Love in the Time of COVID | Esther Perel
Renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel discusses how the coronavirus pandemic challenges romantic relationships, offering actionable advice for couples and singles. She covers topics like managing stress, maintaining intimacy, navigating disagreements, and coping with ambiguous loss and anticipatory grief.
Deep Dive Analysis
19 Topic Outline
Introduction: Relationships Under Pandemic Stress
Esther Perel's Personal Experience and Historical Memory
Coping Mechanisms in Her Own Marriage
Common Relationship Challenges During the Pandemic
Historical Context and Unique Aspects of This Crisis
Forming a Functional Team in Difficult Relationships
The Power of Thoughtful Appreciation and Communication
Navigating Intimacy When Desires Differ
Understanding Anticipatory Grief and Ambiguous Loss
Addressing Loneliness and Creating Connection
Establishing Boundaries and Rituals at Home
Coping with Feeling Trapped in Difficult Relationships
Reframing Arguments Over Household Chores
Coping Styles Versus Gender Roles in Crisis
Processing Emotions: Different Expressions
Online Dating and Single Life During Lockdown
Relationships Forged in Crisis: The Accelerator Effect
Managing Differing Responses to Danger
The Strength of Storytelling and Communal Support
7 Key Concepts
Historical Memory (Resident Fears)
When acute stress or a crisis occurs, deeply stored personal, family, and community fears and memories from past adversities resurface. These 'resident fears' influence an individual's current experience and reactions to the new stressful situation.
The Great Adaptation
This term describes the current pandemic as an event demanding unprecedented adaptive responses from individuals and relationships. It highlights the need for flexibility and collaboration to navigate the unusual and pervasive challenges across all levels of relational life.
Ambiguous Loss
Coined by Pauline Boss, this concept refers to a loss that remains unclear, without resolution or closure, making it difficult to grieve. Examples include a person who is physically present but psychologically absent (like with Alzheimer's) or physically absent but psychologically present (like a kidnapped person).
Responsive Desire (Sexual)
This model suggests that sexual desire often emerges and builds *during* the experience of intimacy, rather than being a pre-existing state that must be present before engaging in sexual activity. It emphasizes that desire can be ignited through touch, kissing, and caressing as the body 'wakes up'.
Anticipatory Grief
This is the experience of grieving a loss that has not yet fully materialized. In the context of the pandemic, it refers to the sadness and fear associated with the potential loss of a known world, a predictable future, or a sense of security, even as these changes are still unfolding.
Principle of Continuity
This principle describes the human need to maintain a sense that life is stable and consistent with what has been known. Traditions, routines, and familiar objects (like a specific cake for a holiday) often symbolize this continuity, and their disruption can evoke feelings of loss and sadness.
Accelerator Effect (Crisis on Relationships)
A global crisis acts as an accelerator for relationships, intensifying existing dynamics and bringing core priorities to the forefront. This can lead to both increased connection (e.g., more marriages, babies) and increased separation (e.g., more divorces) as people re-evaluate their lives and relationships with heightened existential awareness.
8 Questions Answered
Couples should acknowledge and make space for their different coping styles, viewing them as a strength and complementarity rather than a threat. This allows both partners to contribute to resilience.
Intimacy doesn't require being 'in the mood' beforehand; the desire to connect is the precedent. Couples can start with physical touch like kissing and hugging, allowing desire to build during the experience, which can be soothing and release oxytocin.
Beyond just thanking for an action, it's more impactful to acknowledge the underlying characteristic or personality trait. For example, instead of 'thanks for doing the dishes,' say 'thanks for being thoughtful,' to highlight who the person is, not just what they do.
Often, arguments over chores mask deeper anxieties. Couples should try to articulate their underlying fears or unsettled feelings. When discussing chores, be concrete about what you need (e.g., 'I need you to cook lunch today') rather than complaining or criticizing the other person's character.
While there's a tendency to generalize men as more instrumental and women as more emotive, Esther Perel suggests that if given space and not interrupted, men will express their feelings, often in different language, such as talking about feeling useless, unable to protect loved ones, or trapped, which are expressions of deeper emotions like powerlessness or fear.
Yes, online dating is thriving. People are having longer, more revealing conversations before meeting, which fosters deeper connection. This period encourages a slower, more creative courtship, allowing people to feel alive and vital even without immediate physical contact.
Crisis acts as an accelerator, intensifying priorities and existential awareness. This can lead to both stronger connections (e.g., 'Corona babies,' marriages) and separations (e.g., 'COVID divorces'). Some relationships forged in crisis will last, while others will be seen as circumstantial and temporary once normalcy returns.
For the more fearful partner, listen and acknowledge their experience without trying to talk them out of it. For the less cautious partner, let them explain why certain activities are important to them. The goal is to make room for both coping styles in the relationship, as neither approach is inherently superior.
26 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Diverse Coping Styles
Acknowledge and make space for different coping styles within a relationship, viewing them as a strength and complementarity rather than a threat, especially during prolonged uncertainty, to build resilience.
2. Collaborate as a Functional Team
In challenging times, prioritize creating a functional team with your partner, responding as collaborators rather than focusing on past grievances, to develop adaptive responses to unusual situations.
3. Prioritize Responsive Intimacy
Engage in physical intimacy (touch, kiss, hug) even if not initially “in the mood,” as desire often arises during the experience, and it serves as a soothing, connection-building activity that releases oxytocin and contributes to well-being.
4. Communicate Your Stress Level
Monitor your own stress levels and explicitly communicate them to your partner (e.g., “I’m stress level six”) to prevent reactivity and help them understand your state, fostering more understanding interactions.
5. Appreciate Character, Not Just Deeds
Make a conscious effort to acknowledge positive actions by highlighting the underlying personality trait or characteristic (e.g., “thanks for being thoughtful”), rather than just the act itself, to strengthen relational well-being.
6. Communicate Needs, Not Faults
When addressing issues, articulate what you need (e.g., “I need you to cook lunch today”) rather than criticizing what the other person did wrong or didn’t do, as expressing needs is more vulnerable and effective than accusatory language.
7. Articulate Grief and Loss
Recognize and articulate the unspoken grief and sense of loss for the world as it was, including anticipatory grief, as this emotional processing is crucial for navigating prolonged uncertainty and feeling less alone.
8. Schedule Device-Free Connection Time
Dedicate specific device-free time, like a “date in another room,” to give each other full attention, fostering deeper connection and serving as a ritual to calm the nervous system and create order.
9. Establish Clear Boundaries
Create physical and temporal boundaries and demarcations in your daily life, such as eating in a different place than you work, to prevent dysregulation and maintain a sense of order and structure.
10. Uncover Underlying Argument Causes
When arguments arise over practical matters, recognize that they often stem from deeper, unarticulated fears or anxieties; articulating these underlying emotions can reduce relationship escalations.
11. Listen Without Reassuring
When someone expresses fear or anxiety, especially if you have different threat responses, simply listen and acknowledge their experience without trying to talk them out of it or offer reassurance, as this makes them feel less frightened.
12. Respect Diverse Danger Responses
Understand that people have different coping styles for danger; allow others to explain their need to engage with the world, even if it seems risky, and make room for both cautious and purpose-driven responses in your relationship.
13. Recount Resilience Stories
Share stories of resilience, triumph, and vulnerability from your family or community history with your partner or friends, as these narratives can provide strength, hope, and a sense of future during challenging times.
14. Foster Deep Communal Support
During social gatherings, occasionally ask friends what thoughts or life experiences the current situation has brought up for them, fostering deeper sharing and communal support, which is vital for mental health.
15. Validate Feelings with “That Sucks”
When someone is complaining, use simple validation phrases like “that sucks” to acknowledge their feelings, as merely listening and validating their experience can be extraordinarily soothing and curative.
16. Create a Resource Map
Develop a basic disaster preparedness plan by mapping your resources, identifying who is where, who you can reach out to for help, and what you need in the house, to ensure readiness for unusual situations.
17. Implement Daily Structure & Rituals
Create a schedule and preserve routines, both together and apart, to establish structure and rituals that prevent everything from bleeding into each other and maintain a sense of normalcy.
18. Vent to External Confidantes
If trapped in a difficult relationship, seek out friends or colleagues to vent and commiserate with, rather than relying on your partner for emotional exchange, to find external support.
19. Set Confinement Goals
Identify and set personal goals for what you would like to accomplish during periods of confinement, leveraging the unique circumstances to pursue things you might not have done otherwise.
20. Adjust Household Expectations
Adapt to a “survival mode” mindset regarding household cleanliness and organization, accepting that standards may be lower than usual, and avoid feeling that giving up perfection diminishes your identity.
21. Request Specific Household Tasks
When discussing household chores, avoid general complaints and instead make very concrete, practical requests (e.g., “I need you to cook lunch today”) that the other person can easily understand and act upon.
22. View Intimacy as Well-being
Adopt the mindset that intimacy is a fundamental part of human well-being and relational health, and even if not immediately desired, engaging in it can awaken the body and contribute to overall health.
23. Utilize Online Dating for Depth
Engage in online dating by having more conversations and taking longer to meet in person, as this context encourages deeper, more revealing discussions about important life events rather than superficial “job interview” dates.
24. Innovate Dating & Intimacy
In dating, allow imagination to explore creative forms of intimacy and connection, such as phone conversations or other practices, to maintain an erotic charge and feel alive even without physical contact.
25. Evaluate Risk in New Relationships
When considering meeting a new dating partner, openly discuss and assess individual risk tolerances, living situations, and contact history, similar to public health discussions around STIs, to make informed decisions about physical interaction.
26. Embrace Impermanence
Reacquaint yourself with the basic laws of impermanence and entropy, recognizing that despite societal progress, human fragility and the randomness of existence remain, which can have salutary effects.
9 Key Quotes
What's more interesting for me is the historical memory that I'm living with. I think that every one of us has resident fears, you know, that live inside of us, but they're kind of stored away in normal times. When acute stress occurs, your own resident fears, your historical memory appears, the one of your own life, the one of your family history, of your community.
Esther Perel
The challenge is really acknowledging the different coping styles and making space for them and not seeing one person's style as a threat to the other person.
Esther Perel
Distressed relationships typically take the positive for granted and make a big deal of the negative.
Esther Perel
Sometimes the desire comes while you are having the experience. The desire is not the precedent for it. You know, it's the desire to connect that is the precedent.
Esther Perel
Relational health involves sexual health, involves mental health. It's a large big thing. I don't have to start because I'm in the mood.
Esther Perel
The tension rises because you actually feel unsettled about other things. The more you can articulate the other things, the more you can actually ground yourself into what you really feel, the less likely the escalations in your relationship and in your household.
Esther Perel
I just think we can't expect everybody to speak one language, to have a kind of a feminized version of emotion talk.
Esther Perel
Lonely is really scary at this point. There are people who have nobody calling them or very few and vice versa. They can really get lost at this moment. I mean, you know, there is a way of thinking that as many, if not more people will die from the coronavirus as a result of poverty, depression, and loneliness than from the virus itself.
Esther Perel
The magic words are that sucks. And just to validate, just to hear and to validate is extraordinarily soothing.
Dan Harris
5 Protocols
Becoming a Functional Team in Crisis
Esther Perel- Create a map of your resources, identifying who is where, who you can reach out to for what, and who is counting on you.
- Ensure you have necessary household items and plan how to manage when you don't.
- Establish a schedule to preserve routines, distinguishing between shared and individual activities.
- Create structure and rituals to prevent daily life from bleeding into each other.
- Respond to each other as collaborators, not as ex-lovers or divorcing partners.
- Make a conscious effort to acknowledge when the other person does something right, highlighting their positive characteristic rather than just the act.
- Monitor your own stress levels and communicate them to your partner (e.g., 'I'm stress level six') to prevent reactivity.
- If you are only with each other and have no other contacts, engage in physical touch like hugs and intimacy.
Initiating Intimacy When Not 'In the Mood'
Esther Perel- Shift your mindset from needing to be 'in the mood' to recognizing that the desire to connect is the primary driver.
- Don't plan for immediate sex; instead, be together and be open to what happens.
- Begin with non-demanding physical touch such as touching, kissing, hugging, and caressing.
- Allow your body to gradually 'wake up' and warm to the experience, similar to physical exercise.
- Understand that desire and pleasure can arise *during* the intimate experience, contributing to overall well-being and connection.
Creating Emotional Space and Connection
Esther Perel- Close devices and dedicate full, undivided attention to each other for a set period.
- Create a 'date' ritual, even if it's just in another room, by dressing up, opening wine, or lighting a candle.
- One person speaks about how they are doing, while the other listens attentively without interrupting or offering solutions.
- Acknowledge and validate the speaker's experience and feelings (e.g., 'I know that for you, this is the hardest part').
- Maintain a respectful boundary, allowing the speaker to talk and breathe without feeling encroached upon, while still feeling connected.
Navigating Differing Responses to Danger
Esther Perel- For the partner who is more fearful, allow them to talk about their fears without trying to reassure them or talk them out of it.
- Listen and acknowledge their experience, as this can make them feel less frightened.
- For the partner who seems less cautious, ask them to explain why certain activities or behaviors are important to them.
- Make room for both coping styles within the family or relationship, recognizing that neither is inherently 'right' or 'wrong' in a time of prolonged uncertainty.
Strengthening Resilience Through Storytelling
Esther Perel- Share stories of resilience, triumph, and vulnerability with your partner, family, or friends.
- Reflect on the strengths and lessons learned from your personal history, family, community, or religious groups.
- Use these narratives to provide strength, hope, vision, and a sense of future continuity.
- Engage in conversations that allow for the sharing of deep, non-linear, or paradoxical realizations about life experiences, fostering communal support.