Esther Perel
30 statements across 3 episodes · 3 bullish · 1 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Sep 17, 2019 by Emily Nagoski · said 10 times in 3 episodes since 2019 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Esther Perel's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Shane Parrish (4), Jim Dethmer (4), Emily Nagoski (2)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2019 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
Everything said about Esther Perel, oldest first
Sep 17, 2019
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019 negative
Perel: Longevity should not be the primary metric for relationship success
“There needs to be a way for people to, at some point, choose to separate without us still thinking that longevity is the main marker for success, that if you meet at a funeral home at the end of life, then it means you had a good relationship and that every br…”
Dec 10, 2019 neutral
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Greater emotional intimacy can paradoxically decrease sexual openness
“The idea is greater intimacy would normally free us to greater sexual freedom and sexual openness. But in fact, that is not necessarily the case. The more we start to feel intimate with each other, and we become close, and we worry about each other, and we are…”
Dec 10, 2019 positive
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Asking partners how they played as children reveals core psychological truths
“It's such a revealing question, what, how you played as a child. What kind of, what did you allow yourself to play? Did you have the permission to play? Was it safe enough to play? And what kind of play did you engage yourself in? Boy, does that tell you an am…”
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Couples therapy progresses from broad interventions to fine chiseling
“Therapy is like sculpting. At first, you carve away gross shapes, you make big motions, big interventions, so that you get the basic, and then you start to chisel, you know, and it's the middle phase of therapy, where you literally create the lasting shape of …”
Dec 10, 2019 positive
Perel: Eroticism is cultivating experiential pleasure, not mechanical performance
“And the erotic is cultivating pleasure for its own sake. It's not about achieving an orgasm. It's not about the performance of sex. We did it. We both came. No. It's really about the quality of the experience and of the pleasure that you experienced, and where…”
Dec 10, 2019 neutral
Perel: Marriage was historically an economic enterprise separate from passion
“We've never looked for, you know, the word passionate marriage is a contradiction in terms. We've never looked for passion in the same place where we looked for security and anchoring and somebody with whom to pay the checks and fix the house. These two things…”
Dec 10, 2019 neutral
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Criticism in relationships masks vulnerable unmet desires to avoid rejection
“So instead of saying what I want, I'll say what you didn't do. That's the criticism. What you didn't do and what's wrong with you is safer in some bizarre way than to tell you what is special about me and what I would have wanted.”
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Argument choreography matters far more than the actual content
“What's really important in terms of couples and relationships in general, I will say, is that it's probably one of the golden rules, is to understand that the choreography, the form, is way more important than the content. If you have people who are going at e…”
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Decades-long relationship conflicts are visible on the first two dates
“You know, there is a theory that says that basically, whatever you discuss, the difficult conversations, if you want, that you discuss 20 years later, they were all there in the first two dates. People actually know their things, they know their key conversati…”
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: The core relationship conflict is negotiating autonomy versus togetherness
“You know, I think one of the big conversations that accompanies every relationship is about closeness and separateness. What is together, and what is individualistic, or what individual, you know. How much money do you get to spend alone? And how much money, y…”
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019 neutral
Perel: Love requires predictability, but desire thrives on the unknown
“Love thrives on closeness. It thrives on deep knowledge with each other. It thrives on minimizing the tensions, on narrowing the gaps, on, you know, and on a sense of predictability. You do want to know that you're going to have the same person the next mornin…”
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: People expend best energy outside, bringing leftovers home to partners
“What they're going to do is they're going to be so engaged throughout the day, and then they're going to go home, and basically they're going to bring the leftovers home. And at home, they're going to talk very little, actually. Or they're going to check in on…”
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Long-term erotic desire requires premeditation and intentionality rather than spontaneity
“It fades because people don't necessarily invest in it and value it as something, you know, in the beginning it seems to come on its own, supposedly, so you don't have to do anything. And people have this idea that it should be spontaneous, and it should, you …”
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Breakup quality dictates trust levels in subsequent co-founder partnerships
“The way people leave the previous relationships, the quality of the breakups, is really at the heart of how people start the next relationships. How much they will trust, how they trust, how they collaborate, how they protect themselves, how they anticipate, y…”
Dec 10, 2019 positive
Perel: Hope requires cultivating imagination and anticipating a better future
“They understood the erotic as an antidote to death, basically. It's, what does it take to maintain hope, to maintain a sense of meaning, to have imagination, because if you have hope, You need to be able to project yourself, you know, whether you're in a camp …”
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Father survived 14 camps by organizing kitchen black market
“My dad the last year and a half in one of the camps, he was in 14 of them basically organized some kind of a black market with the kitchen around
You know, food and potatoes, or potato peels more correctly, and managed to actually feed the Germans as well.”
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Consistently changing your own behavior forces your partner to adapt
“Because if you consistently start to do something different, at some point the other person has to adapt, because it's ping pong. If the ball goes to a different corner, you can't stay standing on the other side. At some point you will move.”
Dec 10, 2019
Perel: Couples grow apart from how they experience differences, not differences themselves
“Look, when people grow apart, it's not because they have a difference of opinion, necessarily, because some couples have major differences in opinion, but they continue to remain deeply connected, curious about each other, respectful of who they are, and they,…”
Jun 21, 2022
Perel: Couples grow apart by experiencing differences as threats
“When people grow apart, it's not because they have a difference of opinion necessarily, because some couples have major differences in opinion, but they continue to remain deeply connected, curious about each other, respectful of who they are. And they, they'r…”
Jun 21, 2022
Perel: Relational security requires balancing safe anchoring with independent freedom
“To be secure in a relationship is to have both of those things. Is to be able to come back to the harbor, to anchor yourself, to feel rooted, and then to get up, to leave, and to go and play without having to worry.”
Jun 21, 2022
Perel: Core 20-year relationship conflicts are present on first two dates
“There is a theory that says that basically, whatever you discuss, the difficult conversations, if you want, that you discuss 20 years later, they were all there in the first two dates. People actually know their things. They know their key conversations from t…”