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The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships

For so long relationships were structured, organized, through social order, religion, communal structures and people didn't really have to think about them so much. They were very codified, they still are codified in most parts of the world. But in our western world, where we have dismantled all the structures that used to define relationships, relationships are going through a massive transformation, a massive makeover over, and we don't necessarily have the skills of how to deal with all these changes

The majority of us are socially wired, we exist in relationships. We define ourselves in relationships. I know who I am by being with you. Who am I outside of that? It's in the presence of the other that we discover who we are

We are not just what happened to us, we are also who we become, and sometimes we become on the basis of what happened to us, and when you ask people sometimes “what are some of your most important inner resources” those very resources come from some of the miseries of their childhood. It's not linear, it's not ‘bad’ leads to ‘bad’. It's that some absence, some deprivation can lead to an acute awareness of something that makes you become the exact opposite. It's a dynamic dialogue with your childhood, it's not just the determinism that your childhood will determine what's going to happen to you later

We all need security and we all also need adventure, or change, or freedom. Some of us will come out of our childhood wanting more safety, more protection, more connection, more grounding, and some of us will come out of our childhood wanting more space, more freedom, more individuality, more personal expression. That doesn't mean it's static, the beauty of us is that we are forever changing creatures

Couples have dances, and the dance is how you see one person trigger or evoke in the other a survival strategy. His survival strategy is “nobody tells me what to do” and that survival strategy is going to then trigger in her the vulnerability of “well, if you won't do anything I asked then I’m again alone”. And then when that person feels that “alone” her survival strategy is to go and knock at the door and see “are you really not there for me”? The dance between the vulnerability and the survival strategy is one of the most common patterns in a relationship

If I always think I’m alone, and I can't count on you, and I feel abandoned, and let down, then that becomes the filter with which I enter most of these conversations. And if your thing is “nobody pushes me and nobody imposes their will on me because I have been telling my dad for a long time that he's done being the boss of me” this is the filter

We create the other person, we contribute to making them the very thing we don't want

What happens in a couple is that you want her to change, you want her to stop annoying you, and do what you do. “Doesn't she see that I’m busy? I’m almost done. Why doesn't she wait?” So we always think the other will change and then my life will improve. But if you actually want your life to change or your relationship dynamic to change, you could do it in a minute

Why do we go for people that are opposites? No, we don’t. You go for people who express the part of you that you don't want to deal with

I outsource to you the parts of my needs that I am conflicted about

Do you actually acknowledge that and show her the appreciation for it, or is 90% of your speech to her the part of the “I need my time, my independence, my this, my that”?

Instead of apologizing, you thank. Then you are actually saying “I couldn't do this without you” which means I am an independent person who is completely interdependent with you, and that interdependence is the part that the independent person is struggling with

“I could not do this without you” that gives the other person not a sense that they are superfluous, or intrusive, or annoying, or choosing the wrong moment, but that they matter, that they have a presence and a meaning in your life, and that is a secret to a connection

I can do that because there's someone there that has taken care of all of the stuff I don't have to worry about, and when you acknowledge that and you thank a person for that, you're basically saying “I couldn't do this if you didn't do that” – that's the interdependence

If you give the best of yourself at work, if you bring the leftovers home, if when you come home, you say “I’ve given everything I had, now I’m just putting my feet on the table, I just need to chill, I don't want to make any effort” your relationship degrades

Basically, if people were able to put a little bit of creativity, attention into their relationships, as they do with their customers or their guests, relationships would be doing a lot better, and my profession would be seeing a lot less people. Why are people so lazy, so complacent, so unimaginative with their relationships at home?

“Ambiguous loss” is a term that was developed by a psychologist friend. She talked about what happens when you have some parent for example that has Alzheimer, they are physically present but they are psychologically gone. They're emotionally absent and you can't really mourn them because they're still physically there. But you are caught in between, in this ambiguous loss. On the other side you can have somebody who is deployed, hostage, miscarriage. They are emotionally very present, but they are physically absent. In both cases it's an “ambiguous loss”. Are they still there or are they gone? When we live with these phones all the time, …because you've been at work, you've been at the computer, you come home, you think “ah, I’m so happy to finally let go of the computer.” You turn on the TV, and then you turn on the phone, at the same time you're watching here, you're watching there, and there's a person next to you, and most likely they often do the same thing in the end too. And gradually there is less and less of a thread of conversation, of connection, of joy, of sex, of intimacy, that becomes “ambiguous loss” – somebody is there but they're not really present

You do half an hour walk together, you'll come back to me, and you tell me what it will do. It's amazing how these small interventions that are playful, creative, not digging, change the dynamic of the relationship

If you want to change the other, change you

When people lose the spark, it is a lot of these small details that people say so much in the beginning, all the positive stuff that people use, and it's actually only more important with time rather than less important with time. The death of a relationship is when people take each other for granted

This is the first time in history that the survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple

Do you know a single person who would treat their business the way that some people treat their relationships? The business would be dead

The conflict is occurring because there is a fraud connection

Instead of asking what we are fighting about, ask yourself what we are fighting for

There are relationships that are not dead, and there are relationships that are alive

Usually, people fight for about three things:

• they fight for trust – they fight to feel like the other person has their back,

• they fight for recognition – to be valued,

• and they fight for control – they want to feel that their needs, their beliefs, their expectations have priority

What happens when you played freely on the street? You had unchoreographed, unmonitored, unscripted free play with other kids with whom you learned friction, rubbing, fighting, making up, competing, collaborating, being jealous, making alliances, breaking alliances, recreating, you learned a ton of social skills and dealing with conflict, and disagreement, and reuniting, and all of that. This entire universe of experimentation that children had is gone now. And you really don't learn it by playing games on the screen

Uncertainty is essential, you can't innovate without uncertainty

We've never expected more from one relationship, and asked one person to give us what usually an entire village used to provide

Relationship issues are not binaries, they're not black and white, they're not problems that you solve, they're paradoxes that you manage

We want spontaneity and excitement all of these kind of erotic fantasies, but at the same time we want safety, and belonging, and familiarity, which seem like a contradiction

Romantics are aspirational. Romantics live in the realm of the imagination. They live in the realm of how you transcend the limits, how you project yourself outside of the narrowness of your own reality, boundaries, consciousness, body, etc. A kind of an active engagement with the unknown and a reverence for the connection. Realists are more pragmatic. Realists are basically, instead of “this is not possible, there must be more” they say “this is fine, why should there be more”. I just use these two terms because they were handy, it's not because I had entire definitions of them but I understood that in relationship you often have one person who says “why you always want more” and then one person who says “but there is so many possibilities” and then the other person says “yes, but so many minefields”

I don't buy the thing that men talk less. I do think that men are often emptied out from the vocabulary of emotions by the age of seven. The socialization of boys does not really prioritize an active engagement with one's emotional life and one's interiority. It's much better to be stoic, to be fearless, to be competitive, those kinds of values. But when I sit alone with men, it's not because they don't have a vocabulary, and I’ve been a therapist of many men for decades for it was actually something I actively sought, and when you take your time, and you listen, and you support the expression, things will come out. Here's the thing, when a woman talks to you, many times you know that she's already said that to somebody else. But when a man talks to you, you know that he's hearing himself for the first time

I think every gender has been given license to what needs they're allowed to have publicly and officially, and in what language they're entitled to talk about them. So men will not necessarily talk about the need for tenderness, connection, care, intimacy, holding, because that is not the vocabulary that has been assigned to them. So they will talk about it in the language of sex. Women have basically not been given the license to say what they want sexually that is really not what they have been educated to develop, so they have learned that they are allowed to speak about relational needs and wrapped in their relational needs are all kinds of other longings for sexual intimacy, for seduction, for pleasure, for connection

Sex is not always politically correct. Sometimes we demonstrate during the day against the very same things that we delight in at night if it's playful, if it's consensual, if it's voluntary – that feels like a contradiction

Woman's experience doesn't really matter, there may be sex but that may be miserable sex. Do you think there's a lot of miserable sex? Of course, when women don't have desire is it really that they have less desire or is it that they don't have desire for the sex they can have? In order to want sex, it needs to be sex that is worth wanting

You can change the kitchen, but it won't change the bedroom. But when you change the bedroom, it changes the people who walk into the kitchen

This fear of rejection is probably one of the most important emotional or sexual vulnerabilities for many men, it's part of what is so alluring in porn, you are never rejected

Ask yourself: What is the most sensual sexual experience I’ve had without having sex?

One in four women, and one in six men have experiences of unwanted sex, or abuse, or violation, or assault. A lot of people are carrying a lot of very negative experiences, traumatic experiences

People cheat because they're lonely, they cheat because they have been sexually frustrated for so many years, they cheat because they are resentful, they cheat for vengeance and vindictiveness, they cheat because they need to constantly be affirmed by anybody that can make them feel better about themselves, they cheat for a lot of reasons that have to do with conflict, and discontent, and disconnection in their relationship. But they also sometimes have affairs that have nothing to do with the relationship and that's what was one of the big discoveries for me. Sometimes affairs happen in happy couples too, and sometimes it's not that you want to leave the person that you are with as much as you want to leave the person that you have yourself become

At the heart of affairs you find betrayal, and duplicity, and lying, and cheating, but you also find longing, and loss, and yearning. The word that I heard the most when people would describe their affairs, they would talk about the fact that they felt alive

If people were to put 10% of the creative imagination that they put into their affairs, into their marriages, or primary relationships, those relationships would be doing so much better

If you want to experience desire, it is wanting something that you don't yet have, it's exploring something that you don't yet know.

I’m most drawn to my partner when I see my partner in their element, passionate about something, competent, when I see my partner as a separate other person that is already so familiar but that is yet again somewhat mysterious, somewhat unknown, somewhat elusive

Relationship is an active engagement. It demands risk, it demands vulnerability, and it demands accountability. Typically, when people are in trouble they want the other person to change and to do the work, and I said if you want to change the other, change yourself. Ask yourself “what can I do that would make it better?” and do it

A lot of people end up in a rut because they're complacent, they're lazy, they're unimaginative, and they have a lot of imagination for a lot of stuff outside but not with their partner, and then they say I’m bored

Do not get impressed by the money, by the fame, by the education, look at the decency

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