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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Whatever the reasons for cut-offs, I think they are among the most impactful measures that you can do to a family system. And the way I know it is because there is not a family that I've worked with that when this has happened, even in the generations before, doesn't tell it to me within the first three minutes.
Hi, I'm Kate Langbrook, and my guest today is Esther Perel. Esther is one of the world's most influential relationship therapists. She spent decades helping people understand love, desire, marriage, infidelity, intimacy and family. Her books have become international bestsellers. Her TED Talks have been watched by millions.
And through her podcast, Where Should We Begin?, she's invited us into the private conversations most people only have behind closed doors. What makes Esther's work so compelling is that she doesn't just talk about relationships.
Chapter 2: Why do parents struggle to accept their child's partner?
She talks about relationships as a reflection of the culture we live in, the families we come from, and the people we're trying to become. And lately, there's one story that seems to be playing out everywhere. We've watched it happen publicly with Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz, with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
An adult child falls in love, chooses a partner and suddenly finds themselves caught between the family they came from and the family they're trying to build.
Chapter 3: How can falling in love feel like a betrayal to family?
The details are different, but the tension is familiar. What happens when your parents don't approve of the person you've chosen? What happens when a partner enters a family and changes its dynamics forever? And why can choosing the person you love sometimes feel like betraying the people who raised you?
Today, Esther and I are talking about loyalty, family, love, estrangement, and what happens when our most important relationships collide.
Chapter 4: What challenges arise when a partner enters a family?
This is Esther Perel. Esther Perel welcome to no filter thank you it's a great thrill to have you here it's a pleasure for me to be here well let us see at the end who's been pleasured but i was thinking about you and and um really your contribution to, I think, a public analysis of relationships that is at once very personal for people. And I was thinking about your heritage.
Chapter 5: How do loyalty and intimacy conflict in relationships?
You come to us from New York, but via Belgium. And my dad, who is Dutch, was married in Belgium.
Mm-hmm.
He married my mum and he would always say, oh, the Belgians are very unusual people, he said. They have the practicality of the Dutch and the romance of the French. And I think that that is kind of attendant in your work, do you think?
But my origins are not Belgian. Uh-oh. My origins are Polish. Ah.
So I could probably... Like post-Holocaust.
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Chapter 6: What impact does family estrangement have on individuals?
Yes. Right, yes.
So my parents arrived as refugees to Belgium from Poland and were refugees for a good five years in Belgium until... they became nationalized. But I think that the metaphor holds. I definitely had the practicality. And I am from the Flemish part of Belgium, but I did absorb a lot of the French culture as well, the Latin romance part.
You know, the big difference between Belgium and Holland is that one country is Catholic, the other is Protestant. Ah, yes. And that also influences.
Right, yes.
Chapter 7: How can couples navigate family disapproval?
And because the Catholic have the flamboyance, I guess, even in their worship that the Protestants do not have.
Correct.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah, quite austere. Yeah.
I mean, Dutch people like to go to Belgium when they want to go out. Yeah, when they want to have a good time. Because part of it is about, you know, a certain joie de vivre, an abundance, rather than the more sober.
A freedom. Yes. So you brought, I think... that freedom to what previously I think a lot of people would have thought as quite a dry science, the science of psychotherapy.
I mean, I've never thought of psychotherapy as a dry science. I am steeped in it.
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Chapter 8: What strategies help maintain family relationships amidst conflict?
I still am a practitioner today. I keep myself close to the craft and my feet on the ground. And I think it's an endlessly fascinating occupation and preoccupation. So maybe what I have done that...
I was 35 years in my office and I was teaching and practicing and I felt at a certain moment that I wanted to lower the walls of the office and I wanted to bring to the public the insights, the revelations, the conversations that take place in this closed room and that most people have no access to. I wanted to also democratize it and bring it into the public square.
And I did that with the podcast, Where Should We Begin? Which is basically one time anonymous therapy sessions, consultations with couples and individuals now as well. Kind of, you'll be a fly on the wall and listening on what are the dilemmas of other people, because when you listen carefully to them, you will actually see yourself.
And then I decided not just to lower the walls, but then I thought I want to get out of the office. And I began to speak in public and do lectures and tours. They're not lectures, they're really interactive experiences. That's how I came to Australia the last time I was on tour here.
And I went to a bunch of different cities, and right after the pandemic, right when people began to come out of lockdown, and it was a most moving experience, because for many people, it was the first time that they were back In public. And with other people. With other people. The intimacy of that. It was two things. One was for them to be back, close by, sitting.
I mean, for so many years, we had seen every person as a potential contaminant. And now we were back, you know, allowing the nervous system to let people come close to us and not instantly go into... a fight or flight. And at the same time, I also noticed how much people in Australia had listened to Where Should We Begin during lockdown to the podcast.
And so they had a whole relationship with me, a parasocial relationship with me, where they felt like I knew them in some way. And that gave a whole different tone to the evenings because people had questions that are way beyond what are the typical questions asked in the public.
Like what sort of questions?
It's a question, it's a depth of question. You know, if I trust you and I know you have a good sense of me because I've heard you do it with somebody else and that you understand my dilemma, that when I ask you, should I stay or shall I go? Or how do I know that I am not repeating a pattern? Or how much can I learn to build trust again when it has been broken?
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