‘The nuclear model is too insulated and isolated’
Before her stop at the Boch Center, popular psychotherapist and podcaster Esther Perel chatted about touring, post-pandemic intimacy, and polyamory bylaws in Somerville
Belgian-American psychotherapist Esther Perel has been in the relationship business for a very long time — and she’s famous for it.
She’s the author of “The State of Affairs,” which examines infidelity, and “Mating in Captivity,” a tome about sexual desire and commitment — and how people can remain together happily (or not).
Her popular podcast, “Where Should We Begin?,” features real people talking about their private lives; Perel has helped them work through grief, trauma, sex, long-term commitment, and, occasionally, why they can’t stop fighting. As of 2021, there’s also a “Where Should We Begin?” card game.
Now Perel is taking the discussion on the road with a tour she’s calling “The Future of Relationships, Love & Desire.” She’ll be at the Boch Center’s Wang Theatre on Wednesday. The venue bills it as an “immersive event,” but no one will be forced to share. Listening is just fine.
To preview her visit, Perel hopped on Zoom to talk about love, sex ... and polyamory in Somerville (she knows plenty about it).
Q. I know you’ve given talks in many different places. Are Boston audiences different than others?
A. I’ve been all over the world, from Turkey to Morocco, and I think what is interesting, doing a tour in the US, is how much I bring out multiple voices in that city. “How many of you are from Boston?,” is a question I may ask. And, “How many of you were not born in the States?” When you have 30 countries present in the audience, Boston becomes a different Boston — even for the Bostonians.
Q. In Greater Boston, there’s a lot of talk about polyamory — mostly because Somerville became the first municipality in the country to pass an ordinance where you can have more than one domestic partner. Now other communities [Cambridge, Arlington] are following suit. Is polyamory something that’s coming up more for you? Are people checking in to see how you feel about it?
A. I wrote about consensual non-monogamy and polyamory in “The State of Affairs” and in “Mating in Captivity”; “State of Affairs” — that was years ago. That exploration was already on the map. I wrote about it from the point of view of how it helps us reconcile the improbable duality between independence and belonging. It was one of the ways people were answering the question of “How do I straddle the need for security and the need for freedom?” ... But in addition, I think that polyamory, more and more, has become an answer to questions of community building . ... I’ve said before, the nuclear model is too insulated and isolated. We demand too much from one person to give us what the whole village is to provide. I’ve said before that gay couples have long understood the difference between emotional monogamy and sexual promiscuity — and they understood that monogamy is a primary commitment to a primary relationship that may or may not involve sexual exclusiveness . ... Polyamory is a philosophy. It’s a practice. It’s a relational arrangement. It’s not just a solution to the mishaps of infidelity. It needs to be done in a context that demands enormous equality. It can’t be a power maneuver.
Q. I am still trying to figure out how COVID affected people and their relationships.
A. I think a lot of things happened in the pandemic. We experienced the complete collapse of the roles. If I sat in this chair, I was the mother, supervisor, the therapist, the wife, the friend, the sister. All in this one chair without moving, without changing clothes, without going anywhere. … And you were trying to stay safe. And you saw people as potential contaminants. … You couldn’t be spontaneous. That’s another major aspect of life — spontaneity, serendipity, happenstance — and we have not recovered that . ... None of this can take place in a little box on the screen like we are looking at each other now, where we think we’re looking at each other and we’re not. Nothing on a physiological level gives us the mirror neurons that eye contact normally should generate . ... The pandemic created a social atrophy in which we lost skills. We have gone inward.
Q. You’ll see people in person here soon. I know what people get when they listen to you talk about relationships. I’m wondering what you get from being in a room of people who engage with you.
A. I get so much. I was sitting at South by Southwest, and I had a conversation with Trevor Noah and I had a conversation with Brené Brown. And with Trevor, we were talking [offstage] about what it means to be in a room. You hear people are actually responding to what you’re saying. I spent years lecturing in front of a green dot on my screen, pretending I was seeing people when there was nobody there — and imagining that maybe I said something funny, but I could never hear laughter. It wasn’t an amazing experience. So both Trevor and I were talking about, you know, what does it mean to be in front of an audience and to experience the aliveness?
One thing he was saying is there’s a reason that in a comedy club there are no windows and you sit very close because you’re saying things that outside of the club would have a very different meaning. The same thing is true with therapy. But this is true in reverse. Some of the things that are said in my office I think should not just belong to the office with a closed door. It belongs in the public square.