Esther Perel

Are you attempting to see others?

Or are you just busy with the reflection on yourself?

But next thing is when I say that a relationship is more than just the feeling.

A relationship is an encounter with another.

It involves ethics.

Hmm.

And that ethics is about responsibility and accountability.

And that is missing here.

It's what are you doing for me?

Are you giving me the safety I need?

Are you giving me the spark I need?

Are you providing?

And this is romantic consumerism in which those aspects, not that the items themselves are not super important, but the approach to it.

What makes you feel not safe?

What makes you doubt the quality of the bonding?

Yes, people have often connected because they had shared loss, shared grief, shared the experiences of destruction, of natural disasters, of wars, of displacement, of course.

I mean, why does that have to be called trauma bonding per se?

You know, there may have been something traumatic in it, but there is also maybe we bonded on our experience of revival.

We bonded on how we process these experiences.

We bonded on the meaning that we gave to all these losses.