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Episode: You're Inching Me Out

Author: Esther Perel Global Media
Duration: 00:55:00

Episode Shownotes

This is a classic session, from the first season of How's Work? They were mates in university before co-founding a successful communications company. They still work together from different coasts, but they barely speak. One wants to move on; the other is grasping for his former friend. Neither can find

the words to talk about it. 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 the episode "You're Inching Me Out," Esther Perel facilitates a compelling conversation between two former university mates who run a communications company. Despite their business success, they face significant challenges in communication, leading to an emotional divide. One partner desires reconnection, while the other feels marginalized and unsupported. The episode delves into themes of self-worth, relational dynamics, and the impact of unresolved feelings on both personal and professional levels, highlighting the importance of open dialogue amidst their growing disconnect.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (You're Inching Me Out ) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_02
What you are about to hear is a classic session of How's Work with Esther Perel. How's Work is a one-time unscripted counseling session focused on work.

00:00:11 Speaker_02
For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names, employers, and other identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices and their stories are real.

00:00:24 Speaker_08
Support for this show comes from Amazon Prime. However you plan to make the most of the holiday season, you can do it with Amazon Prime. Whether it's last minute ingredients and stocking stuffers, or a themed puzzle to solve with the family.

00:00:37 Speaker_08
Get fast free delivery on Holiday Essentials with Prime. And with Prime Video, you can curl up on the couch, warm drinks in hand, and have a holiday movie marathon. Throughout it all, you can tune into classic holiday playlists on Amazon Music.

00:00:52 Speaker_08
Whatever you're into this holiday season, from streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Visit amazon.com slash prime to get more out of whatever you're into.

00:01:08 Speaker_05
I think the sort of hilarious irony really is that for two people who run a communications company, we are both like drastically terrible at communicating.

00:01:16 Speaker_03
They had been together for 13 years as business partners, as close friends that had met in college, that stumbled upon this new idea that turned into a very successful business that is on a number of continents and bi-coastal.

00:01:33 Speaker_01
And the business is actually doing really well and the relationship is sinking.

00:01:38 Speaker_05
The single most stressful thing in my working life, if not life, are the challenges with our relationship. I just feel continually undermined.

00:01:54 Speaker_00
The job has always been that place where I've been needed and I feel important.

00:02:01 Speaker_03
A lot of the people that work for me are like an extension of my family. There's no doubt that your emotional and relational dowry comes with you to work.

00:02:12 Speaker_10
Imagine going to work every day in a really busy place and no one will make eye contact with you.

00:02:17 Speaker_00
I mean, it feels like a breakup.

00:02:19 Speaker_10
It doesn't feel. It is!

00:02:24 Speaker_01
So, how's work? Four years they've been sitting with this.

00:02:36 Speaker_03
And so the ask was big. It was A, about just opening up the conversation, B, about what actually needed to be talked about, and C, what was a potential resolution that they could both engage in.

00:02:54 Speaker_03
But the conversation was so hard for them that I understood why it took them four years. And it wasn't just hard for them.

00:03:01 Speaker_03
It was hard for me as well, because they kept unconsciously saying, we need to talk about this, but then did everything possible to not talk about this.

00:03:13 Speaker_07
There's sort of two aspects to it for me. One is the relationship. And then the other is the sort of the the business and what we both, our roles and what we both bring to the business.

00:03:27 Speaker_07
Yeah, I'd like to sort of be able to get to a point where we can have a kind of way of being able to work that out.

00:03:39 Speaker_03
Which one keeps you awake at night?

00:03:40 Speaker_07
I mean, a couple of months ago, it was kind of quite bad.

00:03:47 Speaker_03
But which one? The business or the relationship?

00:03:53 Speaker_07
Well, business is fine, really.

00:03:54 Speaker_03
So I'd say it's probably... That's one thing you agree on, is that both of you are preoccupied by the fissures of your relationship.

00:04:12 Speaker_05
Yeah, I mean, I'd say there's sort of, when I look at what we've achieved together, and I look at where we've come from, it seems so sad that we can't see eye to eye.

00:04:24 Speaker_05
I think, you know, at the times when we've been most aligned, I've been most happy in the business, and I felt most sort of confident in myself as someone operating the business, and just generally, like, in life, because, you know, business does flow into so many other aspects of the way that you feel about yourself and think about yourself.

00:04:48 Speaker_05
I read, so yesterday, it was just by chance, I read that Carl Jung said, loneliness is not an absence of people, it's an absence of genuine understanding. And I was just like, or feeling genuinely understood.

00:05:01 Speaker_05
And I think if I could sort of put my finger on like a key fissure between the two of us, it's like, I don't, I haven't always felt supported

00:05:14 Speaker_05
Because there is a fissure, because there was a challenge there in our relationship, which had been there for years.

00:05:21 Speaker_03
And it is, name it.

00:05:25 Speaker_05
I... It's getting quite big quite quickly. You're doing good.

00:05:33 Speaker_03
The challenge I think is... Is it okay that I be GPS?

00:05:38 Speaker_05
You can GPS, yeah, yeah. It's probably just for the best. Throughout that entire period of building the company, when we won lots of awards and things, I was always really keen to make sure that we shared the stage together.

00:05:54 Speaker_05
And I feel like that, you weren't quite as willing to share the stage with me. And that led to

00:06:10 Speaker_05
some of the decision-making that I, you know, so when you were like, look, you know, you have to let all these people go or you have to do this or that, it wasn't necessarily coming, you know, even today, like, you know, we're looking at the marketing and, you know, I feel like you're quite sort of anti-marketing.

00:06:27 Speaker_05
But part of the reason I think you're anti-marketing, frankly, is because I think you see it as something that I'm doing.

00:06:34 Speaker_05
And so if we can show that marketing fails as a thing for us to do, then that will somehow diminish me, rather than that was definitely the thing that we needed to do. Does that make sense?

00:06:50 Speaker_03
What do you hear?

00:06:52 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:06:53 Speaker_03
Just repeat it.

00:06:54 Speaker_05
Okay.

00:06:55 Speaker_03
So that we get a sense, because he said a lot.

00:06:59 Speaker_07
Yeah. So what I hear is, that there's a kind of emotional response to a lot of the decisions that we've had to take as a business.

00:07:21 Speaker_03
For me, I kind of think... No, but before you rebuttal, what did you hear him say? He said something extremely important.

00:07:34 Speaker_07
that it was about doing it together and sharing the stage? No?

00:07:38 Speaker_03
Yes, but that's not what, that's... Look, we tend to be able to repeat things quite easily when it's stuff we have no problem listening to. What's extraordinary is how hard it is.

00:07:58 Speaker_03
And generally we can probably handle 10 seconds, which is three sentences. But before you answer, you have got to just say, this is what I'm hearing.

00:08:10 Speaker_03
And then instead of shaking your head, you can say you heard a piece of it or that's part of it, but there's more. So that we first establish, I will tell you what I heard, but it's also to be checked.

00:08:22 Speaker_03
It's not because, at this point we have reached a place where there is a confusion between your disagreeing with an idea versus your disagreeing with me. and it becomes essentialized.

00:08:36 Speaker_03
It's not about marketing, it's not about this or that, it ends up being about me and I feel that on some level I'm undermined. And then I have to prove myself and I'm being tested.

00:08:47 Speaker_03
And if it's something that I want, by definition you won't want it, but not because of the idea, but because it's coming from me. And that's how the waters have gotten muddled. Is that?

00:08:59 Speaker_04
Yeah.

00:09:03 Speaker_03
It's okay to say, I don't, you know, I'm not sure I really understand what you're saying. But if you don't listen, it's because you're busy with the rebuttal. So, you gotta slow it down. And anchor yourself, first and foremost, into the listening.

00:09:24 Speaker_03
That's the essence of the communication, is actually not the talking. It's the listening. He gave you the opening line, right? There's a loneliness in not being understood. That in itself is a loneliness.

00:09:43 Speaker_03
And you are, do you still see each other outside of work? Do you still have a friendship?

00:09:51 Speaker_05
Sometimes, a bit.

00:09:53 Speaker_03
Do you still talk about anything besides the shop?

00:09:55 Speaker_05
Yeah, yeah.

00:09:56 Speaker_03
Okay. Do you still go out just to hang and be with each other for the company of each other?

00:10:01 Speaker_07
Well, we've lived in different places for five years.

00:10:04 Speaker_03
Yes. Do you still text each other stuff that is not about work? As the way that you bring each other into each other's lives?

00:10:11 Speaker_07
Not really, no.

00:10:16 Speaker_03
Is that a loss? Do you care about it? Are you so fixated on the shop and on the business that the friendship is no longer on the menu?

00:10:28 Speaker_07
No, I mean, I'd quite like it there. I sort of would quite like to not have the business in the way and just be able to be friends, you know, outside of that.

00:10:38 Speaker_05
The thing that's quite marked is like, we're lucky enough to have built a company of people who we get on really well with.

00:10:46 Speaker_03
No, no, I understood. The people in the company are rather happy. It's just the two co-founders that are not particularly happy with each other. And at this point, they can't discuss an idea because an idea becomes the representation of a person.

00:11:02 Speaker_03
and when it becomes essentialized this way, you no longer know if you're discussing I don't like the idea or I don't like you.

00:11:08 Speaker_07
Right, and that's where potentially, that's where I get very frustrated because.

00:11:13 Speaker_03
So does he.

00:11:14 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:11:15 Speaker_03
So first answer him. I mean, answer him doesn't mean argue with it. It's just repeat now that I said it. Just repeat it again. What do you think he was talking about? What did you hear?

00:11:30 Speaker_07
that when I object to an idea, he sees that, you see that as somehow a rejection of you or a way of me somehow proving a point.

00:11:49 Speaker_03
For the first hour of this session, They've told me what they want to address and they've shown me how they will do anything possible never to talk about what they came to talk about.

00:12:03 Speaker_03
They avoid conflict, they avoid pain, they avoid the inevitable, they avoid having to face each other and say those things to say, I don't want to continue with you. And I'm actually actively trying to push you out.

00:12:20 Speaker_03
This is not an uncommon story among co-founders, in which one often may find that there is one person whose primary paradigm continues to be the relationship and the friendship, and the other one who's more mercenary and whose primary paradigm becomes business first.

00:12:40 Speaker_03
So, after an hour, my frustration has been mounting, and I feel for them.

00:12:46 Speaker_03
because I realize that they're desperate to engage in a conversation and they have no idea how to do it and they'll do anything not to do it because it is about to show the sad sides and the not nice sides that each of them carries.

00:13:10 Speaker_05
When we first set the company up, we talked all the time. I mean, like, just daily several times, because it was always like, oh, we can do this, we can do that.

00:13:22 Speaker_05
And I think as the business developed, we just talk less, and then the less you talk, the less you sort of get that genuine level of communication.

00:13:32 Speaker_03
Yeah, it's like a relationship.

00:13:34 Speaker_05
Yeah, who knew? Who knew?

00:13:36 Speaker_03
In the beginning, you don't stop.

00:13:39 Speaker_07
I think kind of trying to unpick it a bit as well, that whole period in London, in terms of letting people go.

00:13:49 Speaker_07
That's where I feel like let down by you in that it stopped becoming a partnership there because I was doing everything I could to try and support you and to help make these difficult decisions to the point where I actually came back and did some of it.

00:14:12 Speaker_07
But there was a kind of unwillingness to listen to those very practical suggestions and solutions. And that led to immense frustration on my side, which I know had an impact on a personal level. And yeah, that's kind of where it really got difficult.

00:14:36 Speaker_05
I mean, that was extremely damaging. I think we just both have very different narratives about what happened from when you moved to the U.S. on.

00:14:46 Speaker_05
We came here, it was, you know, admittedly, it was something that you really drove, and, you know, we moved over here, and we basically gutted the UK business to make New York into the biggest opportunity that we could.

00:15:05 Speaker_03
Can I, you said just, you just said something that I wanna pick up on for a sec, if you allow me. We have different narratives. Give me just a sense. What kind of relationship cultures you come from and you grew up in?

00:15:26 Speaker_03
When it comes to talking about difficult subjects, being direct with people that are close to you, managing conflict, expressing certain feelings or not, or other feelings but not those. What kind of relationship cultures did you grow up in?

00:15:51 Speaker_03
I call this the relational dowry. The stuff that we bring with us to work and does not stay at the door.

00:16:03 Speaker_07
I mean, for me, we didn't talk about feelings a lot at home. Well, I mean, very sort of loving environment and, you know, very happy with my upbringing. But there wasn't, my dad's English and didn't talk about emotions very much.

00:16:21 Speaker_07
My mom, German, very direct. So I sort of, got some of that directness, I think, from her.

00:16:32 Speaker_03
How did people handle disagreement, conflict?

00:16:38 Speaker_07
Yeah, not we're not a sort of big like talky emotional family I'm not good at vocalizing my feelings.

00:16:47 Speaker_07
I know that I've been told And I think that then I have very I think high expectations of myself and therefore other people and can not verbalize that kind of stuff so I think there are I recognize there are times where I

00:17:07 Speaker_07
just expect people to get things and expect them to, you know, yeah, just have high expectations. And I think that then, when that doesn't happen, I then get annoyed.

00:17:18 Speaker_03
And how do you show annoyance?

00:17:20 Speaker_07
Passive, aggressive, I think. What you want? Either withdraw, I'll just kind of go very quiet. Yeah, I normally just do that and just keep it inside. Yeah, good old British bottling up.

00:17:35 Speaker_03
Yeah, but there's an art to passive-aggressive, so what's your particular craft?

00:17:45 Speaker_07
I can ask you too, we know the guy.

00:17:47 Speaker_03
We've known him many years. And you may be better off at knowing each other than yourself.

00:17:54 Speaker_05
Yeah, probably. I'm very similar vibe, for me too. Either rolling your eyes, or I find you lick your teeth to me quite a lot. I find that quite, which is a very sort of animalistic sort of fight mechanism.

00:18:14 Speaker_05
I don't know if you notice that, but you do it to me all the time.

00:18:20 Speaker_05
You know, I think the sort of hilarious irony really is that for two people who run a communications company, we are both like drastically terrible at communicating, which is probably why we're sitting here.

00:18:32 Speaker_03
Well, or the reverse. The fact that you're here I always take as there's a longing underneath. There's a wish for something better. You may not know how to do it, but you at least have a desire to want to do it. And that speaks volumes.

00:18:52 Speaker_03
So I don't think that the fact that you're here is because you're worse than others. Quite to the contrary. But I do want to know, how does conflict get managed? How does appreciation get expressed? How does disagreement come out?

00:19:10 Speaker_03
How does sadness get expressed? I mean, there's a wide vocabulary. So what's the vocabulary you come with?

00:19:23 Speaker_05
Bottle it up and don't deal with it, and then go to the pub. Probably why I'm still really carpe about my dad dying when I was 10.

00:19:33 Speaker_05
Not that that has anything to do with this really, but inability to deal with challenges, or emotional challenges, sorry, is an issue. I don't think the universe deals particularly well with communicating unhappiness.

00:19:51 Speaker_03
And that's where you are. You are rather unhappy with your relationship with your co-founder and your friend. And he, you, are rather unhappy as well. So that is actually the thing that you're in the midst of at this moment.

00:20:08 Speaker_03
Not the direction of the company. that is actually unfolding quite well. And part of what you're doing about your unhappiness is you're fortifying the troops.

00:20:26 Speaker_03
You're building a case for leaving, but of course with a fantasy that he would do the leaving, so you don't even have to take responsibility for that. That's passive aggressive. And he feels it. And he even says it. You know, you're inching me out.

00:20:53 Speaker_03
So far so good?

00:20:54 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:20:54 Speaker_03
All right, continue.

00:20:57 Speaker_05
I just, I feel continually undermined. We had a thing on Friday where we have a deck that we send out.

00:21:04 Speaker_03
I want you to try and do that thing that you just said is so hard.

00:21:10 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:21:13 Speaker_03
I'll be with you, I'll help you.

00:21:15 Speaker_05
Thank you. I just feel continually marginalized. A company that I've loved and given my all and given countless late nights and weekends and hours and hours and weeks of lost sleep. I just feel like my

00:21:43 Speaker_05
joy and desire to do it is just crushed, like, over and over.

00:21:52 Speaker_05
And every time we're on a call, and, I mean, it doesn't necessarily need to be where I go off on one, like, quite often you just roll your eyes at the things that I say, or, you know, like, finding the deck with my name excluded.

00:22:05 Speaker_03
This is the moment when you want to check if he's listening.

00:22:07 Speaker_05
with my name excluded. The reason I got so upset about that on Friday was because it was just the clearest possible manifestation of the way I feel. So that was just a slide of the company and it had everyone in the company on it.

00:22:29 Speaker_05
except I just, I literally just didn't feature. So it was like a sort of, it was a hierarchy of the company with one person missing and the one person missing with me. And that just, you know, now. That hurt.

00:22:43 Speaker_05
That hurt, but it hurt because I've had that feeling for years. You know, that first year when we entered loads of, we went into these big awards.

00:22:56 Speaker_03
But you see, you're thinking and you're oozing feeling. You tell him that hurts. And now you sit with it. The problem is that you talk to flatten whatever you feel and you go numb. And when you go numb,

00:23:15 Speaker_05
He goes numb. Yes. Yeah. Fair. That is fair. That's it.

00:23:21 Speaker_03
Now go back to him. Sit and let him react. I get it. It's an awful thing. You build this thing, they put a slide up, you're not even in it.

00:23:31 Speaker_06
Yeah.

00:23:32 Speaker_03
That's a clear feeling.

00:23:34 Speaker_06
Yeah.

00:23:35 Speaker_03
It sucks to be edited out. You feel excluded and hurt. Period.

00:23:46 Speaker_05
Me, shut up, not you, shut up.

00:23:49 Speaker_03
I know, I know. It's not shut up. It's you don't allow yourself to feel it.

00:23:55 Speaker_06
Yeah.

00:23:56 Speaker_03
And it hurts. It feels awful. But by continuing to talk, you don't allow yourself to actually feel it.

00:24:03 Speaker_05
You dilute what you're saying.

00:24:04 Speaker_03
That's right. I realized in listening to the session that I actually ended up doing with him what he was doing with his partner.

00:24:19 Speaker_03
I was trying to help him to actually just sit for a moment with the load of emotion that was coming up as he was describing how he had been rendered invisible. But instead of saying, just sit with it for a moment.

00:24:38 Speaker_03
Where in your body are you feeling this? And then just watch the wave come over him and just say, stay with this. Let it come out. I ended up saying to him, you're not letting yourself feel, rather than helping him to actually feel it.

00:25:02 Speaker_03
And let the other person see the consequences of his actions. So I missed it. So the only thing you turn to him and you say, do you get it? Do you understand? We're not solving the business problem at this point.

00:25:19 Speaker_03
So we solve, we're just in this conversation. Do you understand what I'm saying?

00:25:23 Speaker_05
Do you understand what I'm saying?

00:25:28 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:25:30 Speaker_05
Yeah. What, like, how would you like it to be? That's a very good question. I guess I'd like to just put a lot of that animosity behind us. You know, like there's a lot of water under the bridge, I understand that.

00:25:54 Speaker_05
I want us, I want to feel like you've got my back.

00:26:06 Speaker_07
Yeah, which I totally understand. And for me, it's about kind of, I guess, finding a way back to, you know, the first few years of the company and how that worked. But part of that is around the roles, I think.

00:26:29 Speaker_07
And that's where I kind of keep coming back to.

00:26:35 Speaker_03
I listen to him say, I want you to have my back. I want to feel that you still care about me. I want to feel like we're still in this together.

00:26:46 Speaker_03
And the other one answers from the place of, structurally, I think we need to redefine the rules here in the company. But emotionally, he kind of is gone.

00:26:59 Speaker_03
And this discrepancy is something that I really have witnessed so many times in romantic relationships.

00:27:06 Speaker_03
When one person is still fighting for the relationship and the other person basically just came to drop this one off and said, see you later, I'm on my way out. And it is basically, you cannot work on a relationship

00:27:24 Speaker_03
If one person is gone, you need two people.

00:27:34 Speaker_01
We have to take a brief break. Stay with us.

00:27:45 Speaker_08
Support for this show comes from Amazon Prime. However you plan to make the most of the holiday season, you can do it with Amazon Prime. Whether it's last minute ingredients and stocking stuffers, or a themed puzzle to solve with the family.

00:27:58 Speaker_08
Get fast free delivery on Holiday Essentials with Prime. And with Prime Video, you can curl up on the couch, warm drinks in hand, and have a holiday movie marathon. Throughout it all, you can tune into classic holiday playlists on Amazon Music.

00:28:12 Speaker_08
Whatever you're into this holiday season, from streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.com slash Prime to get more out of whatever you're into.

00:28:25 Speaker_07
Yeah, I get it. Like, from a sort of emotionally supportive perspective, I definitely can do more. Yeah.

00:28:36 Speaker_03
Do you think there is validity in what he describes when he says, I feel undermined, you don't have my back? You translate this as he wants me to agree with him. So your next thought is, how can I have his back and not agree with him?

00:28:54 Speaker_03
The only way he will feel supported is if I say yes to what he says and I don't agree with it.

00:29:05 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:29:08 Speaker_03
All right, speak up.

00:29:17 Speaker_07
Yeah, I mean, yeah, because I think that kind of is, you know, I think from a work perspective, I do have doubts, you know, that's kind of where it comes from, I just kind of do,

00:29:35 Speaker_07
sort of worry about the role and what you're going to be doing and where that's best placed. And that's where I think, to a certain extent, I don't have your back, you know? From a business perspective. I don't want you to be happy.

00:30:00 Speaker_07
And I'm, yeah, kind of happy to, Yeah, I see what you mean. I sort of say, yes, I'm happy to help you get that, but I am kind of saying on my terms, so I do recognize that that's not the right way to do it, really.

00:30:18 Speaker_07
So in terms of kind of supporting but not agreeing, what does that look like?

00:30:23 Speaker_03
I think the first thing you may want to say to him is, I don't know how to do it with you.

00:30:32 Speaker_03
You know, part of the stock is that at this point, if you don't agree with him, he can't hear what you say either because he instantly feels rejected or undermined. So he's into his wound, he's into being hurt.

00:30:48 Speaker_03
He's not able to actually hear that maybe there's this different point of view. Everything's muddled. A thought is a feeling and a feeling is hidden. By the way, if you ever say I feel that, what follows is never a feeling. What follows is a thought.

00:31:13 Speaker_03
The injunction that moves us into a thought, and generally it's a thought about what the other person is doing. I feel hurt is a feeling. I feel that you're undermining me is a statement about him.

00:31:29 Speaker_05
Yeah, it's just clumsy language.

00:31:32 Speaker_03
of new vocabulary that you want to learn. Somebody in the company is going to have to do it anyway, because these are normal feelings in a company. Being hurt, feeling ejected, feeling excluded, feeling not included, all of these things, you know.

00:31:46 Speaker_03
Yes, in a polarized system, every person basically ends up defending themselves. And there's a lack of accountability that just says, what you are describing about me, I did do. That said, there is more.

00:32:05 Speaker_03
When you did it, I didn't react in the same way, or I totally see that I almost tanked the ship. In this situation, everyone is only referencing half of the story.

00:32:22 Speaker_03
And it's the other person who then highlights the part that each one is not acknowledging. That's what happens in a polarized system, is that everyone is actually saying the part that they wish the other one was saying, but is not.

00:32:41 Speaker_03
Meanwhile, I don't know anything about this slide, but that's hostile. It's aggressive. Is somebody owning that?

00:32:55 Speaker_07
I mean, it wasn't me that put that slide together, but I guess I could have.

00:33:01 Speaker_07
Well, you did bring it up about six months ago, and I did create a new slide with all of us on there, and I have a version of it, which I've been sending out to clients, which does have you on it. So it's not cut and dry.

00:33:14 Speaker_05
it was just the clearest possible manifestation of something which I've raised in the past. It's also not like it was a mistake that happened and then it was rectified and it all was fine and dandy.

00:33:24 Speaker_05
It was a mistake that happened, I raised it and sort of said, there is another person in the company. We agreed to fix it. And then six months later, it's not been fixed.

00:33:37 Speaker_05
I'm not saying that is directly your fault at all, but it's a manifestation of something that's far more

00:33:48 Speaker_05
So I feel, on a basic level, on every single call that we do, the management team, on every single document that gets sent out, every single email, you know, slightly overstating it, but it's a background feeling that is always there.

00:34:05 Speaker_07
Where do you think that comes from?

00:34:09 Speaker_05
I think it comes from... Good.

00:34:12 Speaker_03
It was very good.

00:34:16 Speaker_05
I think it comes from a real desire that this is just your company and that I wasn't part of it.

00:34:26 Speaker_07
I mean, that's very interesting, but kind of that's, I've never had that feeling. And I've been in a position where I felt completely like I have no role and, you know, sails the wind, you know, in the early years a lot.

00:34:42 Speaker_07
You know, you were the guy that had the filmmaking ability. What was I doing? I was just sort of hanging around.

00:34:49 Speaker_05
But I supported you then. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, It's not even that I'm not getting that support back. I feel like actively you're using the fact that I am in not quite such a defined role to marginalize me.

00:35:12 Speaker_07
Yeah, I mean, I understand why you would feel that. My kind of response is it's come from a sort of business

00:35:24 Speaker_05
like there's sort of, yeah. But back then I could have gone, you know what, I don't see the value that you're bringing. There's such a discrepancy in the value that we're bringing to the company.

00:35:39 Speaker_05
Not only was I making a film, I was also new business director. So I was making all the calls to all the agencies that then blew the company up. I could at any point then have gone, what exactly is he doing? And I didn't, I stood by you.

00:35:58 Speaker_05
And I always made sure that we shared the podium.

00:36:02 Speaker_05
And when we had the challenges in the UK, and you were over here, at board level, across, you know, you used the fact that we had low sales in the UK to completely commandeer the control of the board to ostracize me.

00:36:24 Speaker_05
And we know companies go through sales cycles where sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. We had a sales squeeze last year in New York, which we came through. We had challenges with the office refit. I've stood by you.

00:36:41 Speaker_05
I could have used any of those things as leverage, but I didn't.

00:36:45 Speaker_07
I get it. I understand the sort of... I know it was difficult and it felt... very hard at the time, but the way the UK business was structured at the time was... That's not what he's talking about. I know, I know.

00:37:02 Speaker_03
So don't deflect.

00:37:03 Speaker_07
From my point of view, there was a very strong business case to the point where that business nearly folded. And if I hadn't come in and made those decisions at that time, it probably would have done.

00:37:21 Speaker_07
It wasn't about some sort of personal power struggle, it was about trying to save the UK business.

00:37:27 Speaker_05
Yeah, I mean, over the period from when you left to now, we let 27 people go in the UK to turn that business around, right? We had already let a number of people go before that. You came over and basically just said, right, we have to do it right now.

00:37:46 Speaker_07
I'd waited, I'd, you know, seen it coming for a while anyway.

00:37:51 Speaker_03
If you go in this direction, you will do an interesting comparative study of the narratives. And that's irrelevant, because you're not busy trying to really understand each other's narratives.

00:38:05 Speaker_03
When one person keeps repeating the same thing over and over again, it's easy to get frustrated. Can you finally talk about something else?

00:38:14 Speaker_03
But the fact is that we repeat because we are still waiting for the other person to actually acknowledge that which we are saying. So we're holding up the flag, not just because we are stubborn and a one-note person, but because we are signaling

00:38:35 Speaker_03
to the other person. I need to know that you see what I see before I can move on to the next thing.

00:38:48 Speaker_01
We are in the midst of our session. There is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break. So stay with us.

00:39:00 Speaker_09
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00:39:38 Speaker_03
He's talking about a very particular thing, which is regardless of the cycles of the business, I've always put us first. And I experienced you putting the business first basically as a betrayal. And you're saying,

00:39:57 Speaker_03
I value our relationship, but not at the expense of the whole business. And I needed to do certain things, which you still haven't recognized, because you're busy with your wounds.

00:40:06 Speaker_07
I think that's fair, yeah.

00:40:11 Speaker_03
Yeah?

00:40:11 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:40:12 Speaker_03
All right. Let's move there then. Otherwise, you will leave, and you'll continue what you're doing. What he needs to know is, have you given up on us? Is the business really become more important? Then we will discuss it.

00:40:27 Speaker_03
Either he gets a certain role or you get bought out. Do you have a partnership agreement or none?

00:40:32 Speaker_07
No.

00:40:32 Speaker_03
Nothing.

00:40:33 Speaker_07
Probably should get that one.

00:40:35 Speaker_03
How old were you when you started this whole thing?

00:40:38 Speaker_06
Twenty-five.

00:40:38 Speaker_03
So you were the friend sort of, okay, you know. He's still into that, you know, you're my friend, you're my buddy, you're my partner. And we do this together. And we waver and we wave all the ups and downs together.

00:40:54 Speaker_03
And you're into the, you know, the business comes first. And you're in my way, basically.

00:41:03 Speaker_07
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment, yeah.

00:41:06 Speaker_03
You're in my way, and he knows it. You want to make the decisions. You want to be the CEO. You want to, you know, you're actually no longer talking in partnership terms, and he's in a completely different storyboard.

00:41:22 Speaker_07
Yeah, I mean, I think that is true, and I do, that is the way I see it. I do, I see it as a business. I see my responsibility towards the board, the shareholders, the employees, the clients.

00:41:37 Speaker_07
I don't think the company kind of defines, you know, everything about me. I see it as a, it's become an amazing thing, but I don't think it's going to be the only thing I'll ever do.

00:41:51 Speaker_05
I hear you. I don't agree with the classification of this difference that I don't care about the company and I'm not interested in the success of the company. Sorry, that I put the relationship first.

00:42:05 Speaker_05
The reason I think the relationship is important is because without the relationship the company tears itself to pieces. And that's why I'm willing to overlook things which, on the face of it, seem extremely damaging to the company.

00:42:22 Speaker_05
Yeah, it's not some sort of like, oh, this is our amazing, exciting adventure and we have to stick together and damn the consequences as long as we're together. It's that the value

00:42:39 Speaker_05
to the company that we're able to offer is drastically enhanced when you combine our two skill sets.

00:42:45 Speaker_03
He no longer thinks that.

00:42:48 Speaker_05
No.

00:42:50 Speaker_03
I know you think that, but he no longer thinks that. That's where you actually are parting.

00:43:02 Speaker_06
Yeah.

00:43:02 Speaker_03
And he hasn't thought that for a while, and because of that, you are spinning your wheels. I am saying it for you because you're not being direct and you know, if you leave here, but you have to be.

00:43:20 Speaker_03
At this point, you have to be out of sheer respect for him.

00:43:23 Speaker_07
Yeah, no, you're right.

00:43:24 Speaker_03
Because otherwise, you will leave more convinced with what you already came in and you're going to continue to do more of what you did in a more blatant way and it's hostile.

00:43:36 Speaker_03
Maybe he should continue the company, since for you, you know, if you sell cars or if you sell movies, it's not fundamentally different. You like the selling, you like the structure, you like the business piece.

00:43:46 Speaker_03
And so, you know, who knows whose company it will be. Or maybe he does take a certain role, or he takes a new division that is not about corporate, or whatever you choose to do.

00:43:55 Speaker_03
But you first and foremost, it's a terribly painful thing to do it like this, but it's the respectful thing to do.

00:44:06 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:44:10 Speaker_03
And it's why you came.

00:44:11 Speaker_07
It is.

00:44:17 Speaker_03
Let them do it.

00:44:22 Speaker_07
Just say that. Whatever you're going to say, I don't know what, but... Yeah, I mean, I think we have had the conversation, but it would be useful to... for both of us to really think about what we want to do and, yeah, and what that looks like.

00:44:45 Speaker_05
I agree. I think, if I may, the reason you've lost so much confidence in me is that you really struggle, almost to the point of not seeing, benefits and the things that I've done for the company.

00:45:08 Speaker_05
You know, we've got this absolutely thriving culture in the UK, right? That was because, well, in part, I'm amply supported by the rest of the team. I made turning the culture around in that business the number one priority.

00:45:31 Speaker_05
And we've done that, and it is absolutely thriving. And it's thriving to the point where neither of the founders need to be there. Now, you have real difficulty attributing that to anything that I did. But, like, who else did it?

00:45:55 Speaker_07
Yeah, I do. I mean, yeah, just the sort of value conversation is often on quite intangible things.

00:46:05 Speaker_07
And I just, I think, you know, with my sort of business head on, yeah, I do find that difficult to sort of put a value on because it's, you know, it's often the stuff that's kind of out there a little bit. Yeah.

00:46:19 Speaker_05
I mean, I guess, you know, the tangible aspect of it is the sales and the profit we're making in the UK, like that is extremely tangible.

00:46:29 Speaker_05
I mean, the other thing is our Brooklyn refit, which you oversaw, ended up costing, at the last count, $350,000, which we originally signed off $80,000 to do that. Now, that was entirely on your watch, right?

00:46:49 Speaker_05
If we're being completely harsh and the business does really come first, there could have been quite a different outcome from that.

00:46:59 Speaker_07
Sure, you know, I'm happy to, like, again, I don't want to sort of get into the specifics and the context around that because it's not really about that, but I'm happy to put my case forward and take it to the board or, you know, if we can't agree it between ourselves and... No, as in, I'm happy with my response to it, I think.

00:47:18 Speaker_07
That's what I mean.

00:47:19 Speaker_03
The true response is this. I'm not going to argue with what he says about London. The fact is I hold him responsible for London. When it doesn't go well on his side, he's responsible.

00:47:33 Speaker_03
When it doesn't go well on my side, there are a lot of other circumstances. Mine is circumstantial, his is personal. It's classic, yeah. You want to leave or you want to part, why do you need to destroy him first? As a way to justify. you wish to go.

00:47:58 Speaker_03
I mean, you are entitled to go. For whatever reason that you choose, you're entitled to go. Then you'll decide how you want to divide and part and all of that. But you're entitled to want that. And you don't want him to leave, so you're groping.

00:48:15 Speaker_03
That's the... Groping is not the... Yeah, sure, sure, sure. I bring imagery from other relationships. Grasping. Grasping. That's actually different. Go ahead.

00:48:32 Speaker_07
Yeah, look, I recognize that... So I can be very difficult in that sense. That's gotta be really hard.

00:48:48 Speaker_03
You're locked. Because you have a certain desire for whatever reason, and everything gets measured vis-a-vis that. I mean, if I have a wish for you, it's that you would live with one new thought, but it's not happening.

00:49:10 Speaker_03
What's happening is a reinforcement of every thought you already have. It brings up culture. You say, once again, he brings up culture. We've already talked about culture, him and his culture.

00:49:21 Speaker_03
You know, it doesn't occur to you to say, of course you had something to do with it because there probably is something he had to do with it. Maybe not as much as you think, but you're not going to give him an inch.

00:49:31 Speaker_07
Right. Yeah, that's fair.

00:49:33 Speaker_03
Cause you pissed. I don't know why you're pissed, but you're pissed. You're in an ante and he knows it. So he's trying to justify himself. He's trying to prove to you that he's capable of something.

00:49:44 Speaker_03
And the more he's trying to prove and the more you think he's pathetic. But you don't realize that you're putting him down the whole time because you give him nothing. You know, you're entitled to say, I don't want to continue together.

00:50:02 Speaker_03
That's a fair wish. But what you're doing is, is aggressive.

00:50:09 Speaker_07
It's hostile.

00:50:12 Speaker_03
You know, I had something to do with it. And you say, well, I'm not going to get into it because you know, I have a very different understanding of what really actually happened. And you know, there is no value to this.

00:50:20 Speaker_03
And this is, what the hell is this? Because I'm sure that tomorrow you're going to make a speech at your company about culture. and how important it is because everybody does these days. So you must be doing that too.

00:50:36 Speaker_03
But when he brings it up, you think it's woo-woo. That's what I mean, woo-woo. You're the hard core, you're the hard skills, you're the hard core, you're the number. But when it's your numbers, then it's circumstantial.

00:50:51 Speaker_03
Then you say, I'm happy to bring the board to do what? Arbitration? Which story is the board going to believe? should not have, when you say you lost trust in me, what's striking to me more is to watch how you lost trust in you.

00:51:09 Speaker_03
I mean, it's painful to watch. I can only imagine that it's painful to experience it.

00:51:21 Speaker_07
Yeah, you absolutely correctly identify. I just get in this kind of mindset of this is, this is the business, this is how things should be run, this is how we resolve problems.

00:51:35 Speaker_03
But you have a confirmation bias. Everything you hear or everything he says gets interpreted vis-a-vis your main idea. It's like you never change perspective. Au contraire, it gets more and more rigid.

00:51:53 Speaker_07
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Okay.

00:51:56 Speaker_03
You're stuck.

00:51:57 Speaker_07
Yeah. Yeah.

00:51:59 Speaker_03
With that, you're stuck.

00:52:00 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:52:04 Speaker_03
At the end of the session, there was no master game plan of how they were going to proceed henceforward.

00:52:14 Speaker_01
But so much had been said that they had been avoiding for four years.

00:52:21 Speaker_03
from the acknowledgement publicly about the difference between one holding the business and one holding the relationship to neither one of them being able to actually acknowledge anything that the other one is saying about them and therefore being stuck in highly differentiated and entrenched narratives to

00:52:46 Speaker_03
blaming the other for the specific mistakes and blaming circumstances for their own mistakes.

00:52:55 Speaker_03
And so while I said I wished you had left with something and I'm not sure we're leaving with anything new, I'm not so sure that they didn't leave with anything new.

00:53:22 Speaker_02
You just heard a classic session of How's Work with Esther Perel. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut.

00:53:33 Speaker_02
To apply with your partner for a session on the podcast, for the transcripts or show notes on each episode, or to sign up for Esther's monthly newsletter, go to estherperel.com.

00:53:44 Speaker_02
Astaire Perel is the author of Mating and Captivity in the State of Affairs. She also created a game of stories called Where Should We Begin? For details, go to her website, astaireperel.com.

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00:54:19 Speaker_00
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