In another "My Favorite People" episode, Trevor sits down with Esther Perel. This time around, Esther reflects on her early life experiences and how those experiences have shaped her life and career. They also discuss the importance of “friction” as an essential element of a life well lived, and why we should all maybe be hanging out at the laundromat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the unique insights from Esther Perel's early life?
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In New York, you ask people how you are and they often tell you I'm behind.
Yeah, they tell you what they're doing, I find. I find that's the biggest change, is when I'm in New York or when I'm anywhere in the US, if I ask somebody, and I notice it most glaringly when I come back from South Africa. If I ask somebody, how are you or how are you doing? They'll often tell me what they're doing. You know, so I'm really busy. And that's even how people ask me questions.
So what are you up to? What are you up to these days?
What are you doing?
What are you doing? What are you? What are you? What are you? It's all about that. And as I say, when I go back to South Africa, it's all how are you?
In fact, if I go home and I start to talk too much about what I do, people don't like it. It's like you're not there to talk about yourself so much and put yourself in the center. You're there to participate in a collective experience in what we are creating together, the afternoon, the lunch, the walk. There's a clear distinction between talking about work and talking about life.
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Chapter 2: How does friction play a role in relationships?
Correct.
Yeah.
Of course, whose bachelor party was this? Oh, what do you mean? This is the most common thing. Of course. It's like, you know, people are like, bachelor party. It's actually more common in the US. I don't think I ever got invited to a bachelor party at a strip club in South Africa.
Not, what do they do?
I think it's more of a, you have what we call a braai, like a barbecue, and you hang out. But I don't think it's a, it's funny actually, now that you're asking me, it isn't seen as an ending of a life. Does that make sense? So I find a lot of American bachelor parties are, well, this is the last time you get to explore sex and craziness and eroticism and all of it. So you better enjoy it.
One last ride.
That's right. You're about to enter the marital cell.
There you go.
And your monastic life.
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Chapter 3: What impact does technology have on our relationships?
How do you find the balance between that and living life with a reckless abandon that causes danger to you and others? Because some things scare you for the right reasons, don't they?
Yes, of course.
Like when you were hitchhiking, you didn't go with that one person because something scared you in some way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you always want to keep judgment. You have a healthy dose of skepticism. You don't believe what everybody tells you.
People will say this in different ways. They'll be like, go to the thing that scares you. And then I've like, I mean, you know, and I've been public about this, but I always think to myself, I go, I wish my mom was a little more scared of domestic abuse. Because then I wonder what it would have changed in my family. And I talked to her about this, you know.
And I'm glad I spoke about it publicly because people have even spoke about it publicly as well. Now with me, they go, yeah. When do you allow the fear to control you or to inform your decision? And how do you know when it's a good fear, when it's a bad fear? Like,
This is, you don't always know. I mean, you have a sense, you look around, you ask other people for a reality check. When I am very worried about things, I ask for a reality check. I also know that in my stomach lives a real long history of fear and that I can have very strong reactions there. you know, to situations. But I also know that the legacy of this precedes me.
And then what do I do with it is a different thing. But I think when do you know if your fear is valid? It's a fear. So what helps you with fears is grounding yourself in reality. How do you trust reality? Generally, it helps to have other people around you to help you. You know, is what I'm seeing what you're seeing too? I mean, it's a check. And the check is not always done alone.
You're not always the best person to actually know. Or at least for yourself, you can be perfectly perceptive for others. But for yourself, you don't necessarily know because you sense a lot of things.
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Chapter 4: How can we navigate uncertainty in relationships?
And they'd be like, that can't be right. It seems like slavery. It must have been slavery. Why would they do this? But that purpose is...
But it's purpose with the spiritual dimension. It's purpose with the transcendence.
Oh, yeah, definitely, which is, I think, the most powerful.
It's not only a pragmatic purpose.
Yeah, I think we're erasing it with a lot of technology. We're going, you don't have to do it. I'm sure you've seen this, and I say this to my friends all the time. One of my best friends just had twins. And him and his wife have gone through this whole journey now of finding a nanny and finding this and finding that.
And I remember laughing one day and I sat with them and I said, do you ever think it's, do you ever think of how funny it is that we live in a world that has tricked us into living alone, but then buying our community back? You know, you're buying every element of your community. Who is a babysitter? If not your sister, your friend, your uncle, your grandparent. Who is that sort of babysitter?
By the way, I didn't even know that was a concept growing up for me as Trevor. Because it's people. People babysit. Your ride to the airport. There's no Uber. It was whoever. Esther, can you take me to the airport? Esther goes, oh, I don't want to take you to the airport. But I guess I have to take you to the airport. But you know what I think of?
I'll take you next time.
I think it was Scott Galloway who says on one of our episodes, which I really loved, he described it as garbage time. I mean, I know you wouldn't be so crass as to say it that way, but I appreciated what he meant. He said it wasn't the moments where he had planned magic where magic happened. It's when he didn't. And I think of that airport ride with your friend. You hate the friction.
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Chapter 5: What is the importance of community in today's society?
I have dreams. I have aspirations, Esther. I want to go hitchhike. I want to go hitchhike. I don't care that I'm a robot. I also have dreams. I want to see what the world has for me. A little frisson, you know? And then I wonder, what are we going to do when we get there?
I can't go as far, but I do know that we are relational creatures. That's part of the purpose. I mean, sometimes you do things that matter to you, but sometimes what matters to you is related to how it affects others.
Oh, wait, say that again, please.
Sometimes you do things that matter to you, but it's exactly your image of the soccer. I kick the ball, but that ball will actually have a future that is determined by how other people catch it.
Oh, I like this.
It's the same image.
Can I tell you, Esther, I'm just noticing there's a huge gap in sports relationship psychology, and I think you could...
No, no. I'm so bad at it. But you gave me a good image.
No, but I'm serious. If we could find like a gap, I think there's a lot of people, men stereotypically, yes, who love sports, who I think would be able to see relationships and like psychology in a different way if you applied it through that lens. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How does Esther Perel define relational intelligence?
There's a loss of social capital that people have no one to turn to in a time of crisis or to confide to, that friends on social is not the same as friendship in life.
Yeah.
And all of that, I mean, there is really an impoverishment of connection. And at the same time, we know that emotional health… is essential to overall health. So you can't separate the changes in relationships with the kind of mental health issues that are emerging that are connected to the questions of longevity. I mean, these things are, to use the word we keep coming back to, interdependent.
So how do we get people to relate to each other more, to have more connection, to come out of their house, to go to the laundromats of this moment? I think it's really the question that all the people who work in my field are currently questioning.
So I haven't studied any of it, nor do I think I'm an expert. But if I was to throw in an amateur observation, I would argue there are two things that I think are contributing to it in a major way. I was with my brother and we're sitting, myself, my brother, and one of my best friends, and we're sitting together in front of the TV. And my friend, he goes, I want you guys to watch the show.
And he puts the show on and the three of us start watching. And then my brother goes very quickly. He's 20. He goes like, man, this is boring. I think his exact phrasing was, this is ass. That's what he said, actually. And my friend said, I don't care. We're going to watch it. Just watch the episode. It's really, it's going to get good. And I'll never, my brother went like, I don't know.
And he pulled out his phone. And then he went immediately. He was just on social media. And I'm sitting there. And then we started speaking about it, which was fun. I said, man, do you realize how crazy it is that there was a time when you couldn't do what you just did?
And not only could you not do it, I argue it would have made the evening a little bit better because you would watch the thing that we're watching sometimes because your parents are watching it because the TV's on it, whatever it was. And because of that, you were connected, even if you were connected in the thing that you didn't like, which I know seems like a paradox, but you were.
So at the end of it, you would go, that was boring. But you had experienced boring with us, as opposed to experiencing entertainment alone. And that's the first part I think of. I know that as Trevor, I can sit here and pontificate and sort of romanticize a laundromat. Oh, this beautiful. And then someone will say to me like, yeah, so you can afford to spend two hours.
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Chapter 7: What lessons can we learn from Esther's experiences?
So, you know, sometimes we go that person is bad because this happened. We don't think to ourselves that happened because of what they did, but their goodness or badness isn't really part of it. The algorithm was an example of this.
When they originally made a lot of these algorithms, they designed the algorithms to maximize getting people's attention and to keep people engaged, which seems like the right thing to do. regardless of the product you're making, right? So you have a restaurant. No, no, make the food taste as good as possible so that people will enjoy the food. But we also know there's balance.
You can also fill the food with cocaine. People will really enjoy the food, but what is the outcome going to be? And now things like food have a longer history, a longer tradition. So if you talk to somebody who's cooked and knows their food, they will tell you through the history of that food that people learned why not to add this or why to add that.
Oh, because then over time it does this to you, right? Digestion, moods, you name it. Tech, I think, is still, because it's in its infancy, it doesn't have the legacy of 400 years where you can trace it through and say like, ah, yes, that is why this algorithm exists like this. It doesn't have four centuries of knowledge. So they went, it's all about attention.
Let's make it attention, then people will love it. But then the attention was what they call like the car crash attention economy. People pay attention to car crashes. People always look at a car crash. Almost no one can ignore it. The algorithm then went, oh, that gets your attention. So more car crashes, more car crashes, more car crashes, more car crashes, right?
And so they talk about how the algorithm then did its job indiscriminately and put us in the position a lot of the position that we're in are not completely it's accelerated a lot of what we're experiencing and so now this there's this new idea of creating an algorithm the other way around and so for instance the other way around being being it's not about a car crash
We won't feed you what will keep you hooked in a negative way. We won't show you the opinion that is going to inflame you the most. We won't show it. No, we will connect you with the people who you know and who you follow, which seems like a small thing, but apparently it's big.
A lot of people follow people that they don't ever see because the algorithm has determined that it's not as interesting. Yeah. Strangers are more interesting. New is more interesting. In fact, some of them, you would love this. I'll send you some of this work that they've shown.
Some of the social media sites would even not show you your spouse or partner on your feed because they've realized people very seldom interact with it because you know them. However, it will show you your ex or... This is one you'll love. It will show you the person that your partner is lingering on. Do you get what I'm saying?
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