These are very valuable lessons that we

need in our relationships. So, lesson

one.

Alain de Botton

Best-selling author

The modern philosopher of love

His goal

To help you live a better, more

meaningful life.

The average human has 70,000 thoughts a

day. The problem is that we don't know

how to use them. For example, we tend to

believe we'll find the one, but that

belief has led to more rage, more

disappointment, cuz we're not free to

love just anyone. What's problematic is

that we're drawn to love stories that

are echoing our childhoods. And this is

something that troubles so many people

because our past was not necessarily

happy.

We are all confused about love. You

know, the most romantic sentence [music]

that people will say is, "I met this

person and we didn't even need to speak.

We just felt on the same page." Well,

this leads to a catastrophic outbreak

[music] of sulking. They say to you, "Is

anything wrong?" Of course there is, but

you're not going to tell them. And the

reason is that you're a romantic and you

believe that your partner should have

alien capacities to look into your

wounded soul to understand what the

upset is, but of course they can't

because they're just human. So, what

would you say are the core habits of two

people who have a really successful

relationship? What we need is

Let's talk about sex. Goodness me, does

it cause problems. 26% of people in

relationships are having sex less than

10 times per year. So, the question is,

what are we getting wrong? One of the

leading answers that neither party knows

is there is that

Ding ding, that's normally a sign of a

problem.

Quick one. This is really, really

fascinating to me. On the back end of

our YouTube channel, it says that

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[music]

[music]

Alain,

you write about so much. You produce

content about so many different subject

matters, but what is the overarching

mission that you

are on?

I'm trying to look almost systematically

at a variety of causes of unhappiness

created by the world we live in.

Um you know, obviously the world we live

in has solved many, many problems, but

it's also generated in a host of areas,

particularly

um difficult challenges that have not

really struck humanity before. And I

like to think, both personally and on

behalf of others,

um about what these problems are and how

we might steer through them. The average

human has 70,000 thoughts a day, right?

Not huge elaborate ones, but just stray

little fragmentary thoughts, 70,000 of

them, pass through consciousness every

day.

And the problem is that we don't know

how to process them or use them. It's

part of the reason why we end up with

such,

you know, busy and troubling minds. We

haven't stepped back in order to ask

ourselves, at the end of the day, some

of these questions that can calm us

down, like, you know,

who am I angry with? Who What am I

excited by? What's really happened

today? You know, we let experiences rush

past us.

And then, of course, experiences that

haven't been digested properly have a

nasty habit of coming to sting us in the

tail. Um and I think you can look at a

lot of mental

troubles as essentially the outgrowth of

unprocessed emotion.

Um

you know, depression is often sadness

that hasn't understood itself. Anxiety

or irritability is worry that doesn't

know its own cause. And so, often what

we need, particularly in the modern

world, is occasions on which we can

get to know our own minds. It's It's a

It's a strange thing. Surely we know our

own minds. Surely we No. No. The way

that we're built is obviously not

prioritizing a full awareness of

ourselves. We're outward-facing

creatures. We're action-focused

creatures. Which is all to the good and

has many advantages. But, because of the

way we live now,

more sedentary lives, lives that call

upon us not merely to be active, but

also to be fulfilled,

um those lives require periods of

introspection that our

routines often don't allow for.

So, I'm always trying both for myself

and advising others, you know, take that

time in the evening

and just sit down in a semi-darkened

room and just ask yourself, what's

coming up for me? What's really happened

inside me? Because it can take a little

while to realize what you're really

upset by, what you're really excited by,

etc. We're not obvious

to ourselves. And as I say,

so many of

things that we call mental disorders or

mental illnesses are really stored

emotion that hasn't found a way out.

Emotions that haven't been acknowledged

have a nasty habit of um stirring our

conscience, demanding to be heard. They

might want to tell our spines. They

might want to tell our stomachs. Uh you

know, and again, a useful exercise

so's not to be struck by so many of

these psychosomatic disorders is to ask

the body what it's trying to tell you so

that it doesn't need to tell you in the

more dramatic forms that end up as

illnesses. So again, if you, you know,

if you lie down you simply say to

yourself,

"If my back could speak, what does it

want to tell me? If my shoulders could

have their say,

what are they trying to say? If my

stomach could have a voice, what might

it be trying to utter?"

Can you apply that same rationale to

things like anxiety?

Absolutely. You know, if you think of

take something like insomnia, right? You

wake up at 3:00 in the morning.

The way I like to think of it is

insomnia is if you like a kind of

revenge for all those thoughts that you

were so careful not to have in the day.

You very carefully schemed not to have

those thoughts in the day

because of our emotional conscience,

they want to be heard. And if you're not

hearing them at 3:00 p.m., you're going

to be hearing them at 3:00 a.m.

And so, you know, one of the best ways

to sleep is to make sure you're having a

little bit more of an in-depth

conversation with yourself

before you enter sleep because that will

allow you that kind of deeper rest. So,

as I say,

we have this

emotional conscience that requires that

the key things about us have a chance to

be heard. And look, let's not forget, I

mean, this is the whole theory of

trauma. You know, what psychotherapists

have very usefully over the last 20, 30

years

informed us about is that um events in

our past, especially in our early

childhood, that we have not had a chance

to properly understand, and how much can

a three, four, five, six-year-old

understand?

Events that we can't understand, um it

doesn't mean that they haven't

registered. They've registered all the

more deeply, and they haven't had a

chance to be processed.

You know, I I was thinking,

friend of mine recently lost a parent.

He's in his 50s, well-educated, got

resources, got friends, spouse, etc. He

was telling me he was laid low by

depression. He just couldn't get out of

bed, completely stunned by his loss.

And I was thinking,

in a way he's lucky

because he's got all those resources of

adulthood. Imagine a five-year-old child

who suffers a bereavement. They've got

no friends that they can have those sort

of dialogues with. They've got no books

that they can reread about this. They've

got no capacity to process. They've got

no understanding of time, etc.

Um emotions that can't be had lodge

themselves in us and gum up our systems.

And um

I think so much of the work that we need

to do on ourselves is to process pain

that has not been properly understood.

Not because anyone's evil, but because

we've lacked the resources to do so.

You got me thinking about this concept

of happiness as you're speaking and

whether it's a natural thing for our

species to be aiming at or whether it's

a new

more modern thing that we've decided to

focus upon. And are we causing ourselves

immense distress in this pursuit of this

thing that maybe our ancestors didn't

didn't ever think about. This whole you

know, we think about self-actualization

and they were probably thinking about

survival and reproduction more.

Look, these all belong to the sort of

paradoxes of modern times. Modern times

have obviously brought us enormous

advantages, but they've also brought us

particular complexities that I think

we'd be wise to to realize. And one of

them is the disappearance of religion. I

mean, we are still among the first

generations in many parts of the world

to be um trying to live good lives

without the support of religion. Think

of how religion structure

time and human experience in time. As a

religious person, you immediately feel

that the present moment is not as

important as a hundred, two hundred, two

thousand, million-year history that has

come before and that will continue

after. The present moment is a speck in

time.

And and there's a whole narrative of

which you're part of that immediately

diminishes you in scale.

Now, nowadays, all of us want to be

rather large, don't we? We want to be

big big people. We want to make a big

impression.

But, um

arguably, this is a fast route to mental

illness because the graceful acceptance

of your minuscule position in the cosmos

is

the gateway to calm and harmony.

And when people say, you know, "I went

into this hotel,

you know, the person made me feel

small."

That's a bad way of being made to feel

small, but there's a good way of being

made to feel small. Pick up an ancient

text, read words that were written by

someone in a

foreign tongue 3,000 years ago. That'll

make you feel small. Go into the desert,

notice the the age of the rocks

inscribed in, you know, time inscribed

in sand. That'll put you in your place.

Um spend time with an animal that has no

concern for your status, your sense of

importance, your foiled narrative of

your own success. All these things that

drive modern humans mad. These are not

present in an older kind of religious

sphere. And as I say, what religions do

is they tell us you're part of a bigger

story. They also tell us, many faiths

tell us,

that life and you particular are

imperfect. Um you know, think of

Catholicism and its notion of original

sin. Now, lots of lots of bad stuff

associated with original sin. I'm not,

you know, a huge fan of many aspects,

but let's look at the good side, right?

What it what Catholicism tells us is

that everybody's broken. Everybody is

flawed. It's quite a helpful starting

point, right? Because, um

if you think, well, all right, I'm a bit

broken, but so somebody else, so

somebody else. So, we're all doing our

best. That's the gateway to

vulnerability, to friendship, if you

like.

Lower expectations.

Lower expectations, but also to to

connection with others, you know?

So often people who become successful

find it really hard to make friends.

Why? Because they associate success with

invulnerability, and the more successful

they get, the harder it is for them to

admit to the real truth about being

human, which is that we're all helpless

children some of the time at least,

frightened helpless children. And it

becomes harder to make to keep up the

contact with that, let alone admit that

to somebody else. So, again, religions

handily reduce our expectations and our

sense of ourselves. We are merely flawed

humans. There is a perfect world. It

doesn't exist in Beverly Hills. It

doesn't exist in, you know, the fancy

parts of Singapore or or Sydney. It

exists up there in a in another world.

In other words,

um the human realm is inherently

imperfect. Quite a good starting point.

I mean, even if you went on a date,

right? Imagine two characters you might

go on a date with, right? First one

tells you,

"Yeah, I'm kind of perfect, and I'm

achieve I'm aiming to achieve total

perfection."

Think, "Wow, good for them, but slightly

scary." Next is somebody else who goes,

"I'm kind of flawed, but I'm sort of

managing my flaws, and I'm interested in

how to get to know my flaws and work

with them." Instantly one thinks, "Hmm,

life might be easier around such a

person." There's There's something about

the pursuit of perfection which makes

day-to-day life extremely hard, and

religions, slightly by the by, tick that

box. They were able to reduce us in our

own eyes while raising us in the eyes

of, you know, a divine being. Um and

[clears throat] and that has helped us

to have an

have an easier relationship with with

ourselves. And And the notion also was,

"You cannot perfect this life." You

know, life becomes perfect in another

realm. We'll build Jerusalem somewhere

else, not on this earth, in the next

world. Again, it takes the pressure off

us. We moderns, we modern people, we

think the present moment is supremely

important. Now is important. Everything

that's going on right now is supremely

important. It doesn't matter remember

100 years ago or 1,000 years ago. now is

the only criteria of time. You are

perfectible, right? So, if there's

something wrong with you, you're failing

against an ideal of perfection. Again,

very, very hard. Um

and that you are made I mean, the

biggest the biggest challenge of all,

you're made to be happy as you

suggested, that the true goal of every

human is happiness. Not fulfillment, not

uh you know, the realization of a grand

scheme, not living for others, your own

happiness.

And again, it's a beautiful idea,

but goodness me, does it cause problems.

Goodness me, you know, think of Emile

Durkheim.

Beginning of the 20th century, French

sociologist, writes this book um so

contrasting the differences between

ancient societies and modern societies.

And he identifies one troubling

difference between ancient societies,

the pre-modern agricultural

village-based societies where religion

plays a role, and modern urban

technologically driven success-oriented

individualistic societies, and that's

the suicide rate.

He realizes in his book on suicide,

published in 1900, that modern

societies, for all their advantages,

leads their members of a share of their

members, often the most ambitious of

their members, to take their own lives.

Why? What's going on? And this becomes

Well, it's the birth of modern

sociology, really. It's It becomes a

major inquiry into what modern times

does to the soul. And I'm deeply

fascinated by that. I can't let that one

go because what's this paradox? What's

this paradox of suffering amidst plenty,

of regress amidst progress? This

fascinates me.

I spoke to the CEO of Calm, Campaign

Against Living Miserably, Simon Gunning,

and he shared some stats with me about

exactly what talking about about

suicide. He said someone dies by suicide

in the UK every 90 minutes. 76% are

male. There's 25 attempts for every

death.

Um the single biggest cause of death for

men under 45 is suicide. Single biggest

cause of death for 15 to 49-year-olds is

suicide. That 19 to 35-year-old category

are twice as likely to report being in

crisis than any other group. And 16 to

24s is the fastest growing group in

history to exhibit suicidality. And more

recently, there's a big conversation

emerging now around young women

and suicidality, which is um a fairly

recent unfortunately exploding trend.

This trend of young women now

experiencing suicidality.

And look,

people don't just commit suicide when

things are bad. People commit suicide

when things are bad and they think

it's a delicate point. They think it's

their fault. They cannot

disassociate the trouble they feel from

an intense sense of responsibility,

which then also entails shame. Now,

what's going on there? You see, when I

say that we live in a individualistic

world, what that really means is we live

in a world where people feel that they

control their own narratives. That that

what happens to them is very tightly a

reflection of who they are and what

they've done.

And this was not always the case. You

see,

for long periods of history, um people

were not necessarily tightly held to the

observable outcomes of their lives. This

happened with money, for example. Um

in Old English,

a poor person was known as an

unfortunate, right? Um what is an

unfort- Let's unpack that word

unfortunate. There's the word Fortuna in

there. What was Fortuna? For the Romans,

Fortuna was the goddess of luck, the

goddess of fortune. And the Romans were

therefore all the time sacrificing

things to the goddess of fortune as a

way of saying, you know, please, you

know, it's not me, it's, you know, this

outside agency. Nowadays, this sounds

completely weird. I mean, what do we

call

in the most individualistic country in

the world, United States, what are poor

people called? It's not a nice term,

they're called losers, right? You say,

that's a loser. So, we've gone from

unfortunate to loser. That's a

trajectory of 400 years. What's happened

in that time is a story about who's

responsible for people's fate. And

nowadays, you know, if I said to you,

"Stephen, things have not been going so

well for me. I just been sacked. Uh, you

know, my my book hasn't sold, you know,

there but it's not me. I've just had a

bit of bad luck."

You, very nice [clears throat] person,

but a modern person, inside of you you'd

be thinking, "Hmm, he must have done

something wrong." Right? You'd be

thinking he must have done something

wrong because that's how we think. We

don't allow people

the

benefit of luck, right? Similarly, if

you said to me, "Oh, you know, my

podcast be doing brilliantly. We now got

8 million million million billion I

don't know how many you've got nowadays.

Um, um, and you and you said and you

said to me, 'Oh, I just just a bit of

good luck.'" Right? I think, "Oh,

Stephen's really, you know, he's very

modest, but, you know, it's not true.

He's done something." We believe that

people do things and that that action

leads to results or failures. And that's

why people take their own lives because

in extremis, people think there is

nothing other than me to explain what

happens to me. Of course, the reality is

much more complicated. I'm not saying

that's the truth, but that is the

perceived truth. You know, look, we live

in a world that is

meritocratic,

right? That word, meritocracy,

is on everybody's lips. If you take

politicians, left and right, in the

United States or of the world, everybody

wants to create a world that is

meritocratic. Some people think we've

already got there.

What does that word mean? I don't know.

Meritocratic is the concept of

meritocracy is

a world in which um

people's

outcomes are dependent on their merit

rather than on who their parents were,

um

some corrupt class in society, the

influence of whatever. So, you know, a

left-wing politician and a right-wing

politician say, "We want to make a

meritocratic world where your kids will

go to where they deserve, where if you

work hard, you can get there, and um you

know, where everyone has a chance to

succeed." We You know, you know that

kind of rhetoric, yeah? It's It's the

rhetoric of modern times.

Now,

it sounds great, and in many ways it's

an enormous advance, but again, let's

just focus on the psychological toll of

that, because if you really believe in a

world in which those who get to the top

deserve to get to the top, by

implication, you are also positing the

existence of the world in which those

who are at the bottom deserve to be at

the bottom. In other words, a

meritocratic worldview turns success and

failure from chance to a necessary fate.

And that's why it makes the winners

quite

hard, potentially quite heartless,

because they're thinking, "Well, I got

there on my own. You You know, don't

need to thank anybody. Might not need to

pay many taxes. Why Why pay taxes, you

know? It's It's fine."

And similarly, those at the bottom are

kind of crushed.

So,

we've we've created this very

complicated ideology where um

there's a hidden toll.

What is love? Let's If we're talking

about Let's talk about romantic love.

What is that? [clears throat]

Well, can I just first start by saying

we're a bit confused about it? And and

so I can't give you an immediate answer,

but I want to register that not just me,

but the whole of the current world is

confused about love. And I think we've

been confused for about 200 years. And

and let's let's go easy on ourselves

here because

the way in which we approach love now is

a never-before

um approached philosophy. You know, for

about the last 250 years, we've been

loving under the aegis of a philosophy

we could call romanticism.

And romanticism is is a vision of love

with very particular assumptions.

Let me run through a few of them.

Um

there's one soulmate for everybody.

You're going to find this soulmate. Um

you're going to find them through

slightly mysterious ways.

Possibly through almost something almost

quasi-divine. Like you'll feel pulled.

You'll meet them at the supermarket

checkout line, the and without even

knowing too much about them, you will

sense that they're your destiny. So

you'll feel impelled towards somebody

that you don't necessarily know too much

of.

A force will pull you and you will feel

this is the one. And they will be an

angel, literally a sort of descended

being from from another another world.

Um the romantics were very very keen on

the notion that you didn't have to know

someone too well to understand them.

Even speaking not very much, the

connection will be even deeper. Um the

romantics also thought that love and sex

absolutely belong together. And that

that that you couldn't have a millimeter

of disjunction between the two. Love and

sex had sometimes drifted apart in the

old world and that'd been sometimes a

problem, but it became a tragedy. So

adultery moved from a difficulty to a

tragedy. That's why all modern novels

and films are all about the tragedy of

of of adultery. So look, these are some

of the difficulties that the modern

world has created. We we tend to believe

nowadays that love is an emotion that we

should feel, never a skill that we

should learn. You know, for example, if

I said to you, "We should probably study

love. We should probably go to a school

of love." You know, "That's not very

romantic." Now, every time every time

that someone says, "That's not very

romantic." Ding ding, that's normally a

sign of a problem. Like most things that

don't sound very romantic are a good

idea, and most things that are romantic,

like marrying in Vegas after you've met

someone for 5 minutes, is not so great.

Now,

what are we getting wrong?

One of the things we're getting wrong is

this whole business of instinct, right?

So,

we tend to believe

that love will pull us instinctively

towards marvelous people that will be

correct for us. You know,

the old world, people were set up in

relationships. You'll marry this person

because of this reason, you know, that

person goes well with with what my

family, blah blah. In other words,

nothing to do with you. You you're put

together with somebody. Nowadays, we're

nominally free to choose anyone. Hooray!

Fantastic! Aren't we going to make great

choices? Uh no. Why don't we make great

choices? Cuz we're not free. Why are we

not free?

We need to go to a psychotherapist to

tell us why we're not free. We're not

free to love just anyone.

We love in tracks laid down for us by

our childhoods.

Adult love sits on top of tracks and a

script laid down for us in childhood.

You might go, "What's wrong with that?

So what?" Well, what's problematic is

that many of us had childhoods in which

affection was mixed in with more

problematic dynamics. That maybe in

order to derive love in childhood, we

also had to encounter somebody who was

in a rage, someone who was violent,

someone who was depressed, someone who

put us down, someone who preferred

another sibling, whatever it was. And we

go into adulthood and we find that we're

drawn to love stories that feel familiar

because they're echoing some of

childhood dynamics, but they don't

necessarily for that matter lead to

happiness. And you know,

sometimes we have situations where

yeah, you set up a friend, let's say.

You have a really good friend and you

know another friend. You think these

people would really go well together.

Set them up on a date and then you call

them up afterwards. You say, "So, how

did it go?" You know,

it must have gone really well.

They say, "I'm not sure. Maybe something

was lacking, a little spark." What

they're really trying to get at is

they're not going to put it this way,

"Your friend, this date,

did not show me signs that they would

make me suffer in the way that I need to

suffer

in order to feel I'm in love."

In other words, this relationship

threatened to be happy.

That's why I had to go away. So, we are

paradoxical creatures because our past

was not necessarily happy. We're not

necessarily that happy that our future

romantic lives should be happy either.

And this is something that,

you know, they they weren't thinking

about that when love was reinvented 250

years ago. When people say they have

daddy issues and things like this,

are you saying then that there's

often truth in that because they had a

early experience with a father figure, a

male figure in their life that might

have left them or might have, you know,

created a anxious attachment style or

something. So, they then end up pursuing

dysfunctional men and relationships

because that's the suffering that they

associate with love.

Sure. I mean, we repeat what we don't

understand. And so long as we're unaware

of the stories that we've grown up with,

we will enact them in our adult lives.

So, we're not compelled to do this

forever, but and and look

I think a lot of us have a desire to

give the stories of our childhood a

different ending. Our father might have

been a distant and

you know, mean-spirited creature,

but also had some good qualities.

The dream is to find somebody a bit like

that, but to make sure that the story

has a good resolution. So, it's not

merely a desire to repeat, it's a desire

to repeat and give a better ending.

But frequently, you know, we don't get

there.

And I think that

look, the thing about psychology is we

see all around us people doing

so-called crazy things. You know,

falling in love with people who are not

going to make them happy, sabotaging

their careers,

not able to open up to people, and we

think we can step back and go, "Why are

they doing that stuff? What's going on?"

Now, one way to look at it,

and it's a kind of compassionate way to

look at it, a lot of the stuff that

looks crazy now,

once made a lot of sense.

It was once, probably, a really clever

thing to do. If you were growing up,

let's say, in an environment in which,

let's say, a parent was suicidal, right?

A parent was suicidal.

And you shut down your emotions totally

and decided you would never trust

anyone. Fantastic. That's a

fantastically clever thing to do when

you're 5 years old and you've got a

suicidal parent, right? Because that

will get you through to the next stage

of life. If you open your heart at and

there's a parent who's suicidal, it'll

tear you apart. So, good for you. You're

you're doing something brilliantly

clever, right? Or imagine somebody who

um

is a becomes a clown as a child because

there's a very sad atmosphere and

there's a depression and all they can

have time for is jokes. They're just a

manic joker, right? Brilliant. What What

a fantastic thing for a kid to work out

that they need to be quite a kind of

manic joker. But what happens 10 years

later, 20 years later, 30 years later,

is that what used to be a fantastic

defense against an intolerable situation

has turned out to more or less ruined

people's chances because the person, you

know, with that difficult father will

end up never being able to open their

heart to anyone, even a very safe

person. They won't even know their

heart's closed. But they will be acting

out the same defensive strategy. Or the

person who, you know, it was a great

idea to be a bit of a joker early on,

but now they have no time for anything

serious and their friends feel that

they're a slightly plastic person, can

never connect with them. That's a real

toll in in in the in the adult world.

So,

you know, very often what we need to do

is to say thank you to our younger

selves for having devised strategies

that really work clever. But at the same

time say, "Thank you.

It's enough. I want to I want to live in

a different way. That was a fantastic

strategy then. It may no longer be

the right way for me to live now."

I was thinking as you were speaking

about that that there's kind of two

groups of people. I was bouncing through

different people that I know to see how

it fit with them and I identified in my

mind that there's basically two groups

of people there. The ones that are aware

of their cycle,

you know, and whether they've

acted to change it or they're just

reliving it,

who knows. And the ones that are totally

unaware that they're in this cycle and

they just think, "Oh God, that's my

luck." You know, they say phrases like,

"That's just my luck."

How does one increase their awareness of

their own cycle? Do you think there's a

way?

Yes. Um

so much that can be done. Let's imagine

the very simplest exercise.

Psychologists have these things called

sentence completion tests where you

start with a stub of a question and then

you end it with an ellipsis, a dot dot

dot, and you say to somebody, "Don't

think too much. Just finish the

sentence."

And typical ones are men are dot dot

dot.

Women are

dot dot dot.

I am dot dot dot.

Life dot dot dot.

If you give somebody that sheet of paper

and say to them, "Don't think too much.

Just write it down."

All right? Amazing things bubble up. Men

are, you know, authoritarian villains.

Wow, where did that come from? Right?

You're carrying out, you know, women

are, you know, whatever it is. Life is,

you know, I am,

you know, a nobody who deserves to be

stamped on. Did you know a minute ago

that you have that in you? Not

necessarily. In other words, sometimes

you need these little levers to shine a

light. Now, the thing that

really helps, and I'm not, you know,

for your viewers, um,

many therapists, many psychotherapists

are not what they should be,

but some are great. If you find yourself

with a good psychotherapist, they can

also increase your level of

self-awareness. I think that's what

we're talking about, increasing level of

self-awareness.

And and

the reason is very simple. You know,

there's stuff that we all do. Let's

imagine, I don't know, when you're

around a man, you think that person's

judging me, therefore I'm going to

withdraw and not enter into competition

with them. I'm around a woman, I think

I'm going to have to, you know, I'm

going to be treated badly, therefore I

must, you know, whatever it is.

Something from your past is projected

onto it. You end up in a therapy room

with a man or a woman.

And lo and behold, what do you do?

You bring out that thing, and you bring

out that thing that you're doing

normally. Except this time, you're not

doing it in the office, you're not doing

it in a relationship, you're not doing

it in a context where people are busy

and have got their own stuff going on,

and they're doing their own games.

You're doing it with somebody, a trained

professional, in a quiet room, and they

can see. It's like a petri dish. They

can see the stuff that you're doing. And

so suddenly you'll be saying to your

therapist, "I know you hate me."

And the therapist will be going,

"I really don't think so, but I'm

interested that you have that conviction

that you do."

Um or someone will be going to the

therapist, "I need to look after you. I

think you're quite tired, and I really

you know, you you've been doing such

great work. I feel I want to look after

you."

Maybe you'd be doing that all your life,

and the therapist will be going, "You

don't need to look after me, but was

there someone in your past that you

needed to look after and that made you

feel guilty and that has meant that

every time you're with somebody, you

feel that their needs are more important

than your needs?" And there's a chance,

therefore, to see more clearly than ever

before, outside of the kind of hubbub of

relationships or office life, the kind

of stories that you're projecting onto

reality to your huge cost. So, I'm now

aware

of my cycle that originates from my

childhood.

The next step is doing something about

it. How do I

overpower that sort of

hardwired urge to

repeat the cycle that comes from my

childhood?

Well, look, Stephen, let's not minimize.

That's already an enormous achievement.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? I mean, that's

that's it [laughter] you know, if you're

there that you have a handle on Look,

we don't need people to be perfect,

right? We don't need pe- people perfect.

At best,

we need people to know how they're

imperfect and that they can have a

chance to warn us of their imperfections

in good time before they've done too

much damage. There's an enormous

difference. I mean, look, again, take

the take the dating idea. Let's imagine,

you know,

I I often say,

"Don't do this to me cuz we're not um

we're not on a date, but um but

a great question to ask somebody on a

date is how are you mad?

How are you mad? Right? If the person

says, 'I'm not mad. I'm completely

sane.' Run away because, you know,

everybody has folly inside them. And

we're approaching a measure of everyday

tolerable sanity when we've put some

flags

in the areas of our madness. So, total

sanity is not a possibility for any

human being.

Um but the awareness of where the

insanity lies and a little bit of

warning and prompt apology, you know,

after um an incident goes a huge

long way. You know,

People often say, "I'm looking for a

partner with a good sense of humor."

No one needs jokes. It's not It's not

about jokes. It's really about modesty

about oneself. Right? Somebody who's

able to go,

"I think I mean look, take the other

thing.

If you meet somebody who thinks they're

easy to live with, run away.

No one's easy to live with. And someone

who thinks they're easy to live with is

really trouble. So, somebody who can put

up their hand and go, "You know what?

Yeah, I'm a bit of I'm I'm pretty tricky

to live to to live with."

Great. That person is safer, not

necessarily totally safe, but they're

safer because they've started on the

road to self-awareness.

And so, ultimately, the best we can do

in this world is self-awareness, prompt

apologies when we slip up. Um yeah.

And a

genuine and intention to

uh make progress, I guess.

Is that Is that important as well? So,

like me being aware that I I have

certain habits in my relationship is one

thing, but then I think my partner would

like to know that some of the

destructive cycles I might have, I'm

working on them.

I'm tr- I'm I'm at least trying to make

forward motion.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I think one of

the most destructive ideas in the modern

world is the idea that

true love means accepting somebody for

who they are

in all of their

you know, all of their good and bad

sides.

It's a It's a lovely dream. And you

know, sometimes when you hear of

breakups, they'll go, "You know, my ex,

you know, they just didn't accept me for

who I was. And everyone would go, "Oh,

yes, God, what a terrible person, you

know, how awful."

You know, politely one wants to go,

"Hang on a minute. Do any of us really

deserve to be loved for the whole of who

we are? Is that really a fair

expectation? Or isn't, as you suggest,

isn't it fair to suppose that all of us

are works in progress? And that,

you know, there is nothing contrary to

the spirit of love in a desire to

improve. The ancient Greeks had this

right. You know, for the ancient Greeks,

Plato saw love as a classroom. Beautiful

idea. That love is a classroom in which

two people, in a spirit of generosity

and kindness, I mean, we're not talking

about shouting here. We're talking about

generosity and kindness. Two people

endeavor

to help each other to become the best

version of themselves, of each other,

right? That that that love is is geared

towards progress and working on

yourself. That sounds very odd nowadays.

You know, if you if you went around

saying, "I've read some Plato and he's

kind of guiding me towards uh the idea

that love is a classroom. So, therefore,

I'm going to give you a 40-minute

lecture on some of your flaws. And then

I'd like you to give me a 40-minute

lecture on some of my flaws." This would

be considered, ding ding ding,

unromantic, right? That's not very

romantic, is it? Doesn't mean it's a bad

idea. As I say, love is a skill to be

learned, not just an emotion to be felt.

And some of that means that we might

need to go back to school.

I I've been thinking more recently that

most relationships the success of most

relationship comes down to this idea of

like how good you are at conflict

resolution.

Because I've had a previous relationship

where

I we both can take the the blame, per

se. We were just not good at conflict

resolution. And then I've had a more

recent relationship where we're very we

seem to be much better, not perfect, but

much better at conflict resolution. And

it makes all the difference.

And but I think it's even, you know,

it's not if you were bad at conflict

resolution, it's not just your fault.

It's It's partly the way our society

works. Come back to the idea of

romanticism, right? Romanticism gives us

this extraordinary idea that love is

something that should be felt and

communicated without words, right? So,

the most romantic people think the most

romantic sentence that often people will

say is, "I met this person and we didn't

even need to speak. We just felt on the

same page." Everyone goes,

"Oh, how romantic." Ding ding, danger.

Um because it's, you know, well, this

leads to a catastrophic outbreak of

sulking, right? What is sulking, right?

A What is a sulk? A sulk is a

fascinating pattern of behavior where

you get very angry with someone because

they have not understood you

without even though you haven't said

anything. They've not understood you and

you get offended because you think,

because you're a romantic person, you

think, "They can't possibly love me

because true love means understanding

somebody, you know, intuitively, um

wordlessly. And therefore, I'm not going

to speak." And so, you know, you come

back from a party with your with your

partner and uh they say to you, "Is

anything wrong, darling?" And you go,

"Mhm."

Of course there is, but you're not going

to tell them. And then they start

saying, "Come on, you can tell me.

What's wrong?" And And the sulking

person goes, "No."

And this can go on and on and on. I

mean, you know,

we're all We've all been at it sometime.

[laughter] You know, you you go home,

uh you you go straight upstairs, you go

to the bathroom, you shut the door. And

then your partner's kind of knocking at

the door going, "Please, darling, just

just tell me what's wrong." And you go

from behind the door, "No." And And the

reason is that you're a romantic and you

believe that your partner should have

miraculous,

almost alien capacities to look through

the bathroom door into your gnarled and

wounded soul to understand what the

upset is. But of course they can't

because they're just human, you know.

Takes us a long time to realize that

other humans are not mind readers. You

know, one of the

first thing we should always ask is,

"Have I told them this?" I I know I'm

upset, but did I tell them this? And so

often the answer is not quite, because

we're romantics. And so we have to do

that really, I mean, you know,

we can accept it's really boring. We've

got to use words. We've got to painfully

stack up words and go

"The reason that I'm getting a little

touchy is because

and you've got to explain yourself."

It's not very romantic.

But that is normally a sign it's a good

idea. So, honesty,

I

I've struggled at times to be completely

honest in my relationships when I felt

like the honesty might hurt them.

So,

can we have true love and total honesty?

I believe that the the wish to tell

someone absolutely everything is is both

beautiful and ultimately utopian in a

problematic way. Because

we all of us have within us

ambivalences, doubts,

unfaithful thoughts, etc. And it isn't

the work of love to rub your partner

constantly up against the most

troubling, disturbed sides of your

psyche. Now, we're not talking This is

not an advocacy for sort of total

mendacity and lies, but it is an

advertisement for editing.

You know,

we should hope that we don't meet the

fullest version of each other all the

time. You know, I know it sounds

romantic, but sometimes it's as parents

know, is it is it that great as a parent

to tell your child absolutely everything

about what's going through you? Well,

sometimes, you know, is there a role for

saying "I'm just going to edit myself"

not in the name of subterfuge or deceit,

but in the name of love?

That love could be compatible with an

editing of certain aspects of your

reality. One [snorts] of the areas where

a lot of editing happens is in the

bedroom.

In relationships, in sex, in sexless

relationships.

Um I was looking through some statistics

earlier on because I know that you've

talked quite um extensively on

relationships and sex and sexless

relationships. I found this stat that

says a 2022 study by Relate, a UK-based

uh counseling network, found that 26% of

people in relationships were having sex

less than 10 times per year and 8% were

having no sex at all. This is a stark

rise from 2018

um where the numbers were

quite significantly lower than that. It

seems like as a society we're getting

increasingly sexless.

Yeah. So, the question is where's the

problem? Is the problem in the body or

is the problem in the mind? Now, you

know, being the kind of guy I am, I'm

going to shift us to the mind. I'm sure

sometimes there are bodily issues and

you know, they deserve attention too.

But if I can talk about the mind, um

why is it that sex is easier at the

beginning

than in a long-term relationship?

One of the leading answers is anger.

It's not very easy to have sex or want

sex with someone that you're angry with.

And in many relationships, there's a lot

of stored anger that neither party knows

is there.

And that anger has come from micro

incidents of disappointment. Someone

didn't quite call when they said they

would. Someone didn't laugh when they

might have done. Someone didn't show

generosity when it might have been

required. Um and these things get stored

up and the result of too much of this is

that you don't want someone going

anywhere near you. Contempt. Because

you're you're because you're furious.

You're essentially furious. But in the

way of these things, you don't know you

are. You don't know you're furious.

Again, as it you know, the mind is not

obvious to itself. So,

you know, if you want to have more sex,

don't just invest in candles and fancy

linen.

Um

a quite useful thing to do is to go and

have dinner with your partner

and say to them,

"We're both going to ask each other how

we've annoyed each other." Cuz we have

annoyed each other, not because we're

evil people, but because we're human and

we're in a relationship. And no

relationship can survive more than an

hour without a build-up of frustration.

And the more we can let out the

frustration at the dinner table, the

more it won't you know, create a

blockage in the bedroom. And so, the

chance to discharge frustration and you

know, often the reason why we don't tell

our partners what our frustrations are

is that they sound ridiculous. It's

like, "Well, hang on. You're upset with

me because I used the word really in

what you thought placed too much

emphasis on the why when I was speaking

to your mother."

Are you crazy? Right? You could you are

laying yourself open to your partner

pointing to you going, "Are you crazy?"

But I think that we're all in love, very

small children, at least a small part of

us is. And

um as we know, small children get upset

about really weird, tiny things. You

know, you'll you'll move a button and

they start wailing and you go, "What's

happened?" And they go, "You moved the

button." And you go, "I did? Uh and why

does that matter?" But but for them it

matters. Or you know, a pencil has

slightly changed direction. So, we

should learn we should remember what it

felt like to be a child. And we should

acknowledge that there remains, even in

an adult who's very competent in all

sorts of areas,

a small child who is liable to be

getting very upset about small things.

Triggered.

Triggered. But because they're an adult,

this is the problem, we we think, "Well,

an adult can't possibly be having such

childish reactions." Again, we need to

just um

cast aside our fears of shame and say,

"You know what? Yes, an adult can get

very upset about tiny things. An adult

probably is upset about tiny things."

And we're doing

ourselves an honor when we can dare to

reveal this to our partner and they can

do likewise.

So, if I'm if

if I'm someone listening to this now and

I'm in a relationship where I don't

think cuz it's it's interesting even

when I say I don't think I'm having

enough sex,

the idea of how much sex is enough sex

has probably come from movies, which is

a bit of a trap as well, right? Um but

if I'm in a relationship and we are in a

sexless relationship by whatever

definition,

solution one you presented there is try

and resolve the anger, the underlying

contempt. Um

are there anything else that you think

is

effective ways of solving for that?

Look, I think we I think one useful

thing to do is to go why does sex

matter? What is this thing called sex?

Why why does it matter? And when people

get very upset, I think the answer tends

to be that sex is a symbol of something

very poignant and very delicate, which

is

my partner loves me.

And they can't The reason why it becomes

such an acute issue is that they cannot

hold onto the idea that the partner

might love them and might not want sex.

This is psychologically impossible. Now,

it is important to say

it is possible. It is possible that your

partner both loves you and doesn't want

to have sex. There could be other

reasons. They're feeling unwell, they're

So,

and and then we can ask ourselves what

does sex really aim at? Sex aims at

intimacy. Yeah,

even we'll say they you know, in in in

in people so polite language they say

they became intimate, which means they

had sex. So, what what we know about sex

is that the really exciting thing about

sex is not the sex bit, it's the

intimate bit. Um it's the idea that

someone is without their guard. You

know, most of the time we approach other

people without guards on. And um in this

very rare and unusual thing we do, we

meet another human being in a vulnerable

state. And this is such a relief from

the normal limitations of life. And

there are other ways of doing this. You

know, sex is not the only way of doing

it. So,

by understanding better what sex is, we

can also have a chance to get some of

what we get in sex in things that are

not sex, if that makes sense.

I had Tracey Cox on the podcast and she

said something to me which really stuck

with me because I hadn't noticed it

until she said it, which is this idea I

believe she called otherness, which is

when your partner almost becomes like a

family member or you start seeing them

as like a a sibling because they are in

their sweatpants around you. And she

made the claim which I think I've read

in your books as well that in many

respects that's the very opposite of

the

the spice that makes sex so appealing in

those early days when it's new and novel

and risky, you know, and so

[clears throat] she kind of alluded to

the fact that love and sex are actually

sit on two different ends of a pole.

Right. And again, to come back to my

theme, um what does a romantic say? A

romantic romanticism tells us sex and

love belong entirely together. But I

think what you're saying and you know,

what many of your viewers will know is

that the relationship is is trickier.

And again, let's not torture ourselves

about this. Let's let's get curious and

then let's communicate about this.

And I think that look,

a growing child has a paradox to deal

with. And this is what Freud famously,

doesn't matter what you think of Freud,

very useful observation really, that um

the child experiences love

in the first instance, at the beginning

of life, we all experience love

at the hands of people who, everything's

gone right, we will have no sexual

connection with. Right? So, given the

debt that adult love owes to childhood,

Um, that sets us up with a problem. When

we as adults start to fall in love with

people and start to build up

relationships, which is that the more we

get cozy with someone, the more we feel

like we did a little bit with our

parents when things were really cozy.

Which is oddly why um,

people like going to hotels. Why do

people like going to hotels? To revive a

relationship. It's cuz the furniture

doesn't remember you. The curtains don't

remember you. You are You're allowed to

be for a a chosen moment somebody

without the history. And it's the

history that is making intimacy hard

because that history, while it's

knitting you together and making you

emotionally close, is also rendering

sexual freedom problematic. And I think

it's just we need to go very easy on

ourselves for the fact that this

happens. And um,

What do I do about it, though?

Um,

Do I need to book a lot of hotel rooms?

Do I need to spend a lot of time away

from my partner?

I notice even that you're laughing.

You're smiling as you say that. And I

think that's partly the clue. You know,

when we come up against the hardest

conundrums in in life, um,

having the tolerance of a sense of

humor, a shared sense of humor, you

know, if a couple can turn the sexual

challenges from a tragedy into

something, you know, closer to um,

a comedy, it's an enormous achievement.

Think of you know, think of teasing,

right? There are sides of couples that

they find

really, really hard.

Isn't it wonderful when a couple learns

with affection to tease one another?

They go, "Ah, Stephen, you there's that

thing that you do." Gives you a little

nickname, calls you whatever it is, you

know, a little affectionate nickname.

That's a wonderful moment because it

means that irritation has been

sublimated into tender, compassionate

understanding for why someone is

difficult as they are. So, the best

thing we can do with our irritations

with our partners

is to be able to tease our way out of

them.

Um and we may need to do this in

troublesome areas like I say, it's an

enormous achievement if your partner can

call you, you know, can go from thinking

that you are an idiot to smiling at you

and thinking, "You're a lovable idiot."

Right?

We're all in the end of the day a

lovable idiot. We don't need to believe

in God, but if God was watching us from

up there in the space station, um

we are all, you know, 8 billion lovable

idiots. And once we can have that sort

of compassionate relationship to

ourselves, that's the beginning of a big

bit of the big bit of the solution.

I often think, you know, I've been in my

relationship now for a couple of years.

I I think, "How do I stop my partner

getting bored of me?" Will there become

a day? Sometimes it does cross my mind.

Like, is she just going to get like

bored of me? And also, you know, vice

versa, you think of being with someone

for like 40, 50, 60 years. I'm sure some

people listening have been with their

partners for multi-decades. Is there a

risk of us getting bored of our partner

and then seeking the sort of, you know,

the novelty in affairs? And how do we

prevent that?

Okay, well look, here's one suggestion.

Um

the thing that becomes very boring in

all relationships is when people cease

to listen to each other. Now,

you know, when you when you say the word

listen, you've got to think, "Oh yeah,

yeah, I know what that means." Hang on.

Let's complicate this issue a little bit

usefully. Um

to you know, most of us have never been

listened to properly. It's not something

that normally we know how to do. We know

how to speak. You know, there are there

are there are lessons in how to become a

good public speaker, not very many

lessons in how to become a good

listener, right? So that's that's

telling us something. Um so

what is it to listen? Imagine a

situation where someone says something

to you and rather than you jumping in

and going, "Oh, that reminds me of, you

know, something happened with my

auntie." Or "That reminds me of a" or

you know, starting to give advice and

going, "The thing that you need to

remember is 1 2 3 4." Right? Which is

normally what we do when people speak.

It's to simply hold back. And therapists

are good at doing this. And simply do

what they call reflexive listening. So,

you know, you say to somebody, um I'm

really annoyed. I've had such a

difficult day at work. This happened,

that happened, that happened. And then

you simply

repeat back to them using slightly

different words the essence of what

they've said. And you say,

I'm hearing that life's quite difficult

for you at the moment at work and that

you, you know, coming under pressure

from your boss. And the person, you

know, it'll be Try it because the person

will immediately feel, I'm being heard.

And then they will have they'll feel

more they understand more about

themselves. You know, why is it that in

the company of some people we feel

really interesting and have lots to say

and in company of others we kind of feel

a bit bored we don't we don't have

anything to say with the same people.

It's because we feel we intuit that

we're in the presence of a listener.

And the best way to listen is literally

to not give advice, not um

give out anecdotes, but repeat back to

somebody what they've said in slightly

different words. And I mean,

you know, parents, bless them. I've been

a parent, we've all been parents, been

parents. Um

parents are often quite bad at listening

to their children. They think they're

listening. I I was in a holiday resort

um a few months ago and there was this

kid, little kid, must have been three or

four, and it was having a bad day. It

was really screaming. And the parent,

the mother, was say might might be the

mother, someone, was saying, um

What's What's wrong? Um and the kid was

saying, I hate it here. The whole place

smells. Um it's a poo and I want to be

back home at kindergarten.

And the caregiver said, Don't be so

silly, darling. We're on holiday.

Holidays are fun. And what's more this

hotel has cost a lot of money.

And you want to go, Okay.

I get it. This woman was trying to help.

She was trying to, you know, calm down

this this distressed child. Was she

listening? Not really. Cuz basically

what the kid was saying is, I'm having a

really bad day. Everything feels

absolutely disastrous. Help me. Ah.

Right? And we're all we all have a

version of those days.

And we don't want to be told, "Come on,

you're living in really wonderful times.

The sun is shining, you know, there's

lots to celebrate." We want someone to

go,

"I hear things are bad for you.

I'm hearing things are bad for you.

Um

I'm hearing you're not coping very well.

And you're pretty sad.

And if you do that,

don't rush them. Don't give advice.

Don't give, you know, you will get a

great response back.

We can put money on it.

[snorts]

Listening.

What are the the other core components

then? Cuz I really want to close off

this topic on love and sexless

relationships. What would you say are

the core components or the core habits

of two people who have a really

successful, long-term, enduring

sexual and romantic relationship? If we

just focus on the the the sex side of

things first. What are those core

habits? So,

communication's one that's come through

quite loudly.

Look, I'd

I'd I'd start a little bit further

upstream and go like, overall, what do

these guys need to do? And I think

overall, they both need to acknowledge

that they are frail, fragile, slightly

crazy people because, not because they

are them, but because they're human. And

there's no other option for a human

being than to be slightly crazy.

And nevertheless, against that

background,

they're attempting to do their best.

Right? So, that the combination of an

acknowledgement of their fallible nature

mixed in with a dedication to trying to

understand it through broadly

therapeutic means. So, this is a very

crucial thing.

The other absolutely crucial thing is an

acknowledgement that a lot of what

people will be getting up to in

relationships will have nothing to do

with the person in front of you.

That you will be importing from

different periods of your life,

scenarios and assumptions that owe

nothing to the here and now and owe

quite a lot to mom, dad, caregivers and

other scenarios. And the capacity to

acknowledge that with grace, to say,

"Okay, I'm sorry. I'm, you know, I'm

getting confused about who's in front of

me, right? I'm importing into this

situation an energy that doesn't belong

there." We all do this. The whole basis

of attachment theory, let's remind

ourselves, is that your attachment style

is governed by your first attachment,

the attachment that you had with a

parental figure. And therefore, you

know, you will be, let's say, insecurely

preoccupied, attached to somebody, um,

not because they deserve that quality of

attachment, because your early caregiver

did. That's That's what they mandated

through their own behavior.

But your partner may be someone

completely different, is someone

completely different. So, if I can put

it this way, getting on top of your

projections, we project wildly as human

beings, and being able to have at least

a sense that the person in front of you

may not be entirely who you think they

are, and that reality in the here and

now may be slightly more innocent,

um,

and I think, you know, you owe it to

yourself. It's Look, it's so boring. I'm

sorry, Stephen. I'm sorry to your

listeners.

You have to get on top of your

childhood. It's so boring to be told

this, to be to be 30, 40, 50, 60, and to

be told that you have to get on top of

your childhood. I mean, my goodness,

this is not a nostalgia fest. The only

reason is so you can put the damn thing

to bed and never have to think about it

again, but it's going to be rattling

around unless you have done so. And I

think it's so Look, think of language.

All of us, when we were kids, we were

put in an environment where without us

doing anything, we learned an entire

language with syntax, grammar,

complicated vocabulary, etc. And this

happened while we were doing handstands

in the garden, drawing buttercups in the

kitchen, etc. We absorbed an entire

language and we had no idea.

The same thing was going on emotionally.

We learned an emotional language, not a

language about grammar and vocabulary,

but a language about trust, a language

about self-esteem, a language about who

we are, a language about what will

happen to us when we trust someone, a

language about whether it's safe to go

with someone, to be ourselves, etc. We

learned that whole language and we had

no idea we learned it, just that we had

no idea we ever learned our language of

birth. It just happened. But it's inside

us, no less than the grammatical

language. And what we have to do, and

it's just as difficult as learning in

adulthood, you know how difficult it is.

Imagine if I said to you, learn Finnish

now. Now you're going to learn Finnish.

Or next week we're going to go off and

we're going to learn, you know, I don't

know, Korean, right? You'd be like, in a

week?

Uh well, it's going to take a long time,

isn't it? We're going to have to do this

for a long time.

Do you know what I'd say? There's two

things I'd reply if you told me to learn

Finnish. First one is, God, that's going

to This is what I think. That's going to

take forever. And the second one is,

what's the point?

But I'd also say, let's say we're not

trying to learn Finnish, we're trying to

learn trust. Let's say we're not trying

to learn Korean, we're trying to learn

the lesson of vulnerability, safe

vulnerability, right? These are very

valuable lessons. Very valuable lessons

that we need in our relationships.

I say that because I I point at the

childhood patterns that you're talking

about. And I think one of the reasons

why people don't open up that closet and

do the work there is because they don't

realize that that is the puppet master

dictating their career, relationships,

and everything in between. So, I think

step one is like them understanding the

impact that that childhood narrative is

having today.

Yeah.

And and then also realizing, you know,

this is where language can be a useful

metaphor, is is about time. Because

sometimes people say, okay, so I I I

understand I saw I listened to podcasts.

a Great great guy,

Steven, you know, really

gets on top of it. Listen to many of his

podcasts. Problem is, after three

podcasts, I'm not healed." And you want

to go, "Look, how many lessons of

Finnish your career did you do?" "Oh,

three." "Are you fluent?" "Not quite. I

might need another 150." Right? So, in

other words,

You need 150 [laughter] more.

Well, in other words, we need to take it

slowly and we need to repeat these

things. You know, what we're talking

about religion earlier. One of the

things about religions is they

understand that our minds are like

sieves. You know, take Islam. Islam

wants us to remember their God three,

four, five times a day. In many

religions, you're on your knees

constantly because they know these

religions know that it goes in one ear,

it goes out the other. It goes you know,

that that we're not very good at holding

on to the even the truths that we are

most attached to.

And I think part of the problem with the

modern world is we tend to think, "I'll

just listen to that idea once. I'll just

read an interesting book. Say say

something to me once and and and I'm

going to change my life." You want to

go, "No. No." You know, again, think of

the holy books. How many times are you

supposed to read the Bible, the Quran,

the Buddhist text? Every day because

we're not very good at holding on even

to the things on which our lives depend.

Is there a risk though in this sort of

healing culture where we're all just

healing forever and we're all kind of

like

broken and trying to recover from

[laughter]

our early years where someone snatched

candy out of our hands or something. Is

there I read an article a couple of

weeks ago and it said there was a bit of

a bit of a risk to this long-term

ongoing healing mentality that we're

Look, I I sense your frustration and I

share it. It would be so nice if we

could just get on with life without

having to bother with all this stuff. I

I I understand. But I think, Steven, the

thing you have to bear in mind is we are

no longer merely trying to survive.

We're trying to thrive. Right? The age

of survival is behind us.

You know, we're not just looking to

reach the age of 30 and then collapse

into bed and thinking, you know, it's

been fantastic life. I've not been

butchered by an enemy, right? You know,

we want to reach 80, 85, and we want not

just survival, we want fulfillment. And

if we want that, we're going to have to

pay attention to things that previous

generations didn't. Again, let me use

another metaphor, right? Um for most of

human history, people here I am drinking

a glass of water, right? Um people

didn't pay much attention to water. If

it looked like there wasn't anything

actively floating in it like a frog or

something, they'd think it's clean

water, right? They'd just gulp it back.

And through such nonchalance, if I can

put it that way, millions of people

died, okay? And then towards the end of

the 19th century, at about the very same

time that Sigmund Freud in Vienna was

getting going helping us to think about

certain things in the psyche, various

people got very interested in water

supply. And all the main cities, Paris,

London, New York, got a complete

overhaul of their water supplies because

it was suddenly discovered that

microscopic organisms could kill

hundreds of thousands of people. In a

glass of water that looked completely

clear, you might have enough to kill a

city, right? And this is deeply

perplexing. You think, "Hang on a

minute, it's just a glass of water, must

be fine." And, you know, I don't want to

be hard on you, but in that tone of

like, "Really? Is it Can we be bothered

with that old childhood stuff? Why don't

we just get on with it?" You want to go,

unfortunately,

we have to take care because there are

macrobiotic

organisms, as it were, in our lives that

are gumming up our capacities for

fulfillment. And it's not that it's not

necessarily they're going to kill us,

but they will hamper our capacity to be

you know, to exploit our full potential.

And after all, you know, this is what

this podcast is about. This is what many

people are concerned about, and it's

going to require work.

Can we ever truly heal from those

things? Can Or will they always be there

in the back room just exerting less

power over us?

Um look, wonderful German philosopher

Schopenhauer, he says that uh the goal

of life is to turn tears into knowledge.

Wonderful progress. Tears, what are you

what are you going to do with those?

They just end up in your pillow. They

might end up, you know, being uh things

you can learn from. So, I think the best

we can do is to learn to turn so many of

the troubles that afflict us. You know,

no life is without affliction. But that

moment when we go, "You know what? I've

learned something from this torment.

This was a total nightmare, but I've

pulled out of it something about myself,

about human nature, about psychology."

Then we're really learning. Then we're

really on the path to a good life.

Because a good life is not a

problematic-free life. It's a life in

which we've found a way of learning from

our inevitable pains.

You will never find the right person. I

read that sentence and that sounded a

little bit

um

negative. I think I read it in your

book. You will never find the right

person.

Well, I was teasing gently our old

friends, the romantics, who tell us that

of course we will find the right person.

And the belief in the right person has

led to more rage, more disappointment,

more frustration than any other. You

know, if you tell people, "You will find

the right person." If you build up a

model of what it will mean to find the

right person, you will be dooming people

to disappointment. If, for example, they

meet somebody who's really good, in many

ways very, very good, but they've had an

argument with them. Well, "Oh, I'm not

supposed to argue with somebody that is

the right person. We're supposed to be

bliss blissful." So, I'm teasing really

the concept of rightness. Rightness can

include a lot of wrongness. And that's

why, you know, wonderful English

psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who came

up with this phrase,

"a good enough" applied to parenthood.

He he argued that no child needs a

perfect parent. Indeed, quite dangerous

to have a perfect parent cuz you never

leave home. Quite good to have a parent

who causes you few frustration. It'll

It'll get you out there. Um, but he

argued no one needs a perfect parent. No

one needs a perfect lover. They need a

good enough parent, a good enough

lover."

Do you think um that people that are in

relationships, romantic relationships,

should spend time apart?

Do you think that's healthy for the

stuff we've talked about with

sexlessness and stuff? Cuz I think I I

tend to get more excited about sex with

my partner when she's been away for a

while.

And there's a real novelty to it.

Yes. Look, I think one of the things

that distance can do is to remind you

that there is no preordained reason why

someone should be with you. I mean, it's

one of the most miraculous things that

anyone should choose to be with anyone,

cuz anyone is a quite complicated

proposition. And some of the mystery of

that um can kind of

you know, it achieve its necessary force