Esther Perel

What does it really mean to be a neighbor? It's just everyday people, you know, it's just people who are retired, they have a couple hours in the afternoon, so they're gonna do patrols. And it's people who are, you know, real estate agents, you know, driving around like trying to track how ice is moving and alert neighbors when things are not safe. The rise of mutual aid in times of crisis.

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That's this week on Explain it to Me.

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I got in the water in the very early morning before the sun had risen and the water was pitch black. I started swimming and I felt the water hollowing out around me and felt like something really big was swimming below. I'm Phoebe Judge and this is Love, a show about the surprising things that love can make us do.

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Hi, come up. Welcome to Fashion Neurosis. Esther Perel, can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes?

1:15

I am wearing a suit, dark red, burgundy color suit that was made by my friend Diane Van Furstenbergh and the top is by another friend, Neely Lotan. So I'm basically dressed by my friends.

1:33

That's so nice because as a designer I always feel like we want to have our friends backs and literally we kind of have your back by covering you and cladding you. So it's nice that you, you're clad by your friends.

1:56

And then I thought you have a dark green couch. So I thought, what would I enjoy wearing over velvet? Dark green. And that's when I decided dark red.

2:17

Yeah, it's lovely. I've never seen one of Diane's suits. Actually. I've always seen the dresses.

2:34

And we're both Belgians, you know.

2:39

Oh, yes, I'd forgotten that. Yes. Because I remember I met Diane many when I was in my early 20s and she was always incredibly friendly. And then the first time I came to New York in the 90s, 1990, I think, and she invited me out. She took me out as to a gala as her date and came and picked me up in a green, dark green Jaguar. And she was wearing a cat suit. And it was such a, you know, it's like one of those kind of experiences from a romantic novel like Miss Princess Daisy or one of those kind of sexy thrillers. Anyway, she was, she was great. And you're a world renowned sex and relationship therapist and your book Mating in Captivity Unlocking Erotic Intelligence had a huge effect on how I approach relationships. Now, and I've listened to you read it at least 20 times and wow. The first people I heard talk about you were all men, which I was really struck by. And I wondered why you think men trust you.

2:43

I actually have asked them that very question, so I don't have to guess. And I have asked it to them because I've had the privilege of being invited in a number of men groups, sometimes for three days at a time where I am alone with 60 men, sometimes another group that would meet for five years, once a month. And I went there five, six times. And the first thing that stood out, that I found very moving was she's not angry. I approach men with fondness, kindness, like women I have had, and I don't know, I love my brother, my father, my sons, my husband. I'm surrounded by men in my life. But primarily I think I have a. What is called a male friendly approach in my thinking. I didn't design it as such, but I. I think that I like to take ideas that circulate in our culture and. And then to topple them and to see what's behind this and what if it actually wasn't nearly just that? And how does that affect young and old and people of all genders? And that's it. I like them. I'm not angry. I know when to be suspicious. I know when to be open. And I have an approach in my ideas that is quite open, friendly, and understanding of the predicament that men often find themselves in in the context of relationships.

4:01

Yeah, yeah.

5:45

For example, typically people who say, you know, they have it easier, they have it easier. That's one way of two that one can hear. And I often think that in the realm of intimate relationships, for sure. No, I would say in realm of relationships and in general relational life sometimes, and sexuality, I would say when things are bad for women, they are often worse for men. If there are certain things women can't talk about, men talk about them even less. Why? Because masculinity is often a more fragile identity. It's an identity that is often hard to acquire and easy to lose. So that is a countercultural idea. The typical norm is to think there is male power because we are in patriarchy. And there is. Absolutely. But there are other parts to that story too.

5:48

Yeah. Because there was something that you said, I think, in your conversation with Stephen Bartlett about there's a certain phrase that doesn't exist for women, including losers. Women aren't. We don't have that. But there was another emasculated yes. Yeah.

6:46

Emasculated emasculation doesn't exist in the feminine. You can't take that identity away from you. You can soil it, you can violate it, you can hurt it. You can do a lot of very bad things to it. But in its essence, it is so biologically rooted as well, that it is not. You know, when you talk about, you don't hear, be a woman. You hear, be a man. Show me that you're a man. Prove to me that you're a man. Masculinity is often conjugated in the imperative, you know, and if it has to be constantly proven, maybe it's not that solid in the first place, but we think of it as, this is the solid identity. This is the known continent. And throughout history, the feminine has been seen as this mysterious, unknown continent. I think there is that. But there is also a way in which men have to prove their manhood, and they can easily lose their manhood. And in that sense, there is a vulnerability to that. They are powerful often, but they are often much more busy with the powerlessness and the fear of losing the power than with the power itself. And this doesn't replace what we typically think. This adds yet another perspective. When people said, men buy the book and then they give it to their female partners, I really relish that, because this was a book that could so easily be a book read just by women, as is often part of the relational labor that women have to do. So they have to read these books. And maybe because of a certain understanding of sexuality. I think my thinking about sexuality encompasses other perspectives that the field of intimacy has in the professional sense. As a couple, therapists have been quite feminized in the past 20, 30 years.

7:04

Because when I came to your work, I was also struck by your glamour and beauty. And you make it enticing and alluring to know yourself and what you want. And my therapist is a handsome man. And I also wanted to see if I could be honest with a man that I was attracted to. And are you aware of that happening with you?

9:13

Such an interesting question. It depends on the people. I've had people who want to impress me, but it's men, women. I've had people who want to make sure that they are interesting, that I don't get bored with them. That's your question. Right. It's patients who come to me and want to see if they can be open with me.

9:39

Yeah.

10:03

And given that I'm a woman and.

10:03

Direct and somehow this. I mean, there is this thing that made me Trust you even more on top of your brilliant insightfulness and your kind of genius at fathoming things out, that you make it so you're so beautiful that. Does that bring an extra kind of channel of communication?

10:05

I don't think about that for a split second when I enter a session that I know it is there probably on some level, but it is so not what I think is happening. I think men will talk to me because I'm not instantly scared of what they're about to say, because I'm not judging them, because we are talking often about stuff that. Let me put it to you this way. When a woman comes to talk to.

10:34

Me.

11:06

It matters a great deal. And I, at the same time can sometimes think she has already said this once to someone else. Many, many of the male patients that come to me and I have had many men in my practice for a long time. I often think that when they say something, they're saying it to themselves for the first time. Not just to me, but to themselves. And that is a very precious moment because it's not something that they have had the habit of doing. This type of introspection and confidence in opening up to someone else. And because I work on sexuality and because I have worked on transgressive sexuality and infidelity and the parts, the shadow parts of ourselves that most people don't talk to other therapists even. I mean, they can go for 10 years to therapy and never address any of this stuff. I think that's what creates the flow and the fluidity more than the look. If I look the way I did, but I said other things, I don't think it would make the openness continue. It's what I say and don't say. It's how I respond. It's how I get faced or unfazed that invites the opening up.

11:09

Yeah, yeah. And your family owned clothes shops and the main way you got to spend time with your mother was by working in the shop. I read. And how did she dress?

12:30

Clothes were very important in my family, period. Everybody, everybody dressed well. It's not just my mother. My mother was extremely elegant, dressed beautifully. But so did my dad and my brother and I mean, we lived with clothes. I lived above the store. And from the moment I could talk, I was basically expected to come and work and help in the store. I spent hours watching people buying clothes. Hours, I mean, countless, when I would just sit in the shop because the store was open from 9am to 9pm Friday and Saturday and to 8pm the rest of the week. So if I came home from school at 4, I had a good chunk of the afternoon after doing homework or playing or this or that, to actually go downstairs and just sit and watch. I watched the thousands of people come in in every shape and form, every background imaginable, and who would buy clothes and confide, as I'm doing now, to my mother, father, and to the salespeople in the shop. So it was a fantastic anthropological experience.

12:44

And when did you first think that clothes could be a tool in your life?

14:00

When I was nine years old, I needed a dress to go to some event, and my mother and I went to the shop, another store in the street, a children's clothing store, and she wanted to buy me a dress. And I absolutely did not like that dress. And she said, but that's what you should be wearing. And I said, I will not wear it. And at that moment I bought another dress that I did like. And so I bought, or she bought, basically the one she wanted, but I got to have the one I wanted. And honestly, I never wore hers. And I thought that was my first victory where clothes were the weapon.

14:07

That's so good, because I never forgot that one, actually. No, it's really interesting. And also because you said no one could ever insult my brain, body, clothes, or choices more than my mother.

14:52

And I felt she would sew my dresses too. Really?

15:07

Gosh. Because when I read that, I felt even more connected to you because you seemed so free from the tyranny of that critical voice as well. And I had a mother who never paid me any compliments. And I still remember her saying my legs were big and it was like she'd put a sort of curse on me. And. And I wondered what was your tactic for self protection and whether you ever dressed to invite disapproval as a defense strategy.

15:10

But the fact how you act doesn't necessarily translate in how you feel. I could resist and wear what I liked and, you know, by the age of four, I was working in the shop. By the age of 4, 5, 6, and all the way up on Friday, my father would travel to Brussels from Antwerp to pick up the merchandise, and I would accompany him and we would do hours together and we would go from the wholesalers from one to the other. By the age of 12, I begin to accompany my brother who goes to Paris, and I go with him in the Marais and in the Sentier, and we go to the wholesalers. And there I start to get clothes. Now I can begin to buy stuff that is going to enter our own Store. And often I would listen to what she had to say. It's not like she had exquisite taste, but she wanted me to be a certain kind of girl. And I didn't think that that was the girl I wanted to be so she could give me compliments. This looks good. This doesn't. But the interesting thing is that if you have a very critical parent, you can resist, you can fight back, you can show your autonomy. And that doesn't mean that it doesn't enter intravenously under your skin.

15:45

Yeah.

17:06

And still inhabits you. So I was both rebellious and self critical.

17:06

Yeah, basically, yes. I definitely. I, you know, I was like that too. But I. It seems like your mother focused on you more and my mother sort of neglected me. So it was so mysterious. Like where was the direction? There wasn't any. And. So when she did comment on me, it was like a kind of bomb went off and it just created this huge distance between us. I just sort of.

17:14

You reacted or you went silent.

17:46

I. Yeah, we had terrible fights. But. But I just became incredibly withdrawn from her. And that never really ever returned. I mean I was never. It never happened. You know, I have well dispositioned towards my mother who died.

17:49

And the wall never came down.

18:10

No, no. It was like I cut my heart off from her. I didn't trust her not to hurt me sort of by mistake somehow or other. And you've advocated friends being mother figures. And I found men can be mother figures too. And I wondered, you know, when you're used to having a critical mother, what actions feel like mother nurturing. And I wondered if your father was a mother figure.

18:13

I've never called him a mother figure, but he was. My mother was a mother figure too though. So she was very. She was at the same time nurturing and attentive. But she wanted me to be in her image. That was more the fight for us. And I had a different idea of who I wanted to be, which I actually think was closer to who she was. My. My dad was the kindest man on the planet and strong at the same time. Very strong. And I definitely. And he was not critical and he was not particularly judgmental and. And he basically did what he wanted to.

18:43

And.

19:33

He often was in between us. He was a peacemaker between us. But I enjoy tremendously spending time with him. One of my favorite activities with my father for many years was going biking every Sunday and getting purposefully lost.

19:35

So great.

19:51

So that we had no idea anymore how to find our way home.

19:53

You both got purposefully lost?

19:57

Purposefully Lost. Oh, that's so years.

19:59

That's so moving and touching. How lovely.

20:02

But, you know, I also. I think it's very interesting how with age and with. You also begin to rethink. My mother was probably more critical and judgmental and the boundary setter and the disciplinarian. Because my dad didn't do it.

20:06

Yeah.

20:25

I mean, so she stepped in and he did. Not only didn't he do it, but he didn't always necessarily back her either. So I do think that we had a triangulation going on. It wasn't just he was kind, he was the good one, she was the tough one. I think when you begin to look at the way relational systems operate and how people are put in positions, because that suits the other one, not to have to take that role, you become actually more understanding and more compassionate towards the tougher parent. My mother taught me to sing. My mother taught me to dance. My mother, in a way, taught me to dress. There are a lot of things that I. I carry from her at the same time, but she also taught me to be judgmental.

20:26

Yeah.

21:15

Of myself.

21:15

Yeah. My mother was. She taught me about being courageous. I mean, my father was really courageous, but he had, you know, he had agency and status and she had no money or any of those things. But, you know, when I. The times when she was most complimentary to me was if I was saying, I'm going off into the. Somewhere really dangerous, and then she'd be flooded with kind of admiration and love towards me. But, you know, it was kind of. It was like in a Greek play, you know, I was going off to sort of fight in a war and be killed. And that was how to get her. Her love. So it was delicate. But in your work as a therapist, do you ever get an emotional clue from a patient depending on something they're wearing?

21:17

You get many clues. You get many clues. I mean, clothes are, in many ways, they're a language unto themselves. And they say so much about a person. The person who enjoys getting dressed, the person who inhabits their clothes, the person who puts stuff on, but they are disconnected from whatever is on their skin. The person who has a. Has made it a real statement of their personality. The persons who are irreverent, like Diane, that we were mentioning before, there's such a statement about her and how she dresses, and it's a whole image that comes with it. Every profession has its codes of clothing as well, and every culture. I mean, clothes is like. It's a huge piece of an individual, but mixed with the collective imagination mixed with the time in, you know, the moment in time. I saw the seasons change because of clothes. The windows would change when a patient enters the first day. I always look at them, at them. The whole. How the body moves. How the body moves inside the clothes that it is wearing, top to bottom. How much people put just something on in order to just not be naked and get out on the street, versus how much people dress. Yeah, it's a different.

22:10

Yeah, it is. I mean, I notice it obviously very much. But all your background with clothes I want. You must have an extra radar that you can. Some sort of extra information when you see how somebody prepares to come and see you. I suppose.

23:44

I mean, I have used clothes as part of therapy. It's not just that I look, it's that I understand that some people don't know what to put on, and I understand that. I mean, I remember one of the most moving things I've done, helping somebody pick a pair of frames.

24:07

Oh, really?

24:24

Just, you know, because the glasses and the frames and the spectacles had been such a. An impediment in the experience of this person about themselves. And instead of having these glasses feel like they distort the whole face, we began to think, what if they could become a statement about the face? And we just one day looked at frames together, and that was the session. And then to try them out and then to kind of turn the thing I would love to take off into the thing that I want you to all notice, to reframe the frame.

24:26

That's brilliant. Because that's everything that clothes have to offer. And in fact, you've talked about risk taking. And what I love about your style is that you don't seem to have a muted, professional version of yourself. And I wondered, how do you dress to keep risk alive?

25:07

The first years that I practiced, I was dressed the way that I understood. American society wanted therapists to dress, which was completely muted. But I didn't really know how to do that. But I did try to play down, as we say. I thought the point is to become neutered and gender neutered and sexually neutered and aesthetically neutered and kind of effacing with. The whole idea of the therapist is not. Is a blank screen. And that changed after a few years. I think as I became more confident as a therapist, I basically allowed myself to dress at work the way I dressed outside of work. I mean, they used to be totally separate for a good 10 years. Not just, you know, then you become more confident in your work. And you kind of have a sense that the me that is there can also go here. And it's not because I don't wear the right pair of shoes that I'm going to be looked at differently. It doesn't matter anymore. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do here. And then I began to, I remember vividly making statements. I'm going to wear what I wear outside of work when I go to work. I don't know if it's very risky, but it's, It's imaginative. I explore, I play. I, I think that I remember the first time a patient said goodbye to me after and wanted to give me something and gave me a pair of earrings. And then I realized, you know, I don't spend time looking at myself. I look at them, but they look at me. And for years they had paid attention to my earrings. And at the time I wore very big earrings. And then they thought that that's something for her kind of thing. And I realized through the earrings how much they had paid attention to what I wear.

25:29

Yeah, I love noticing what my therapist wears. And I was thrilled when I noticed he was wearing a Margiela jumper because you can see the four tacks in the back of the neck. And I thought, yes, you're the right person for me.

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Last month, Nora Mabey, a reporter in Montana, was looking around on Facebook for story ideas. In Montana, particularly in rural areas, Facebook is where a lot of news is shared. And a post from the local sheriff caught her eye. He said that Border Patrol agents had rocked up outside of business in the very small town of Freud, Montana, to take someone in and that he, the sheriff, was trying to assist them. But then at the end of his post, he added this. It's important to note that this man was not a threat, not a danger to his community, has no criminal history and has been a great member of this community, which I just haven't seen a statement like that from law enforcement, particularly in a really, you know, conservative area that typically has a lot of support for all types of law enforcement, Border Patrol included. Coming up on today explained the story of Freud, Montana, a town where most people voted for President Trump and how residents reacted when reaction today explained drops every weekday. Hi, everyone. This week on on with Karis Fisher. I'm joined by the iconic actor and activist Jane Fonda.

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You've heard of her.

28:58

Jane and I talked about her roots as an activist dating back to the 1970s when she was protesting the Vietnam War, to her ongoing fight for climate, free speech and ultimately our democracy. Here's a taste of of what she had to say.

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Hope is very different than optimism. You know, optimism is everything's going to be fine and you don't do anything about it. Hope is a muscle. Hope is when you fight, hope can be rage filled. Breaking down the door with a battering ram.

29:13

This is a wonderful conversation. I am privileged to be able to talk to people like this. Jane Fonda is the bomb. She just is.

29:32

She's always been that way.

29:39

She remains that way. She will go down in history as that. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts and search for us too on YouTube and be sure to follow on with Kara Swisher for more.

29:40

And was there anyone when you were growing up that you thought had really great style that you were influenced by?

29:52

No, not particularly. I would go in the store and basically I would ask, what's new? What are we wearing this season? And then I would try things on and the salespeople would kind of come and look at me and say this, yes, this, no, this suit. You know. And I became very accustomed to having a third eye because I don't think I can see myself always well, but I see others well.

30:02

Yeah.

30:30

So I love to have somebody's eye and say this is the right one or try it this way. And that's how I learned. And I would read, you know, I looked. What did we do then? We looked at magazines and we turned the pages of the magazines and so. Oh, that, that I didn't have a model. One model that jumps at me right now.

30:32

It's interesting that you had so much kind of, everyone was so interested in clothes and that makes them much more accessible. And in my, when I was at school, we went to a Steiner school and it was really, it was so shaming to be interested in clothes. And the idea of clothes, was it proficient? Yeah, it was really looked down on.

30:58

And smart people don't look at clothes.

31:22

Yeah, I mean they weren't even smart, you know, they were just sort of narrow minded really in their particular philosophy that they followed. But it made the whole idea of clothes, which are so useful and such a useful tool for confidence or anything, a source of shame. And I did a lot of hiding until this amazing girl joined my class who lived in London when I was 12. And I saw what she did and it was a sort of, it was a breakout moment. She introduced me to David Bowie and I thought, oh, I see. I had no idea. Yeah, there was this shame culture around clothes and Here I am a designer, so. And are there certain clothes a man can wear that you find always attract you?

31:24

I mean, I wear a lot of suits. One could say that that definitely originally comes from men clothing. I like to wear a tie. I saw you wear a tie today. On occasion, I find it very fun to wear a tie.

32:21

But are there clothes that men wear that draw you towards.

32:37

No, it's not specific things, but I like style. I like style. I. I'm drawn to style. I'm drawn to. To the expression that somebody can have through one's clothes. Men and women. So. And I dress a bunch of men, male friends of mine. Really? Yes. For quite a while. And I enjoy that tremendously. And I enjoyed taking them as a stretch beyond where they used to go. The first one I began to dress was my husband, who, you know, over the decades has completely transformed. One of the biggest compliments is I have two sons. They're in, you know, they're close to 30, around 30. And they love for me to go and buy clothes with them. And I just think that is cool. You know, they trust that I have a good eye. And then they've taken it further and they go vintage. I mean, they love clothes. They definitely love clothes. And it's. And I know it's. I. We talked clothes. I showed clothes, I brought clothes. I brought clothes from Europe. You know, at the time, H and M in Sweden was dressing boys with colors, and it was affordable and colorful. So I made many references to what they wore. I made references to what they had to wear when they went to different places. And I think these days, when you go and you look at stores that cater to men, most of the time it's blue and gray and black, and it's very dark and often not colorful, not playful. I think women have a lot more range.

32:41

Yeah. No, it is the best thing on earth to go shopping with a man and more than anything, with a son. I love buying my son clothes.

34:29

How old is he?

34:41

He's just turned 25. And he has a good style anyway. But I love it when he asks me about clothes.

34:43

Yeah.

34:52

It's just the biggest compliment.

34:52

It's a compliment. It's like, you know, it's not just, I trust you because you're my mom. I trust your eye on me and that you will know how I want to be seen.

34:54

Yeah. And it's almost the opposite of trusting because you're my mom. It's trusting you because you have that eye and you handily happen to be their mother because we're always on the.

35:06

End of the phone, we're seeing the same.

35:20

Yeah, yeah. And you have an erotic formula which is attraction plus obstacle equals excitement. And I wondered what's the difference? What's the balance between that and being self destructive?

35:22

So let's analyze the erotic formula. It's not mine. It's from one of my mentors, Jack Morin, who was an extraordinary sexologist. And I think what he emphasizes in this statement is that desire is intensified by not having. What fuels the wanting is the energy to try to reach something that is not so easily immediately accessible. So the not having is the obstacle. Now the obstacle may be your conscience, your self image, what you think you should like and want and be excited by. Your obstacle can be the other person not being available. The obstacle can be religion, agriculture and geography pulls us apart. It's a ton of different things that are obstacles. So I'm drawn to something. There is something that makes it not immediately accessible and that intensifies the force of my desire. And therefore on the other side comes the arousal and the excitement. If you just have attraction and it is linked with a should I must, it's what I have to do. It is much more difficult to experience the I want to do.

35:39

Right.

37:12

We seem to want more or to be more excited about what we want when it is not what we're supposed to want or when it is not a duty that makes it an obligation rather than a desire.

37:12

Because you talk a lot about and this I find so illuminating about the separation, creating the oxygen for that thing to do with people coming together. And also the thing, the sort of big bombshell for me when I first read Mating Captivity was the quest for security and how that in itself it didn't give me the security that I thought I wanted. And somehow feeling a level of insecurity made me feel much more in my kind of in myself where I felt better and the too much security just somehow there was none of this sort of the thrill somehow went awol. And I don't really. It was because I've thought about and sort of, you know, go back to your book and think, read that bit again and again. And I also know that, you know, my parents relationship was so full of insecurity that I thought I must have the opposite to that. And then I found that it wasn't entirely the solution. So I don't know what I'm asking.

37:27

You anymore, but do you want me to riff on what you're. What I think? Yeah, please do.

38:46

Yeah.

38:51

Because I think mating in captivity is turning 20 next year. So I have been doing a lot of thinking myself and writing a new forward about what was this thesis and why did it resonate so much that this book became almost a movement rather than just a book and a theory? And the same way that Jack Morin's erotic equation really shaped my thinking, attraction plus obstacle equals excitement, and analyzed that, I also had Stephen Mitchell, another very inspiring analyst who took ideas from Roland Barthes and Bataille. I mean, there were a bunch of us playing with the same notion that love and desire, they relate, but they also conflict. And that sometimes the same very things that nurture love, care, worry, responsibility, duty, are the very ingredients that at times can stifle desire, which resides much more in a space that wants freedom and autonomy and wanting and choice and risk and even danger. And that we have two fundamental sets of human needs. A need for security and stability, dependability. And we have a need for adventure and freedom and change and exploration. It's Ulysses, it's home and travel. This is an old theme, but we have actually, what is new is not that we have this sense of needs. What is new is that we've never tried to reconcile them into one relationship. That was the big ambition of the romantic ideal. And. And the idea that at a time when we began to want from our romantic relationship to give us a tremendous amount of intimacy, basically to give us what once an entire village used to provide, to then say that in fact the erotic elan needs space in order to have an elan. It needs another person to meet on the other side, it needs a bridge to cross that fire needs air, that it needs a certain kind of distance first. It needs the connection and the secure attachment in order to be able to then create that distance which we then want to close. So this desire wants to open the distance that love has worked so hard to close.

38:53

Right. Gosh, it's kind of tricky how you keep that going in a long term relationship. But I suppose especially when the long.

41:35

Term has gotten twice as long. Yes, that is the mating in captivity. That is the fundamental dilemma that people wonder then how do you do that? And is it possible? And in what circumstances and what else is available to us if we choose to do it differently?

41:45

And you said vanity with a good dose of humor is wonderful. To be vain is sometimes a form of self care. And I wondered, is there someone who exemplifies this, like even a fictional figure?

42:07

No, I think the person with whom I really learned that was actually my mother. Somebody once said people with vanity age much better.

42:20

Yeah.

42:29

I mean, they can age less better because they are upset at the fact that they have lost their youth. But they can age better because they're actually taking care of themselves. And I thought this is an interesting proposition. I was, somebody mentioned this. I was in my teens. It's not like I had much maturity to think about that. But there is something in the. I want to look a certain way that makes me invest in it. When I invest in it, I pay attention. Beautification is, you know, we beautify our table, we beautify our gardens, we beautify our skins, we tattoo it, we draw it. I mean, it's part of the humankind to be invested in. What is aesthetization like? What is beautification like? And vanity involves that. There's lots of things about vanity, but it often has an element of, of aesthetization as well. And I think you can see old, older people who. They are not old because their youth is in the way they aestheticize themselves. And it's not just clothes and it's not just makeup and it's not just a particular hat and it's a lot of things combined. But you know that they're still looking at themselves in a society where often people have stopped looking at them.

42:30

Them. Yeah. That's so interesting because I, I heard somebody say how vanity is a really useful drive. It's an energetic force and it gives you, you know, it propels you along and, and it just has been kind of reduced into something that's supposedly not good, but it's incred how you just described it, especially getting older. It's really handy to, you know, you want to go forward and stay engaged and be.

43:56

Because what's the other definition of vanity? A kind of self centeredness? Yeah, sort of petty self centeredness.

44:30

Is that it sort of, I suppose, some sort of. As though it's oblivious of other people. But it, it isn't necessarily. It's completely enrolling unless it's, you know, some nightmare narcissist.

44:38

No, but the way we describe vanity is with a little bit of humor as well and an irony to it, it's that it can be something different. But I think that it has taken on one meaning. And it has more than one meaning.

44:54

Because in England there's a huge. People are often described as attention seeking and children. As though that's the most, you know, kind of heinous thing you could possibly be. But I mean, it's not. Children need, everyone needs attention. So for some reason it has A really bad rap in England. And now when I see, you know, if I'm wandering around and I see someone really dressed up, I. I feel so appreciative and I love seeing that they've really gone out on a limb to go to work and dressed up to the nines. And I get something from it, just looking at it, whereas.

45:11

But do you feel less and less looked at in a society where people are constantly with their heads down into a screen? Do you experience the. I mean, we used to be looked at and we used to look at everybody. We used to sit on a subway and look at people. We used to be on a plane and look at people. We used to walk the streets. We are looking at people and people are looking at us less and less. There's a paucity of eye contact and a paucity of basically taking in the world visually. We take the world in visually, but through a mediated device. And I think that it is changing a lot. I mean, people, after the pandemic, where they basically didn't dress for two years except maybe a topic on occasion, basically have stopped looking and feel that they are being seen. Do you experience that?

45:49

Well, I, I not. I mean, I look at people all the time. I'm always curious about everything, about what they're wearing. And so I look a lot and I. I notice people kind of looking, you know, especially on the subway, everyone's slightly looking at each other even though they have their phones out. And. And I. So I haven't. I mean, before, when, before phones, obviously it was completely different. But I don't know if it's. I quite enjoy nearly catching someone's eye or just scouring around to see what people are wearing or what the fabric of their clothes is like or if they're attractive. So, yeah, I don't. And I wondered, if you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them?

46:49

No, I mean, not immediately. I. If it's somebody I know. I mean, I'm known for saying, this doesn't look really good. Yes, I'm actually. Or I really like that. Or where's that from? I mean, there's a way of kind of saying something that says, not sure, but I don't have to like what people wear necessarily. They like. They need to like it. I switches. But no, I don't think one time somebody not wearing something makes me change the way I see them because I see them not just for what they wear. The minute, you know, someone you see them in with Multiple eyes at multiple layers.

47:58

Yeah, it's true. Because some people have really specific things that they find repellent.

48:47

And like, I'll give you an example. I have. I have a thing about caps. Americans wear a lot of caps.

48:54

Yeah.

49:04

In Belgium and in France, and especially, you don't wear a suit with a cap or, you know, you go dressed up and then a cap. I have a few friends, but one in particular, and I'm like, half the time she said, can you take that thing off? It just really. It's. It clashes. It's not nice. But I think it's totally an acquired taste. If I grew up here, I may just as well have liked caps. There's something about, you know, okay, if you play tennis, if you go running, if you bike, if you whatever, there's an activity, it's called a physical sports activity that goes with a cap, not when you go to work. So I make comments. Yeah, but she wears the cap.

49:05

Yeah.

49:50

I'm not holding them next to her.

49:51

I always love those things. When something really puts you off or on, it's always, like, exciting to be kind of. To wonder what they could do differently, especially if it's someone you like.

49:54

So the way one place where we do this is we have a once a year group of friends that come together to do a clothes swap.

50:11

Really?

50:21

Yeah.

50:21

That's such a great idea.

50:22

And sometimes even twice a year. And it's phenomenal because we every. What? We go around the circle. Each person takes out the bag that she brought with things. It's really a ritual. It's a magnificent ritual, actually, now that I'm thinking about it. And then we take out a piece, and then people insist, that's a Bella piece, that's a Jessie piece, that's an Esther piece. It's like. And then we put this on the person, and then everybody evaluates. There's no mirror. We are the mirrors. And that's so you. That is perfect for you. This is yours. Done. And we literally go around like that, but sometimes about 10, 12 of us.

50:24

That'S a brilliant idea.

51:07

And people live with magnificent new clothes.

51:09

I might suggest that. I love that idea because it's so friendly. And I love wearing other people's clothes. I like, hand me downs. I like people's leftovers. Anything that sort of passes on. And you said when your mother died, her absence made room for choices that you wouldn't have dared make if she was there. And I really resonated with that because I felt like my father's parting gift to me when he died was my freedom to think what I liked. Because I loved my father so much. That I would have a sort of secret approval system that he wasn't aware of at all. That I thought I needed him to sort of check everything. Or I wanted him to check everything that I liked. And I wondered if he. I had a hunch that when he died. I would feel kind of liberated in that way. And I wondered if he thought that would happen when your mother died.

51:12

I didn't have any thoughts before about that. I loved my mother and I adored my father. So that was a different relationship. I also knew my mother had very strong opinions. And in that, I think she taught me to have strong opinions. Simply resisting her strengthened my resolve. But in order to then oppose her or go and do the thing I wanted, whatever it was, Travel here, study this. I had to be really sure of myself. Even about things that I wasn't sure about at all. So that I could convince her that I knew what I was doing. And that was a very active mechanism. And when she passed, I started working on mating in captivity. Which was the first time that I did something that I was absolutely unsure if I was capable of doing. Until then, on some level, I only did things that I knew I can do. So that I could measure up to what I had said. And not disappoint myself in front of her. So when I began writing, I felt for the first time that I don't have to take the psychic energy needed to convince her that I know what I'm doing. And I could just stay in the not knowing it was okay. And experience the insecurity that comes with that. And do the best I can without knowing if I am capable. Rather than proving to her that I'm capable. And then having to fear the insecurity of maybe not living up to it.

52:26

Yeah, it's as though the horizon is suddenly expands. And you can go places you couldn't before.

54:16

Well, you just deal with your own anxiety. And you don't have to deal with having to reassure two people.

54:25

Yeah, it's great. It's such a. Because I remember when I first went to see my analyst. Who I still see was a couple of years before my father died. And I said, I want to know that I won't fall apart when he dies. And that I can start preparing my kind of autonomy. And it worked.

54:31

How old was he?

54:58

He was 88 when he died. And he was ill and stuff. So we were all preparing for his death. But then, rather unexpectedly, my mother suddenly died the same week as him.

55:00

Oh my God.

55:17

Out of the blue, she. She went into hospital and they said, you have a week to live. And she died four days after. To him, completely, you know, it was like an outsider racehorse. She came in and. And they weren't together or anything like that. But so it was. It was kind of.

55:18

Yeah, that's a total castle crash.

55:42

Yeah, it was really strange indeed. And you have a very handsome husband who's a painter and also a therapist who specializes in trauma. And you said, my husband deals with pain, I deal with pleasure. And they're intimately acquainted. And I wondered how if he sometimes disappears into the pain and how you deal with that.

55:45

No, I don't feel like he disappears into the pain because he creates. He also understands the passage from pain to pleasure, from destruction to rebuilding, from rupture to repair. So actually, part of how I began to conceptualize working on eroticism and the centrality of eroticism much more than of sexuality, was in conversations with him and the work that he was doing at a time when he co created the center for Victims of Torture and Political Violence at nyu. And I asked him, how do you know when people who have experienced torture, forms of annihilation, such wounding, when they can come out of it? Do they come out of it and how does it look and what does it require? What are the mechanisms that let you know that someone is coming back to life? Basically? And one of the first things was when people are once again able to take risks. Because as long as you are in a constant state of utter vigilance, you are just making sure that you are safe, but you can't look outside, and you make sure that the outside doesn't penetrate in. And then the second thing was when they are able to create again. Because creativity is an active engagement with the unknown and the unknown. And to let the unknown in demands a certain level of trust and openness. And then the third thing is when you're able to be playful, because playful is about unselfconsciousness and irreverence and the opposite of responsibility and structure. So those are three things that I think he probably is exploring constantly in painting, but they are part of working with trauma. It's understanding that these are elements that are not just what you get when you have worked through the trauma, but they are in fact part of the medicine themselves. And when I said he deals with pain, it's true, I stand by the statement. But it's also because he starts in one place and then comes to the center And I start in another place and come to the center. And these experiences are interrelated.

56:16

God, it's very. It's so beautiful the way you put it. Because when people do describe extremely awful situations, it's, you know, there's almost nothing to say, but because it's so devastating, but without anything, then there's nothing.

59:00

And erotic recovery is part of trauma healing.

59:20

God, that's interesting.

59:24

It's not the reward at the end. Yeah, that's the difference. And I think we both come together around that construct.

59:26

Yeah, yeah. My closest friend, Karma, we talk about something we call the beauty alongside, which is books, paint, you know, anything to do with creativity, nature. Nature too. And it's so great having that and the pain. There it is. And then there's these other things that you can go like a two horse carriage. And it sort of makes it possible to bear. Things instead of.

59:35

People create in the most dire of circumstances. They sing, they. They move, they recite poetry, they. I mean, you know, the most erotic poems are spiritual and the most spiritual poems are erotic.

1:00:10

You gave the impression of having a lot of confidence in your body. And I wondered, did you receive validation when you were going through that transition from girl to young woman?

1:00:30

You know, I often think if I had the confidence of today, with the looks of then. Yeah, but because honestly, what makes the difference is the confidence, not the looks. I was perfectly fine as a young woman, but if I didn't feel it, what good did it do? I could be doubtful. I could be insecure like many young women are. I could want something else that wasn't the way my body was. I had plenty of things that I didn't particularly like. I think that even if you are reinforced by the people that are close to you as you transition from girl to woman, or as you go through puberty for that matter, society doesn't necessarily reinforce that Society is based on you being critical so that you can purchase new things that are going to make you feel better, you know, So I think that what changes is you mature, that you know yourself better. You start to become more accepting of who you are. You take yourself with the pros and the cons and you become more of a complex being. And that maturity is what makes you look at yourself very differently. So honestly, I don't think that many people in their late teens, early 20s, or full 20s for that matter, go around feeling great about themselves, neither physically nor in other parts of their life. I think that comes with age, with maturity, with a sense that the acceptance is more from within and less from outside. How I should be versus how I want to be. And that applies to looks. So I feel better about how I look today. Even though I probably may have looked better before. Yeah, it's something like that. Yeah.

1:00:44

I find exactly the same. It's so fun being alive and you know, having a body and having the confidence that I didn't have before. And also the shame. Another thing that I love about your work is the absence of shame. I mean, obviously you talk about it and you know, it's not like you don't. I just feel un.

1:02:50

But you can look confident. I don't think I look necessarily different or acted differently. I've always loved dancing, I've always loved dressing. But internally I had a lot more self doubt and I was a lot. I had a lot more turmoil and lack of certainty than I have today. I think that's what's misleading is that you can see, I mean, we can look at a lot of what are culturally deemed beautiful people and actors and creators who we look up to, etc. And their experience internally is not necessarily one that is peaceful, that is confident, that feels home. I think our bodies for some of us are like a chateau and it has multiple rooms and we like to visit from one room to another and we like to linger in there. And when you're young, there are rooms in that chateau that you never want to go in, but you are happy to go to other rooms. And then there are other people for whom it's not a big castle like that, it's actually a prison. A cell from which you can't wait to get out of. It doesn't feel comfortable. It's not a place in which you take deep breath that expand and that really make you feel like you're coming home inside your home, which is your body in which you live. And my work is often helping people to change. Maybe not from a cell to a castle, but certainly from a cell to a place of freedom and liberation and acceptance and dignity and clothes. Sometimes participate in that, sometimes have nothing to do with it. But the everybody knows when they're leaving prison and when they no longer feel imprisoned or entrapped or clouded in dark thoughts about their bodies and about what was done to their bodies or their experience of their bodies. And they become kinder to their bodies and they become more willing to receive through their bodies what other people are giving to them. Touch, kisses or clothes, all the same.

1:03:16

Yeah, that's wonderful. I've been enthralled by your work and it Seems odd to be sitting here with you lying there, Freudian style. And I wondered, how does it feel for you?

1:05:46

The interesting thing is that I've never done analysis. I've never been in analysis. I've been in loads of different therapies, but not analysis. My husband has. He was for six years, five times a week. So I'm familiar with other people's experience, not my own. And I totally can see why lying down and looking up and not making eye contact and not being organized by your gaze, even though I can imagine it. But it's not like I'm watching your facial responses to me and all of that. And by definition, you say more when you're lying flat. It reminds me of a session that I did on my podcast, where should we Begin? And it was a couple that was having harsh arguments. And at one point I said to them, would you please lay down on the floor, both of you. So they laid, like me, one next to the other on the floor. And then I said, now continue fighting. It's impossible to do because your body that fights is a body of which the shoulders are up, the teeth are clenched, the fists are tight, and the body is leaning forward. Because you're on the attack, you're having a fight. To leave open like this, by definition, is a vulnerable position. I cannot defend myself. I can't do anything. So it is much harder to continue arguing while I'm lying flat, looking at the ceiling. And I'm just reminded that I should use this more in my sessions. Maybe not to do analysis, but to understand how the different position of the body. I can't see myself, so I can't even see what I'm wearing. I can forget that I can't see you. If I can't look out, I end up looking more in. And to do that with two people, that is my suggestion to you. One day have two people lying there in front of you like you just did with me.

1:06:02

Yes.

1:08:10

Well, maybe a couple. It'll be a fascinating thing to watch how this unfolds. The same kind of conversation, but done with two people. And it makes me want to do a whole session lying down like that with two people.

1:08:10

Well, if I ever get in a fight with someone, I go, I'm going to try the lying down, because it's such. It's a brilliant idea. Never, never thought about it. But whenever I do lie down just to see what it feels like, I suddenly find my mind goes into my heart and it just sort of my thinking comes from my heart more than my critical self, and suddenly there's something else there.

1:08:25

Because when I'm lying and I'm talking out loud and I don't see anyone, it's almost like I'm talking to myself. And if I'm talking to myself, I can dare to say a lot more things than I would say to other people, especially when I'm aware of them. So my awareness of you is changed by my position.

1:08:55

Gosh. Well, thank you so much, Esther Perel, for being on Fashion Neurosis. It's just meant so much.

1:09:18

Thank you.

1:09:27

I've loved every second of it.

1:09:28

Thank you so much. It's really. It's an adventure.

1:09:30

Yes.

1:09:34

It.

1:09:35