The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Notable Moment: Love Expert Reveals Why 80% Of Modern Relationships Fail
Fri, 14 Feb 2025
We give our best energy to work, but what about our relationships? In this moment, Esther Perel reveals how small moments of disconnection—like looking at your phone instead of your partner—can erode intimacy over time. Discover how to bring attention, creativity, and presence back into your relationships before it’s too late. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link//qmlJPkdxXQb Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link//TgMnzfgxXQb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why do we neglect our relationships?
Our relationships, you know, I think we all, certainly I think I have for much of my life, And I say that because I look at my actions. So what I might say is different to how I think I've behaved over the last 10, 15 years. We see them as kind of an afterthought to everything else in many regards.
Chapter 2: How does working too hard affect relationships?
So the amount of effort I put into my businesses and to the podcast and to every little detail, the creativity, the thought, the brainstorming, all of that, relationships, we kind of all just think they just happen. And if it doesn't happen perfectly, then it's broken and I need to find a new one.
Chapter 3: What happens when we give leftovers to our relationships?
Yeah, that's a terrible way to think. I mean, and everybody knows it. If you give the best of yourself at work, if you bring the leftovers home, if when you come home, you say, I've given everything I had. Now I'm just putting my feet on the table. I just need to chill. I don't want to make any effort. You know, slowly your relationship degrades, period. And then there's all kinds of ways it ends.
None of them are particularly joyful. And basically, if people were able to put a little bit of creativity, attention, attention into their relationships as they do with their customers or their guests, relationships would be doing a lot better and my profession would be seeing a lot less people. I mean, there's no doubt. And why are people so lazy, so complacent, so unimaginative?
Chapter 4: How can paying attention improve your relationship?
with their relationships at home. I mean, I see so many people when you, like here, you know, you're not taking out your phone. You're not, you're looking at me, you're paying attention on occasion, you look for your questions and where we go, but basically you're with me. But at home, if you do this or this.
Looking at my phone.
You know, and then when the person tells you something really important, you go, uh-huh. Uh-huh. You know, and you're kind of there, but not present. And that's the beginning of a kind of modern loneliness, actually, is that this idea that you can share something really important to someone who is half there, half there.
And I think that that's what's happening with a lot of younger people these days, is that they experience a lot of half there-ness, right? And that begins to cultivate a real sense of loneliness that is to do not with I'm physically alone, that has to do with do I matter? Who hears me? Who cares? Who pays attention? Who notices me? So sometimes the advice is very banal.
It's to tell people, put your freaking phone down. Take an hour and put your phone down.
But I'm busy.
Huh?
But I'm busy.
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Chapter 5: What is ambiguous loss and how does it relate to modern relationships?
that you will be busy and there won't be a relationship. Sooner or later, there won't be a relationship. It's not difficult. You can wait, you can wait for the kids to grow up if there are kids involved, things like that. But in the end, there isn't.
Just because someone was on their phone.
Well, it's not just on the phone. It's on the phone means I am continuously saying something is more important than you. We come last. We're a cactus. We don't need to be watered. We can survive in a desert. It's called, there's a term I've been using for this that I borrow from something else. It's called ambiguous loss. Have you ever heard of this term?
Ambiguous loss? Yeah. No. No.
Chapter 6: How does technology contribute to loneliness in relationships?
Biggest loss is a term that was developed by a colleague, Pauline Boss, a wonderful psychologist, when she talked about what happens when you have a parent, for example, that has Alzheimer. They are physically present, but they are psychologically gone. They're emotionally absent. And you can't really mourn them because they're still physically there.
But you're caught in this in-between, in this ambiguous loss. On the other side, you can have somebody who is deployed, hostage. Miscarriage, they are emotionally very present, but they are physically absent. In both cases, it's an ambiguous loss. You can't, are they still there or are they gone? Who knows? When we live with this founting,
When we are, because you've been at work, you've been at the computer, you come home, you think, I'm so happy to finally let go of the computer. You turn on the TV, you turn on the TV, and then you turn on the phone at the same time. You're watching here, you're watching there, and there's a person next to you. And most likely they often do the same thing in the end too.
And gradually, you know, there is less and less of a thread of conversation, of connection, of joy, of sex, of intimacy, all of what, you know, that becomes ambiguous loss. Somebody is there, but they're not really present. I'm, you know, is there a difference between me and the sofa? It's comfy. It's routine. You sit on me.
But comfy and routine do not give us joy or meaning or relevance or connection. And that's what we still seem to want. So it means saying to people, you know, it's actually not very, very complicated. What did people do for centuries? They took walks. That's one of the few times you can't click. So take a walk. Don't sit.
Don't try to do, you know, take a walk around the block and just be in motion. Then you're parallel, you know, it's not face to face, it's side by side. And you can talk about the day. If you, instead of just saying, stop, stop, stop, you just said, you know, let's go for a walk. It's London, but still you can, you know, and you do half an hour walk. It will change.
You'll come back to me and you tell me what it will do. But it's amazing how these small interventions that are playful, creative, not digging, change the dynamic of the relationship. Because she is only pursuing you in part because of how much you are withdrawing. You change, she change. If you want to change the other, change yourself.
Once you understood the figure eight and how we create the other, you understand that if you do something else, sooner or later, they do something else too. So if you want to change the other, change you. This is part of the question you asked me, right? What are some of the essentials understandings of working with relational systems? This is true at work, in companies.
This is true in intimate relationships. This is not just for romantic love. This is foundations of relational systems. feedback loop, it's called in cybernetics.
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