How Love Dies: The Psychology of Cheating & Attraction - Esther Perel - #986

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Oddly, our attachment systems lie to us. They lie to us. And this was put to me earlier this year, is red flags don't look red if you're wearing rose colored glasses. And I think that's what the early stages of a relationship are. The early stages of a relationship are rose colored glasses. And a lot of the time, it means that you don't see red flags.

**Esther Perel** (0:23)
Yeah. I mean, definitely the early stage is a stage of idealization. You project onto the person. You feel so good about yourself in their presence. They make you feel smart, beautiful, irreplaceable, unique.
And you kind of get hooked to that feeling. You know, I used to feel so good in your presence. Why now don't I? Why has it changed? Some people partner with someone and all they think to themselves consciously or not is, please don't ever change. And some people partner with someone and in the back of their mind, it is, this is going to change, this is going to change, this is going to change.

**Chris Williamson** (1:13)
Oh, they're in love with that potential.

**Esther Perel** (1:15)
Yes. That's one way of looking at this. It's like, yes, that's definitely one way. But I think it's an interesting thing, who, you know, when you actually want this to remain set. And I think that after the idealization, we start to experience with the people that we are with, experiences from other relationships, expectations, disappointments, breaches, that we experienced elsewhere, and that we now bring into this relationship. The way I typically used to say it is that there's only, because people often say, I don't have this issue with anybody else. I don't have this at work. I don't have this with my friends. And I always say, I totally understand it. Because there's only two relationships that mirror each other. The one of your romantic and intimate life now, and the one, and the original one.
They echo each other. The one that you had with the people who raised you. And these two have an echo chamber with each other, in most unconscious and visceral ways.

**Chris Williamson** (2:33)
It's strange to think about how much of our adult life is puppeted by things that happened before we could even remember it. You know, it's kind of, it's strange with attachment theory, right, because attachment theory is your attachment.

**Esther Perel** (2:48)
Is it true, Chris, is the question. We think this way. It's a common model. It's a framework of modern psychology.
And it suits us. I mean, you know, it's very much a second nature for me to think this way, because I was steeped into this kind of way of thinking about the humankind and human nature and relationships. But sometimes I ask myself, is that, what would happen if somebody came in with a completely different theory?

**Chris Williamson** (3:17)
You think that attachment theory might be due for a replication crisis at some point in future?

**Esther Perel** (3:24)
Here's someone, you know, there used to be a very prevalent theory when psychoanalysis was really at the core of our psychological culture. And it believed in what it still does, in the Oedipus complex.
Now, you know, who still talks about the Oedipus complex in the general culture, maybe in an analyst office, but in the general culture, it's kind of passé. You know, the truth of today is often the joke of tomorrow. So, this is a perfect example of something that was never considered a theory, it was considered true. Every five-year-old goes through the Oedipus complex, every three-year-old. I mean, really?

**Chris Williamson** (4:08)
Wow. So, the current world of anxious attachment and this happened before you could even speak and this is ingrained in your nervous system, might be in 20 years' time the Oedipus complex of 2025

**Esther Perel** (4:20)
Yeah, it's a theory, let's say, you know, and a theory has definitely elements of truth that it tries to describe. It theorizes over a certain set of observations. But that doesn't mean it's true. And there have been other theories like that, that have been debunked, that we sincerely believe in, you know, including that children don't remember anything. You know, but they do. And that, you know, so there's a lot of, the attachment is a theory. It's a very powerful and a very useful theory. It's a vocabulary, it's a meaning-making system, it's a theory.

**Chris Williamson** (4:56)
It would, there's definitely a question around how much is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? How much is it that you've done this assessment or you've spent some time reflecting and you think that you are a person with dismissive avoidant attachment or you've got anxious attachment or you've got what, and then you start to show up in that way in your relationship and it becomes unfalsifiable because you know it, you can't unknow it.