How to Find, Build & Maintain Healthy Romantic Relationships | Esther Perel

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  We enter relationships both to find ourselves and to become someone new

  Perel says everyone carries dual needs: security and freedom, togetherness and separateness. We are often drawn to a partner who embodies a part of us we want more of, or have disowned. The irony is that the trait that first attracts us later becomes the source of conflict, because we want change, but only up to a point and on our own terms. Her example: you love a partner's stability and punctuality, later call it rigidity, and your own wish to become more reliable quietly disappears.

• 02

  Cornerstone and capstone relationships ask for different things

  Couples who meet in their early 20s build a 'cornerstone' relationship, forming identities together. People who meet a decade later have usually defined themselves, so the partner is a 'capstone' that confirms an identity. Young couples risk crisis when each starts changing individually and the shared 'vest' feels too tight; later couples must generate the energy to merge two finished lives.

• 03

  Many people will have two or three marriages, sometimes with the same person

  Perel argues Western adults now often have two or three relationships or marriages, some with the same partner if the relationship keeps redefining itself. Huberman ties this to Erikson's lifelong developmental stages. It is creative redefinition, not just surviving crises: the goal is a relationship that is alive, not merely 'not dead'.

• 04

  Curiosity is the opposite of reactivity

  Reactivity creates rapid, narrow cycles of defense, attack and blame. Curiosity is an active engagement with the unknown, and both agree it works best without attachment to a particular outcome. Perel's work is largely about moving couples from reactive to curious. That is hard because a hurt, defensive body is wired for shutdown and self-protection, which works against what the person needs psychologically.

• 05

  Couples confuse their story with the facts

  Perel calls much of couples' arguing 'pseudo-factual talk': each person's account of last night is valid as an experience but is still a subjective rendering. She compares two partners' versions to Swiss cheese, where everything one leaves out is exactly where the other's story begins. Implicit memory from earlier life drives the conscious narrative, and our need for coherence can push us to decide that if I feel hurt, you must have meant to hurt me.

• 06

  Conflict has three 'verb states'

  Under threat, couples fall into three patterns: both pursue (fight-fight escalation), both withdraw (flight-flight), or one pursues while the other distances. In her example, one partner follows the other through the house feeling the silent treatment of childhood, while the other feels invaded, as they did in a chaotic family home. At that point their younger selves have taken over. The first step is to shift from the story to physiology and feelings.

• 07

  Apology is between two people; forgiveness is your own freedom

  A real apology acknowledges how the other person felt, not just that a mistake happened. Some people can't accept a sincere apology because accepting it would seem to shrink a big grievance. Perel cites the Jewish tradition of apologizing three times, after which the burden passes to the person who refuses. Accepting an apology is still not forgiving. Forgiveness happens on your own timeline and can happen alone.

• 08

  People who can't apologize usually struggle with shame

  Quoting a friend, Perel defines self-esteem as being able to see yourself as flawed and still hold yourself in high regard. If admitting a flaw means something is wrong with you, saying 'I'm sorry' becomes nearly impossible. She separates shame from responsibility, and real empathy from 'empathic distress' that stays focused on yourself.

• 09

  Love and desire can feed each other or pull apart

  Combining love, security and erotic desire in one relationship is, in Perel's words, the grand experiment of modern love. For some people the two are inseparable. For others they are split, often because they learned to love with extra burden, for example by parenting a depressed or alcoholic parent. Desire means owning your wanting, and that is hard to reach next to someone you feel anxiously responsible for. Drawing on Michael Bader's work, she calls this one of the more common patterns.

• 10

  Affairs are often about finding another self, not another partner

  Perel says she has seen plenty of infidelity in happy relationships. Some affairs respond to loneliness, neglect or sexual rejection, while others have little to do with the partner. The word she hears worldwide is 'alive': the erotic, which she defines as vitality, curiosity and playfulness rather than sex, acts as an antidote to deadness. She is explicit that this is not a justification. Affairs still involve betrayal and lying, but also longing and loss.