what is collective resilience, what is collective
Speaker 1: trauma that mandates collective resilience that goes along with mass
Speaker 1: mutual reliance. That's a real different paradigm shift than the
Speaker 1: way that we have developed, you know, and these two
Speaker 1: conversations are happening side by side in our field at
Speaker 1: this moment. So I have been a translator. I have
Speaker 1: often thought that when I would write about a subject,
Speaker 1: I should start to go and see how do other
Speaker 1: disciplines write about it. When I do supervision groups, I
Speaker 1: have people from every discipline are multidisciplinary groups, so that
Speaker 1: we continuously have one case five approaches. And that has
Speaker 1: to do with the cultural transition. It's really to know
Speaker 1: that there is never just one way. Once you've traveled
Speaker 1: one time to another place, you know that there is
Speaker 1: another way to do things everything. There's another way to
Speaker 1: deal with the baby, is the food, the job. That
Speaker 1: multiplicity of perspectives is something that really came from looking
Speaker 1: 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 can to
Speaker 1: the United States. I was doing what at the time
Speaker 1: was called you know, inter racial groups into cultural groups,
Speaker 1: race relations, you know, political groups that came together, conflict resolution,
Speaker 1: all of that. And then when I was. 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 it made total sense for me. So
Speaker 1: I was training in family therapy. Couples therapy at that
Speaker 1: time was not really central. It was a little bit
Speaker 1: of stepchild of family therapy. And I began to be
Speaker 1: interested in couples because I began to see that couples
Speaker 1: was becoming the most important unit of the family. In
Speaker 1: the traditional world, the family is more important than the couple,
Speaker 1: which is, by the way, part of why infidelity does
Speaker 1: not necessarily become a leading cause of divorce, because preserving
Speaker 1: the family is more important than your individual response to
Speaker 1: a couple's crisis. As the couple became more important, and
Speaker 1: as you can literally say that the survival of the
Speaker 1: family today in the West depends on the relative happiness
Speaker 1: of the couple, nothing else, not even the kids. Kids
Speaker 1: may delay, but that's it. Couple's therapy became like this
Speaker 1: is the central unit to work with, and it is
Speaker 1: very difficult and challenging and fascinating and endlessly renewing. I
Speaker 1: mean you, it keeps you very humble, It does absolutely.
Speaker 1: Have you done any readings of Urban Yam's books and
Speaker 1: his stories, Yes, yes, yes, it's very close to my heart.
Speaker 1: He was on this podcast recently as well, and I
Speaker 1: see some commonalities and your informative books for me. Yeah, 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
Speaker 1: the deep humanity and all of us. It's beautiful. There's
Speaker 1: another topic I wanted to talk about as we near
Speaker 1: the end of our conversation. You've talked 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 dispel 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 exists. 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've spent retreats
Speaker 1: of three days where I am like an anthropologist, I'm
Speaker 1: a guest, I'm a witness to men's groups. So it's
Speaker 1: much more than just you know, I do have a
Speaker 1: very heavily male practice, and have had for more than
Speaker 1: twenty years. I'm practicing twenty five. But it's the groups
Speaker 1: where I really have been very, very interested in. And
Speaker 1: I did a whole conference with sessions live on masculinity
Speaker 1: a few years back because I, well, because me too,
Speaker 1: brought all of that, of course in the open and
Speaker 1: mandated us to once again really discuss this. But also
Speaker 1: because I think that the lives of women will not
Speaker 1: change until the men come along and are given some
Speaker 1: of the same opportunities to rethink their condition, their expectations,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And because I often think that we put
Speaker 1: a lot of focus on male power, and that in fact,
Speaker 1: I think we have more to learn when we look
Speaker 1: at what happens with men's fear of powerlessness. We never
Speaker 1: have to hear women be losers. Losers doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: the feminine, neither does emasculated exist in the feminine. We
Speaker 1: never have to tell a woman be a woman, show
Speaker 1: me that you're a woman. We tell men all the
Speaker 1: time to man up. I think that you know what
Speaker 1: strikes me at this time when everybody is talking about
Speaker 1: masculinity from pop culture to politics, and question what masculinity
Speaker 1: means and how it affects us, and what are the
Speaker 1: roots of masculinity and how does it shape individuals and
Speaker 1: cultures and how has it changed across generations. For me,
Speaker 1: there's five dimensions around 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 the thing that I own
Speaker 1: in I would say this, probably historically people have never
Speaker 1: really questioned masculinity men was a given, you know. Women
Speaker 1: were seen as basically men with genitals on the inside
Speaker 1: until very late, you know. But what we do know
Speaker 1: is that masculine is often a goal and a duty
Speaker 1: and an objective in most societies for boys and adolescents.
Speaker 1: We 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 mandliness, then maybe it isn't as a natural
Speaker 1: as we that would like to think. You know, even
Speaker 1: in the absence of femininity, one doesn't doubt the identity
Speaker 1: of women. But that's not the case for men. Being
Speaker 1: a man requires an effort that doesn't necessarily translates to
Speaker 1: the life of women. Women rarely here be a woman,
Speaker 1: you know. The female is seen as kind of natural
Speaker 1: and unavoidable, and masculinity is seen as something that is
Speaker 1: hard to develop and easy to lose. And so that's
Speaker 1: why I'm interested in the feeling of powerlessness, in the
Speaker 1: loss of identity, in the fragility of masculinity rather than
Speaker 1: just focusing in the obvious privilege and power of masculinity.
Speaker 1: That's such a good point, that's such 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 absorb, 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 sensu as 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 are part of my family life,
Speaker 1: They're part of my professional and intellectual interests, and they
Speaker 1: are very much at the core of this conference that
Speaker 1: I'm doing in November, because I think that this is
Speaker 1: not the first time. You should not pretend that this
Speaker 1: is the first time the world is in an upheaval
Speaker 1: and we don't know where we're going. I think we
Speaker 1: were maybe a bit hubris the thing that we did
Speaker 1: know where we're going. I probably would say that my
Speaker 1: great adaptation is often building within uncertainty, that this is
Speaker 1: a given. It's a given in relationships, it's a given
Speaker 1: in life. Security is often an illusion. Now that is
Speaker 1: a worldview. You aspire to it, but you know that
Speaker 1: it fundamentally exists, but can also disappear. Yeah, we've seen
Speaker 1: that so clearly this past year and a half. So
Speaker 1: delightful to chat with you. I'm so glad we finally
Speaker 1: got a chance to have you in the Psycholoic Pie,
Speaker 1: which want to wish you well with all the many
Speaker 1: exciting things you're doing. We didn't even talk about your game.
Speaker 1: I want to wish that well, your new game, your
Speaker 1: Sessions Live which we did talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the conference, and your podcast, your book, and just want
Speaker 1: to thank you for your existence in this world. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, a pleasure. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at does Psycology podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology 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 of
Speaker 1: the mind, brain, behavior and creativity