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stand up if you've ever felt rejected

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thank you

stand up if you have rejected and look

around you see you have to look around

when this happens because we see it

stand up if you have ever experienced

heartbreak thanks then just go back

because it's has a big it has a

different effect when the vision when

you rouse rise and when you go down

stand up if you have done something

unforgivable

thank you stand up if you have

experienced loss in the last year nos

nos nos and OSs

if you have experienced loss in the last

six months

if you have experienced loss in the last

three months in the last month Wow thank

you stand up if you have experienced a

powerful sexual awakening in the last

two years five years stay up the others

you can stay 10 years thank you stand up

if you're still waiting for them for the

awakening to come

if you are still waiting for the

awakening to come see one of my

colleagues once had the most beautiful

question he said your best sexual

experience have you already have you

already had it or is it still to come

how do you know but if but whichever way

you answer says about it says a lot

about us right stand up if you've ever

been critical of your body stand up if

you've become less critical of your body

CH helps contrary to what they say stand

up if there's someone that you own an

apology - an apology you will get used

to my accent in five minutes thank you

and stand up if there's something if you

if you find yourself still waiting or

hoping for someone's apology to you

thank you

oh that's a nice one

stand up if you've ever lied about

yourself about your own needs and wishes

thank you oh yes

stand up if you think you received good

sex education growing up sex education

you know that thing it's called sex ed

no no but look at this stand up if you

think you receive good sex education

this is for five people six people in a

room of a hundred forty people that says

it all you know huh

does that say that that says something

no I have so many I can go on like this

ah stand up if you grew up in a home

that was more warm and loving thank you

and stand up if you wish you had grown

up in a home that was more warm and

loving it's more of that right but thank

you stand up if you think you've done a

better job than the home you grew up in

nice nice look at it

just take it in you know things don't

stay the same forever huh stand up if

you've had to work hard to change the

way that you relate to yourselves that's

why we're here

thank you now also because that is the

way that you are on that project yes

that's a nice one to stand up if you

hold yourself to a difference

then you hold others too we could do

this a whole night right I could just go

down all aspects of relationships so

it's very it's fascinating to listen to

to Justin and I think what we wanted to

do is to just do very short kind of

recaps this evening I'm also it would

you for two hours tomorrow morning and

then another hour and a half tomorrow

night so whatever I don't cover now we

have plenty of time but do you hear me

when in the back yeah okay

but I think that really the

opportunities for us to engage in

conversations with each other actually

not just with Justin I think all of us

that that really is where the richest

lie you know but I I had the thought of

what I wanted to say and then I kind of

changed it completely as I was listening

to you because I I thought you know it's

everything you say and then there is

everything I'm going to add to it that

is that I think lives in the same

vicinity you know I think of all the

ideologies of the 19th century the only

one that has maintained itself and with

ever more fervor is romanticism

communism is gone Marxism is underway

the whole I mean romanticism you have

all of what you described and then when

people choose to the person got one and

only the level of romanticism that we

bring to our relationships today is

unprecedented so I thought I was I would

give you the way that I am imagining

what has changed and so I'm a clinician

I don't do research in this way and it's

more you know it's clinical work across

the world but still I will tell you I

have no evidence for anything I say

meaning I can sound super confident but

I don't know if it's true

but somehow over the years it seems that

people relate to it so there must be

some truth to it

you know if it's very important because

I don't think of myself as a scientist I

think of myself as as a person who works

with human behavior and as a clinician

but it's different than to collect that

kind of data but I think what what what

I see is that there is something

fundamental that has arrived in the

realm of relationships and it means that

not and this is to me less than a

hundred years ago so I don't go back

that far I think if you look at

friendship it hasn't really changed too

much in the last hundred years if you

look at sibling relationships plenty of

relational systems that have rather

stayed loyal to them for their form

parent-child has really shifted but

romantic love the couple that is a unit

that has just gone through a massive

transformation and we used to live in

communities and when I say we used to

I'm thinking in contrast to the dominant

model of the United States and the west

of your and Western societies all of

these others all of these still exist in

our country too and they certainly exist

in many other parts of the world but

definitely there was a collective model

and in that collective model of living

in the village relationships were very

clear everybody knew who they were you

knew what was expected of you and you

know how you needed to behave you knew

whose salary was the one that's going to

be the important one you knew who was

gonna wake up to feed the baby you knew

who had the right to demand for sex and

you knew how parents not needed to talk

to children and they didn't need to

spend ten minutes explaining why it was

important to clean their room and you

know how children went into a rich aunt

were thirty and you knew how husbands

were going to talk to their wives and

you also knew how their wives were not

gonna respond to the husbands and the

others didn't get to be married so there

was that and in that model that which

was a religious model which was a model

with social hierarchy which was a model

very clear incentives and prohibitions

the boundaries were clear that doesn't

mean they were not infringed upon all

the time but they were clear and all the

big decisions were made for us we had to

make rather small amounts of decisions

so you had a lot of certainty we had a

lot of clarity you had very little

personal freedom and who cared about

personal expression or fulfillment but

we have moved to a model that is on the

other side of this with unprecedented

freedom all the big decisions we have to

make whose salary matters really whose

career is more important who's gonna

wake up tomorrow morning who's planning

for the next date who initiates for sex

on a more regular basis it's all

negotiated relationships today are not

made up of rules and duty and

obligations they're made up of

conversation and negotiation and a lot

of negotiation stuff people never had to

negotiate so we don't know how to do it

those big decisions are all for us

massive amounts of freedom loads of

options a thousand people at my

fingertips as he as Justin describes but

an enormous amount of uncertainty and an

enormous amount of self-doubt and a

system that is predicated on

self-criticism because if you feel too

good about yourself you're not gonna

shop you won't consume you have to not

never really feel like you reach it the

market is not predicated bless you I'm

feeling so good and that I think is the

first thing that is fundamentally

shifted in the realm of relationships

that's number one number two comes to

marriage

we used to marry basically once when a

marriage was the primary form of

committed relationships and basically it

was one time for life and if you didn't

like it you could always hope for an

early death years or the others but

somebody had to go

there was no way out do we don't we

can't even understand what that means

there was no way out

stuck you were you know bad card bad

card and we used to marry and have sex

for the first time today you marry and

you stop having sex with others we used

to marry till death do us apart today

you marry till love dies

you used to not believe too much in

happiness because happiness in the

Christian world primarily was for the

afterlife

you suffered well here you could be

rewarded later this notion that we want

to be happy in our relationships for

God's sake and that it's not just an

option but a mandate we don't even

divorce because we are unhappy we

divorce because we could be happier and

how do I know if I'm happy enough and

could it be better and is it worth the

gamble and all of these decisions are

part of the big decisions we used to

have sex primarily for reproduction on

the on the farm you need many kids and

it was a woman's marital duty did

anybody ever ask her if she wanted it

and if she liked it seriously

this gathering where we are together

here men and women thinking about

radiant intimacy and sexuality and

orgasm and energy and I mean I try to

imagine not my grandparents for sure my

parents that none of these people would

have ever known this was possible so to

me there's a lot of bad news but this is

extraordinary news the fact that we can

even do this you know that we even have

the privilege of being able to not have

to deal just with survival needs so that

we can actually think about the the

quality of our erotic connection and I

don't mean erotic just in the sexual

sense you know we did we we got blessed

with this thing called contraception

because the woman working outside goes

together with contraception these two we

had to go together if she just went

outside but she still had too many

babies she couldn't have done what she

did this democratization of

contraception changed everything to me

that is the second revolution the

agrarian one and then contraception the

internet the Internet

but the Internet is changing lots of

things but contraception changed

something massive fundamental for the

first time we could separate sex from

reproduction for the first time women

and men could experience sexuality

without the threat of mortality for the

first time we replace duty with desire

for the first time we are thinking about

sexual bliss as I do for the first time

we actually as our do and certainly

within the context of romantic

relationships which today are often

committed relationships you don't have

to go outside of your committed

relationship for the romantic love which

is what we've done for centuries for

throughout all of history adultery was

the place for love because marriage was

worth made to mercantile and way to

mercenary to have that be the place for

passion so there was a pragmatic

arrangement and romanticism took place

somewhere else

then we brought love into marriage and

marriage became a romantic arrangement

and then adultery became the betrayal of

that thing then we brought sex to love

now we connect marital satisfaction with

sexual satisfactions whenever did we do

this marital happiness related to sexual

satisfaction that's a that's a

revolution of a paradigm you know and we

take all of these things so for granted

right intimacy used to be that you work

the land together and you deal with the

vicissitudes of everyday life and you

what you deal with the droughts or the

rain so the you know this the

convivencia it was really the sharing of

daily life intimacy today's intimacy and

intimacy means that what I'm sharing

with you is not my heard my diary is not

material my door is my internal life

that's what I come to share with you my

aspirations my anxieties my worries my

wishes and when I share them with you I

want to feel that you care about Who I

am

what I am what's going on inside of me

because I'm a creature of meaning and my

sharing it with you is giving it a

meaning that's why we call it

significant other this whole notion of

bringing oneself to someone to create

that kind of intimate connection with

one person with whom I'm going to

momentarily transcend my existential

aloneness why because I'm asking today

from one person to give me what once an

entire village used to provide because

with you I want to experience everything

traditional relationships were about

companionship family life economic

support and social status were probably

the four major aspects of committed

relationships of long term relationships

I still want all of this but I also want

you to be my best friend and my trusted

confidant and my passionate lover and my

intellectual equal and my co-parent and

the person who is going to help me

become who I want to be it's the self

actualization model of marriage as Eli

Finkel calls it you know it's not just

the mate on the Maslow ladder it's no

longer for survival it's not even for

belonging and meaning it's for self

fulfillment and self-actualization

that's why the slow sex is the slow

model is so crucial because the slow

model doesn't happen at 18 it happens at

28 and at 28 I've already worked on my

identity I've already defined myself

when you choose me you choose me for as

a recognition of my authentic self

that's a whole different story but they

call it the capstone model versus the

cornerstone model that's another version

of the of the slow of the slow movement

so then we bring sex to love and then we

bring happiness on top of it and then we

bring another concept that to me is

really crucial which is that we want to

be able to reconcile love and desire in

the same relationship and love and

desire in the same relationship is also

a reconciliation of two fundamental

human

NEADS which is that we on the one hand

of a need for security for stability for

anchoring for reliability dependability

all the stuff that gives us the oxytocin

or that is connected to the oxytocin but

that it's an every story knows

disability or distension it's not even a

duality it's every epic story knows the

the movement between a home and journey

so this is home but then we have the

other side of us that once changed and

novelty and mystery and the unknown and

the unexpected and spontaneity and

danger and risk and we were all have

these two fundamental human needs by the

way men and women everybody but in this

room every one of you if you track down

just over in one moment your little

history you will realize that some of

you came out of your childhood wanting

more protection more roots more

stability more anchoring and some of you

came out of your childhood wanting more

movement more space more freedom and

probably you partnered at least on

occasion with people whose proclivities

match your vulnerabilities capisce if

Allah me you know so we want this

reconciliation but sometimes instead of

dealing with the two needs inside of us

we can have assigned once at one part of

it to another person which at first we

find intensely attractive and then we

find it intensely threatening because

it's often the very same thing that is

attractive in the beginning that becomes

the source of conflict later because it

still is ultimately different and this

reconciliation of these two fundamental

human needs to me is the real challenge

of modern love or modern relationships

we've usually had them separate the

concept of a passion that marriage would

have been an oxymoron and you can use

marriage as a metaphor for

relationships committed relationships I

don't care if they're legal or not you

know and this is the same way that we

want to experience together love and

desire and we've been told in the

romantic parlance that if you love you

desire they go together but they don't

always go together and everybody knows

it so I began this work for me around

mating in captivity about 15 years ago

because I had really learned a few

things as a therapist you know I was

told sexual problems are always the

consequence of relationship problems and

so therefore you have to fix the

relationship and then the sex will

follow and then I fixed plenty of

relationships or they fixed themselves

and then it did absolutely nothing to

the sex it improved in the kitchen and

it changed nothing in the bedroom and

then I began to think that notion is

really very seductive but I'm not sure

it is just that accurate I had so many

people who would come to my office to

say we love each other very much we have

no sex and I'm not talking about less

sex I'm talking about no sex we are

family we are not erotic we are very

affectionate but we almost used

affection sometimes as a sexual appetite

suppressor those were not the same ways

of relating we experienced secure

attachment but we don't know how to

experience that attachment and at the

same time also I have the tension that

is needed for the erotic and then I

began to think a rhotic is really you

know is not sex I'm not so interested in

the sex per se we were talking with

Justin at dinner it's like you know so

often when people think sex they think

of something they do it's an act I think

of sexuality not as something you do I

think of it as a place you go it's an

energy to trip you take inside yourself

with another with others you know we are

the creatures who have an erotic life we

can make love to somebody for hours have

multiple orgasms have a total state of

bliss and have touched absolutely nobody

just because we can imagine it and a

rhotacism is sexuality that is

transformed by our human imagination

but it does one thing it makes us feel

alive it gives us a sense of vitality of

vibrancy of energy that when people

complain about the listlessness of their

sex life they may sometimes want more

sex but they always want better and the

better they're talking about is to

reconnect themselves to a quality of

aliveness and vibrancy and vitality it's

that that renewal that they're longing

for you know and so I began to think you

know what does it take to to create that

kind of thriving relationship what does

it mean to imagine the state where

people experience their relationships

not just as not dead but as a life you

know and the image for me the origin was

very clear because so I died in my

family I do pain my husband I do

pleasure my husband does pain he's a

trauma expert and he does large-scale

trauma you know shootings terrorist

attacks refugee crisis things like that

and collective traumas and one day we

were talking about working with

basically victims of tortures or people

who've been kidnapped

journalists humanitarian aid workers and

so forth and I kind of asked him you

know at what point do you know that

somebody comes back back to life not

just back to the states like the three

people from Korea two weeks ago you know

and it was very clear that you know that

the person comes back when they are once

again able to play because if they

played and they're not in a constant

state of vigilance and when they are

able to once again take risks and play

is when risk-taking is fun I mean they

basically are the same two things

meaning when you can when you're not

just having to do this the whole time

to protect yourself and you can actually

go and walk into the world that's

exactly what the babies do when they

leave our lap and they start to go to

explore and to discover and to see what

else is out there

and I thought that that was an

incredible stay

meant about sexuality because I've seen

plenty of people do sex and feel nothing

that's not the point you know and that

so what I began to connect it to it was

my own history which was that you know I

grew up in Antwerp in Belgium in Flemish

Belgium and I was part of a community

that was all Holocaust survivors that

was it

and and all the children and they were

often two groups of people in that

community and it's a very funny thing

because I've told the story a few times

but I just had my first reunion after 42

years with all these children we were 15

years together in the same class we were

all born in fifty-eight we were all

children of survivors and we had never

talked about it but I took care of that

and literally said to them do you

understand what we were so and I want to

know I've told this story and I said in

America I tell the story about the two

kinds of families that I remember those

that were not dead and those that came

back to life

but you can apply to all trauma it just

happens to be my reference you know I

said do you remember this do you have

that same sense I thought maybe I

weren't the only one who actually sensed

this but no everybody knew which were

the morbid homes the morbid homes were

the homes in which you could not rejoice

too much because when you are rejoicing

too much not watching out for danger you

know and the other ones decided that

life was worth living with a vengeance

if you were there you made them make a

best of it at all moments you know you

could never sit down actually and to me

it is that energy that I try to capture

when I think about thriving

relationships the rest are all the words

that we know about what makes a good

relationship but that quality of

aliveness that you know the and and all

the work I've done around infidelity

afterwards has been to understand how

people are talking to me about that in

many many different contexts as well so

what I see is another interesting thing

and maybe I'll stop at that is that

I find that there is a moment now in

light of what you were saying justing

that it's like a amazing combination

between on the one hand they search for

the soulmate and a method of romantic

consumerism meaning we have literally

soulmate has always meant God you know

now it means the person that I'm gonna

find that is that one and only with whom

I'm going to experience transcendence

and meaning and connection and wholeness

all the stuff that people used to look

for in the sanctuary of the divine and

that conflation between the spiritual

and the relational is really what is

happening when in the absence of

religion romantic love is taking its

place but how do we go looking for that

soulmate is on the phone on the apps so

that when I find you and I know that

you're the one you know how we know

because I delete my apps that's the new

ritual of commitment you know and it is

an amazing combination to go in looking

for somebody like that that exists

somewhere in cosmos that we know is

gonna be the one that's gonna recognize

me that's gonna see me at my essence or

the whole stick that I talk about and

then to do it in such a consumeristic

approach I find that an amazing

combination I find the thing that you

described about the hanging out the way

I call it is stable ambiguity stable

ambiguity is a way that so many people

have relationships these days which is

just enough connection not to be alone

but not too much connection to forego my

freedom stable ambiguity you know I I I

think it's the perfect term for it

doesn't it it's just unclear enough but

it is just stable enough that you can

rely on it it's in orbit you know you

can and and you can do it by icing

people you can do it by simmering you

know you hold them like you know will

meet

I'm very busy right now but maybe we

could check in with each other again in

another month you know so it's like this

whole it's a it's it's actually I mean

in some cases it it as the hanging out

it's quite it can be quite fulfilling as

well and nurturing but in many other

instances it's actually some social

atomization like that of bits and pieces

of big of relationships but nothing

really it's like people who nibble the

whole day but never have a full meal is

that the image I have at times

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you