Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

They're amicably divorced divorce lawyers, carving out a new kind of relationship after the end of their marriage. Esther reframes their situation and proposes a radical solution. What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Often when a relationship ends, we're left with regrets, questions, and conversations we wish we could have had. Esther helps a woman process the things she left unsaid including the sexual grief and loss she feels after her husband unexpectedly died. What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode contains discussions of a death by suicide. Please take care listening. The suicide of his first wife left four traumatized children in its wake; she's spent six years putting the pieces back together. They're both ready to experience joy in their marriage, but can't quite figure out how. Esther coaches them through the difference between survival vs. revival, and how to live after loss. What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ten years and two kids later, a wife comes to Esther looking for answers: does she want to explore her attraction to women because she's bisexual, or because she no longer wants to be married to her husband? What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join Esther for a dinner table conversation on the topic of polyamory. The dinner was held to mark the anniversary of a panel discussion Esther was part of on the same topic ten years earlier. Together the original panel and a few new friends explore what has changed in the last decade as consensual non-monogamy has become more mainstream, why some advocate for their choices, and what consequences and challenges they still face as well. This is not a session but a fly on the wall conversation. Some of the guests chose to be anonymous, while others allowed us to use their names. To watch the talk from ten years ago "Special Arrangements: The Changing Face of the 21st Century Relationship"discussion panel on non-monogamy and polyamory with Sunny Bates (moderator), Reid Mihalko, Diana Adams, Esq., and Esther Perel, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iDluKrMvYw Diana Adams is the Executive Director of nonprofit advocacy group www.ChosenFamilyLawCenter.org and a mediator serving families nationwide to negotiate polyamorous agreements with www.DianaAdamsLaw.net. Reid Mihalko is a sex and relationship educator. More about his work at http://ReidAboutSex.com. What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It began as a passionate affair and ended two marriages. Now, they're struggling as they try to build trust. Esther encourages them to be brutally honest--with themselves. What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They met in college; he's a U.S. citizen and she's trapped in a cross-border limbo. Their young love complicated by immigration status and politics, Esther helps them appreciate each other's sacrifices as they contemplate marriage. What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls The Arc of Love. Each session centers around a couple’s story. Whether it’s issues of trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and rupture, polyamory or monogamy. The episodes can be listened to in any order you want but were curated with a beginning, middle, and end. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Arc of Love is my gift to you as your summer beach listen of 2024. A curated collection of stories about trust and betrayal, care and aggression, closeness and distance, attraction and disgust, rupture and repair. As the stories mirror and amplify our own experiences, they help us grapple with the parts of ourselves that hold the same emotions, conflicts, and forbidden truths. Inevitably, one of these episodes will resonate with you, even if it’s not your story. I invite you to listen and tell me which one speaks to you. A man has never thought of himself as a father but the partner he's devoted to is now unsure if she wants kids or not. With additional unknowns in his life, Esther helps guide him through his different questions about what the future holds. Esther Callings are a one time, 45-60 minute interventional phone call with Esther. They are edited for time, clarity, and anonymity. If you have a question you would like to talk through with Esther, send a voice memo to producer@estherperel.com. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a classic session, from the first season of Where Should We Begin? A husband hasn’t had an erection in 12 years and struggles with acknowledging it openly. His wife, in despair over her feelings of hopelessness in the bedroom, seeks relief from her sexual frustration and feelings of resentment. Esther reinforces to both of them that defining him as “impotent” is only making things worse. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They met as community organizers in their neighborhood. She had just gotten out of a multi-year marriage to her ex-wife and began to forge new friendships. After about a year, something shifted for her and she began to develop feelings for him, sending her seemingly solid identity into a tailspin. After 15 years of identifying as a lesbian, she was in her first straight relationship. Now, he is beginning to question what he wants out of life and their relationship and can’t seem to grow out of his youth-formed habits of yearning for greener pastures. They find themselves at an erotic stalemate and come to Esther for help. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Four affairs and four divorces later, she is searching for answers as to why she can’t stop leaving in such an abrupt way. Despite longing for a life partner, she questions her ability to maintain a healthy and stable relationship. Esther seeks to uncover the root of these issues and help her forge a new path forward as she embarks on what she hopes is her final relationship. Esther Callings are a one-time, 45-60 minute interventional phone call with Esther. They are edited for time, clarity, and anonymity. If you have a question you would like to talk through with Esther, send a voice memo to producer@estherperel.com. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a classic session, from the first season of Where Should We Begin? A newly married couple comes to Esther for guidance on how to create a space of safety and physical intimacy while also giving voice to past trauma. One partner is working to overcome an aversion to physical touch due to abuse from his past while the other is learning to ask for more without triggering painful memories for his husband. From this starting point, Esther guides them through a discussion on memory, family relationships, and infidelity and helps them work out a blueprint for loving and satisfying touch. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Esther takes a question from a young woman struggling with her relationship with her father. A recent divorce and the slow reveal of an affair on the part of her father has ruptured the family- and leaves her questioning whether or not her father should continue to have a role in her life. Esther Callings are a one time, 45-60 minute interventional phone call with Esther. They are edited for time, clarity, and anonymity. If you have a question you would like to talk through with Esther, send a voice memo to producer@estherperel.com. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this Esther Calling, Esther speaks to a young woman grappling with the burden of caring for her ailing parents and the feelings of resentment she feels towards her older siblings. But the true cause of this family conflict goes much deeper than who is showing up and who is not. Esther Callings are a one time, 45-60 minute interventional phone call with Esther. They are edited for time, clarity, and anonymity. If you have a question you would like to talk through with Esther, send a voice memo to producer@estherperel.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They grew up together and now run a production company. They are contending with the growing pains of transitioning from best friends to coworkers and the challenges of running, essentially, a family business. Esther helps them find the complementarity in their roles and see their story as growing and developing even in the face of challenges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Esther speaks to a woman who is experiencing a kind of a double story. She resents her mother for the choices she made and the example she set, while also wondering if she keeps choosing the safe person as a way to combat those childhood feelings of abandonment. Esther helps her untangle these complicated feelings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a classic session, from the first season of Where Should We Begin? A middle-aged couple, together for seventeen years, best friends and partners who, despite their loving and positive relationship, go months without connecting sexually. He transitioned 10 years ago, and they’re both experiencing the physical changes of aging. Esther guides them through body exercises, in an effort to help them find sexual spaces amidst the crush of everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He gets to a certain point in relationships before he starts fantasizing about his ex-boyfriends or other future partners. Esther talks him through what he might be holding onto from his childhood that makes his otherwise healthy relationships feel stifling. Esther Callings are a one-time, 45-60 minute interventional phone call with Esther. They are edited for time, clarity, and anonymity. If you have a question you would like to talk through with Esther, send a voice memo to producer@estherperel.com. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

She gets angry when she feels devalued and put down. He intellectualizes and rationalizes instead of sympathizing. Esther helps them to see each other and work towards dissolving the patterns they developed to protect themselves. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A woman whose ex-boyfriend cheated on her with his ex girlfriend ends a perfectly good relationship because she can't trust how close her current partner is with his own ex. She wonders if two people can meet each other's needs without having to sacrifice a part of themselves and if she can ever move past her fears and let love into her life. Esther Callings are a one time, 45-60 minute interventional phone call with Esther. They are edited for time, clarity, and anonymity. If you have a question you would like to talk through with Esther, send a voice memo to producer@estherperel.com. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices