EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Esther Perel

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] I'm Dan Rathers.

[2] I'm joined by Modest Mouse.

[3] Hello.

[4] I don't think our expert today needs an introduction.

[5] She really doesn't, but we'll give her one.

[6] Okay, people love her.

[7] I love her.

[8] I'm in that list.

[9] Esther Perel.

[10] Esther Perel.

[11] Oh, man. She is a psychotherapist by training.

[12] Yeah.

[13] She's written a couple of very popular New York Times bestselling books, The State of Affairs and Mating and Captivity.

[14] the other guests of ours have talked about her.

[15] She's an expert in relationships and sexuality.

[16] Ooh, we like both those topics.

[17] She also has a very exciting podcast called Where Should We Begin, where she actually does therapy with a couple?

[18] Yeah, and you get to hear it.

[19] And it's been described as almost like a crime episode of a podcast, which I really like.

[20] Yeah.

[21] She's incredible.

[22] So please enjoy Esther Perel.

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[25] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[26] He's an armchair expert.

[27] So Esther Perel, you're here.

[28] You're our expert.

[29] And I don't know that I've been more excited to talk to somebody.

[30] First of all, you've come up on this podcast several times.

[31] We've had several guests that have been singing your praises and my wife's obsessed with you as probably doesn't shock you.

[32] But I was aware of you, but I consumed a lot of your stuff last night.

[33] I watched you do your TED talk and I watched you on some panels and stuff.

[34] And you are phrasing and thinking about some things in a very unique way, in my opinion.

[35] And I'm an addict.

[36] So we talk about addiction a lot in here.

[37] But at best, maybe addiction's going to affect.

[38] I don't know, you know, 20 % of the population maybe, or we'll talk about eating disorders.

[39] Maybe with that, I don't know what that's going to affect.

[40] But affairs, cheating quote, that's probably the topic we'll talk about that will affect the very most amount of people that we've really talked about, other than maybe certain health disorders, but I don't even think those.

[41] This is, you put it really well in your TED talk.

[42] You said infidelity has been universal.

[43] How do you say?

[44] Condemned.

[45] Universally condemned and universally practiced.

[46] Yes.

[47] First and foremost, you're a psychotherapist.

[48] You have a very interesting story.

[49] You were raised by Polish Holocaust survivors in Antwerp, yes?

[50] In Belgium.

[51] In Belgium.

[52] And in a community of other Holocaust survivors, is that right?

[53] Yes.

[54] The entire Jewish community in Antwerp were survivors and refugees from the Nazi Holocaust.

[55] We were small, it was a 15 ,000 people community.

[56] It wasn't a big community.

[57] Belgium said come here.

[58] Oh, no, no, no. There was a presence of Jews in Antwerp for quite a while because of it being a diamond center.

[59] And those actually, many of them, were Dutch Jews who had come to Belgium when the situation in Holland became more complicated.

[60] No, no, my parents were accepted as refugees.

[61] in Belgium for three months.

[62] Oh.

[63] And then they were meant to leave.

[64] And they had a list of a few other countries that would take them.

[65] But they decided to stay.

[66] So after being in the war for five years, they were another five years illegal refugees in Belgium.

[67] Yes.

[68] And so I would imagine in ways during your childhood, I don't wouldn't know if you would remember at five years old, but they're obviously kind of always conscious of who's watching.

[69] So this is before I'm born.

[70] Oh, okay.

[71] Because I came later.

[72] But, yes, the stories were that, you know, if a policeman came into the shop, because they had a store, they'd run off.

[73] One time, they couldn't even grab me while they would run.

[74] Really?

[75] And hide until everything seemed clear and they would come back out.

[76] So, yes, it was the, it's everything you hear about today.

[77] Yeah.

[78] You could be asked your papers at any moment.

[79] So you constantly feel watched.

[80] You live a certain kind of life under the grid.

[81] Well, and I would imagine you would develop a justified paranoia.

[82] Like, to live with that threat at all times, I would have to imagine would change your worldview in ways.

[83] I won't say this paranoia.

[84] I would say that you develop an astute, acute sense of safety and danger.

[85] Uh -huh.

[86] And of who's who.

[87] And you get a very, very sharp sense of people.

[88] Your spidey senses.

[89] Yes, who you can trust, who you can rely on, who you don't.

[90] But I think they had already developed those.

[91] skills in the war in the camps.

[92] And my mother also was hidden in the woods for a year.

[93] And that's where she really developed her animalistic threat detector.

[94] You know, you have a statement that is you observed there that basically there were two types of people, the people that didn't die and then the people that were reborn.

[95] Yes.

[96] But I will give you context for this.

[97] So we can we can go to my childhood or we can go to how that also fits what I came to do later.

[98] I want to go everywhere you're willing to go.

[99] When I was writing mating in captivity, which is a book about relationships, modern love, in which I wanted to understand the nature of erotic desire and the way that we need to straddle in all our relationships, a dual need for stability and reliability and consistency with our need for change and novelty and growth and adventure.

[100] And we do that from the moment we are born.

[101] We have to straddle these two fundamental sets of human needs.

[102] And in that, I wanted to understand, is the degradation of desire inevitable?

[103] What sustains it?

[104] What is it?

[105] And what is its meaning today in modern relationships?

[106] Because we've never spoken that much about desire before.

[107] And desire also meant owning the wanting.

[108] And in that sense, how do you maintain wanting, which is a sense of a life, meaning hope, wishes, claims, prerogatives, you know, in the best sense of the world, a healthy entitlement on your living.

[109] And from there, I thought, I'm actually writing a book about sexuality, but it's not a book about sexuality.

[110] It's much, much bigger than that.

[111] And it's a book, if at all, about eroticism.

[112] And eroticism, not just in the narrow sexual sense of the world, but in really life force, aliveness, vitality, vibrancy.

[113] Stimulation of any kind?

[114] It's, yes, it involves food, or travel.

[115] It's more existential than that.

[116] What gives you a feeling of aliveness?

[117] What's the difference between not being dead and being alive?

[118] What's the difference between a couple that survives and a couple that thrives or a relationship that survives?

[119] What is thriving mean?

[120] And I thought, what better way than to go and ask people who have survived?

[121] Right.

[122] So it.

[123] In the most literal sense.

[124] In the most literal sense.

[125] And I also went and talked with Jack, my husband and my partner, who works in trauma.

[126] And I said, when you work with victims of torture and political violence, and you see the people are able to come back to life, what is it?

[127] What are the signs that a person is not just not dying and not under constant threat and not vigilant, but that they once again able to open their shoulder to give and receive, to welcome people close to their.

[128] inside of them, to form connections and all of that.

[129] And we began to talk about, you know, what it means when people are able to venture out, meaning to take risks, to play, to explore, like a child.

[130] And you can only do that if you feel a basic sense of safety.

[131] Then you can go and deal with the unknown.

[132] So it is a paradox in a way, right?

[133] Because they're a little bit opposed to each other, yet one requires the other.

[134] So you have to feel safe and secure to be able to venture out and play.

[135] It's a dialectic, because it's a loop.

[136] For the listeners, you're removing clothes already.

[137] I thought maybe at the 60 -minute marker we would start doing that, but here we are.

[138] This is a hot thing.

[139] It's warm here.

[140] But then I went to Antwerp.

[141] I went back to my childhood, and I just began, I said to him, you know, when I grew up, I remember the homes of the people where it just felt morbid.

[142] They were depressed homes for good reasons.

[143] There were places where people did not there.

[144] to laugh out loud.

[145] Because when you laugh out loud, you are free and unselfconscious.

[146] And you cannot be free and unselfconscious if you fear dread.

[147] If you're in a state of fear and anxiety.

[148] You can translate that directly into sexuality.

[149] You cannot, from a state of contraction, experience pleasure.

[150] And fear is contraction.

[151] Dread is contraction.

[152] And then I looked at the community.

[153] Tightening, the whole thing.

[154] And I said, in my community, I noticed that they were, was two different responses to what people had experienced.

[155] Some of the people who did not die and who lived in a state of contraction.

[156] They didn't trust.

[157] They didn't experience much joy.

[158] They couldn't really let go and reenter the world.

[159] But they did the basic question.

[160] Yeah.

[161] Do you think that was motivated out of that it would have been disrespectful for them to be living some boisterous out loud life that they would not be appropriately mourning or something?

[162] Is it that or was it, it would have been irresponsible to let your guard down.

[163] It's both.

[164] I think you ride on.

[165] For some people, it was survivor guilt.

[166] We shouldn't be here celebrating more.

[167] Yeah, why me?

[168] Why me?

[169] Why are all the others?

[170] And they were better than me. And none of the other people of my family made it and all of that.

[171] Yeah.

[172] I mean, my parents, it's interesting.

[173] You know, they both were the only survivors of their whole family.

[174] Were they young?

[175] My mother was 18 when the war started and my father, 25.

[176] They could have said, why am I the only one?

[177] My mother came from a family of nine and my father from a family of seven and it's nearly incomprehensible like when you say that to be one of nine family members that survive and has nobody nobody it's all it's it's it's big it's you know on occasion i stop to actually take it in and either you say why me or you come out and you say because me i have to make the best of it i will live life at its fullest because i am here to live all the lives that others didn't live.

[178] And that is often a message that is passed on to the children too.

[179] Yeah, I mean, that's the irony of it is the most respectful way to live that life that you got when no one else did, would be to be as joy -filled as possible.

[180] Even if it feels counterintuitive, the true way to respect being the one that lived would be to have the most joy -filled life imaginable.

[181] It's when you turn tragedy into victory.

[182] It's what I do a lot in the work with people who have gone through trauma or sexual abuse.

[183] There's no better vengeance on the person who hurt you than to be able to enjoy again.

[184] Yes.

[185] Well, and we have, so I'm, as I said, sober, also sexual abuse survivor, a lot of things.

[186] But we have this great saying in AA, which is, you know, resentments and anger towards people is like drinking poison hoping your enemy dies, you know.

[187] I love that line.

[188] You're losing now twice over this thing.

[189] So, now the people that were able to flourish and play, it was rooted in eroticism, is what you observed.

[190] I call it eroticism.

[191] Yeah.

[192] I mean...

[193] Let's clearly define that so we know, because I think of erotic, I think of...

[194] Sex.

[195] Sex.

[196] That's very, very recent definition of eroticism.

[197] Eroticism, eros, the most literal definition is life force.

[198] It was the god of love, but it also erotic means a force of life.

[199] And in the mystical sense of the word, it has a spiritual dimension in which you touch on a kind of an essence, on a sense of aliveness, vitality, vitality, vibrancy, radiance.

[200] Yeah, okay.

[201] The 20th century narrowed it down to something that is much more purely sex, because this is what people also experience in sex.

[202] I would define eroticism as the antidote to death.

[203] Mm -hmm.

[204] Mm -hmm.

[205] You know, because you can have sex and feel nothing.

[206] Yeah.

[207] Women have done that for centuries.

[208] Sure, sure.

[209] You know.

[210] Yeah.

[211] And you can feel erotic and do nothing.

[212] Uh -huh.

[213] And feel completely blissfully fulfilled.

[214] But erotic, you know, what's the difference between sex and eroticism?

[215] Animals have sex.

[216] Mm -hmm.

[217] It's the pivot.

[218] It's nature.

[219] It's the instinct.

[220] It's the raw material.

[221] Mm -hmm.

[222] But it's finite.

[223] Eroticism is infinite.

[224] It's never ending.

[225] It's really sexuality that is transformed by the human imagination.

[226] And we are the only ones who can have a full experience, blissful, multiple orgasm, whatever you want, and never touch anybody just because we can imagine it.

[227] Right.

[228] That erotic mind is what gives the poetics to sex.

[229] Yeah.

[230] Who did you quote that said, we have imagination?

[231] You have a great quote from somebody.

[232] Proust.

[233] Yeah.

[234] What did he say?

[235] It is the imagination that is responsible for love, not the other person.

[236] Yeah, that's pretty powerful.

[237] Leave it to him.

[238] Yeah.

[239] Okay, so you grew up in Antwerp.

[240] This is a very unique scenario to grow up in, and I'm sure that came with all kinds of pros and cons.

[241] And were you immediately drawn to psychology?

[242] So I grew up above the shop.

[243] Uh -huh.

[244] And I basically sold clothes from the day I could talk.

[245] Okay.

[246] I was like a family business, a little store, and you all.

[247] participated in the shop.

[248] And the only thing I remember thinking is I would like to have a profession that I can carry on my back.

[249] I don't want a physical thing that you have, that you are all the time, because my parents would talk about the store all the time and we couldn't leave the store.

[250] It was this, you know, the shop.

[251] I think I became interested in psychology because I wanted to, for two reasons.

[252] I was very good at being the confidant of a lot of people.

[253] Uh -huh.

[254] People trusted you.

[255] Yeah.

[256] And I got it.

[257] I kind of, I could connect the dots.

[258] And I understood that what you see is always what it is.

[259] Do you have siblings?

[260] I have an older brother who is 12 years older than me. Oh, okay.

[261] With whom I'm very close.

[262] And who, and, um, and I think I became interested in psychology because I was a troubled teenager as in trouble inside.

[263] Like, I just wanted to feel better about life and about myself and have less, was rather melancholic as a teenager.

[264] Okay.

[265] And I, I just, you know, began reading.

[266] And the first things I would read was stuff about education.

[267] I was in a very harsh school system.

[268] Okay.

[269] And we had, you know, I studied six years of Latin and four years of Greek and another three languages.

[270] I mean, it was just, and you had no importance.

[271] But you know the, the derivative of eroticism, though.

[272] That's what you got out of it.

[273] I do.

[274] I got my Greek etymologies, you know, but I, I was like, there must be a better way to go to school.

[275] I hated it.

[276] Uh -huh, yes.

[277] And I read stuff about alternative education.

[278] That was the 70s.

[279] And that's how I began.

[280] Like alternative education began to tell you that it's not always the material that matters, but that the child actually matters.

[281] A child has a psychology.

[282] A child has feelings.

[283] I was like, what?

[284] Uh -huh.

[285] And from there, I began to just read, you know, all kinds of things.

[286] And I met people every time that say, read this, read this, read this.

[287] I don't think I was thinking I would become a psychologist, but I was interested in psychology.

[288] And by the way, at a time, when you went to school, it wasn't because you already knew what you wanted to be.

[289] Right, right, but you could discover yourself.

[290] Yeah.

[291] That's kind of how I came to the same.

[292] States.

[293] I came to Boston to do graduate school and nobody had ever come to America, to Boston, to study.

[294] It was like all these things.

[295] Where in Boston?

[296] At Leslie College first.

[297] And then I went to work at Mass Mental Health, which was a psychiatric hospital of the Harvard medical system.

[298] Okay.

[299] And I was like, wow, it's like, you know.

[300] And I could have been a journalist.

[301] I could have been a translator.

[302] Everybody thought I speak many languages.

[303] I should be able to be a translator.

[304] Yes.

[305] But I thought, you know, I wanted to be self -employed.

[306] I had the sense that that mattered to me. Now, let me ask a silly question.

[307] Do you think you're better positioned to study sexuality as a European in this country?

[308] Because I find that we are so puritanical in this country, this huge fear of sexuality, of young people's sexuality, of what sex does to people, all these things.

[309] I feel like we're very, very fear -based.

[310] in this country.

[311] It's manifested.

[312] If you go to the beach, everyone's covered up.

[313] You know, there's just all these, I remember going to Germany as a kid and there's naked people in the park.

[314] And I thought, oh, well, this is much different.

[315] And then on TV, there's nudity, right?

[316] Yet I don't see a bunch of, you know, fatherless children running around.

[317] None of the things we would fear are happening.

[318] So I started quickly realizing, oh, this boogeyman's sexuality is just that.

[319] It's a boogeyman.

[320] So I just, I wonder if you are positioned uniquely.

[321] to do your work here coming from another culture.

[322] I'll answer it to you in two ways.

[323] You know, first of all, no, not by definition because I'm European.

[324] Because if I take my parents' Polish background, that was not a very enlightened background when it comes to sexuality at all.

[325] It was actually complete ignorance.

[326] But I lived in Belgium.

[327] Right.

[328] And I lived from the Flemish part of Belgium, but I was also Francophone.

[329] And so I was very much influenced by a French view of relationships, of sexuality, of love, of gender, all of that.

[330] That I bring.

[331] But I think that that is, I would say, I typically have always had an outsider's point of view wherever I am.

[332] Right.

[333] I was outsider in Antwerp.

[334] I was outsider when I went to study in Israel.

[335] I was outsider in Boston.

[336] And I have always, because of my parents' background, looked for, you know, I don't take the given narrative.

[337] as a given.

[338] Yes.

[339] Because I think that, you know, I can see power and I can see systems and I can see truths or versions that proliferate as truths.

[340] And I think that's more me. It's like wherever there's a certain way of thinking, I'm thinking there must be something else.

[341] There must be yet another way.

[342] Now, besides that, you have a country here that is, you know, the United States often treat sexuality.

[343] It's either titillation and smut or something.

[344] sanctimony.

[345] Very little in the middle.

[346] There's very little of a thoughtful, respectful approach to the broadness of sexuality, of human sexuality, that isn't falling into one of these two poles.

[347] And that is much more different.

[348] I think of the pressure we put on young women in this country that they had better choose perfectly to lose their virginity.

[349] The person has to be a perfect choice.

[350] They have to be in love.

[351] It has to happen in a romantic way.

[352] Like the state are so high, the responsibility for the woman is to make sure that experience is absolutely...

[353] Do you know what the stats are?

[354] Tell me. The stats are that more than 40 % of people's first experience here is bad.

[355] Bad by what definition?

[356] It's a negative experience.

[357] Oh, okay.

[358] Right.

[359] Period.

[360] It's not a pleasurable experience.

[361] Right.

[362] And that is very, very high when you compare it to the European stats.

[363] Okay.

[364] You know, in Holland, for example, which is one of the big companies, comparatives that often takes place, you probably have 10, 15 % of young people who would say that their first experience is negative.

[365] And that comes because you have massive ignorance.

[366] You have zero sex education.

[367] At this moment, it is the lowest rate of sex education that the United States has had in 20 years.

[368] Which is crazy.

[369] And whatever there is, is based on abstinence.

[370] Yeah.

[371] You know, it's, it doesn't work in the sense that the abstinence focus has created a response, which actually you have more STDs than all of the EU and 30 developing countries combined.

[372] You have unwanted pregnancies and two years earlier onset of sexual activity than the liberal Dutch.

[373] Oh, that's ironic.

[374] And it's not done from a place of, you know, exploration, of connection, of relationship, of pleasure, of, you know, so it becomes this, you know, dirty thing that you should just keep for the one you love.

[375] Yes, and I do think in the absence of education, when people are forced to, fill in the blanks themselves, that is where you get a, for lack of a better word, perverse understanding of something where if you're just, if no one's explaining it to you and you're left to figure it out on your own, the sky's the limit for what someone could fill in the blanks.

[376] Does that make any sense?

[377] Well, the most important source of sex education at this moment for many young people is porn.

[378] Right, which is not very emblematic of the sex I've had.

[379] Which is a very nice fantasy on occasion, but it's lousy sex ed.

[380] Yes.

[381] And the next thing is that Americans talk about sex ed rather than talking about sexuality and relationship education, which is what most European countries do.

[382] Really?

[383] We start at age four.

[384] In Europe?

[385] In northern Europe, mostly.

[386] Oh, wow.

[387] We start at age four.

[388] We have in school a week, it's called The Week of Love.

[389] Okay.

[390] And it's a program for the four -year -olds and a program for the nine -year -olds and a program for 13 and 17.

[391] It's developmental.

[392] And it doesn't talk about disease and dysfunction and dangers.

[393] It talks about how sometimes you like certain people and you suddenly feel like you want to hold their hand and you enjoy when you spend time with them.

[394] And it is an integrated story where sexuality and relationships are integrated into one narrative.

[395] It isn't just a bunch of anatomy classes and plumbing.

[396] Right.

[397] Yes, I often think, like, you know, to graduate in this country, you're going to have to take an economics class.

[398] You're going to have to take all these classes that are not going to pertain to maybe 10 % of the population.

[399] Yet 100 % of us are going to have sex or 90 -some percent before we die.

[400] And there's little to no education on that.

[401] Also, just the interplay of relationships.

[402] How do you state your needs?

[403] How do you frame a message to a partner?

[404] How do you communicate?

[405] How do you evaluate your own motives?

[406] All these things that should be, you know, 18 -year -olds should leave high school with some sense of how to communicate with one another in a relationship, which they're inevitably going to find themselves in, there's nine just figure it out have a bunch of partners and they'll go wrong in a bunch of different ways and hopefully you know how people figure it out tell me one of the ways that is most common to put them to figure it out is they get drunk okay so that they don't know what they're doing yes except that they don't have to deal with their inhibitions right and then they do something and then they wake up the next morning and they don't remember what they've done right and then you ask them tell me something when you go hiking or when you go to listen to a bed or when you do whatever, do you try to not remember it the next day, stuff you like, or do you actually want to remember it?

[407] Right.

[408] So this is the anxiety people bring.

[409] Yes.

[410] It's so dissociated.

[411] It's like they're not in their bodies.

[412] They're not connected.

[413] They're not aware.

[414] And they just get through it because the pressure says you have to do it.

[415] It's a right of passage.

[416] It becomes a marker in your you growing up, right?

[417] Yes.

[418] And that's the motivation sometimes.

[419] Oh, my God, I should have done it by now.

[420] I'm 18 and my nine friends have done it.

[421] You know, in the past, if you had sex, you were stigmatized.

[422] Now, if you don't have sex, you are stigmatized.

[423] Yeah, there's no winning.

[424] But the tyranny is always there.

[425] Yes.

[426] Okay, so first and foremost, you point out this incredible evolution that's happened within the last 100 years, which are marriages were financial arrangements for most of history.

[427] Yep.

[428] And so...

[429] And still are in most parts of the world.

[430] Right.

[431] In the traditional...

[432] It's a financial...

[433] arrangement, the marriage wasn't where someone found passion.

[434] The affair was where someone found passion.

[435] Yes, that adultery was the space for love.

[436] For love.

[437] When marriage was about companionship, family life, economic support, and social status.

[438] You know, love belonged somewhere else.

[439] We brought love to marriage.

[440] Right.

[441] And now the primary goal of marriage is love, or that's in theory why people are getting married now, right, not out of some kind of financial arrangement or to bring two properties together.

[442] And so now when we have affairs, what are we in search of?

[443] Infidelity has always existed.

[444] The interesting thing is this.

[445] It has always existed regardless of the model of marriage.

[446] But the meaning of it, the way we experience it and the consequences of it have always changed.

[447] So, let me go back a step.

[448] How I got to infidelity.

[449] Once I had written mating, which was like looking at the dilemmas of desire inside relationships, I thought what happens if desire goes looking elsewhere?

[450] I want to continue to track desire.

[451] I'm going to be this sleut detective of desire and I'm going to see what happens when it leaves the house.

[452] Yeah.

[453] And I thought, okay, I want to write another take of this modern relationships.

[454] And infidelity is the perfect human drama because it encompasses everything.

[455] It has lies, secrecy, passion, duplicity, deception, possessiveness, passion, jealousy, vengeance, you name it.

[456] It has just about the entire human drama in one story.

[457] And if I can capture some of that, then infidelity will be the perfect window to look at all the tensions and the aspirations of romantic relationships at this moment.

[458] And that's kind of why I picked infidelity.

[459] It's not like I was per se interested in, you know, why people cheat.

[460] Right.

[461] But white people cheat gives you access to so much.

[462] many important parts of modern relationships.

[463] And then I thought it also gives you a story of the social structure and the power structure of gender, because this has never been a gender equal proposition.

[464] Men have had a license to cheat practically all over the world with very few consequences.

[465] And because of that, people have come in and given all kinds of theories to justify why it's in their nature to do so, as if it's not in the nature of women.

[466] You know, men are fundamentally different from women in that way.

[467] And we have no idea because women have rarely done what they wanted.

[468] They've always done what they should and what was making them feel safe and protected.

[469] So we are going to begin to see what women really want only now.

[470] Right.

[471] And then I thought, you know, that gives us access to all the stereotypes about not only why man cheat and why women cheat and how they are so different in their motives, but also the nature of what the nature or what is male sexuality versus what is female sexuality.

[472] A bunch of myth.

[473] A lot of myth goes in there.

[474] A lot of thoughts that are really not founded that just get...

[475] Well, so let's just say one.

[476] So one is, okay, men have testosterone that is fuel for sexuality.

[477] The women have testosterone, too, but therefore, male sexuality is biologically driven.

[478] It is uncomplicated, unprompted.

[479] They're always up for it, always interested, always looking for an outlet in perpetual motion.

[480] Well, and it's a little bit rooted in evolutionary biology in that right.

[481] A woman can only at best give birth to, you know, I think the record we had in here.

[482] We had a evolutionary biologist.

[483] Yeah, 60 something.

[484] But, you know, a man could have 2 ,000 children if he had access to that many women.

[485] So that's kind of the underpinning of that, right?

[486] Yeah, that's one lens.

[487] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[488] We've all been there.

[489] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[490] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[491] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[492] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[493] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

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[497] What's up, guys?

[498] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season, and let me tell you, it's too good, and I'm diving into the brains of Entertainment's Fest.

[499] and brightest, okay?

[500] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[501] And I don't mean just friends.

[502] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[503] The list goes on.

[504] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[505] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[506] Yes.

[507] But I just wanted to get that out there so you can now just add another lens to it.

[508] Because I think evolutionary biology is essentially as another attribution of how we think about things, but it's not where I focus.

[509] I know.

[510] What I don't like is when you say men are creatures of nature and women are creatures of psychology.

[511] You know, male sexuality, simple, female sexuality complex.

[512] Male sexuality always interested, women need conditions just right.

[513] Male sexuality, the unrelated female sexuality interwoven on a lattice of emotion filled with, you know, seriously?

[514] You know, at this case...

[515] Is there any truth to any of that?

[516] there is no truth to a thing that is that polarized black and white and binary it utterly lacks nuance it's not true right let me put it this way right in my thinking are you sometimes afraid of rejection me yeah always all right is do you think fear of rejection is not psychological or relational sure it is right are you sometimes worried about performance no because i'm like a Clydesdale stud but yes most men are just I just mean, you know, is your penis, you know, responding to your old wishes, performance, you know, that is relational.

[517] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[518] You know, I think a lot of guys, it doesn't go talked about very much, but a woman can rarely fail to perform.

[519] A guy has a high probability of either not getting an erection, coming too quickly, there's numerous things, right, that can go wrong.

[520] There is a lot of pressure on a young male.

[521] Of course, but I'm saying even something else.

[522] What I'm saying is that when we think about performance, we think of it as a physical thing.

[523] Right.

[524] I say that the fear of performance is a relational thing.

[525] So to me, the notion that male sexuality is not relational.

[526] I think that there is a real investment in making men simple and in depriving them, actually, of a psychology and of connecting that with their sexuality.

[527] And now this is a system that we men have set up.

[528] So the question I immediately go to is how are we benefiting from that?

[529] do it there there must be a benefit are you my my well let's just think about it so if we're so simple i guess it's like when i watch certain husbands play dumb as a tact as a tactic no i don't understand how to do that i don't it really it gets them out of having to be troubled by anything it's an excuse it's an excuse yeah people so if we're so simple in a way is it is in an attempt to to um get rid of responsibility for actions i mean i'm just wondering what the benefit for men?

[530] Because men did craft this system.

[531] Why did they prefer to have a scene so simplistically?

[532] I actually don't think it's only men that have crafted the system.

[533] Okay.

[534] Yes, because I guess mothers are...

[535] Mothers are the ones that raise most boys in most parts of the world, most of all.

[536] But also, I think that, you know, the gender structures that we have and sexism as it is is an is an ordeal for everybody, not just for women.

[537] Right.

[538] It keeps men very, very constrained.

[539] and very limited and constantly battling their identity.

[540] You know, it's actually, I don't think there is that much gain in it.

[541] That's what's so interesting.

[542] Right.

[543] You know, but let me go back a second.

[544] My work is about challenging, received notions that I actually don't think are necessarily that true or that exclusively true or useful.

[545] And I do it with infidelity, and I do it with masculinity, and I do it with sexuality, because I think that we need better ways to think about these things so that people can be helped more.

[546] That's kind of where it comes down to because I work with people.

[547] I don't just work with ideas.

[548] Right.

[549] And I try to help them with their conundrums and with their despair.

[550] Well, what immediately struck me by watching your TED talk was, oh, yes.

[551] this is a great perspective and it's a great point of view because it's from someone that's on neither side of the equation because generally when we think about infidelity, we are either evaluating how we would feel if we were unfaithful or we're evaluating how we'd feel if our partner was unfaithful.

[552] Now, neither of those positions are that objective.

[553] They're both very emotional.

[554] They're very emotional evaluations, right?

[555] Because we're, we're, we're we're putting ourselves in one of those two positions.

[556] But you're also reducing the story to a two people thing.

[557] Okay.

[558] Let me ask you this.

[559] Have you, were you a child of a parent who was unfaithful or who fell in love with someone else or who left?

[560] Yeah.

[561] So my parents got divorced and towards the end I think they both had affairs.

[562] Okay.

[563] There can be a possibility where you are the child of an illicit love.

[564] Oh, uh -huh.

[565] There can be you being the friend that somebody is being.

[566] confiding in you for weeks or somebody's weeping on your shoulders.

[567] Yes.

[568] And then they can be you as one person in the triangle and you may have been in every role in your life.

[569] You may have been the person who was having an affair or cheated the person who has been deceived or the third person in the story.

[570] And when you put it together like that, you actually have 90 % of the people in most of my audiences raising their hand.

[571] that in one way or another they've been affected by an affair and then you realize that you're not talking about a story of two people infidelity is family stories it's intergenerational legacies it's secrets that carry across and it's societal it's not just a story of a cheater and a betrayed person it's really not a useful frame right and from then then you start to then i can be much more open i'm a you know it's no longer like I'm trying to decide who's the good one and who's the bad one.

[572] You know, who's the victim and who's the perpetrator.

[573] I look at what happens when there are breaches of trust, violations, love stories that emerge, you know, all these sagas in people's lives.

[574] And then you are in touch with humanity.

[575] You're not just looking for who can you punish.

[576] Now, currently in our current culture, it's still just as frowned upon infidelity.

[577] but it's more so tell me why because you know when men did it in the past women were very sad but that's what men do right that's part of your same theory of male sexuality uh -huh and women well you have famously like uh you know the prime minister's funeral in france midteran or whatever and his his his mistress is with the wife they're both crying it's on tv everything's cool right definitely that's not a material for scandal no right no there is something bigger going on the president just died so what happens i think today why it's worse is this it's no longer seen as part of a social system marriages are not meant to be for that of course this may happen men do it more simply because they have less consequences when they do it women have less of an opportunity to do it their risks are much higher they don't have divorce laws that protect them, they may become ostracized, destitute, they may lose their children.

[578] It took until the late 70s for women to even have any of these rights.

[579] So infidelity, you have to put it within an economic and social structure.

[580] And then, why today?

[581] Because today, love and finding the love, and finding the one for whom, after many more years, I'm not meeting you at 18, I'm 28, I'm 32, I'm 35, and I meet my soulmate.

[582] And that soulmate is the person with whom I'm going to put everything else aside.

[583] And I can delete my apps and I finally have found you and I'm everything for you.

[584] And you're everything for me because that word everything means very different when I've had 15 years of nomadism where I've been sampling around.

[585] Yes.

[586] Well, as you pointed out, monogamy used to mean one partner.

[587] Yeah.

[588] And now it means one partner at a time, which is new.

[589] Yes, but that, so that goes in it.

[590] So if that's the case, then exclusivity is something very different.

[591] If I don't have to marry in order to have sex for the first time.

[592] Yes.

[593] But I marry and I stop having sex with others.

[594] Right.

[595] Or I love you and we become a committed relationship.

[596] It doesn't have to involve marriage.

[597] Exclusivity means something very different when you've had 15 years of many partners versus when you're the first and the last.

[598] It's the same word, completely different life.

[599] So why is it worse today?

[600] Because it's not meant to happen.

[601] Because if I found the one, then it's not meant to happen.

[602] It's no longer considered as something that can happen in a relationship.

[603] And therefore, if you betray me, if you cheat on me, if you lie to me, it's a crisis of identity.

[604] It's not just, you know, it hurts.

[605] It's who am I?

[606] It wasn't supposed to be my life.

[607] That's not what I can't.

[608] I didn't wait for 10 years.

[609] to get that.

[610] I didn't give up on all these other people for you to do that to me. Yes.

[611] You know, the sense of outrage about it, the sense of it's the ultimate betrayal.

[612] And it's the first time in history that people divorce because of infidelity.

[613] That was never the case.

[614] It is the ultimate betrayal.

[615] There is no other thing you can do to me for which I tell you at every minute, get the fuck out.

[616] Get out.

[617] Leave.

[618] No, no. You can be mistreated.

[619] You can by somebody who doesn't show up for weeks on end.

[620] You can have somebody who drinks nonstop.

[621] Nobody says just like that leave.

[622] Well, okay, great.

[623] So you pointed this out, which is we had a transition where the most shameful thing that could have happened to you in the 40s is that you would have gotten divorced.

[624] Yeah.

[625] And nowadays, the most shameful thing you could do is stay with a partner who's cheated on you.

[626] It's not in the 40s.

[627] It's 70s.

[628] The divorce laws, the no -fold divorce is in the, I forgot the exact date now, but it's late 60s, early 70s.

[629] Okay.

[630] So that's a big flip.

[631] That's a radical change.

[632] Because in the past, marriage was for family.

[633] So if you cheated on me, I was upset, but the family came first.

[634] Right.

[635] Today, the survival of the family depends on one thing only in the West, and that's the happiness of the couple.

[636] Uh -huh.

[637] Couple not happy, no family.

[638] That's priority number one.

[639] And do you think that's wrong or right?

[640] I think it is.

[641] It just is.

[642] I don't.

[643] I...

[644] anthropologists at heart.

[645] I can see it.

[646] That's right.

[647] It just, it is.

[648] I mean, I think the relationships, what we look for in our relationships has completely changed.

[649] We've never expected more from our relationships that we do now.

[650] And there's something beautiful about that.

[651] And when you have it, it's a very different thing than in the past, till death do you apart.

[652] And if you were miserable, you were stuck.

[653] You had nowhere to go.

[654] Yeah.

[655] So I don't answer, is this good or is this bad.

[656] It is an evolution and it comes with a lot of things.

[657] I think the idea that people could actually get out of a marriage is a revolution.

[658] It's a godsend.

[659] There's still in nine countries still.

[660] If you are a female who's unfaithful, you could be looking at jail time or, right?

[661] They generally are stoned or burned.

[662] Stoned or burned.

[663] In nine countries still.

[664] Yeah.

[665] Yeah.

[666] That's pretty severe.

[667] Let's circle back to identity because I just want people to recognize the power of identity.

[668] That is the thing we will fight most passionately for.

[669] There are things that could make you mad in a partner in a relationship.

[670] They're inconveniences.

[671] She doesn't do this.

[672] He does that.

[673] Blah, blah, blah.

[674] But now once we threaten our own personal identity, this thing we've created, if something jeopardizes that, you'll see a new level of panic, right?

[675] Right.

[676] Because, you know, in the past, your identity was something that was assigned to you.

[677] Who you are was defined by where you were born, whose child you were, what milieu you're in, and what trade you're in.

[678] You inherited it at all.

[679] Yes, it was a sign to you.

[680] Your community told you who you are.

[681] It gave you your sense of belonging.

[682] It gave you the calendar by which you were going to live, the rituals with which you would be born and die.

[683] All the big definitions and all the big decisions were made for you.

[684] Today, you have to figure all of that out on your own.

[685] In our Western secularized world, the burdens of the self are such that we have the freedom and the burden of having to define and to make up our own identity.

[686] Is that good?

[687] It is.

[688] This is what I'm saying as an anthropologist.

[689] It is.

[690] And so there is something wonderful in being able to have the freedom to define who I am, to decide my values, to choose my affiliations, my religious.

[691] homes, all of that.

[692] But it comes with a tremendous burden.

[693] Of anxiety, I would imagine, yeah.

[694] Of anxiety, of anxiety.

[695] You have to constantly know.

[696] Did I make the right decision?

[697] At least if someone else gave you the decision, you could only feel so guilty about it.

[698] That's right.

[699] You have plenty of certainty and no freedom.

[700] Now you have massive amount of freedom and massive amount of uncertainty and self -doubt.

[701] As we've gotten more anxious about what our identity is because we have all this freedom, we're now kind of expecting another human being to help us to help us to.

[702] find that maybe more than ever before.

[703] That's right.

[704] That's exactly it.

[705] I call it relationships as religion.

[706] Uh -huh.

[707] Yes.

[708] It's because religion used to give you these things before.

[709] And now it's your partner.

[710] They define you.

[711] When you are in a relationship, do you lose touch with your friends?

[712] I don't know.

[713] But you know that many people do.

[714] Yeah.

[715] Yeah.

[716] Uh -huh.

[717] Never have we expected more from this one relationship and never has that been called our romantic relationship.

[718] And never has that relationship been more isolated.

[719] Yeah.

[720] Tell people what we're expecting from our partner now, because it's a great list.

[721] I would start with first, we expect what we always expected.

[722] So what we wanted was a companion and some economic support and someone to have a family with or children with and social status because you were definitely different if you were in a family or not in a family.

[723] Right.

[724] That's what we wanted.

[725] Now we still want all of that.

[726] And on top of it, I definitely need you to be my best friend.

[727] Right.

[728] And I need you to be my trusted confidant.

[729] And I need you to be my passionate lover.

[730] Yes.

[731] And I need you to be my intellectual equal.

[732] And I need you to be my co -parent.

[733] And I need you to be my soulmate.

[734] And I need you to help me become the best version of myself.

[735] Uh -huh.

[736] That's a tall order.

[737] It's so true, though.

[738] It is.

[739] Yes.

[740] Oh, yeah.

[741] Mind you, the other person's barely got the, own shit together and they're going to somehow add all this value to your life.

[742] Yes.

[743] But we still need all those things.

[744] Yeah, but I would argue that's an inside job.

[745] My own personal take on it.

[746] The way I say it is we ask one person to give us what wants an entire village.

[747] Exactly.

[748] Get a community.

[749] Yeah.

[750] Yeah.

[751] Your relationship is essential, but it is one relationship in the middle of other very important, significant relationship.

[752] Yeah, you could aggregate those other things.

[753] But that's up to everyone to agree upon.

[754] It can't just be the one person to say, I'm going to outsource these things.

[755] Your partner has to get on board with that because if you say, okay, I don't need this person to be my intellectual equal.

[756] So John is going to be my intellectual equal.

[757] So I'm going to spend some time with John because he's giving me this.

[758] That partner needs to be okay with that.

[759] There's so much jealousy.

[760] I am welcoming that.

[761] Help me out.

[762] But I think, yeah, you have to be confident.

[763] Because you see, you just outlined the model.

[764] Why does it mean I'm jealous about that?

[765] Or it means that the minute you need to anything elsewhere, it means I'm not enough.

[766] Exactly.

[767] It becomes a measure.

[768] That's your identity question.

[769] It becomes a measure of my sufficiency, of my adequacy.

[770] And so it becomes a crisis of identity.

[771] Because you want to see yourself as indispensable.

[772] And unique and irreplaceable and everything.

[773] That's the only way you'll feel safe.

[774] But I would argue.

[775] Or valued.

[776] Or valued.

[777] The identity model of relationship, if it's one person for everything, the moment you're not everything, you have a crisis of identity.

[778] Right.

[779] That's the logic of this model.

[780] But I feel like you...

[781] It's the model that has to change.

[782] It's not one person.

[783] Yeah, I agree.

[784] Right.

[785] But I also do think you're in charge of those things.

[786] The individual has to be giving themselves a lot of those things.

[787] You can't be asking someone else to give you those feelings.

[788] Well, you need, some of it is partnership.

[789] Some of it's partnership, I agree, but my own self -esteem has to be good enough that I'm not reliant on you to provide me with my self -esteem.

[790] I think that's cancerous.

[791] You're going to hear a lot of, it's both and from me. Okay.

[792] You don't know who you are outside of your relationships with others.

[793] So what about when you've been single for a long period of time?

[794] You still don't.

[795] You have relationships.

[796] So relationship with humans.

[797] We have relationships.

[798] We are social animals.

[799] You don't know who you are.

[800] Who you are is a both end.

[801] It's who you are with yourself and who you are with others.

[802] Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is I personally would want to strive for all these things you're talking about, my social standing, all that.

[803] I would strive to handle that myself.

[804] No, you don't.

[805] It's a both end.

[806] You don't want to depend entirely on one person to reflect back to you, your sense of self -word, because it's way too vulnerable.

[807] But you also don't have a way.

[808] of saying I will address my own sense of self -word by myself because self -worth is a relational experience.

[809] It's not just a thing with yourself.

[810] I agree.

[811] It's both.

[812] Yes.

[813] So in my case, I know my laundry lists of things that give me self -esteem.

[814] Right.

[815] Being of service to my wife is only one of those things.

[816] You know, there's a laundry list.

[817] Sitting here now.

[818] Yes, sitting here talking to you and yeah, being vulnerable and owning stuff publicly is a source of self -esteem for me. So I'm just saying if I was relying on Kristen to give me all that, that doesn't seem very fair to Kristen.

[819] Who would have time to fill someone's entire glass up every day?

[820] It's not a realistic expectation.

[821] Or what it would do is it would render your relationship, a relationship of a child and a mother.

[822] Yes.

[823] And you know what?

[824] I have a theory on this.

[825] So now that I have little kids, I'm now watching these little girls.

[826] I have four and six -year -old girls.

[827] And I am endlessly at service.

[828] I have had this moment where I'm caring for them.

[829] And I say to myself, oh, this is part of the problem.

[830] This is so misleading.

[831] These girls will grow up and expect that they will find a partner who's going to do all this stuff unconditionally, have no expectations in return.

[832] And that's what we're all looking for.

[833] We're all weirdly wanting a mom or a dad who just unconditionally loves us.

[834] We can be little fucking brats when we want to.

[835] We can do all this stuff.

[836] And yet the arms will always be open.

[837] But that's not a realistic expectation in relation.

[838] Your partner isn't apparent, but I think we all, a little bit, are looking for that.

[839] We're looking for just blind, open, unconditional, you can do anything, and you're still welcome in my lap, when that's not how a relationship between two autonomous adults works.

[840] That's a fantasy that people have sometimes, but what people really want is that when they do something, that it be noticed.

[841] Uh -huh.

[842] the reality of what people want in relationships from their parents and we have asked many times the questions what is something that you would have wanted more of in your family or something that you had wished for and it's not about I wanted to be I've never actually heard people talk about they wanted to be unconditionally loved that is on the fantasy level in the reality of their life what they really wanted was to be noticed was to be seen was that if they did do something that it would be appreciated was not to be endlessly criticized or told that it wasn't good enough or that, you know, they could do better all the time.

[843] You know, in reality, people actually know that what they want is a very important thing that actually they deserve to get.

[844] You know, the four -year -old is a different story, but older, what people missed in their experiences, you know, was either attention, look, most trauma of childhood you could kind of put on a continuum of attention.

[845] They either got too little.

[846] Okay, I wanted to give, yes, a concrete example, which is I have dated girls with no father and I have dated girls with the perfect father.

[847] And I don't think either one was that beneficial or they were equally fraught with issues.

[848] Because?

[849] Because the one with no parent, any approval was enough approval and the seeking approval and all that.

[850] I don't think that's healthy.

[851] On the other hand, someone who's raised as a princess who, no matter what she did, dad still loved and she could be an asshole and dad never gave her any consequence, I can't be in a relationship with that person.

[852] Like, I'm sorry.

[853] When you're a pig and you're this, no, yes, I don't like being with you as much.

[854] I hate to break it to you.

[855] My love is conditional.

[856] My affection for you is conditional.

[857] You have to behave a certain way in a relationship or I don't want to be in it.

[858] So it's a false.

[859] I'm just saying it's a little bit of a white lie that this unconditional love, it is conditional.

[860] As it should.

[861] be.

[862] We should have boundaries.

[863] We should have expectations.

[864] We should have to meet people's needs.

[865] We shouldn't just float through and get unconditional love.

[866] We should have to earn it.

[867] Right?

[868] I'm with you.

[869] I mean, I don't usually go with the word conditional.

[870] I think love is relational.

[871] And therefore, it means that you have to think about the other.

[872] It's not just the other fawning over you and blowing up your ego.

[873] Yes.

[874] Worshiping at the altar of you.

[875] Then that's what I'm saying.

[876] It's too much attention, too little attention.

[877] Right.

[878] And being a parent, it's really hard to find that sweet spot where it's like I'm giving this child confidence and in a feeling of safety.

[879] And yet I'm also letting them know you're not that cute.

[880] You still have to behave a certain way or no one's going to be want to be around you.

[881] That's right.

[882] That's a hard tightrope to walk.

[883] It'd be presumptuous to think that you'd be interested.

[884] But I do think my own past might interest you a little bit, which is I had a very serious girlfriend in high school.

[885] We were together for, five years, three of the years I lived here and she lived back in Detroit.

[886] And we got realistic.

[887] What I'd say realistic is that we both have needs.

[888] We both want to cuddle people.

[889] We want to kiss.

[890] So I had my first open relationship at 20 years old, maybe even younger.

[891] My conclusion at the end of that relationship was she loved me every bit as much post her having been with other guys as she did before.

[892] I saw no impact on how much she loved me or I loved her.

[893] My next relationship I was 21, she was 19, and I said, here's my history.

[894] I'm bad at this.

[895] I'd rather not have that expectation, because I like you and I'd like to be with you.

[896] We decided, if I don't know what happens, I don't care.

[897] That was kind of the parameters.

[898] And we were together for nine years.

[899] And it was a wonderful, amazing relationship.

[900] The one thing I can own that it was destructive was it's so hard to maintain a sexual relationship.

[901] In a relationship, I think that requires the most work and the most vulnerable work and all of our fears are on the table and when you don't have to do that work to be satiated you won't so i do think it definitely destroyed our sex life but the partnership and the friendship and all that was still wonderful i'm an hardcore addict by nature and i realized shortly before meeting my wife that i was using sex addictively, and for the exact same reason I use cocaine or alcohol, I just used it to regulate my emotions.

[902] And I wanted to be monogamous for me. I can't open the door and do it once and then never do it again.

[903] I will do it again in six months, then I'll do it in four months, then I'll do it a month, and then I'll do it every single day.

[904] And then I'll be a fucking addict with it just like anything else.

[905] Because that's been my experience in relationships, I have a view.

[906] of monogamy that's I'm a little critical of it.

[907] I think it's interesting that that's the number one priority in a relationship.

[908] When I think of what I want from my wife, I list 10 things.

[909] That's number 10.

[910] I would way rather have her had oral sex in Atlanta and I didn't know about it and is still present with me and gives me quality time and all my needs are met.

[911] I'm just, I think it's a little outweighed in our culture, which is not to say, I'm not pro -affair.

[912] I'm not pro -polygamy.

[913] I'm not pro -anything.

[914] I just, I think it's, it occupies a much bigger.

[915] I think there's a lot of very insightful things, do you say?

[916] I mean, that's what I was saying before.

[917] It has become the ultimate betrayal.

[918] And the question is why.

[919] Look, for, for all of history, people didn't go elsewhere, women didn't go elsewhere primarily, because they would be punished.

[920] So the boundaries were set externally.

[921] Today you're dealing with the vagaries of the heart.

[922] You know, monogamy is no longer an imposition on women primarily.

[923] It's a conviction.

[924] It's become part of the romantic ideal.

[925] And its monogamy defined primarily as sexual exclusivity.

[926] It's not defined.

[927] You can define monogamy in many other ways than just this one criteria.

[928] But because it has become a part of our fundamental.

[929] freedom.

[930] I choose you because I'm attracted to you because we have sex before we ever are together even within we are together.

[931] I mean, the order of events has completely turned upside down.

[932] Right.

[933] So it has become the marker, you know, of who we are.

[934] You know, we used to have sex for reproduction in relationships.

[935] And we used to have sex because it was a woman's marital duty.

[936] Who cared if she wanted?

[937] Right.

[938] And he, who cared really much if we if she was into it, you know, she, she did it for him.

[939] She did it because it was part of her marital duty, her job.

[940] And by the way, I still meet young women in America today who that was the religious education and that's what sex is.

[941] And just get it over with and make sure that he's got what he needs.

[942] He needs it.

[943] He needs to get it.

[944] And you need to give it.

[945] And it's that entire set of verbs that defines this transaction.

[946] Yeah.

[947] And you like it.

[948] You don't like it.

[949] Nobody cares.

[950] then we brought desire into sex and now it's about pleasure and connection we only need two kids three kids maybe in the West and that's that so the only reason to continue is because we like it because it makes us feel good because we enjoy being together because it breathes a sense of connection of intimacy of fun of pleasure of sensuality all of that now that takes a whole different program and how you stay with that and how you deal with the fact that you may have all kinds of roaming desires.

[951] I don't think people in the past had less desires.

[952] But when you were afraid that you could get pregnant instantly, you just didn't go.

[953] Yeah, the stakes were too high.

[954] The stakes were very different.

[955] It's not that human nature has fundamentally shifted in a hundred years.

[956] And you'd be ostracized permanently from your community, perhaps.

[957] You know, all of that.

[958] All of that.

[959] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[960] We don't have more desires, but we fear definitely.

[961] there are less risks and we feel more entitled to pursue them because we are in the era of happiness and I deserve to be happy and I deserve to pursue my desires.

[962] So now how do you keep them on the inside becomes a whole different story, you know, and it becomes the threat of abandonment.

[963] It's become a real essential measure of my value, of my narcissistic value, you know, am I everything?

[964] And am I enough?

[965] And if I, and if you do this, it's a sign that I am not.

[966] And it's too bad because it makes a lot of people question themselves and go into all kinds of crisis about their own self -worth rather than, you know, what's going on here?

[967] What's going on in this relationship?

[968] What's going on?

[969] You know, your wife and you, you're in a different stage.

[970] You have kids.

[971] She is different from you.

[972] You're in a different state in your mind.

[973] and sex meant certain things for you that it doesn't mean in the same way for other people.

[974] I think that's another thing that we need to ask people is what does sex mean for you?

[975] Yeah.

[976] Not what do you do and are you getting laid?

[977] What do sex mean for you?

[978] Yeah, for me it's validation.

[979] Okay.

[980] I mean, it's very clear.

[981] Like, I have friends who have gone to prostitutes and I go, oh, that doesn't work for me because really all I'm looking for is the validation.

[982] So the exchange with a prostitute just doesn't work for me. Or a strip club doesn't work for me. Because that's not, I'm not desiring just the physical thing.

[983] I want the approval.

[984] And it's interesting, I have lots of friends that they don't, that's not what they're looking for.

[985] That's right.

[986] They're looking to have a physical experience solely, which is interesting.

[987] But, and there's a range of things.

[988] That's why, and once you start to ask that question, it becomes a very, it's an endlessly fascinating conversation.

[989] You know, what's the currency?

[990] What's the transaction?

[991] I mean, I repeat this all the time.

[992] I don't think sex is just something you do.

[993] It's a place you go.

[994] Mentally.

[995] Mentally, physically, inside yourself with another or others, where you go.

[996] And what you say is where you go is in the validation.

[997] I am worthy.

[998] I am seen.

[999] I am liked.

[1000] I am good.

[1001] I'm desired.

[1002] I am attracted.

[1003] People want me. They seek my presence.

[1004] You know, that's a whole set of things that come through this one channel, yeah, to this one channel, you know.

[1005] Now, people love to ask you, like, what percentage of people cheat, right?

[1006] And you point out, which is great, is that's almost impossible to get a number on because what is cheating?

[1007] Is it sex?

[1008] Is it oral sex?

[1009] Is it an emotional affair?

[1010] Is it sexting?

[1011] Is it watching pornography?

[1012] So because of that, we can't really say.

[1013] The numbers are very high.

[1014] The numbers have not necessarily changed as much for men.

[1015] they have doubled for women.

[1016] The gap between men and women is very small.

[1017] Who were those men having sex with?

[1018] That's exactly what I say all the time.

[1019] Yeah, like was it one woman was servicing five guys?

[1020] It's the only way the math works out.

[1021] But, you know, men don't always go to women.

[1022] And women don't always go to men.

[1023] We should not forget that.

[1024] Okay, good, good.

[1025] No, who you live with is not necessarily always just who you are attracted to.

[1026] That's true.

[1027] Or who you want to have sex with.

[1028] So the pool is bigger.

[1029] But the interesting thing is, this in the past you didn't have to define what is infidelity it was kind of clear there was a baby that came out a few months later and it didn't resemble you right you know yeah but now that we have contraception and we have this whole new shift at the borders where people draw the lines is actually a conversation it's not like I can answer this right it's really people having to this talk about this stuff with each other and those are sexual conversations that partners need to have.

[1030] I had a conversation last night with a group of women of the kind that you rarely have.

[1031] I mean, really people just talked at a level of openness that was remarkable.

[1032] One of the things that was interesting is that the vast majority of them had never had these conversations with their partner.

[1033] I mean, they've been living for 10 and more years with the same person.

[1034] They have actually never had a conversation about their sexual relationship with each other.

[1035] Mm -hmm.

[1036] Yeah.

[1037] It's an astounding thing.

[1038] Well, there's a few reasons why that's tricky.

[1039] A, it's just the apex of vulnerability, I think.

[1040] And it's a topic that you've learned to be silent about most of your life here.

[1041] Yeah, it's, so there's a couple things.

[1042] I think there's like, there's your, the fears everyone brings into it.

[1043] But then I also think there's like, for a male, in this conventional male way, there's this very thin line between vulnerability and neediness.

[1044] the balance, the weird little balance in a sexual relationship is so tenuous.

[1045] That's for females too.

[1046] Right.

[1047] To be attractive to one another.

[1048] You don't, you know, like, you know, like, you know why?

[1049] Tell me. Because it's the distinction between an adult relationship and a parental relationship.

[1050] If you need, then it's more difficult to want.

[1051] If you need, you elicit caretaking.

[1052] If you elicit caretaking, you elicit mothering.

[1053] Right.

[1054] Right, which is anti -sexual.

[1055] You don't want sex in the family, no. It's not meant to be taking place there.

[1056] No. So the fine line is to maintain a relationship of adults is that people, of course, they have needs.

[1057] But it's a kind of neediness of childlike that elicits a form of caretaking.

[1058] And caretaking is very loving, but it's not particularly sexy.

[1059] Let me give you an example.

[1060] Sometimes a man would ask, how was it?

[1061] Oh, uh -huh.

[1062] And mostly women know if the question is, how was it for you?

[1063] Yeah.

[1064] Versus how was I?

[1065] Oh.

[1066] And when he asks, how was I?

[1067] Yeah.

[1068] He's asking for reassurance.

[1069] Uh -huh.

[1070] Uh -huh.

[1071] That's very different of...

[1072] That's like a little boy.

[1073] He wants to, did I look cool on my bike?

[1074] It can.

[1075] Yeah, yeah.

[1076] It can be.

[1077] Yeah, it's a lady bone kill.

[1078] Versus, how are you?

[1079] Right.

[1080] I'm interested in you.

[1081] Uh -huh.

[1082] And so the issue is all about confidence.

[1083] Right.

[1084] You can have needs, you know, but it's very subtle this thing.

[1085] But every woman knows when she has entered caretaking role.

[1086] Every man knows when he's taking caretaking role.

[1087] And unless it is fetishized and then people can experience this sexually.

[1088] Wearing a diaper or something, yeah.

[1089] But otherwise, people just, this are two separate relationships.

[1090] relational tracks.

[1091] They're two different paradigms.

[1092] Wait, but real quick, because when you brought up your open, do you have an opinion on open relationships?

[1093] Whether they're productive.

[1094] You know, I started by saying, I have never thought about these things in terms of open and closed.

[1095] It's the same idea is like the door, you know?

[1096] It's like it's either a closed door or not the way relationships operate.

[1097] You know, and that's why I began to talk about the fact that the whole meaning of monogamy has gone through massive transformations, you know.

[1098] You're not monogamous in your memory.

[1099] Right.

[1100] You're not monogamous in your fantasies.

[1101] Right.

[1102] So you're only monogamous in a portion of your life.

[1103] Yeah.

[1104] Now, people need to negotiate boundaries, period.

[1105] Yeah.

[1106] You know, do they even share their fantasies with each other?

[1107] Do they share their past with each other?

[1108] That's all part of open and close.

[1109] So in the end, for me, open is about the openness of the conversation.

[1110] How honest are people with each other?

[1111] How much are they able to really bring each other into one of the most intimate places that they can?

[1112] And that's, you know, what we like to call the anti -chabre of their erotic mind.

[1113] That's a place that is way more intimate than entering orifices.

[1114] You know, you can enter those and there is absolutely nothing happening between these two people on an emotional level.

[1115] So that's the conversation people need to have.

[1116] By the, you know, the notion of having relationships that are not sexually exclusive that are monogamous on an emotional level, on a commitment of a primacy of the relationship, but it doesn't, it's a relational contract.

[1117] It's not just about sexual exclusivity.

[1118] Makes a lot of sense.

[1119] It's not for everybody at all.

[1120] And it demands massive egalitarianism.

[1121] It needs two people who are sovereign people who can decide for themselves and not one person imposing this on another one.

[1122] You have two great answers that you've seen.

[1123] said in your TED Talk, which is cheating happens in open relationships.

[1124] What I'm saying, first of all, is that people crossing the boundaries has nothing to do with the boundaries.

[1125] They will cross the boundaries.

[1126] They can be opened, moved on this side or on that side.

[1127] Right.

[1128] Transgression is some seems to be part of relationship spirit.

[1129] I do not think that consensual non -monogamy is just as a matter of protecting oneself against infidelity.

[1130] It's not a protection device.

[1131] It's a philosophy.

[1132] It's a philosophy.

[1133] It's a, a way of thinking about the meaning of sexuality, the meaning of freedom inside relationships, the centrality of the individual within a relationship of people.

[1134] That's the concept.

[1135] You know, if this is not an important part of your life, then it's not a negotiation that matters.

[1136] Right.

[1137] And it is progressive in the sense that it says there cannot be a one -size -fits -all.

[1138] That's the more important piece here.

[1139] We need multiple models, not if this is the right model versus that one.

[1140] It's that there is a sense today that relationship are self -determined or determined by the people who are in it, since they're no longer prescribed by the social structure.

[1141] Then you need to think consciously about what that means, what are the implications for you, and at what stage of your life are you?

[1142] And maybe this is something that you find very attractive at 22, and not at 42, and then again at 62.

[1143] These things are not static.

[1144] We are not people who are either this or that.

[1145] And once we create a different ecology for this whole thing, then we can have many conversations about the fact that today, since people are free to meet others before, they are together, some people also want to experience the desire or the right to be free inside the relationship.

[1146] And for many people, that makes a lot of sense.

[1147] They want to create a partnership.

[1148] And that partnership is not just defined by the sexual exclusivity.

[1149] It's a much bigger story.

[1150] But you have an amazing quote.

[1151] I wrote it down because I liked it so much.

[1152] He said, affairs aren't always someone turning away from their partner towards someone else, but toward a different side of themselves, away from who they've become.

[1153] I'll let you elaborate on that.

[1154] I think it was really one of the great discoveries when I wrote the state of affairs.

[1155] I spent 10 years about exploring work.

[1156] I mean, this is thousands of couples here and abroad.

[1157] And the one word that people would tell me when I would talk with people who had been unfaithful, who had strayed, and they would say, I felt alive.

[1158] They didn't talk about sex particularly.

[1159] They didn't.

[1160] I felt alive.

[1161] I felt like I had reconnected with, first of all, my will, because by definition, when you stray, you are acting selfishly.

[1162] It's for you.

[1163] It's for nobody else, you know.

[1164] And I'm not justifying a thing.

[1165] But, I understood what they were trying to tell me, the power of the transgression, of having broken outside of their own rules.

[1166] And then, of course, you ask, why, why?

[1167] Because many of these people had been faithful for decades.

[1168] These are not chronic philanderers.

[1169] Why would you risk losing everything?

[1170] For what?

[1171] What made you do this?

[1172] And why now?

[1173] And that's when they began to hear this line that kept coming back.

[1174] It's not that I wanted to leave my partner.

[1175] I'm actually quite happy in my relationship.

[1176] know, there's lots of infidelities that have to do with the discontents of a marriage.

[1177] Sure.

[1178] Period.

[1179] But there's a whole other group of people that come in and say, I love my life.

[1180] I love my partner.

[1181] We have a great family.

[1182] Da, da, da, da, da.

[1183] And then, you know, it's not that I wanted to leave the person that I am with.

[1184] It's that I wanted to leave who I had become.

[1185] I was looking for parts of me that I just had lost and didn't know where they had gone.

[1186] It was years since I had felt this, that, whatever it.

[1187] was the specific.

[1188] I had been a mother for all these years, a father, a caregiver.

[1189] I've taken care of my parents.

[1190] I just felt like I was trapped or like I was lifeless.

[1191] That's what I mean by the erotic as an antidote to deadness.

[1192] That's it.

[1193] That's the definition here.

[1194] This is what they were highlighting.

[1195] Your mind goes immediately to my partner wanted that person.

[1196] They wanted that person more than they wanted me, but just knowing that in some cases, or maybe often, know, your partner wanted a part of them.

[1197] You know, this thing is very important because then you know what you need to do when you want to help people.

[1198] Phase one, if this happens, is that I have to acknowledge that I hurt you.

[1199] And then I regret hurting you.

[1200] Yes, it's about the remorse and the guilt for hurting the other person.

[1201] You've got to acknowledge that.

[1202] Phase two is you ask me, what was this about?

[1203] And that's when I understood that the meaning of the affair is what's at stake and not the details and the sordid facts.

[1204] Because then, of course, it will hurt me still, but it's very different.

[1205] Because if you tell me that, I can sometimes say, I too have had that feeling.

[1206] I just didn't do it.

[1207] Right.

[1208] I didn't give myself the permission or it would never have crossed my mind to hurt you in this way.

[1209] But the thought, the experience itself of longing, of yearning, affairs are about betrayal and violation of trust.

[1210] and they are also about longing and loss and yearning.

[1211] And longing and loss and yearning for what?

[1212] For intensity, for youth, for a sense of freedom, for reconnecting with possibility, for an ability to finally step out of one's own choking and all of that.

[1213] And that's much better for people to understand about their partner than to just think you wanted somebody else but me. Yeah, and again, many people that are, going through this right now won't have access to a great therapist or the means by which to pay for that.

[1214] So I just want to, I really want to double back on that.

[1215] So asking your partner, why were you attracted to her?

[1216] How good was the sex?

[1217] Was she better than me?

[1218] Was he better than me?

[1219] Did he have a bigger dick?

[1220] All these things.

[1221] Those are, do not go down that path.

[1222] No, because it keeps you awake the whole night and you will obsess and you will feel miserable.

[1223] And it won't help you actually understand what am I going to do now in my relationship.

[1224] But great questions are...

[1225] Why did this happen?

[1226] Why are you looking for it?

[1227] Is there something that you felt there that you just could not bring home?

[1228] Why do you feel like you could not tell me those things?

[1229] What was it about, you know, being with someone who was like that person that allowed you to do that?

[1230] Did you think about us?

[1231] How did you feel when you came home?

[1232] You know, because the assumption is, of course, that people are just having a great time.

[1233] No, often people are having a lot of complaints.

[1234] contradictory feelings.

[1235] They feel guilty, they feel ashamed, and they feel like they're having a divine intervention all at the same time.

[1236] It's a bit of a mind fuck.

[1237] This whole thing, it's not a simple plot, you know?

[1238] Yeah.

[1239] But when I heard you say, you're turning towards a different side of yourself, it kind of put into words something I experienced, which was, I've seen many times, I've said this on here before, but I've seen a lot of people in AA who are having a hard time getting any kind of sobriety think oh when my kid arrives my wife's pregnant when my kid arrives i will stop i will stop because i'll there'll be something more important than me and almost without fail it actually leads to more drug use and i never understood that from the outside so much until we had kids and i started feeling like oh my god my whole day is about everyone else and I started feeling like, I fucking deserve something.

[1240] I need a sliver of my life that's just for me. I found myself having these kind of desires to be high again that I hadn't had in 10 years.

[1241] And I was like, oh, I get it.

[1242] You just feel like you need something for yourself.

[1243] It's very childish on some level, right?

[1244] Because what you say is one of the most important things people get when I'm not talking about any kind of sex outside of relations, but I'm talking more about affairs now.

[1245] is attention.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] Attention, you know.

[1248] Interest in you.

[1249] Interest in you.

[1250] You know, patience, curiosity about you, non -just management ink kind of conversations.

[1251] You know, actually, who are you?

[1252] What are you?

[1253] The stuff that couples neglect in their relationships.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] Because they become little companies.

[1256] And that's why I often say, it's like if people took 10 % of the creative energy that they bring into their affairs and they brought them home, their marriages would be doing a lot better.

[1257] Yeah.

[1258] Because they can do it.

[1259] But they don't know anymore how to do it at home.

[1260] Obviously, they go to bed, you know, at 8 o 'clock at night.

[1261] The next morning they wake up and they go and they are able to give all of this.

[1262] They have a motivation.

[1263] And the question is, why is that motivation seeped out of your relationship?

[1264] Why can you put such attention there?

[1265] You can get all decked up for there, you know, and yet you come home and you're like a shell.

[1266] Well, here's what I find to be so heartbreaking about divorce.

[1267] I now have enough friends that are our age that have gotten divorced.

[1268] And I now look at what their life, what shape it takes on.

[1269] So in many of these cases of my friends, you know, the dad has the kids half the week and then the mom has the other half the week.

[1270] And I'll look at that and I'll go, isn't it heartbreaking that they had to separate so that each person could get three and a half days of their own life back?

[1271] And that they couldn't have just said, we got to figure out how to get a day or two of our life back within this.

[1272] Like now it takes splitting up to get that back, and that's heartbreaking.

[1273] And that's what you're up against.

[1274] Like, you have to prioritize it.

[1275] Or you'll get it, but it'll be waking up in the house without your kids half the time.

[1276] I think it's very interesting observation.

[1277] Now they can give that time to someone else.

[1278] Each of those people can give three and a half days of their week to some other person that didn't build all that with them.

[1279] And that person received that.

[1280] Yet the poor partner, that was never an option.

[1281] And it's sad, because I think in many of these cases, had those people had three days to themselves, they could have kept going.

[1282] But what it points out to, for me, is there is enormous conventionality and conformity on many people's marital relations.

[1283] It's an amazing thing in the age of entrepreneurship and people rethinking and disrupting everything.

[1284] This is one organization, one institution where there is not enough creativity.

[1285] And there is such pressure on not changing anything.

[1286] And if you try to do anything a little bit different, people instantly want to define it as well.

[1287] It's like your question, is it open?

[1288] It's like, you know, what category are you in?

[1289] You know, where do you position yourself?

[1290] As if these things are so set, we're not allowing people to explore, you know, take a month and do three days.

[1291] two days and see what happens, you know?

[1292] You hate family vacations.

[1293] Who says you have to go on vacation with three screaming kids in the back of a car?

[1294] A good friend of mine said that's not vacation, it's parenting in a different setting.

[1295] And it's funny because you feel a little bit like you're being a bad parent if you were to carve out that time, but I would argue the option is divorced then.

[1296] Is that a better parenting technique?

[1297] And it's an issue of the current sideguise around parenting.

[1298] And by the way, it never was called parenting.

[1299] It was called parenthood.

[1300] It was an identity, not a verb.

[1301] Oh.

[1302] You were a parent.

[1303] You didn't do parenting.

[1304] So here's the thing.

[1305] I used to say it around sexuality, but I think it's true on a broad sense.

[1306] If you need a happy couple to have an intact family, then what does the couple need to do?

[1307] It really needs to redirect some of the energy away from family and children to themselves and to do it without massive amounts of guilds, to do it because they actually know that the survival of the family will depend on their ability to redirect what I call the erotic energy to the relationship.

[1308] What is the erotic energy?

[1309] The kids get all kinds of new activities.

[1310] The adults, same old.

[1311] The kids get to wear all kinds of new clothes, but the adults, same old.

[1312] The kids get the latest play dates that, you know, the adults go on a date for their anniversary and their birthdays.

[1313] New games, new sports, new activities.

[1314] Imagination, curiosity, playfulness, novelty, exploration, discovery, all the stuff that fuels the erotic that makes you feel alive and energized is all deflected to the children.

[1315] And if you don't bring some of that back, the couple becomes just an organization unit that spends 90 % of its time talking about management.

[1316] Yes.

[1317] And then they look at each other and they just say, You know, we're not connected.

[1318] We are not intimate.

[1319] We never talk.

[1320] You know, who are you?

[1321] And they talk with their friends.

[1322] When they finally go out, they talk with their friends.

[1323] And they're fascinating people.

[1324] And then they go into the car and they talk about who's speaking up Johnny tomorrow morning.

[1325] And they become bored with each other.

[1326] And the sense on ennui sets in.

[1327] And then you are completely predisposed to the kindness of strangers.

[1328] It's just this one step of things that go.

[1329] You can literally see it unfold.

[1330] You know, you don't want to have sex.

[1331] Have it for your kids.

[1332] It's almost like that.

[1333] If you think, you know, on the long list of what they need, you should ask couple time, should feature of one of the things that your children need.

[1334] Yeah.

[1335] Well, I like the analogy of when you're on the airplane, they tell you put your mask on before you put your kids mask on.

[1336] So I think in that way, you're doing your kids a favor by making your relationship as good as possible.

[1337] Like in AA again, it's like, sorry, sobriety is going to be number one.

[1338] It's got to be above family because without sobriety, there is no family.

[1339] which feels counterintuitive, but without sobriety first, there's nothing else for us.

[1340] This is a very interesting thing.

[1341] At this moment, you have never seen a generation of parents that feels more guilty when it takes time for itself, can't find babysitters because nobody is good enough, doesn't leave the house, has taken two years before they ever had a night away.

[1342] I mean, it is really, the hierarchy has changed.

[1343] It's the child, is an unprecedented child's centrality that has reached an apex of folly, and it is really crippling to the couples.

[1344] Yes.

[1345] Oh, I'm sure.

[1346] I think this, the judgment on parent from other parents, it's the new steps of the church.

[1347] I couldn't agree more.

[1348] There's so much shaming going on.

[1349] And there's this, again, like religion, this spurious or erroneous idea that there's perfection to be attained, which there's not.

[1350] There's just aversion.

[1351] You know, you can try to be good as you can be, but there's no perfect doing this.

[1352] It's this combination between people have never had so many aspirations and then so often felt so bad about themselves.

[1353] Right.

[1354] Well, we're also doing it much more out loud now, right?

[1355] So my family vacation is there for you to judge.

[1356] It's on Instagram.

[1357] It's on Twitter.

[1358] It's on all this stuff.

[1359] So people are seeing sexual of your life that they wouldn't have normally seen.

[1360] It's not true.

[1361] When I say the steps of the church is because there has always been the central square of any village.

[1362] Anywhere you go in Europe, there is a central square.

[1363] And in that central square, you saw everybody and you knew exactly what was going on in every neighbor's house.

[1364] Uh -huh.

[1365] So people were always judged.

[1366] They were held accountable.

[1367] You could hear every fight in the neighbor's house.

[1368] Right.

[1369] So I think actually you have more of an ability these days.

[1370] While you have more of an ability to hide and while your friends can, how many of your friends divorced and you didn't even see it coming?

[1371] No, sure, sure.

[1372] I've had a few.

[1373] It was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, okay.

[1374] Yeah, that was impossible.

[1375] You know, that is incredible that people could live so isolated that you don't even know that your friends are on the brink.

[1376] Yeah.

[1377] That is completely new.

[1378] And at the same time, because you can be so isolated, people are pouring out everything into the public square.

[1379] Yeah.

[1380] I've had not everything, only the good stuff.

[1381] Curated version.

[1382] Yes, yes, the filtered version.

[1383] I have never seen a perfect marriage.

[1384] I'm a therapist for 35 years working with couples.

[1385] I have never seen a perfect marriage.

[1386] And I would like that we separate these words.

[1387] My friend Terry Ariel calls the cycle of harmony and disharmony and repair.

[1388] That's what relationships are.

[1389] Right.

[1390] You connect, you disconnect, you reconnect.

[1391] Yeah, and you've got to be patient.

[1392] that disconnect phase.

[1393] And you do it hopefully with a good sense of humor.

[1394] It will be very interesting to see where this is taking the future of relationships.

[1395] Yeah, I think we're in a big paradigm shift, to be honest.

[1396] I think there's going to be a lot of reevaluating.

[1397] You're seeing it, the numbers in New York women get married, you know, at half the rate they were getting married in the 60s, you know, people choosing to marry for the reasons you stated earlier.

[1398] Like, that's all, all that stuff is going to create a bunch of change.

[1399] That'll be pretty fascinating.

[1400] Now, I want to talk really quick.

[1401] Your, podcast where should we begin is really neat in that you're doing therapy you're doing couples therapy and you record it and there's so many things I'm curious about a that's so neat that we're allowed to experience that without having you know being able to book a session with you that's really interesting how does it come about how does a couple agree to be on the the podcast they are not my patients I do not mix the metaphors these are people who applied to Amazon to audible and they request to be on the podcast.

[1402] They come and they have a three -hour session with me in my office like I do all my first initial consultations.

[1403] Yes.

[1404] There are three hours.

[1405] And then I, as if I was doing a training tape, actually, for other therapists, I explain why I do what I do, what I was thinking, process of the therapeutic process, if you want.

[1406] And it is exactly how I would do it if I was preparing a tape for a clinical conference where I would teach my work.

[1407] So I wonder when you're reflecting back on it, how much of it is just like there was some intuitive stuff, some stuff was kind of, lots, okay.

[1408] Because I work with an approach much more than with a method.

[1409] Okay.

[1410] And I have a way of thinking.

[1411] I have a way of connecting the dots.

[1412] And I have a certain way of going non -linear when I try to understand what is going on here.

[1413] There is, of course, many decades of training and theories and understandings that are inside, but I'm not following a protocol.

[1414] I'm a little bit like a tailor and I do fittings and no two sessions are the same.

[1415] Uh -huh.

[1416] In a way, I'm inviting you to enter into the couple's therapy of another couple in a way that you never have.

[1417] This is everything that you never heard about this couple, of friends of yours, that they didn't tell you for years that you would actually be hearing.

[1418] I would imagine that's so comforting to hear that other people are struggling in the way we all struggle.

[1419] It's people say, on the one hand, hand, they've never, never been there.

[1420] They've never gone in the backstage of another couple.

[1421] They've never seen what happens behind closed doors.

[1422] And here they are.

[1423] And at the same time, sometimes they feel like it's almost uncomfortable like they're in somebody else's guess.

[1424] Well, it's been described as more of like a crime show investigation, which is really fascinating.

[1425] But you're right.

[1426] The only glimpses we get are hopefully a very well -written movie that feels real.

[1427] I mean, that's about as good of a glimpse as we get into other people's relationships.

[1428] That's exactly what it is.

[1429] You're listening so close to the details of another relationship and you actually see that you are in front of your own mirror.

[1430] Yes.

[1431] It's called Where Should We Begin?

[1432] Yes.

[1433] We have three seasons.

[1434] Season trees coming out very soon.

[1435] Look, I have always thought that if I could find a way to let people hear what happens in this room, I could teach and reach so many more people.

[1436] And now we've reached millions.

[1437] of them worldwide, and that is a dream come true.

[1438] Well, no one's teaching you anything.

[1439] The second you try to teach me something about me, I get defensive.

[1440] But if I can just observe you grow, I now can see the similarities and I can try things that are working for you, and I'm not really on trial.

[1441] There's some comfort in that.

[1442] And that's one of the more beautiful things, is that even when they listen to episodes that have nothing to do with things that have gone on in their life, they say in every episode there is something that I could take for myself, even when the circumstances were completely different.

[1443] The other thing that is really, for me, phenomenal is that we know, thanks to all the analytics, that probably more than 40 % of the listeners are men.

[1444] Oh, that's wonderful.

[1445] And that is fantastic.

[1446] I can't get any men to listen to this.

[1447] To this?

[1448] Yeah, this is all women.

[1449] It's a lot of women.

[1450] It's all women.

[1451] Okay, so now I have last two questions and they're just curiosities.

[1452] Since you do individual therapy have you ever fallen in love with a patient and you can't lie no i've actually never fallen in love with the client and i don't mean like did something yeah yeah yeah just found yourself going like wow i think i'm in love with no no no i've never had that experience because it's so intimate but the experience i have is i'm so i'm glad we found one another i'm the right fit for you And I know you have changed me as much as you may think I have changed you.

[1453] Uh -huh.

[1454] It's in that way.

[1455] I felt very honored.

[1456] But you've never been confused by that feeling?

[1457] No, no, no, no, no. It's a very, you know, I feel like, you know, when there's a fit, which is the most important thing for good therapy.

[1458] Uh -huh.

[1459] It really needs to be a fit between the client and the therapist.

[1460] And you know that it's a good fit.

[1461] It becomes artful.

[1462] And then you know that when you've changed somebody's life and you've really made a difference, but in the same way, you know that they changed yours because they trusted you, because they opened themselves up to you, because they shared with you things.

[1463] They allowed you in.

[1464] The mutuality, the depth of that reciprocity is really very moving.

[1465] It's like a creative partnership.

[1466] Yeah.

[1467] And do you ever feel the deep responsibility?

[1468] because I've had this experience while sponsoring guys getting sober.

[1469] I'm imparting on to them this information.

[1470] And as I'm doing it, I'm also telling myself, like, you've got to walk the walk.

[1471] Like, you're asking this person who trusts you to try this thing.

[1472] You had better be doing it in your life.

[1473] It's helped keep me. Totally.

[1474] Do you have that experience?

[1475] That I have all the time as a therapist and as a couple therapist.

[1476] I mean, I go home and I say.

[1477] Because you'd feel fraudulent if you're advising someone to communicate with their partner and then you go home and you just decide that I'd rather not get into it.

[1478] Then I said to my part, I said, you know, it's like, where are we?

[1479] Yeah, for sure.

[1480] So, yes, it's a beautiful way of actually creating accountability.

[1481] No doubt.

[1482] Yes.

[1483] No doubt.

[1484] But I will tell you something, though.

[1485] It's an interesting question because I will say that some of my best work days have been days when I felt completely down.

[1486] And why do you think that is?

[1487] I mean, I have an immediate theory.

[1488] in touch with the suffering.

[1489] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1490] I feel like I'm more in touch with the essence of life on those days.

[1491] Yeah.

[1492] And I'm less guarded myself.

[1493] And I have gone some, it's not always when I am actually holding myself by the standards that I try to acquire to others.

[1494] It's also on days when I actually feel like I have nothing to give.

[1495] Yeah.

[1496] And, you know, or I've just had a big fight myself or, you know, or I've just had a spat with a kid.

[1497] And I'm like, you know, and I'm thinking, oh, what, you know, what do I have to say about mothering?

[1498] You know, when I don't feel like, and yet those are the days when sometimes I feel like I'm the most able to offer myself to others.

[1499] Yeah.

[1500] So then my last fun question, which you just kind of touched on was, is it intimidating?

[1501] God bless Jack.

[1502] Is it intimidating to marry Esther Perel?

[1503] I mean, we've been together 35 years.

[1504] 35 years.

[1505] Yeah.

[1506] Oh, wow.

[1507] That's quite a number.

[1508] You know.

[1509] But Esther Beryl was esterreel from, you know, when she was 22 and then when she was 30.

[1510] So it evolves, you know.

[1511] I'm a regular person.

[1512] It's like...

[1513] I know, but I could see...

[1514] Let's say you're on the single scene.

[1515] Yeah.

[1516] All right.

[1517] Just for whatever reason, Jack, he's had enough.

[1518] He splits.

[1519] You're on the single scene.

[1520] We meet.

[1521] You're attractive.

[1522] You're funny.

[1523] And then I find out you're a relationship.

[1524] Oh, I never say that.

[1525] I might be like, oh, like we have a friend whose mother teaches tantric sex.

[1526] And I said to her, you know, I might keep that quiet for a while, just telling you as a guy, if I met a beautiful woman and she said, by the way, my mom teaches tantric sex, I'd be like, I'm too intimidated.

[1527] I don't know how to have tantric sex.

[1528] I'm sure your expectations are very high.

[1529] You know, maybe it's just something that comes out later in the relationship that this is where you come from.

[1530] And I just wondered, like, yeah, if it would just be a. an intimidating thing that oh man if this person's a relationship therapist i'm going to have to be like perfect or she'll know when i'm not being perfect or there'll be an expectation that i too will have to you know really walk the walk but it sounds like jack didn't he didn't have that fear or you weren't so regarded at the time 35 years ago no definitely i mean regarded no i was a i was a young girl i've not done squat yet i think it this is a question that would be very good to ask even to my sons.

[1531] It's like when you ask, when they ask that question, for them, they say she's my mother.

[1532] Yes.

[1533] And he will say, you know, she's my wife.

[1534] She's my partner.

[1535] And that implies when I do this, but I do, but it sees the full, the 360.

[1536] So you don't, but if you're on the street or if, I mean, and people come to tell me, you know, they recognize, you changed, you know, you helped me. You were really there at an important moment.

[1537] man, all you feel is thankful.

[1538] It's like it's so gratifying to do something for which you know, I didn't sell Coca -Cola or cigarettes.

[1539] I sell useful advice sometimes for life and you tell me that this was helpful and I feel like I'm relevant and feeling relevant is a wonderful feeling.

[1540] Doing something that has social value, that has purpose.

[1541] I didn't, I, it's not something that I was looking for but it is part of my profession, and it is one of the great things about my profession.

[1542] I don't have to introduce purpose.

[1543] It's just part and parcel of it.

[1544] Yeah.

[1545] And, you know, therefore, you can do this until your mind checks out.

[1546] Yeah.

[1547] Well, I love you.

[1548] I think you're fantastic.

[1549] I really am so happy you came.

[1550] I kind of want you to just tell us your last line of your TED talk because I thought that it hit.

[1551] We watched it in bed last and my wife and I, and she went, oof, at the last line.

[1552] Well, it's a line that I once came up with when one of the magazines asked me about my relationship, which I talk very little about because it involves another person who has not decided to talk about things.

[1553] I mean, you remember very clearly where I, you know, it's like a line when you know exactly the place you were when you said it the first.

[1554] And I just said, look, today in the West, most of us are going to have two or three marriages or adult relationships in our lifetime.

[1555] And some of us are going to do it with the same person.

[1556] I probably have been with Jack in three different ways.

[1557] And it just felt very clear.

[1558] And that line then became such a hopeful line when people would come to me, particularly in the aftermath of the crisis of an affair, where I would say your first marriage may be over.

[1559] Would you like to have a second one with each other?

[1560] Oh, I like it.

[1561] It's so sweet.

[1562] it's also subversively proactive.

[1563] Let go of trying to get back the thing you had and let's create something new because there's really no going back to what you had.

[1564] No, that's correct.

[1565] We got to mourn that.

[1566] We got to accept that.

[1567] And now we can go forward in some other direction.

[1568] That's right.

[1569] Well, thank you so much.

[1570] It's a pleasure.

[1571] What a pleasure.

[1572] Oh, and I also just want to say that you have a online workshop called rekindling desire.

[1573] It's astaireporell .com.

[1574] And what rekindling desire is, is basically me taking the, particularly mating in captivity and saying, okay, you read it, now let me take you and tell you what you can do.

[1575] Action.

[1576] So you can listen to it alone or with your partner and I take you to a whole series of exercises and so you can put it into practice.

[1577] And we all want to keep the flame going one way or another.

[1578] And this is one way that I can contribute to help you, you know, keep the flame.

[1579] That's great.

[1580] Thank you so much.

[1581] I sure hope we get to talk again.

[1582] Maybe Chris and I will come on with code names and to your podcast and let you analyze us.

[1583] That would be fantastic.

[1584] All right.

[1585] Bye -bye.

[1586] Wonderful.

[1587] Thank you.

[1588] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1589] The Year of the Facts.

[1590] Do do, do, do, do, do.

[1591] Wow.

[1592] I just learned that song.

[1593] Monica, I didn't know the song, The Year of the Cats.

[1594] Still don't.

[1595] I'm so impressed that that gentleman tackled a song entitled The Year of the Cat and pull it off.

[1596] It's almost impossible.

[1597] Well, why?

[1598] Well, let's just, let's workshop this.

[1599] So we're friends, hey, Monica, what's up?

[1600] Been working on a new song.

[1601] I think you're going to love it.

[1602] Oh, how long is this going to take?

[1603] I'm in the middle of laundry.

[1604] Oh, I just wanted to drop title of it.

[1605] Oh, all right.

[1606] Yeah, yeah.

[1607] It's called the Year of the Rap.

[1608] Oh.

[1609] Okay.

[1610] Sounds cool.

[1611] I don't know about rats.

[1612] Rats are a little bit off -putting.

[1613] Okay.

[1614] Well, I'm up to suggestions.

[1615] Maybe the year of the dog.

[1616] That's a little cliche.

[1617] It's a little on the nose.

[1618] Everyone has a dog.

[1619] The Year of the rabbit.

[1620] No, that sounds too horny.

[1621] The year of the cat.

[1622] Okay, I like it.

[1623] You know what's funny?

[1624] Out of all those, that's the title I like the least.

[1625] Yet in its execution, you had way rather hear it.

[1626] a song about the year of the dog.

[1627] But not the year of the rat.

[1628] Let's be honest.

[1629] We don't like rats.

[1630] No, we don't like them, but their life seemed very interesting to me. I know what the life of a dog and a cat is like.

[1631] I don't know what are rats doing.

[1632] Yes, you do ratatooie.

[1633] Oh, they're cooking.

[1634] That's right.

[1635] Rat tattooi.

[1636] Yes.

[1637] Oh, so anyways, I was about to tell you that I invented something.

[1638] Okay.

[1639] Okay.

[1640] I fancy myself an inventor.

[1641] I know.

[1642] I've never really brought anything to market or even a prototype, but I still like to invent.

[1643] my one that I thought was a billion dollar idea I've told you about a toothbrush that has your birth control pill built into the handle that way because people always remember to bring their toothbrush places and then you have to hold your toothbrush in the morning everyone brushes their teeth in the morning and then you would just remember to click one out yeah yeah billion dollar idea it's pretty good I don't know that everyone remembers to bring their toothbrush everywhere okay well just forget about that but you do use your toothbrush every morning right I have to yeah of course yeah so I I keep mine in my purse.

[1644] Your birth control?

[1645] Okay.

[1646] So that if for some reason I happen to stay the night out or something unplanned, I have it with me. If it was in my toothbrush, I wouldn't have it with me. It'd be at my house in my toothbrush.

[1647] Okay.

[1648] So great.

[1649] So I'm glad we're doing a little research.

[1650] So how about this?

[1651] My invention will come with two toothbrushes.

[1652] One you keep in your purse and when you keep it, you know, with your at your sink.

[1653] Okay.

[1654] You have two sets of birth controls?

[1655] Yeah.

[1656] You can't because insurance will not cover that.

[1657] You can only get one pack a month.

[1658] Okay.

[1659] Well, all right.

[1660] Well, you have some stuff to work out, but okay.

[1661] That's not even my invention.

[1662] That's a very old invention.

[1663] That's about 25 years old.

[1664] I could have been a billionaire by now.

[1665] You should have come to me 25 years ago.

[1666] Market research.

[1667] That's what I was looking for.

[1668] Okay.

[1669] So I clear my throat in the morning.

[1670] What I'm really doing is I'm clearing my lungs out, right?

[1671] And I have found that there's a certain frequency that helps me do that.

[1672] You've probably heard me do it around the house where I go, and I like, I go, with my, I add, I've now added that to clear it, right?

[1673] And there's a certain frequency that it'll just, it'll jostle everything loose.

[1674] Okay.

[1675] So my invention now is a little chest pack you'd put on that would have vibrations.

[1676] Of course, we'd have to monkey with a lot of different frequencies to figure out what rattles loose mucus in your lungs.

[1677] Okay.

[1678] and clears it all out.

[1679] It would just be a sonic vibration.

[1680] You put on your lungs while you have a cold and it would just break it all off.

[1681] What do you think of that?

[1682] Okay.

[1683] That's better than taking a pill, right?

[1684] You don't wrestle with a lot of chest congestion, so it's not as important to you.

[1685] That was my, how many people do we think this affects?

[1686] I think a lot, millions of people.

[1687] Okay.

[1688] Yeah.

[1689] And so you just put on this little chest thing at night and in the morning.

[1690] and it just has a few different frequencies to tackle different types of mucous on your cilia, and then you're completely cleared out.

[1691] How does it get inside and break it up?

[1692] Well, the sound waves penetrate, just like a sonogram would.

[1693] We just need a week of like trying different frequencies, and we can even test it on me. And I'll go like, oh, yeah, everything's, I'm wide open now.

[1694] Okay, I like to get a doctor involved.

[1695] Okay.

[1696] Well, we've interviewed a few.

[1697] Do you want to incorporate Topol?

[1698] I do you get Dr. Eric Topal on.

[1699] Or Sanjay, he maybe could help me sell this thing.

[1700] If we had a tie -in with CNN or something.

[1701] Yeah, you look great.

[1702] Oh, here's something fun.

[1703] So my mother -in -law texts me this morning to say that she worked with Dr. Topal.

[1704] Cool.

[1705] When she used to install pacemakers and he was a cardiologist at U of M. That's crazy.

[1706] What a tiny little world.

[1707] Wow.

[1708] Yeah.

[1709] Anyhow.

[1710] Anyhow.

[1711] Pester or Elle.

[1712] She was so fascinating.

[1713] Yeah.

[1714] I'm so glad we got her in.

[1715] real cute smile too and she would give that real full smile like if she'd actually be laughing sincerely it was just an adorable smile yeah she was wonderful okay so you said addiction affects maybe 20 % of people 19 .7 million American adults age 12 and older battle to substance use disorder in 2017 do you want to do fast math would you say how many 12 million 19 .7 so 20 million out of 30 It would be like 7%.

[1716] But I just read a different statistic.

[1717] I don't doubt I could find it.

[1718] This was on a reputable site.

[1719] I believe you.

[1720] I believe that the site said it and I believe you read it.

[1721] I also independently saw something a couple days ago from somewhere reputable that had that rate at like 18 % for addiction.

[1722] It's certainly a very hard thing for them to determine.

[1723] Yes, for sure.

[1724] About 38 % of adults in 2017 battled an illicit drug use disorder.

[1725] order of those addicts yeah if it's yeah that's true yeah so we can probably assume the majority of the rest is alcohol or exercise addiction oh I wonder if they are including no substance use to know okay okay okay I think that's low as far as people what do you think people with alcohol issues only 7 % well I assume these are people who have sought treatment.

[1726] Not people who are just addicted.

[1727] There's no way to know that.

[1728] I guess that's probably the difference between the two numbers you and I read.

[1729] But how could your person have ever known that?

[1730] Well, they could take a group of Pew Research could do a group of 10 ,000 people and actually interview them and ask them their alcohol consumption.

[1731] Then they could determine whether they thought that was addictive or not.

[1732] Yeah, but that is not necessarily true.

[1733] One person's amount is not the same as another person's amount for whether or not they're abusing, right?

[1734] Right, yeah.

[1735] So it seems impossible to get a real number, I guess.

[1736] I think you could get a sense of how many people are over -consuming.

[1737] If you're asking, like, how many drinks a week do you drink and they say five a night and then on the weekends 12, that's probably an unhealthy level of drinking.

[1738] Yeah.

[1739] But for another person who maybe has two drinks a night, but needs to have two drinks a night, that's still addictive and probably negative.

[1740] I don't know.

[1741] Yeah.

[1742] I just don't know.

[1743] She said that you can't normally experience pleasure if you are in a state of fear.

[1744] And I found that to be interesting and maybe untrue.

[1745] Because I feel like people get, like, titillated by fear.

[1746] Some people, yeah.

[1747] Mm -hmm.

[1748] Well, these people who love horror movies, obviously.

[1749] That's true.

[1750] I think there's, there's, when people have affairs, I think there's something about the fact that it's scary that is part of the attraction.

[1751] Uh -huh, sure.

[1752] I think people like that, like a little bit of danger.

[1753] The heightened stakes of it all.

[1754] Yeah.

[1755] Yeah, sure.

[1756] But whenever she meant something different.

[1757] Maybe.

[1758] Yeah, I wonder.

[1759] Because people have rape fantasies.

[1760] Mm -hmm.

[1761] You know?

[1762] Yeah.

[1763] And I guess if they coordinate with their partner some kind of like, I'm going to walk down this alley at this exact time and you pretend to be an assailant, obviously that's going to be mixing fear and pleasure.

[1764] Definitely.

[1765] Yeah.

[1766] I mean, she probably means that not in a fetish way.

[1767] Exactly.

[1768] I'm thinking she, yes, she probably just means if you're fearing for your safety.

[1769] Right.

[1770] But I guess that's what I mean.

[1771] Like, I don't mean in like a fetish way.

[1772] I think, well, maybe it's still a fetish in affairs to have that heightened thing and like it.

[1773] I don't know.

[1774] I just think that's kind of common.

[1775] Mm -hmm.

[1776] The affair thing, though, so yes, there would be fear associated with your partner catching you.

[1777] But if you were with the person you were having an affair.

[1778] fair with, you wouldn't be afraid that that person was going to do anything negative or harmful.

[1779] So would your fear be just about some other extraneous outside person and not the actual person you're enjoying the pleasure with?

[1780] Yeah.

[1781] Is that the delineation?

[1782] Maybe.

[1783] I don't know.

[1784] I don't know.

[1785] I've been sweating a lot I've noticed lately from my butt cheeks while I sleep.

[1786] Like I've been, you know, I wake up in the middle.

[1787] the night to pee so often.

[1788] And I've noticed that I'm, my boxer's shorts, which I sleep in, I'm sweaty.

[1789] Are you sure you didn't pee?

[1790] I'm positive.

[1791] It's definitely perspiration from my butt cheeks.

[1792] And I'm just wondering what's going on.

[1793] Well, it's gotten hot.

[1794] Yeah, but I have the air on in there.

[1795] There's really no reason for it.

[1796] And it feels new, like the last six months is a new chapter.

[1797] You probably are having a hormonal shift.

[1798] Maybe I'm like hot flashes, menopause?

[1799] Well, just any kind of shift can cause that.

[1800] Like, I get night sweats before my period, yeah.

[1801] Oh, okay.

[1802] And you sweat through your garments?

[1803] Not all the way through.

[1804] I'm not soaked when I wake up, but I'm sweaty.

[1805] Yeah.

[1806] I don't normally have that.

[1807] I'm not soaked either.

[1808] And let me just tell you the level of water that's involved.

[1809] Okay.

[1810] So when I walked to the bathroom and I return, There was enough moisture in the boxer panty to make them cool now, but they're not wet to the touch after that walk.

[1811] That's the level.

[1812] Oh.

[1813] But they're not, you couldn't ring them out.

[1814] But if you touched it, was it wet?

[1815] I don't know that I'd describe it as wet.

[1816] No, no. Okay.

[1817] Moise.

[1818] Is it sticky?

[1819] That's a great way to think about it.

[1820] Yeah, there is a little adhesion from the perspiration.

[1821] And then again, by the time I've peed and walked back, that adhesion is.

[1822] gone and now the boxer pant has dropped considerably in temperature okay yeah i think that you're about to start your period oh okay hormones cause sweat okay okay all right let me know if you pee okay because you know what you have if you peed i found out thanks to tumors on your spine a wonderful arm cherry that i could have spinal tumors yeah attention all arm cherries please don't suggest to Monica any kind of medical condition she has.

[1823] Do not listen because I need to know things.

[1824] What if that person saves my life or another person saves my life?

[1825] You'll be happy about that, maybe.

[1826] Of course as I will.

[1827] So she said that it's the lowest rate of sex ed that the U .S. has had in 20 years.

[1828] At present, only 20 states require that sex and HIV education be, quote, medically, factually or technically accurate.

[1829] Oh, boy.

[1830] I know.

[1831] What the hell?

[1832] Meanwhile, the definition of what's, quote, medically accurate can vary by state.

[1833] While some states may require approval of the curriculum by the Department of Health, other states allow materials to be distributed that are based on information from published sources that are revered by the medical industry.

[1834] The lack of a streamlined process can lead to the distribution of incorrect information.

[1835] Healthline and the sexuality information and education council of the United States an organization dedicated to promoting sexual education, conducted a survey that looked at the state of sexual health in the U .S. In our survey, which pulled more than 1 ,000 Americans, only 12 % of respondents 60 years old and older received some form of sexual education in school.

[1836] Meanwhile, only 33 % of people between 18 and 29 years old have reported having any.

[1837] To date, 35 states and the District of Columbia also allow for parents to opt out of having their children participate in sex ed.

[1838] Oh, geez.

[1839] So it's not a great state of affairs with sex ed.

[1840] No, no, no, no. I guess I personally don't understand everyone's crazy fear about talking to children about sex.

[1841] You can watch an animal show with them.

[1842] They see two lions fucking.

[1843] They have no problem with it.

[1844] They get it.

[1845] It's no big deal.

[1846] And then just because us humans are walking bipedal, it's an issue.

[1847] I don't understand everyone's embarrassment or timidity.

[1848] They're just embarrassed.

[1849] They're ashamed and embarrassed to talk about sex.

[1850] I don't get it.

[1851] Maybe they're afraid that the kids will start trying it if they know.

[1852] No, I think people scapegoat that.

[1853] I just think they personally are nervous and feel awkward to talk about it with their kids.

[1854] Maybe.

[1855] You can barely get adults to talk about sex to each other.

[1856] So the last thing you want to do is talk to a seven -year -old about it.

[1857] I guess.

[1858] I don't know.

[1859] I mean, I feel like people are talking about sex.

[1860] They're not.

[1861] We have friends.

[1862] We're like, have you talked about knowing they should never see an adult's penis other than dads?

[1863] No, that's a good idea.

[1864] We should do that.

[1865] Yeah.

[1866] You can say that to your kid at any age.

[1867] You should never see an adult's penis other than dads.

[1868] Yeah.

[1869] If you do, you need to tell mom and dad about it and you need to leave the room.

[1870] You know, like, that's for some reason a very hard conversation for people to have with their kids.

[1871] Well, I think they're not, I do think most people just aren't thinking about that.

[1872] It's not that they're actively not saying it.

[1873] I just think it's not.

[1874] I think every parent has a fear of their kid being molested.

[1875] I'm sure.

[1876] Yeah.

[1877] So if you have a healthy fear of your kid being molested, then you should be, you know, from day one explaining what that means.

[1878] Yeah.

[1879] I agree with you.

[1880] I just mean, I don't think it's at the forefront of people's minds, maybe as much as it is yours, because you experience that.

[1881] That's possible.

[1882] I don't think it's that.

[1883] I think it's either they feel awkward, bringing it up, or B, they think they think.

[1884] Oh, no, I don't want to tell them about the, I want to protect them from the world.

[1885] Like, I don't want them to know that we live in a world where adults sometimes prey on kids.

[1886] Sure.

[1887] I think that's a big element of it.

[1888] Like, it's too young to introduce them to that reality.

[1889] Yeah, I'm sure that's a part of it.

[1890] Yeah.

[1891] But I would argue it is reality.

[1892] You can choose not to introduce them to it, but you're just opening them up to be a victim of it.

[1893] Yeah.

[1894] The reality is the reality.

[1895] And it's okay.

[1896] It's okay to explain.

[1897] Some people are sick.

[1898] There's a lot of us on this point.

[1899] and some of us are sick and some of us abuse other people.

[1900] Yeah.

[1901] You know, I think that's good.

[1902] I guess, yeah.

[1903] And I do think people don't want to because just like they don't want to show them scary movies.

[1904] Like, then there's a fear you're sort of imparting that affects you because then they can't sleep and then they're talking about it.

[1905] They're worried.

[1906] That makes a lot more sense to me. Yeah.

[1907] Because first of all, it's fake.

[1908] The movie is fake.

[1909] It's been constructed to elicit fear in you.

[1910] So it's not reality at all, nor is a kid ever going to find themselves in a horror movie.

[1911] But they find themselves in reality all day, every day.

[1912] I just mean, I think they're worried about putting fear into their kids.

[1913] Right.

[1914] That will then affect them.

[1915] I mean, I think you're right.

[1916] I think the kids need to know as soon as possible.

[1917] Yeah.

[1918] But like when I was little, I was afraid of kidnappers.

[1919] and robbers.

[1920] I was afraid of real life things that were happening.

[1921] I mean, they weren't really happening often.

[1922] What percentage of children are molested in the United States?

[1923] Yeah, so here we go.

[1924] Center for Disease Control.

[1925] One in six boys and one and four girls are sexually abused before the age of 18.

[1926] So if you had a 25 % chance of your kid getting kidnapped, you would talk to your kid about that.

[1927] And what's funny is parents will talk to their kids about getting kidnapped.

[1928] Don't talk to a stranger.

[1929] Don't ever get into a card.

[1930] Don't accept candy.

[1931] Their odds of getting kidnapped are one in 10 million.

[1932] Yet their odds of getting molested are one in four.

[1933] So if you're going to prioritize what you're going to tell your kid about, you probably start with molesting.

[1934] That's an infinitely higher percentage that that could happen to them.

[1935] Yeah.

[1936] Yeah.

[1937] That's true.

[1938] You said 100, percent of us are going to have sex or 90 -something percent before we die.

[1939] According to the CDC, the average American who ends up having penis and vaginal intercourse does so for the first time around the age of 17.

[1940] This age has something to do with how stable your family is, peer pressure, personality, and according to a recent study, your genes.

[1941] But between 12 to 14 percent of adults age 20 to 24 have never had sex.

[1942] the number drops to around 5 % for adults age 25 to 29, and by age 44, only around 0 .3 % of adults report never having had the type of sex that could end in somebody getting pregnant.

[1943] Oh, so 99 .7 % of people end up having sex.

[1944] Yeah.

[1945] That's encouraging.

[1946] In the U .S. In the U .S. It says by contrast in 2010, 25 % of unmarried Japanese men over the age of 30 reported being virgins.

[1947] The trend is so prevalent There is now a term For late in life male virgins Yaramiso Oh, we're doing a lot of Japanese words We are, we're learning a lot of Japanese Yeah What was the one that sounded like Hiroshima?

[1948] Hiroshi?

[1949] No, where you...

[1950] Yeah, where you die suddenly of overuse.

[1951] From working too much.

[1952] I forget.

[1953] It's just yesterday and we already forgot.

[1954] Yeah.

[1955] This is stuff is not sticking.

[1956] I feel like Rob who's married to an Asian lady should know this.

[1957] Karoshi.

[1958] Karoshi.

[1959] Coroshi.

[1960] So, yeah, most people.

[1961] Good.

[1962] Most Americans, anyway.

[1963] Most Americans, yeah.

[1964] Chevrolet, apple pie, baseball, and coitus.

[1965] That's right.

[1966] I bet more people have sex in the U .S. than ever try apple pie.

[1967] Probably, yeah.

[1968] Yeah.

[1969] Or drive a Chevy or play baseball.

[1970] Definitely drive more than drive a Chevy.

[1971] Not very many people.

[1972] Well, how many?

[1973] I don't know.

[1974] Probably a quarter of people drive a Chevy.

[1975] A quarter?

[1976] Yeah, because it's one of the big three.

[1977] And America was largely dominated by domestic cars.

[1978] In the 80s, you would add like a 30 % chance probably of driving a Chevy before you die.

[1979] And people try different brands out.

[1980] They do.

[1981] Yeah.

[1982] I feel like most people when they find one, they like, one or two they like, they kind of stick in that.

[1983] Yeah.

[1984] You're also from an Indian family and they love Toyota Camry's.

[1985] They like Toyotas, yeah.

[1986] Just in general.

[1987] Camry's for sure, yeah.

[1988] Yeah.

[1989] Yeah.

[1990] Very, very good.

[1991] And Honda's.

[1992] They like Japanese cars.

[1993] Yeah, they're very dependable.

[1994] They are.

[1995] There's really no arguing that.

[1996] I'm trying to think, have I ever, I've only had Japanese.

[1997] I've only had Japanese, yeah.

[1998] When I met you, you drove a Honda CRV.

[1999] And then you switched to a Prius.

[2000] You went Honda, Toyota.

[2001] And I had a Toyota before that.

[2002] I had a Camry.

[2003] Okay, great.

[2004] And ever when you were in that car, did you hear the song?

[2005] I think I'm turning Japanese.

[2006] I think I'm turning Japanese.

[2007] I really think so.

[2008] No. I did not.

[2009] Really not once in either of those?

[2010] No. Shock.

[2011] You've heard that song though, right?

[2012] Yeah.

[2013] I sure have.

[2014] Okay.

[2015] I wonder if the author of the song, what was it?

[2016] The author of the song was a five -year -old kid on the playground.

[2017] Well, what was the catalyst of him feeling like he was turning Japanese?

[2018] I think it was something mean and bad.

[2019] You do?

[2020] Yeah.

[2021] Yeah.

[2022] Yeah.

[2023] what you do that's how you feel go on go on no it's it's just such a glass half empty point of view yeah it's a minority point of view yeah yeah it is i get it though i get that that's probably not the most optimistic way to look at it okay so we forgot a fact we forgot how many kids that lady had the lady who had the most amount of kids oh uh -huh and it was 69 Remember because there were 16 pairs of twins, seven set of triplets, four sets of quadruplets, and we were trying to figure out that math for too long.

[2024] Yeah, and I am dead ashamed to myself that I would forget the number 69.

[2025] Oh, that's true.

[2026] I mean, of any number, even Wabiwob, he created a combination for our T -shirt canon.

[2027] He was smart enough to make it zero, zero six nine, so I would remember it.

[2028] You're very predictable.

[2029] Although I can tell you something about that woman, she did not do much 69ing.

[2030] she did straight coitus it sounds like just to keep up we don't know how much foreplay they had well remember it said like she was property of him remember how outdated the uh it was old yeah like her name was like gal of mark or something yeah that's right that's right it was so it was uh poor lady yeah it was um handmaid's tale oh yeah well no because it kept being referred to as vizilias and his wife right is i think christian should start going by christin of dachs okay pitch that to her the next thing you see her sounds like that'll go over well um think i'll get some traction with that maybe you should go by dax of christin if she'll go by christin of dax i'll go by dachs of christin okay yeah quid pro quo oh okay so i don't know how factual this is i don't think we know but the emperor Gangus Khan.

[2031] Mm -hmm.

[2032] Oh, he's supposed to have had the most amount of good.

[2033] Yeah.

[2034] He said to have had as many as 3 ,000 wives.

[2035] Ooh.

[2036] And we'll never know exactly how many children he father, but it's estimated to be somewhere between 1 ,000 and 2 ,000.

[2037] I just don't believe it.

[2038] You don't, you think that's it?

[2039] If you have 3 ,000 wives, you should minimally have 3 ,000 kids.

[2040] How could he have had 3 ,000 wives?

[2041] No problemo, monfriar.

[2042] You're awake for 16 hours a day, you've got 3 ,000 wives.

[2043] There is 365 days in a year.

[2044] All you got to do is see nine wives a day.

[2045] So no problem.

[2046] So every hour and 45 minutes you visit one of your wives and have sex.

[2047] And that should be 3 ,000 babies that year.

[2048] Nine times a day you're having sex?

[2049] Yeah.

[2050] I don't think he could do that.

[2051] Even the Great Gangus Kong.

[2052] Maybe, but that sounds like, could you do that?

[2053] I don't know.

[2054] Okay.

[2055] I mean, is that a challenge?

[2056] Because I don't want to do it.

[2057] Sure.

[2058] Let's, yes, consider that a challenge.

[2059] Okay, she couldn't remember the date of the no -fault divorce laws.

[2060] And my aunt is a divorce attorney.

[2061] So I asked her.

[2062] She said, the first no -fault divorce law was introduced in California in 1970.

[2063] California's law signed by then -governor Ronald Reagan, was followed by similar laws in many.

[2064] states in the 1970s and early 80s.

[2065] Today, all states except New York offer some form of no -fault divorce.

[2066] Oh.

[2067] Yeah.

[2068] Okay, great.

[2069] So that's something.

[2070] Now, does your aunt, is she tiring of all your fact check requests?

[2071] Or is she liking that this is an opportunity to check in a lot with you?

[2072] I think she likes it.

[2073] The latter.

[2074] I haven't asked her anything in a while.

[2075] If it was every time, she'd probably get annoyed by that, understandably.

[2076] So, yeah, it's just enough.

[2077] Well, I don't.

[2078] Well, I don't think you could ask me too many questions.

[2079] Thanks.

[2080] Yeah, I wouldn't get annoyed ever.

[2081] You've got a top knot pony today.

[2082] Well, just half up.

[2083] Yeah.

[2084] It's new.

[2085] You hate it?

[2086] Not at all.

[2087] No, I'm just observing.

[2088] I'm when my voice got really went up.

[2089] Well, it's because I worked out and so my head is kind of sweaty.

[2090] I haven't showered.

[2091] I bet it feels like my boxers in the middle of the night.

[2092] Oh, maybe.

[2093] Like not wet, but damp.

[2094] There's some dampness.

[2095] Okay.

[2096] Yeah.

[2097] And I bet now that you've, unspooled it, it's going to drop in temperature quickly, like my boxer pants.

[2098] It'll probably make me feel ill. Oh, I thought it would feel refreshing.

[2099] No. If my head felt cool right now, I would love it.

[2100] But not like in a damp way.

[2101] Right.

[2102] That's not good.

[2103] No one wants that.

[2104] What are you going to do about your sweat?

[2105] Just see what happens, I guess.

[2106] Okay.

[2107] You know, time heals all wounds.

[2108] I can't imagine when I'm like 80 years old and I have a paper thin skin and stuff that I'll still be sweating through my boxers.

[2109] No, your hormones will probably level out by then.

[2110] I wonder if I'll start putting a mat down under where my butt cheeks are when I sleep so that I don't soil my sheets in bed.

[2111] Are they getting soiled?

[2112] I don't want to ruin my sleep number.

[2113] Oh, not.

[2114] Or your brook linens.

[2115] Is it the diaper you're wearing?

[2116] Oh.

[2117] No, if I had a diaper, I wouldn't probably, it would just sop up all that moisture.

[2118] I wouldn't even feel it.

[2119] another reason to wear a diaper.

[2120] Oh, boy.

[2121] I'm going to put my money where my mouth is on this.

[2122] Okay.

[2123] I'm going to try it.

[2124] Wear it.

[2125] Yeah, try it.

[2126] Maybe I'll make it 2020's resolution.

[2127] Great.

[2128] I'd say go for it.

[2129] Wait to all this travels over.

[2130] Yeah, sure.

[2131] I imagine my diapers would take up a bunch of my carry -on.

[2132] That's true.

[2133] That's, although I could get them in the city I landed.

[2134] What am I talking about?

[2135] Although, if I'm buying, depends all around the country right out in public, Like maybe there'll be a story and some gossip mag about me that I poop my pants or something.

[2136] So I do have to watch my P's and Q's.

[2137] Yeah.

[2138] She said in nine countries, if you're a female who's unfaithful, you could get stoned or burned.

[2139] So I actually read 15 countries.

[2140] Also, India's top court has ruled adultery is no longer a crime, striking down a 158 -year -old colonial era law, which had said treated women as male.

[2141] property.

[2142] That's great news for my motherland.

[2143] Okay.

[2144] Look, I succumbed to stereotypes just like anyone else.

[2145] And it's funny because sometimes, like, I have this notion of what India is and what the folks there are.

[2146] And occasionally there's stuff that's just totally incongruous with what I think about, India and Indians.

[2147] Okay.

[2148] Like that brutal raping of the girl on the bus.

[2149] I was like, that does not feel like India or Indians.

[2150] And to hear that they were property up until a minute ago, that doesn't feel like them either.

[2151] I mean, it's positive what I'm saying.

[2152] I have a really high opinion of India and the Indians.

[2153] So I don't like when I hear stuff like that.

[2154] I'm like, wait.

[2155] But you know that?

[2156] Like a long time ago, husbands would buy wives.

[2157] Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[2158] I guess they were technically property at that point.

[2159] If you paid a few cows or something for somebody.

[2160] Yeah.

[2161] Generation Iron 3, which Rob McElheny was talking.

[2162] talking about with me, we both love this series.

[2163] It's a documentary series about bodybuilders.

[2164] And this one really took a global view of the sport.

[2165] And there was a man from India that was going to compete for the first time.

[2166] And he didn't place very well.

[2167] He's enormous, but he didn't have the level of definition that they're requiring to take a trophy.

[2168] But then it was pointed out afterwards, the guy's a vegetarian.

[2169] Right.

[2170] That's something you just don't think about when you think about an Indian competing on the world stage for bodybuilding and can't eat meat.

[2171] Yeah.

[2172] That's a huge part of those bodybuilders diets.

[2173] In fact, those things, half the documentary is watching these guys eat food.

[2174] Oh, it's crazy.

[2175] They'll eat like nine chicken breasts for breakfast.

[2176] Oh.

[2177] They're eating, you know, dozens of chicken breasts a day.

[2178] Wow.

[2179] Yeah, it's crazy.

[2180] Yeah, what's he eating?

[2181] Did they show?

[2182] Well, no, they didn't.

[2183] But when I'm watching it, you know, you go into it thinking, like, well, I could never be that because I can't work out that hard or that much or lift that.

[2184] But fuck that.

[2185] When I watch it, I go, I couldn't eat like that.

[2186] Yeah.

[2187] I couldn't force myself to eat 700 grams of protein.

[2188] I would die.

[2189] Yeah.

[2190] That seems to be the hardest part of the whole endeavor.

[2191] The whole thing sounds awful.

[2192] Yeah, it's really funny.

[2193] You know, I used to think that the reason I watch these was because of the muscles that I just love looking at muscles, which is certainly a part of it.

[2194] But really my conclusion after this third one was no. I'm interested in the subculture and how uniquely, and I'm going to use the word bizarre, but not in a pejorative way.

[2195] Yeah.

[2196] What a bizarre and unique lifestyle choice it is.

[2197] It's one of the most out there lifestyle choices, anyone on the planet's making.

[2198] And that's actually what I'm interested.

[2199] Do we think it's control?

[2200] Yeah, I mean, I would have to imagine, yeah.

[2201] I think that's the only explanation that it really is people who need a sense of control.

[2202] And it is the most controlled.

[2203] endeavor.

[2204] I mean, you're going to talk about measuring your food.

[2205] Yeah.

[2206] What time you work out, what supplement, what time you take the supplement, all that stuff is crazy.

[2207] We're all freaks.

[2208] I just think we all are.

[2209] Even the people that think they aren't, they are seeking control in some way and getting it.

[2210] We would like to be able to control the world around us.

[2211] Yeah.

[2212] It's scary.

[2213] A lot of variables in the world.

[2214] Yeah.

[2215] So anyway, back to this legality with adultery.

[2216] Right.

[2217] Adultery is considered illegal in 21 American states still, including New York.

[2218] Although surveys show that while most Americans disapprove of adultery, they do not think of it as a crime.

[2219] The criminal statutes remain in force for largely symbolic reasons and there isn't enough enforcement risk for anyone to incur the political cost of repealing them.

[2220] Well, this was that super fascinating episode of More Perfect, the Supreme Court series that, who puts it out?

[2221] Radio Lab.

[2222] Radio Lab.

[2223] More perfect.

[2224] It's an awesome podcast series about the Supreme Court in landmark cases.

[2225] And one of them was down in Texas and these two guys got arrested for sodomy.

[2226] And it really went through what's going on with laws like this.

[2227] So in all these states where they might have like an anti -adultery law, right?

[2228] To get that off the books, the state legislator would have to take it out.

[2229] So there would have to be a representative that would, that would, that would, that would, that, would be his or her cause, and they would take it onto the floor of the legislative body and amend it.

[2230] There's so little incentive for someone to take on a cause, like, let's get rid of the sodomy, Laura, let's get rid of this.

[2231] So what happens is they just stay there because no one's going to take that cause.

[2232] And then they, yeah, and then the unwritten agreement is, or unset agreement is they don't enforce it.

[2233] Yeah.

[2234] And then what, what some of these like ACLU groups or other groups are are hoping for is that someone actually gets tried with this crime.

[2235] So that was the case in this fascinating sodomy case because they, in fact, were not committing sodomy, but they had to kind of go along with it and pretend they were just so that it could go to the Supreme Court and they could banish sodomy laws altogether on the judicial side.

[2236] Right.

[2237] Yeah.

[2238] Yeah, it's such a good podcast.

[2239] All the episodes are so good.

[2240] Two seasons, I believe.

[2241] Yeah.

[2242] Or maybe three.

[2243] I mean.

[2244] Maybe three.

[2245] But check it out.

[2246] We love it.

[2247] Check it out.

[2248] Okay.

[2249] So you said a couple times that parenting is thankless.

[2250] It isn't thankless.

[2251] I mean it in the most literal sense.

[2252] They don't ever turn around and say thank you for giving me a bath.

[2253] Thank you for brushing my teeth.

[2254] Thank you for making me dinner.

[2255] It is in the most literal way.

[2256] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[2257] It goes completely unappreciated.

[2258] Yeah.

[2259] Women in New York are getting married at half the rate they were.

[2260] in the 60s.

[2261] Ooh, half the rate.

[2262] Well, that's what you said.

[2263] Oh, in New York City.

[2264] That's what I said.

[2265] Women in New York are getting married at half the rate they were in the 60s.

[2266] Oh, okay.

[2267] That's too high.

[2268] It sounds like.

[2269] Well, I don't know.

[2270] I mean, I looked it up and I didn't really find specific New York.

[2271] But the Great American Marriage decline is a drop from 72 % of the U .S. adults being wet in 1960 to half in 2004.

[2272] Oh, wow.

[2273] So in the whole country, yes.

[2274] Half.

[2275] Oh, wow.

[2276] I don't know about New York.

[2277] It could be even more.

[2278] Yeah, the article I was reading was just about New York.

[2279] But wow, that says a lot.

[2280] Yeah.

[2281] It says it's usually chalked up to gains in women's rights and the normalization of divorce.

[2282] But this article was saying it also has to do with men.

[2283] Well, I don't think men ever wanted to get married.

[2284] They just knew they had to if they wanted kids.

[2285] I don't know.

[2286] The cliche that I feel like is a little bit.

[2287] is I feel like it's generally the woman's waiting for the dude to ask.

[2288] Yeah.

[2289] You know, I've yet to hear a dude be like, I just wish she'd ask.

[2290] Yeah.

[2291] Or be open to it.

[2292] Well, I mean, that's the whole, the woman's not supposed to ask, supposed to in old -timey days.

[2293] Old -timey days.

[2294] Well, that was weirdly a question the last time I was on Ellen when I did ask Dr. Das.

[2295] Oh, what happened?

[2296] This woman said, like, I'm waiting.

[2297] what should I do?

[2298] And I'm like, state your needs.

[2299] Ask him to marry you.

[2300] If you doesn't want to, and you think that's a deal breaker, then find someone who wants to marry it.

[2301] Like, don't wait for someone else to give.

[2302] If this is for her, if that's a big thing, then do it.

[2303] Oh, this is just a talking point.

[2304] We talk on this episode a lot about infidelity and people might not like this word, but overreaction to it.

[2305] And it reminded me of Paul Bloom.

[2306] He's a psychologist.

[2307] I heard him on Sam Harris.

[2308] He's been on Sam Harris a few times.

[2309] But he talks about betrayal bias and how when people are feeling betrayed, there is a skewed sense of reaction to that.

[2310] Yeah.

[2311] And I think in the context he was talking about, wasn't it about the difference between dying from, a traffic accident versus a doctor who purposely misdiagnosed you to give you a treatment.

[2312] Yeah, he was talking about, specifically, yeah, specifically a case where one doctor was purposefully making people go to chemo.

[2313] To chemo, yes, exactly.

[2314] And people died.

[2315] And people died.

[2316] But his point was if they die of cancer, they're not mad.

[2317] No one's mad.

[2318] Right.

[2319] But the fact that someone's.

[2320] hand was behind it, then there's a person to, you know.

[2321] Well, in its simplest, most ridiculous example, this is my opinion, you look at the amount of money we put towards terrorism over the last 9 -11, 18 years.

[2322] Yeah.

[2323] It's in the $5 trillion range.

[2324] Yeah.

[2325] Versus how much the government spent on cancer, it's a very easy way to go, oh, there's something emotional going on because one thing killed 3 ,000 people over the last 20 years.

[2326] And the other thing killed 60 million.

[2327] Right.

[2328] And we put all of our resources into the thing that killed 3 ,000 instead of 60 million.

[2329] Yeah.

[2330] Well.

[2331] There's something bonkers going.

[2332] There's some dissonance there.

[2333] And for someone who's lost two people from cancer, I'd say get over our emotional attachment and fucking attack the things that kill the most of us.

[2334] Yeah.

[2335] I agree.

[2336] But in the doctor case, we trust doctor.

[2337] inherently.

[2338] Like they're supposed to protect us.

[2339] That's their job.

[2340] We could walk in there feeling like they're going to do everything they can for us.

[2341] So then when they don't, it feels extra painful.

[2342] Because I think because then people feel like they got got.

[2343] Well, in my theory on that is it's already so hard for humans to be vulnerable.

[2344] And you are vulnerable with a doctor.

[2345] You go to a surgeon, you go, I trust you to open my body up and take care of me. Yeah.

[2346] And so when you're vulnerability is betrayed it's a double whammy and that's what happens in relationships is you're vulnerable with somebody and you feel like that person now has to walk a line yeah because they have your vulnerability in their pocket yeah so if we just practice being way more vulnerable to everybody the stakes of that one person seeing your vulnerability would go down I would hope that's probably true yeah well I liked her and I liked her message a lot were you at all thinking the whole time, or is this just my dirty mind?

[2347] Like, has she cheated on her husband?

[2348] Oh, interesting.

[2349] Because she has such a clinical, disembassioned, enlightened view of it.

[2350] View of the whole thing.

[2351] Yeah, no, I didn't think that.

[2352] I think she's just seen a lot of couples and a lot of people have come in with problems and she knows she can't demonize them because she knows them.

[2353] Yeah.

[2354] It's hard to demonize a human.

[2355] when they're in front of you and they're a person.

[2356] Well, specifically a psychologist's main promises they're not going to see, make a judgment on you, right?

[2357] Yeah.

[2358] Yeah.

[2359] But, and I don't mean that I was thinking she did or didn't cheat.

[2360] I just got extra curious if she had ever.

[2361] Yeah, that's interesting.

[2362] Yeah.

[2363] No, I hadn't, I didn't think about that.

[2364] I assume she does what she said, which is not put all her edge.

[2365] in her husband's basket.

[2366] She probably does do that, and I'm sure he does that if they are on the same page.

[2367] Yeah.

[2368] You know, so I'm sure it makes their marriage better.

[2369] Yeah, she's not expecting him to be every single person.

[2370] Right.

[2371] Well, I liked her.

[2372] I'd like to talk to her again.

[2373] Me too.

[2374] Let's bring her back.

[2375] Should you and I go on to her show for therapy?

[2376] Sure.

[2377] Okay.

[2378] That would be fun.

[2379] All right.

[2380] I love you.

[2381] I'll see you at Esther's.

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