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Episode: Say More - Esther Perel on Fantasy with Gillian Anderson
Author: Esther Perel Global Media
Duration: 00:59:01
Episode Shownotes
Recently, on Where Should We Begin, we've been focusing on the things we sweep under the rug in our relationships—conversations that we have a hard time having with ourselves let alone with others. Oftentimes, our sexual fantasies exist in this space and reveal us at our most bare, showing us
not just what we want sexually, but what we want emotionally and psychologically. Even with a loving partner, it can be difficult to share our most personal sexual fantasies. There's often shame, stigma, and a fear of being judged. Award-winning actress, Gillian Anderson, joins Esther to discuss Want, her collection of women's anonymous fantasies from around the world. To purchase Gillian Anderson's new book, Want: https://bit.ly/3O8CVcZ If you have an individual question you would like to talk through with Esther, please send a voice memo to [email protected]. If you would like to apply for a couples session with Esther, please click here: https://bit.ly/40fGHIU. Esther’s two new courses on desire are now available inside The Desire Bundle. Go to https://www.estherperel.com/course-bundles/the-desire-bundle to learn more about Bringing Desire Back and Playing with Desire. 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
Summary
In this episode of 'Where Should We Begin?', Esther Perel and Gillian Anderson delve into the often hidden realm of women's erotic fantasies, using Anderson's book 'Want' as a springboard for discussion. They emphasize that these fantasies expose not only sexual desires but also complex emotional and psychological needs, calling for an open dialogue that transcends societal stigma. The conversation covers a range of topics including the nature of sexual fantasies—how they provide emotional healing, the distinction between fantasy and reality, and the importance of normalizing discussions about sexuality both in family settings and intimate relationships.
Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Say More - Esther Perel on Fantasy with Gillian Anderson) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.
Full Transcript
00:00:00 Speaker_03
Recently, on Where Should We Begin, we've been focusing on secrets, the stuff we push under the rug, conversations that we are loath to have and certainly not in the public square, the forbidden, the hidden,
00:00:19 Speaker_03
the obfuscated, the unexplored, the unarticulated. And one such topic is the subject of erotic fantasies, especially erotic fantasies of women. The book that very much opened up this subject in my generation was Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden.
00:00:41 Speaker_03
The book that is now on many people's shelves is by Gillian Anderson, who's an award-winning film and television and theatre actor.
00:00:53 Speaker_03
But she became very much a household name in my house, for sure, when she played sex therapist Dr. Jean Milburn on the Netflix series Sex Education. And her book is called Want.
00:01:09 Speaker_03
It's an exploration of hundreds of anonymous women who have sent in the scripts, the descriptions of their own erotic longings, of their sexual imaginings. And one of them is actually by Gillian Anderson herself.
00:01:30 Speaker_03
So, I wanted to have a conversation about the power of fantasy, the intricacy, the irrationality, the secret logic of the erotic mind, because it actually is one of the most fascinating parts of our minds and our bodies, is how we conjure up
00:01:52 Speaker_03
those fantasies, those plots, those sensations, those elixirs that are all meant to heighten pleasure and excitement. Sexual fantasies are sometimes so counterintuitive in some ways, so counter to
00:02:12 Speaker_03
our conscience to the way we see ourselves, to our values, that they can baffle us. So we talk together about how we make sense of what we call sexual fantasies, how we come to understand them, how culturally bound they are,
00:02:30 Speaker_03
how we don't always want to experience them in real life for sure, and what it means when fantasy is as if it's play, it's pretend, but it's a powerful production in our mind.
00:02:47 Speaker_03
So I'm inviting you into my office to meet me and Gillian Anderson as we talk about sexual fantasies of women. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Autograph Collection Hotels.
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00:03:39 Speaker_00
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00:04:20 Speaker_04
who are reading the book are starting to ask themselves, am I getting what I want sexually with my partner in our relationship? Or my multiple partners, or whatever their life circumstances are at that particular moment.
00:04:38 Speaker_04
And if they're observing their feelings around it, around the thought of asking for it, Meaning, do I dare to ask for what I want? Do I dare to ask for what I want? And do I know? Do I know? Do I dare to ask? If I don't know, why?
00:04:57 Speaker_04
If I don't dare to ask, why? If I do dare to ask, but I'd rather not waste time, not bother, it's too complicated, we've tried, it didn't work. But it just opens up the conversation, and women are also starting
00:05:15 Speaker_04
as they are engaging with the stories in the book, you know, you get quite a lot from the women who have written in. It's not just the fantasy. It is, I've been married for 40 years. He hasn't touched me for, you know, or whatever.
00:05:31 Speaker_04
Or I am in a lesbian relationship for all intents and purposes, but my fantasies are always about men. You know, just there's a lot of variation and you get
00:05:44 Speaker_04
women are really identifying with the human beings writing in and identifying with particular aspects of their real lives, their needs, their desires, the complexities of both the fantasy, the desire and the status quo.
00:06:06 Speaker_04
And so it's just bringing up a lot of questions and It's also, I've heard from a lot of women that they're making life changes. because of what the book is bringing up.
00:06:25 Speaker_03
Right. Because I think when, what I was thinking when I was reading is you get, first of all, a theory of desire. How is female desire constituted and multiple ways? It's not just one, one way, but how is it articulated?
00:06:41 Speaker_03
Um, when, and I, when I say desire it, I define it as to own the wanting. But that's one piece, but I think the bigger piece that I have always thought about, and that I find confirmed here is that
00:06:58 Speaker_03
Fantasies are not just sexual scripts or sexual enhancements and turn-ons. Fantasies actually reveal you at your most bare. And they tell truths about you that are hard to get at otherwise.
00:07:14 Speaker_03
And they reveal not just what you want sexually, but actually what you really want emotionally and psychologically.
00:07:23 Speaker_03
And once you understand that it is a coded language for some of our deepest emotional needs, wishes, fears, aspirations, rather than just plain sex, then it reveals you in a way that is irresistible.
00:07:41 Speaker_03
Once you find yourself with a huge gap between the permissible and the possible, then you cannot stay in your seat. No, and you can't unsee that. You can't, yeah.
00:07:54 Speaker_04
I think that's what people are finding.
00:07:56 Speaker_03
And I always said to my students, I say, don't ask people what they do. Ask them what they think about while they're doing it. That's interesting. Because what they do, okay, they'll describe, we go this, we start, we do that.
00:08:12 Speaker_03
But what they think about with their partners, not when they're in the fantasy itself, but what is it that they're actually thinking about and who are they thinking about?
00:08:22 Speaker_05
Yeah.
00:08:23 Speaker_03
What is the creative resource of a fantasy? I mean, fantasies are enormously creative and imaginative plots coded and they can heal you and they can repair and they can compensate and they can transform.
00:08:39 Speaker_03
I mean, they are that powerful because a good fantasy states the problem and offers the solution. Right? If in my fantasy I'm irresistible, you know, I may often find that in my real life I'm slightly more insecure and not so bold.
00:09:00 Speaker_03
If in my real life I have a hard time asking for what I want, I can set up a fantasy where I'm with someone who knows exactly what I want. I don't even have to ask. I don't even have to know because they know better than me.
00:09:13 Speaker_03
It's the problem and it offers the solution.
00:09:17 Speaker_04
Can someone learn to fantasize? Can it be learned?
00:09:21 Speaker_03
Yes, yes. Like I think that if people read stories here, they will have some stories they say, hmm, I'm curious about that. What would that be? Or suddenly they find themselves, you know,
00:09:35 Speaker_03
moist, titillated, aroused, and they say, and they suddenly have to notice that that actually speaks to them. In others, they feel, ew, gross, crush, you know, don't want to touch that.
00:09:48 Speaker_03
So it's a little bit like standing in front of a buffet and deciding which foods, which taste, which textures, which smells appeal to you. And then from there, it opens up inside of you.
00:10:03 Speaker_03
Fantasies are kind of the combination of your personal history and the broad collective sweep of the cultural imagination. So a lot of fantasies, you watch them in movies.
00:10:16 Speaker_03
And you say, ah, you don't even, it's not consciously, but you register this is a beautiful moment where this person experiences something at the hands of this other person.
00:10:27 Speaker_03
Sometimes you read and then you realize, you know, the next time around when you are pleasing yourself, you're actually going back to that thing that you read back then. Most fantasies are discovered, stumbled upon, or learned.
00:10:44 Speaker_04
what percentage of fantasies have roots in childhood experience in some way? Are most of our fantasies linked back to something that's happened, either a first love or a trauma or a, you know, there's... Many, but I don't think it's very broad.
00:11:06 Speaker_03
Yes, you can have experiences in childhood of delight, of play, And you remember of biking, of sitting on a horse, of paddling, of sitting on your granddad's lap or your father's or mother's lap. It's not just trauma.
00:11:25 Speaker_04
But for instance, there are a few fantasies, or at least in the initial submissions, there were a few fantasies, women imagining having sex while wearing a diaper, a nappy.
00:11:37 Speaker_03
Yes, because It's been 20 years I've been kind of tracking this subject, the erotic mind, the erotic imagination, and it's amazing ability to do a lot of things.
00:11:51 Speaker_03
It's unique because most other fantasies, if I say I want to go to Paris, my fantasy is to travel to Paris, I would like to make Paris happen. But sexual fantasies often exist
00:12:09 Speaker_03
as a realm of experience that transcends the restrictions, the boundaries, your sense of self, your self-image, your moral and ideological convictions.
00:12:22 Speaker_03
It's the transgressive nature of it that is so powerful and not your desire to want to experience it in reality. many of our fantasies we would never want to experience in reality.
00:12:36 Speaker_03
And that's the opposite of most other fantasies that we have, most other things that we imagine. So how is it that in our mind alone or with someone, we can create absolute delight and flight of fancy about things that would make us cringe?
00:12:56 Speaker_04
in real life? So I guess what I'm understanding is that the growth or the healing around fantasy is not necessarily about finding a way to enact what is in one's mind.
00:13:12 Speaker_04
It's more about finding a way to learn from, as you were saying before, what your real
00:13:20 Speaker_04
needs, desires, and what the solution is to those feelings, whether it's about insecurity, or whether it's about needing, at the end of the day, to be held, or whether it's about, you know, that one investigates the fantasy for deeper truths about oneself, as a healing path to that, as opposed to
00:13:48 Speaker_04
the healing path being a reenactment of it in some way.
00:13:52 Speaker_03
And it's not always healing. Sometimes it's just fun. It's excitement. I mean, the primary purpose of a fantasy is to intensify excitement and arousal and pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. Let's be very, very clear. That is the its main function. Yeah.
00:14:07 Speaker_03
It's what more can I add, you know? And sometimes it's enacted. Sometimes it doesn't need to be enacted because it's enacted in my mind. But the interesting piece about erotic fantasies is that they often include many
00:14:26 Speaker_03
feelings and experiences that do not get processed so easily in other parts of our lives. You talk about the diaper, infantile needs and wishes are very big in our fantasy world. Jealousy, possessiveness, revenge, power exchange,
00:14:50 Speaker_03
total surrender, passivity.
00:14:52 Speaker_03
I mean, there are many feelings that we would not want to experience those in, I don't want to feel jealous in real life, but in my fantasy, if that jealousy becomes an elixir, it's fun, it's playful, it's pretend, it's a great theater.
00:15:10 Speaker_03
I mean, as an actress, it's really, you know, the world of fantasy is a theater. You perform the play, or you read the play, or you imagine the play, but it is a theater.
00:15:24 Speaker_03
And it's extremely important for people to understand the pretend nature of it, because that's what helps with the discomfort, the shame, the guilt, the embarrassment. And people have to understand that fantasy is play.
00:15:37 Speaker_03
But because it reveals them to themselves, they often think, oh, what does that say about me? that I am imagining something like that. Why are the infantile wishes so prevalent?
00:15:49 Speaker_03
Because for many people, it's a time when they felt very secure, when it is about the rapt, warm, peeing in the diaper felt, it was very warm. It was, you know, being held, being cleaned.
00:16:04 Speaker_03
There's a lot of, for many people, positive associations with being rocked, being held, being sued.
00:16:12 Speaker_03
And so what we have a capacity to do is to eroticize those needs, wishes, aspirations, experiences, and turn them into erotic material, basically, sexually enhancing material.
00:16:30 Speaker_03
And I don't think anybody has ever fully understood how this works and why we do this. And do other mammals have them? everybody has a sexuality, but not everybody has an erotic life. And a central agent of eroticism is our imagination. Yeah. Yes.
00:16:52 Speaker_03
It's this and not that. Yeah. But for many women, I just say sometimes it's the time of day, it's the weather, it's the temperature, it's things that have nothing to do with plot and accoutrements and toys.
00:17:07 Speaker_03
It's just anything that enhances the experience. You don't have to think about it as an elaborate script.
00:17:15 Speaker_04
Sure. One of the questions that came up early with journalists and promoting the book was about the fact that we included a chapter called Captive. And that we discussed... Forced seduction. Yeah.
00:17:32 Speaker_04
I mean, I know for myself a number of women who have very violent fantasies. And it was important to me that The book included those because they're true and women have them.
00:17:48 Speaker_04
And I wanted to ask you about that, just in terms of, I mean, as you said a minute ago that, you know, a woman would never necessarily want that to actually happen. No, I've never seen a woman who wants a splat lip. She wants it to happen, yeah.
00:18:04 Speaker_04
But the fantasy of a level of violence Not sure, some may be rooted in trauma, but if it's not, then, yeah.
00:18:17 Speaker_03
It may be, it may be. Yes. And when it is, I think it's always important to ask the question, is it repetition or repair? Because sometimes it's repair. I reclaim it. I have turned this story into my own story because of fantasy. You are the author.
00:18:36 Speaker_03
You are the character. You are the playwright. You're the performer.
00:18:41 Speaker_00
You have every role in it.
00:18:42 Speaker_03
You're the director. And nobody makes you do anything you don't want to do, even if the plot is that somebody is making you do something, but that's the plot you're writing. Exactly.
00:18:54 Speaker_03
So I think that forced seduction has, you know, people have been delving into it and trying to understand it, and I prefer to call it that than rape fantasies and all of that.
00:19:05 Speaker_03
But to me, there's something very ingenious about the forced seduction fantasy, and it's this. For most of history, women could never claim their sexual wants. And so what did they do in their imagination?
00:19:22 Speaker_03
Sometimes they created someone who made them do everything they wanted, but that they couldn't ask for. Because de facto, if I write the story, it's everything I want.
00:19:36 Speaker_04
Yes.
00:19:37 Speaker_03
But you're making me do it so I never have to say that's what I wanted. I just did it because they wanted me to, they made me.
00:19:44 Speaker_03
And it was such an ingenious way to be able to experience pleasure and excitement without having to claim it and own it and bear the responsibility of it. Surely today that's not the same, you would hope.
00:20:00 Speaker_03
But I think that the power of the fantasy is actually, you know, often there is a sense today that people, the more power they have in life, the more sometimes they fantasize about being able to surrender that power, to not have to be responsible, to not have to take care of everything, make decisions.
00:20:22 Speaker_03
Look, when the first seduction, you don't make a decision. There is another person who makes you do things, and he makes you do exactly everything that you've decided you wanted them to make you do. And you never hurt. Let's be very, very clear.
00:20:37 Speaker_03
Nobody hurts in a fantasy. Even if the fantasy is violent, you experience pleasure.
00:20:45 Speaker_03
Some people, when it is repetition, when it is a sense that they can only come, or they can only climax, or they can only get aroused if it re-evokes the sense of fear, or the sense of dread, or the sense of danger.
00:21:02 Speaker_03
Then we sometimes think, is this really just plain fun or is there something here of a trauma reenactment that is being played out that should be examined?
00:21:11 Speaker_03
Can this person experience the same kind of pleasure in a different script or is there a rigidity attached to it? And now it has become fixed and it's fetishized and this is the way I come and this is the way I like it. Interesting.
00:21:31 Speaker_03
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00:22:44 Speaker_03
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00:25:08 Speaker_04
A couple years ago, someone brought a study to my attention that was referring to a predominance of postmenopausal women turning to BDSM. In what capacity?
00:25:24 Speaker_04
To the degree that suddenly, as a post-menopausal woman, for the first time in their lives, they were enjoying it or going after bondage scenarios in a way that maybe, I was curious whether you'd ever come across that.
00:25:38 Speaker_04
My question was, if that were true, that a lot of women or a greater proportion of women who are through or going through menopause are interested in BDSM, than younger women. What is that related to?
00:25:54 Speaker_04
I had some thoughts just in terms of going through a stage in life where you're feeling so completely out of control of what's happening in your body and to your body that something about the power scenario within BDSM was satisfying or feeling like there was a taking ownership of not just
00:26:19 Speaker_04
one's output, but also what's happening to that you are in control, or that you declare control in that relationship. I was wondering whether you had come across that at all.
00:26:31 Speaker_03
No, I have not, not as in Post-Menopause, but also I would probably have a different reading. I mean BDSM is not just, and these are heterosexual women, bisexual women, pansexual women?
00:26:48 Speaker_04
I don't know what the study was. I was assuming that it was across the board.
00:26:54 Speaker_03
I think that I had a number of thoughts when you were asking the question. I mean, one is for many women, sexuality in the long-term relationship, I would say now more in heterosexual context, but I'm not sure it's exclusive to that.
00:27:09 Speaker_03
It's not usually the most interesting for a lot of women. It's often penis in a vagina. It's often a five-minute drive-by. It's not necessarily the kind of attention that they would like to have.
00:27:24 Speaker_03
Bondage makes somebody pay an enormous amount of attention to you. And you have to do nothing. And you don't have to take care of anybody. And you don't have to be responsible. And you don't have to make decisions. And this is a dream for many women.
00:27:41 Speaker_03
Working women, caring women for others, young ones, old ones, partners. You name it.
00:27:48 Speaker_03
And I think a lot of the fantasies of women are often about either being able to want everything exactly as they want or not to have to make any decision about what they want. Because the fantasy comes to replace the social role.
00:28:07 Speaker_03
I have a thing that I often describe that I see primarily in straight couples. I see many male partners who tell me nothing turns me on more than to see her turned on.
00:28:21 Speaker_03
And you say loving, caring, nice, cares about the pleasure of their partner, et cetera. I have yet to hear a straight woman tell me that in my office about her male partner.
00:28:32 Speaker_04
Interesting.
00:28:33 Speaker_03
Nothing turns me on more than to see him turned on. It's irrelevant. It's irrelevant what he's experiencing if she's not feeling anything. She's not feeling anything. He can be standing there with a major erection right next to her. It won't turn her on.
00:28:50 Speaker_03
It will not do anything to her. What turns her on is what's happening to her. And in order for that to happen, she needs to be able to completely focus on herself.
00:29:04 Speaker_03
And many of the fantasies are set up so that she can focus entirely on herself and not worrying about the well-being of others, on caring for them, on feeling responsible for them, all of that.
00:29:19 Speaker_03
That kind of narcissistic investment in the very positive sense of the word is essential to connect her with her erotic self. I am free, which is what a fantasy is a script for.
00:29:33 Speaker_03
I'm sovereign means I am not responsible, worried, caring for anyone else's well-being at this moment. I'm thinking about me for a change. Bondage offers that, submission offers that. Fantasy in general.
00:29:50 Speaker_03
Fantasy in general, but you were asking me about BDSM. I think if you're not able to experience so fluidly spontaneous arousal desire and you are more in a in an entrance to your sexuality that has to do with willingness. I'm willing, I'm open.
00:30:10 Speaker_03
It's not like I'm turned on. I'm not excited. I'm not aroused. I don't yet have any desire, but I'm I'm open to see what will happen.
00:30:18 Speaker_03
Fantasy becomes ever more important in Post-Menopause because if it's not coming from the body, it will come from the mind, from our imagination. So that's where I think that a good story, a good plot can do wonders. Interesting.
00:30:39 Speaker_04
I have a couple more questions.
00:30:40 Speaker_03
Yeah, me too. I have one for you now. Because I think one of the things that you do and that I do in Where Should We Begin? So I do sessions that are anonymous. Your stories were collected anonymously. You inserted one of you anonymously in the book Want.
00:30:59 Speaker_03
And the assumption is there is a freedom that we feel when we can reveal ourselves to our fantasies in an anonymous way. What did you learn about this anonymity?
00:31:16 Speaker_04
Anonymity, I have to imagine that you know, I did a book reading last night and a woman came up while I was signing and said that she wrote a particular one in the book.
00:31:29 Speaker_04
And I was so, it was the first person that I had met a real human being who had written.
00:31:36 Speaker_04
And I was so, you know, obviously grateful to her and amazed that she felt free and courageous enough for me to, you know, take a picture of her with the book and the fantasy. And I have imagined that
00:31:50 Speaker_04
Many, many women did it purely because it was anonymous. And had it not been, and had we asked for more detail, that they would have been much shyer or maybe would not have sent them in at all. And that's even Western.
00:32:05 Speaker_04
I'm not even thinking about women in countries where fantasy is illegal. Various forms of imagination even would be considered punishable. And certainly for the one that I put in myself, I was grateful for the anonymity of the book.
00:32:21 Speaker_04
Has anyone identified you? I mean, if they did, I would not... I mean, I think it's important that mine remains anonymous.
00:32:29 Speaker_03
I think it's a beautiful idea that you did it, that you threw yourself in the lot, so to speak. You said, I'm one of yours. I'm not just a collector of your stories. I'm part of the stories. And you swim with the fish.
00:32:42 Speaker_04
Yeah. It was hard. I was... really surprised at how challenging I found it. Not even the fact that I was going to be handing it to somebody else, but the writing down particular words all of a sudden felt, I keep thinking, dirty, which
00:33:04 Speaker_04
On the one hand, I feel like I'm not particularly square.
00:33:07 Speaker_04
I feel like I can hear anything and say anything, but there was something about the act of writing it down that felt much more pornographic than the visuals or my imagination, which was interesting. I found that interesting.
00:33:22 Speaker_04
Did the fact that you wrote your own change how you read the ones from the others? It made me be much more impressed by the courage that it took for women to write in. And did you write it in the beginning? No, I wrote it at the end.
00:33:44 Speaker_04
I kept putting it off. And then a couple of times I tried to write it while I was on airplanes and I found that I was too paranoid about people, you know, that I couldn't do that. And then eventually I just sat myself down and did it.
00:34:04 Speaker_03
We are in the midst of our session and there is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break, so stay with us. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Bombas.
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Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. We fuss over every single detail of the show. We sort through thousands of applicants each year to pick the stories that we share with you. And the conversations that I have with couples start off as
00:38:08 Speaker_03
three-hour sessions and then we thoughtfully edit them to one hour and then go back and listen to then add the notes and sometimes even a critique of the session.
00:38:21 Speaker_03
It's kind of what is in my head as I listen to the session that I didn't say in the session. We create original music and sound design to bring the sessions to life. Where Should We Begin?
00:38:36 Speaker_03
involves a whole team who have been there since the beginning with me to bring my office to you. It's about eight years that we are telling the stories of raw intimate encounter between people that you are invited to listen in like a fly on the wall.
00:38:55 Speaker_03
It's an expensive and quite time-consuming effort to create Where Should We Begin, and which we gladly undertake because you tell us time and again how valuable these conversations are to you, how they accompany you in critical moments of your life, how you see yourselves even in stories that have nothing to do with yours, and how it has helped you.
00:39:20 Speaker_03
And that is probably the most affirming thing people can come and tell me. So, now we need to ask you for more, and for your help. And you can do your part not only by listening, but by joining my office hours subscription on Apple Podcasts.
00:39:36 Speaker_03
A subscription to Where Should We Begin gives you an ad-free version of these sessions,
00:39:41 Speaker_03
and all the Esther callings, and more importantly, a way to continue the conversations with me on all the topics that come up in these sessions, from sexlessness, to work conflicts, to infidelity, to secrets, to betrayals, all sorts of relational betrayals.
00:40:02 Speaker_03
to ending relationships. And we offer follow-ups with the couples because people always ask me, you know, do you see them again? Do you hear from them? Do you know where this session landed?
00:40:15 Speaker_03
So I go back to the couples and I ask them for a follow-up, which they share with us and which I then share with you. And just like our relationships, what you say isn't as important as what you do.
00:40:30 Speaker_03
So, I've heard you say how much you enjoy the programme, how much it adds to your understanding of your own relationships. But now, it's time for me to do an offer and an ask.
00:40:41 Speaker_03
Which means, click on the subscribe button to the Where Should We Begin show page. I'd love to see you in Esther's office hours. Is it only or primarily for women or when people who identify as women or can everyone?
00:41:02 Speaker_04
Oh, absolutely.
00:41:03 Speaker_03
Like, can I learn about myself by understanding and by reading you? That should be able to be translated to any gender and any... Exactly.
00:41:13 Speaker_04
I mean, it was important to me that we asked Only Women for this particular book to Descendant Fantasies. I have heard from many men how much they're learning from reading it.
00:41:30 Speaker_04
Obviously, and this what's bizarre is this never occurred to me because I was really only initially doing this for women, but men, you know, buying it to be turned on. And but it it's it is for everybody.
00:41:45 Speaker_04
And men, a couple of men have said that they're buying it for their daughters, for their teenage daughters.
00:41:52 Speaker_04
one said to counterbalance the toxic masculinity that's out there, to have other ideas out there about what is possible and what is okay and what other women think about. I mean, actually, speaking of males, you have two sons, is that right? Yeah.
00:42:10 Speaker_04
I'm curious, I also have two sons, how you, when they were of, you know, of the ages that you might have had these conversations, how you taught them about, as you say, relational intelligence, how you talked about sex with them or about what
00:42:38 Speaker_04
women if they were wanting to be with women, what women might want of them or what you expected them to be aware of in their relations with women.
00:42:52 Speaker_03
I wrote Mating in Captivity when my oldest was 11 and my youngest was 8. We had talked about sexuality basically, since they were four. At four, I had the first book that explained where babies come from.
00:43:11 Speaker_03
Because at four is when children become theologians. And they ask, Where do I come from? And where does grandma go when she dies?
00:43:19 Speaker_03
And so the French general books were started then, and it was about the chickens, and the elephant, and the kitten, and the people, and how each one of them gets their little ones. And so that's how we talked about it.
00:43:34 Speaker_03
We talked about, you know, how it's when you like someone, you like to hold their hand, you like them to touch you. And when you don't like them, you sometimes feel like, you know, your neck goes up and your shoulders tighten.
00:43:46 Speaker_03
So it was woven into the conversation. There was no sexuality that didn't also include relationships. It's one whole. And then they would sometimes like someone in the kindergarten and then in elementary school.
00:44:01 Speaker_03
And then you talk, do you have a little girlfriend? And you normalize this. This is not necessarily the most common way in the United States, I have to admit.
00:44:12 Speaker_03
But then one day, I was writing, and in the front of the house were all the books that I needed to read. And there were many, many books about sexuality. And my older one came home one day and he said, could you please cover all these books?
00:44:25 Speaker_03
Because I have friends coming over. And I said, if I was writing a book of weapons of mass destruction, you would not ask me to cover anything. So we're not covering. This is normal. We're not making this an ooh, ah, ooh subject.
00:44:42 Speaker_03
And we're not cringing around it. This is just part of life. And if your friends have questions, then we'll talk about it. And at first it was a little, yeah.
00:44:53 Speaker_03
And then at one point, one day I came home and I heard him sitting with a bunch and they were talking. And then one of them finally said, how do you know this? And my older one says, because my mother is writing a book about it.
00:45:06 Speaker_03
So I said, okay, we're good. Now we can go forward. And then at first there was a little discomfort. What is this mother who writes a book?
00:45:14 Speaker_03
But then when the teacher came to school holding the book in hand, then they said, my teacher is reading your book. So it became respectable and everything. Took a while, took a while.
00:45:23 Speaker_03
On their own, one day, one of them called and wanted to ask if they could come and bring someone. And I said, You can bring her, but I want to know her name, and I want her here for breakfast.
00:45:38 Speaker_03
She's not coming here furtively, lying to her parents, not telling them where she is, and then leaving this house afterwards and going home. This is not how we're going to do it. She has a name, she's dignified, and she's invited for breakfast.
00:45:54 Speaker_03
And then after she left the next day, which we did, and then I came into the room and I said, shall we chat? Now I know, I this, I that. And I said, you don't know much. Most people in my office know very little.
00:46:08 Speaker_03
And the older they are, that doesn't always mean they know plenty. If there is a subject people don't know much about, it's sexuality. If there is a subject people lie about, it's sexuality.
00:46:18 Speaker_03
It's the topic that men lie about by exaggerating, it's sex, and women by diminishing. So shall we chat? And then the basic first first thing was it's not a performance and an outcome based thing. It's an experience. Sex isn't just something you do.
00:46:39 Speaker_03
Sex is a place you go. So where do you want to go? Do you want to experience a deep connection, a spiritual union, a transcendence, fun, naughtiness, mischief? What calls you there? And more importantly than anything else, slow down. Slow down.
00:47:02 Speaker_03
you will always go too fast for now. And that was kind of the first conversation we had.
00:47:10 Speaker_04
Can you teach boys respect for women? Absolutely. But you also- And so what would the language be?
00:47:18 Speaker_04
How would you, you know, particularly in this day, this time of Andrew Tate's, et cetera, how do you begin that conversation with them knowing that there is the other dialogue going around about it?
00:47:33 Speaker_04
So that they listen and don't- Does it matter to you what she experiences?
00:47:42 Speaker_03
She, they, he. Does it matter what your partner experiences? Would it make a difference for you if your partner said this was a wonderful moment? And that you would know that you were the source of that in part.
00:48:01 Speaker_03
I think that that will give you a whole different experience of sexuality, partnered sexuality. And then if you tell me, yes, I wouldn't mind. I'd like that. Who would say no to that kind of thing?
00:48:18 Speaker_03
Then I would say, here are ways that you can demonstrate that and that you can invite that. Would that intrigue you? Never give away what you know before you have the buy-in. Make them really want to know. Because I didn't just talk to my sons.
00:48:39 Speaker_03
I talked to the whole group of friends around. It was like the mother you can talk to. But it's not like you sit down for one conversation and you teach. It has to be an easy, integrated flow of conversation.
00:48:53 Speaker_03
It's not, I sit you down and let me tell you what you need to do. There is a way of thinking about sexuality that's very different from most of what you're going to see. You know this thing, porn, that you may enjoy? Lots of people get turned on to it.
00:49:08 Speaker_03
But just so you know, for a lot of people, that is the last thing that they really want. And before you begin to bring all what you watched on screen, take your time to discover it with the other person. Get to know them.
00:49:24 Speaker_03
Get to know how they like to be touched. Get to know, by them holding your hand, how they like to touch. How they give touch and how they take touch. How they please you and how they please themselves. Get to know them, be curious.
00:49:42 Speaker_03
Don't think you need to know. I remember one of them, I said, you're not expected to know. You know, you didn't learn baseball in one day. You didn't learn baseball in one year either.
00:49:55 Speaker_03
So, you know, this idea that you have in your mind that you should just know. No, you know squat. And then at the end, it was like, do other kids talk like that?
00:50:07 Speaker_03
I said, I don't know, but I would feel really bad that the world wants to talk to me and not my own sons. Or their friends that I've known since they're born. So that's the way you teach.
00:50:20 Speaker_03
You weave it in, you normalize it, you make it comfortable, you don't accuse them of anything. They're boys, they're not supposed to know. Yet.
00:50:35 Speaker_04
How would you apply relational intelligence to the concept of fantasy? Let's say in my relationship, I've been married for 20 years.
00:50:48 Speaker_04
My partner, my husband, let's say, has never quite been able to satisfy me in the way that very often I take myself off alone afterwards and satisfy myself for another time, and that's how I get pleasure.
00:51:03 Speaker_04
But because of reading this book, I want to address the subject. No, don't.
00:51:08 Speaker_03
Not like that.
00:51:10 Speaker_04
Well, I guess that's my question.
00:51:11 Speaker_03
No, you don't start from your book. If you start from the place which you just described. Yeah. I live with someone who basically I've never really come with them.
00:51:22 Speaker_03
I enjoy it somewhat or not at all, or I wait for it to be over, or I actually enjoy it, but I've never come, et cetera, et cetera. You don't start with a fantasy. because you don't even know if the other person, I read one like that this morning.
00:51:38 Speaker_03
I'm with my partner for 20 something years. We have zero romantic relationship. When I want to tell him Um, he instantly feels criticized. I probably do because by now I'm so frustrated, so fed up.
00:51:55 Speaker_03
I think the first thing when, when you, I just did a desire bundle, these two digital courses on sexuality. And one is really starting from the place of we're stuck, nothing's happening. That demands one kind of conversation.
00:52:11 Speaker_03
The other one starts from, we have a flicker, we would like a flame. That one could start with your book. The first one, you first write and you just say, I've been thinking, and I think it's writing.
00:52:25 Speaker_03
You write a letter by hand and you put it wherever they will find it. I've been thinking, I've been thinking about us and I've been wanting to bring this up for many years and I actually don't always, don't know how. I don't find my words.
00:52:41 Speaker_03
I'm afraid you're going to be upset that we're going to end up in an argument. That's the least thing I would want. What I really hope is to create the deeper connection between us because I know that we really care deeply for each other.
00:52:54 Speaker_03
But I know that we've never really been able to have an adult conversation about sexuality. We will talk about renovations of our houses umpteen times, but we will never talk about the renovations we could have in our own relationships.
00:53:09 Speaker_03
Home improvement. you know, of our own sorts. And before I even say anything, I was wondering, does that even interest you? Would you be open to that? Can I invite you into this conversation? And maybe just answer me in writing.
00:53:25 Speaker_03
We may not be ready to have a face-to-face conversation, so we'll do it side by side.
00:53:29 Speaker_04
Yeah.
00:53:30 Speaker_03
That would be the opening. You do not come and say, you know what I would really like that would get me off is this. No, no, no.
00:53:38 Speaker_04
I think I meant just as a result of having read it, one decides that they want to have the conversation with the partner and how did they go about doing that? So that's fantastic.
00:53:47 Speaker_03
I think most people start from a very different place. They've never, you know, how is it? It works. What does it mean? We both come. And how is it? It works.
00:54:02 Speaker_03
So I'm trying to think, before we enter the fantasy world, that doesn't mean they can't go there, but sometimes it starts with, if you could have a mini session where each of you could just show exactly how they would want the other person to touch them.
00:54:23 Speaker_03
And all you do is you guide them. And you can even do it with your clothes as in a good sense of focus. But it is about having someone who is completely attentive and attuned to you. That in itself is a fantasy too. And then you sustain it.
00:54:42 Speaker_04
Yours are advanced. There's a lot of fantasies in there where it's, you know, the bottom line is a woman wanting to be loved for exactly who she is.
00:54:54 Speaker_03
Yes. And seen. And seen. And adored. And heard. And adored. And cherished. And worshipped even. Yeah, cherished. Cherished. Cherished. Yeah. And I see a lot of cherished spouses and famished lovers. Interesting. So it has to start.
00:55:12 Speaker_03
It starts much more basic, you know, but we have to stop. So I was thinking, what's this like for you? Because they usually interview you. Yeah.
00:55:23 Speaker_04
It's really fascinating. I've had some fantastic conversations with women. One thing that I want to make sure that we speak about before we finish is the area that I think I'm
00:55:36 Speaker_04
I'm most interested in what's coming from this, which is about a new sense of empowerment in starting this conversation in this community that's developing because of the book. It's encouraging women to find their voice.
00:55:55 Speaker_03
Right. But what you just highlighted when you talked about cherished and adored and being loved for exactly who she is, is that that's not always how she experiences herself. Correct.
00:56:07 Speaker_03
She experiences herself with a much more of a critical voice, a comparative voice, a competitive voice, a voice of abnegation, you know. And so the fantasy of being received and loved as she is, stands in contrast. Exactly.
00:56:26 Speaker_03
So that's the fantasy that repairs and compensates. Yes. The power, I think it's empowerment and self-acceptance are interconnected. Absolutely agree. And so when she finds her voice, if I ask her,
00:56:48 Speaker_03
This is a very different level of question, just like I turn myself on when or by, which is different than what turns me on is or you turn me on when.
00:57:03 Speaker_03
And sometimes it starts with, I turn myself on when I walk in nature, when I listen to music, when I dance in the bathroom, when I pamper myself, when I go out with my girlfriends, when I read a good book.
00:57:16 Speaker_03
It's basically, I give myself the permission to attend to myself. It's the personal version of the same in the fantasy.
00:57:30 Speaker_04
Is that the first step before being able to ask that of somebody else?
00:57:37 Speaker_03
I don't know. I imagine for some, it may be me first, you next. And for others, it may be you first, me next. I don't know that there is a one size fits all. But what I do know is that when you ask women, how do I turn myself on or off?
00:57:54 Speaker_03
The answers are not sexual in nature. They have to do with empowerment.
00:58:00 Speaker_03
They have to do it what you're highlighting with self-acceptance with body image with sensuality with pleasure with nurturing oneself with attending to oneself and that in itself is the first level of
00:58:18 Speaker_03
I'm adoring myself, or not adoring, I'm cherishing. Particularly with the shame, so much shame. Yeah, we can't have this conversation without using this word at least once. Yeah. You know, because you paid a lot of attention to that. Yeah.
00:58:34 Speaker_03
And I think that cherishing myself, attending to myself is on the other side of the shame. Absolutely.
00:58:54 Speaker_02
Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut.
00:59:04 Speaker_02
Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julian Att. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker.
00:59:24 Speaker_02
We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul.
00:59:40 Speaker_01
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