Esther Perel: The effects of trauma, the role of narratives in shaping our worldview, and why we need to accept uncomfortable emotions

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode. My guest this week is Esther Perel. Esther is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of The State of Affairs and Mating in Captivity.
She's given two TED Talks, which have been widely viewed. She's also the host of the popular podcast, Where Should We Begin and How's Work. The latter is a newer podcast. The former has, I think, is probably now in its fourth or fifth season.
She's given a number of other really fantastic lectures that you can visit and we'll link to in the show notes. Couple of talks at South by Southwest that focus on relationships in the workplace and such. I've wanted to talk with Esther for quite some time now. And while she's known in most circles as an expert on human sexuality, eroticism, and things like that, I, of course, maybe have a bit of a broader aperture of her expertise and how it figures into relationships in general, and have found this to be very interesting. And I wanted to have her on a podcast so that we could talk about things that go far beyond what she normally speaks about. And we do that. We start with her incredible upbringing in childhood, which is kind of a heroic story of her parents and how that shaped and influenced her. And then really go from there into how she followed her passion, both in her education and ultimately her curiosity in her career and how it got her to where we are today. So I'll say no more about this episode, other than I think it's gonna be very interesting to anyone who's interested in relationships. And that's basically your relationship with yourself and your relationship with anyone around you. And hopefully that includes everybody who's listening to this. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Esther Perel.
Hey Esther, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. It's been a while I've wanted to sit down and have the discussion we're about to have.

**Esther Perel** (2:37)
It's a pleasure.

**Peter Attia** (2:39)
I detect a slight accent. Is that New Jersey?

**Esther Perel** (2:42)
Oh yes. Right across the river.

**Peter Attia** (2:46)
Right, right, right. How many languages do you speak?

**Esther Perel** (2:50)
I speak nine languages.

**Peter Attia** (2:52)
As someone who speaks 1.25 languages, it blows my mind, and I'm sure we're gonna get to how one learns nine languages. But you grew up in Belgium?

**Esther Perel** (3:03)
I grew up in Belgium, yeah.

**Peter Attia** (3:05)
Tell me a little bit about that.

**Esther Perel** (3:07)
Linguistically or broader?

**Peter Attia** (3:09)
Yeah, broader. You've spoken in the past about the impact that your parents' survival had on your upbringing.
Maybe you could tell folks a little bit about that, because I'm gonna assume not everybody is familiar with your story.

**Esther Perel** (3:23)
So I grew up in Belgium. I was born in Leuven, which is one of the oldest university towns in Europe. And then I grew up in Antwerp to two Polish parents who were both the sole survivors of their entire family of the Nazi concentration camps. And they, by fluke, arrived to Belgium. They had a permit there for about three months, and then they decided to stay. And so they ended up being another five years illegal refugees in Belgium.
I was educated in Antwerp, which was a Flemish city. So I did 12 years of schooling in Flemish. But we spoke also French and Yiddish and German and Polish in the house.
And that just was the way it was. It's the air that you breathe. Nobody made a big deal out of speaking all these languages and learning them. So that's the basics.

**Peter Attia** (4:21)
When you finished your education, your high school education, what was the next step for you? Where did you go after that?

**Esther Perel** (4:28)
The first thing I did after I finished high school was come to the United States to travel for almost two months, and I ended up hitchhiking across the US and seeing the country in a way that I probably will never see again. And then I went to study in Jerusalem.