The Covid-19 pandemic didn't destroy strong relationships but it did act as a "relationship accelerator" by piling on a lot of existential stress, says Belgian-American psychotherapist Esther Perel.
"[Events like this] put you in touch with life is short and life is fragile. And when you have a sense of mortality you have a certain urgency about your priorities and about what matters and about time. So you basically say 'what am I waiting for?'" she tells Kim Hill.
Esther Perel Photo: Supplied
- Listen to Esther Perel's podcasts Where should we begin? and How's work? here.
The self-questioning prompted by the pandemic led some people towards marriage and kids and others in the direction of 'I'm out of here', Perel says.
Instead of trying to make a couple stay together at all costs, Perel sees her goal as helping those involved "find clarity and responsibility, together or apart".
"It's also [a way] for people to be able to say goodbye, separate, disentangle, acknowledge what they took from each other, what they gave each other and integrate this in such a way that they're free to move on and have another relationship."
Changing the dynamics of a relationship is very difficult, Perel says, as in a party of two it's very easy to think the problem is the other person and if they were to change things would improve.
"You are responsible for my misery and if you changed I would be happier but since you're not changing I keep being more angry" is a viewpoint she often comes across.
It's a relatively recent idea that one relationship should be the hub for all of our pragmatic and intimate needs, Perel says.
Once a pragmatic, economic arrangement, people now seek a marriage partner with whom they can experience nothing less than "a sense of wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence".
"We have collapsed the spiritual with the social and we are looking to the religion of romanticism to basically provide us the things we used to look for in the realm of the divine."
Perel says people of her generation did not expect their partner would also be their soul mate and/or best friend.
"We didn't expect to not suffer ... to not struggle. We didn't expect to not have to make concessions. We didn't think that love and the romantic plot of perfect harmony was going to drive us. Many people did not create marriage on that basis.
"It wasn't easier [back then], but things were decided for you. And now you have to make all the big decisions yourself. So you find yourself often caught in a state of relational ambivalence when it is too good to leave but too bad to stay."
Making decisions about whether or not a relationship is good for you can be very confusing, she says.
"You have to answer questions of which the only criteria is to be true to yourself. And being true to yourself is really the burden of authenticity."
Our individual relationship history, which Perel calls an "unofficial resume", dictates the expectations we bring to a relationship, Perel says.
Some people have had good relationship mentoring in their early lives – "they know how to receive, to ask, to share, to touch".
Others received "very poor schooling" in the form of neglect, harm and being taught not to have needs.
In her hit podcast Where Should We Begin? Perel invites listeners to be a fly on the wall in her therapy office as she helps couples navigate every kind of problem imaginable.
Many people who listen to the podcast are interested to hear the kind of honest conversations they would like to have in their own relationships, she says.
"Could [my partner and I] have this 'opening up'? Could we have this kind of unlocking? Could we get some of our juices back, could we reconnect with our lost desire? Could we have a different conversation from the one we always find ourselves in?"
Esther Perel is the author of the best-selling books Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. She will be in Auckland on 20 November to give a talk on the future of relationships.
