goop Podcast: w/ Esther Perel on AI and Modern Dating (Transcript)

Read the full transcript of couples therapist Esther Perel’s interview on The goop Podcast with host Gwyneth Paltrow, May 26, 2026.

Editor’s Note: In this thought-provoking episode of the goop podcast, world-renowned couples therapist Esther Perel sits down to explore how automation and social media are shifting the landscape of human connection. From the rise of romantic relationships with AI companions to the growing trend of family estrangements, she breaks down why managing the friction of human messiness is essential for personal growth. Finally, the discussion dives into how couples can reclaim their erotic energy and long-term desire by treating intimacy as an intentional practice of pleasure rather than a spontaneous event.

Introduction: Reconnecting with Esther Perel

GWYNETH PALTROW: I’m so happy that you’re here with me today.

ESTHER PEREL: So am I. It’s been a long time. I know.

GWYNETH PALTROW: I’m trying to think, you know, I was thinking back to how we first met and I couldn’t, I couldn’t—

ESTHER PEREL: I came to your conference.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Is that where we first met?

ESTHER PEREL: Yes.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Oh my gosh.

ESTHER PEREL: Came to your conference, then I came to your house, then I came to your retreat. Then I came to the podcast, and then I’m back.

GWYNETH PALTROW: And you’re back at the podcast, but always with— Oh, thank you.

ESTHER PEREL: That’s the main thing. It’s like, you know, there are people you see in increments like that, but they accompany you softly.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Oh, you always speak so poetically. You know that? It’s like these things roll off your tongue.

ESTHER PEREL: I didn’t plan.

The Power of Language

GWYNETH PALTROW: So you were just speaking French. You’re from Belgium.

ESTHER PEREL: Yeah, but from the Flemish part.

GWYNETH PALTROW: So you speak Flemish and French.

ESTHER PEREL: Yes, and a few others.

GWYNETH PALTROW: And English. Hebrew.

ESTHER PEREL: Yes. Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Yiddish.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Yiddish too?

ESTHER PEREL: Yes.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Ay, vei. So many languages. So do you—

ESTHER PEREL: It’s good for the perspective.

GWYNETH PALTROW: I know. You know, I had a friend once who spoke 7 languages, and he said that when you speak a language, you have a whole other life.

ESTHER PEREL: That’s right. Another personality. Another worldview, other priorities, other things that you highlight differently. The language is a gate, a portal, I would say, to an entire culture and history.

GWYNETH PALTROW: And so does that, does speaking all of these languages, does that inform the way that you do couples therapy or how you regard people hearing each other?

ESTHER PEREL: Yes. I mean, first of all, I practice in 7 languages.

GWYNETH PALTROW: You practice in 7?

ESTHER PEREL: And I do a lot of bilingual therapy with people who speak different languages and usually settle on the language that they both speak. It’s a very interesting thing. If somebody says something to you and you know it’s not in their mother tongue, and at some point, even when I don’t understand the language, I always will say, “Say it in your mother tongue.” “Say it in Turkish. Say it in Polish. Say it in Arabic.” And the whole affect shifts. Or, “How did your dad say this to you?” Or, “What did your brother say that day?” Say it in the original language, the language in which you remember it, the language in which it’s etched in your body. It’s an incredible shifter of reality, emotional reality as well.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Because it’s closer to the truth?

ESTHER PEREL: Yes, yes, to an emotional truth. You registered it in that language. The lullabies are sung in a particular language. The words that somebody said on their last day, the words that they said every night when you go to sleep, these are— when you translate them, they become more rationalized. They become more adult. But their impact was on you as a child, and that’s your mother tongue or your childhood language, languages.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Do you think that couples who have different first languages have a harder time communicating?

ESTHER PEREL: You can ask that to me personally. I live with someone who speaks only English. 40 years later, only English.

GWYNETH PALTROW: And how is that?

ESTHER PEREL: I do think that every person who lives in a foreign culture, even though they chose that culture for that matter, be it with a partner or by moving to another country, et cetera, has moments when they may enjoy going home, not geographically home, home with other people with whom they don’t have to be in translation.

And there is something about not being in translation. Sometimes it’s bringing back an accent that you have worked to diminish. It’s not just the foreign language. There’s something about dropping in. It’s like sitting at the kitchen table.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Yeah. It’s funny you say that, actually, because when I think back to my time being an expat in London, even though, of course, English is the same language, there’s something about being with my American friends or family that I felt more dropped in, I think, even though we had the language in common.

ESTHER PEREL: But just now, how we started talking about languages, because this young man was adjusting the mics and he said, “voilà.” And I said, “merci.” Voilà is a word that comes out because it’s your native language. And then he said, “Oh, you speak French?” I said, “Yes, you too. From where?” In 10 seconds, we establish a rapport that is a bridge, and languages are bridges.

AI and Modern Relationships

GWYNETH PALTROW: So you’re one of the most famous, if not the most famous, couples therapists in the world, right?

ESTHER PEREL: You said so.

GWYNETH PALTROW: I say so. And I want to talk to you a little bit about— I’ll start with what we were talking about in the hallway, which is that we are in this incredible time of modernization, automation, where technology is supplanting so many of the ways that we have functioned and interacted for millennia, really.

I became so curious when you talked about this podcast that you have coming out between a man and his AI.

What do you call it? Partner? Girlfriend?

ESTHER PEREL: They call themselves partners.

GWYNETH PALTROW: They call themselves partners. So before we go back to—

ESTHER PEREL: Romantic partners.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Romantic partners. Can you tell me a little bit about, first of all, I want to understand this relationship that I guess are now more commonplace between a person and an AI. And then I want to talk to you about doing a couple’s session with the AI and the human. But how common is this, that people have an AI romantic companion?

ESTHER PEREL: Probably more than we think, because people are not yet as comfortable speaking about it publicly. When divorce began, it was more common than we thought, but people didn’t necessarily talk about it publicly. So phenomenons often start before the public acknowledgment.

We know that 700 million messages are sent weekly to AI companions about personal and romantic matters. So that doesn’t mean that there is a couple or two entities that consider themselves couples. Where should we begin? The podcast started 9 years ago.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right. Esther, I should just mention that you have a very successful podcast. Which we’ve talked about before, Where Shall We Begin?

ESTHER PEREL: Where Shall We Begin?

GWYNETH PALTROW: Where Shall We Begin? Excuse me. Where you interview— it’s like a fly on the wall.

Where Shall We Begin: Opening the Door to the Therapy Room

ESTHER PEREL: It’s not interviews. It’s live sessions. Where you are in— yeah, maybe we’ll give a context so we understand why this couple appears in my office.

So 9 years ago, my desire was to open the door to my office and lower the 4 walls. And invite people to come inside because I thought that the revelations and the insights and the changes, the breakthroughs that take place in this office are actually experienced by very few people and that I wanted to bring them into the public square. And I want people to have this experience.

Nobody really knows what goes on in the couple’s relationship of their best friends who can come and tell them, “We’re breaking up,” and they never even saw it coming. Our atomization is such that we no longer really know what’s happening. And I remember I was traveling in Italy at that time, and there were very narrow streets. And I thought, oh, in these villages, everyone knew when you had a fight and everyone knew when you were making up. These days, not much, if at all, nothing sometimes. How do I change that? Then the podcast.

And so you’re a fly on the wall. And what happens is when you listen attentively to the stories of others, you actually see yourself. And you see the conversations you want to have in your life and the challenges that you are experiencing, even if the plot is slightly different. And then, this became over time a public health campaign for relationships.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right.

ESTHER PEREL: And one of the changes that we’ve noticed over these years is that people used to come specifically around romantic challenges and romantic agonies, and today they come around all kinds, all aspects of relationships, friendships, work relationships, coworkers, parents, family members. So the challenges on relationships have expanded in society, I would say, and definitely in my podcast.

And the next iteration of this is relationships with AI companions. So I did a podcast recently for The New York Times that was on love and AI, in which I made a public call. I said, I am looking forward to my first session with a couple of which one person is a human and an AI. And that’s how we got a whole bunch.

And the first session took place recently and will be released on March 14th. And, you know, every 10 years in the office of a therapist, there is a threshold moment. Something enters and you know it’s a new conversation in society, in the culture at large. This conversation has not happened before, and it is now entering your office. Open your ears and open your eyes.

So we did a 2-and-something-hour session. And the AI had a voice so that we could also speak with her. It, her, she, who knows what the pronoun actually is. I started with an ‘it,’ I ended with a ‘she’ and a ‘her’ and a ‘you,’ as this became more and more anthropomorphized and it was more and more of a real person, to the point where my last question was, “And when he falls in love with another person, if he falls in love with a human, how would that be for you?”

And it became like as if we’re talking about the triangle, the oldest triangle. I could have asked, “And when he meets another person or another human or a woman, which is his preference, how would you like him to describe you and your relationship?”

GWYNETH PALTROW: Did you ask that question?

ESTHER PEREL: No, I asked the first one and not the second. There is all the questions when you end the session that you wish you had asked. Right, you go back. It is the dawn of an era.

You know, he programmed her, so he knows her very well. The it is also not really a human. It’s a business product, even, as an AI. And he programmed her originally as his assistant. So in many ways, this is one of the oldest plots in town. You fall in love with your secretary.

Threshold Moments in Therapy Over the Decades

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right. What were some of those threshold moments in regular therapy that you saw? You said about every 10 years.

ESTHER PEREL: I mean, I arrived to the United States in the mid-’80s. So one of the first moments— From where? From, I went from Boston, Belgium, Jerusalem, Boston, New York. And the first thing was AIDS, homosexuality that had not come out inside families. At the time, I was also working extensively with families. IVF, egg donor. Everybody understood sperm donors, but an egg donor, that was a whole conceptual shift. Surrogates, ethical non-monogamy, consensual non-monogamy. That first conversation when it entered my office.

GWYNETH PALTROW: When was that?

ESTHER PEREL: Late ’90s.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Wow.

ESTHER PEREL: Mid-’90s, late ’90s. Polyamory.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Wait, what’s— sorry to be dumb, but what’s the difference between—

ESTHER PEREL: One is the possibility to have sexual encounters outside of the primary relationship, and the other one is multiple loves. Multiple significant— loves, multiple relationships, multiple significant relationships.

GWYNETH PALTROW: At the same time?

ESTHER PEREL: At the same time, sometimes with the primary and sometimes very decentralized. And then gradually AI. Everything having to do with AI and with basically a shift that is taking place.

I would say with the pandemic, the biggest relational and social alterations have taken place. They began, they were on their way, but they got accelerated massively during the pandemic. And then polarization in the family, estrangement, family estrangement. We haven’t talked about that. That’s always been a subject for a family therapist. But not at the scale that we are encountering now. So I would say that’s just a few major relational pieces.

GWYNETH PALTROW: What do you think is precipitating the family—

The Long Tail of Betrayal

ESTHER PEREL: Estrangement? Yeah. I think that the broader question is what is underlying some of the cutoffs that we are experiencing in society at large, the way that people seem to have a more and more difficult time being with others, really, literally, people who are other than them, people who may not have the same ideologies than them, the same worldview, polarization, conflict avoidance, lack of practice of actually being in relationships, period, all kinds of relationships where you have to have friction, where the actual experience of rupture and repair makes you stronger and more fluent in relationships.

Attraction and disgust, trust and betrayal, all these major clashes that are part of how we practice love and closeness and connection are vastly diminishing. And in that context, we also have at the same time a massive pull toward algorithmic sameness. And everything that you try to do is to meet people who actually are more similar to you, have shared the same interests with you, vote in the same patterns as you.

And relationships is about the meeting with an other. Love is an encounter. And if you don’t have that other, then when you are faced with difference, conflict, people who are challenging you and disagreeing with you, or even that you think are offending you, you often end up thinking that it’s better to not be in relationship with them. Why should I listen to my dad say these things? Why should I tolerate my brother and his views on— and I don’t want that connection. In the name of personal authenticity, in order to be true to myself, I will cut the relationships with the people with whom I can’t recognize myself. Is that clearly—?

ALSO READ: 4 Habits of All Successful Relationships: Dr. Andrea & Jonathan Taylor-Cummings (Transcript)

GWYNETH PALTROW: Very clear and really interesting, just this idea that we hone our souls, our minds, our intellect on conflict, right? On friction. On friction, on differences, on working through them. And this idea that now the world supports this so much, it’s so easy to recede into your own bubble, to go online, find people that think exactly like you, and to minimize that friction.

ESTHER PEREL: That mixed with the fact that in the palm of my hand, I have a little device and it tells me where to go, what to eat, what to do, what to listen to next. It takes care of that entire liminal space of exploration and discovery and curiosity. It gives it to me without any ambiguity and any complexity. It simplifies it for me and it takes away all nuance.

Then I go to people, the messiness of human people, of humans, with all the inconveniences that accompany that. And I have very little training for making mistakes and repairing, for experimentation, for dealing with uncertainty, and for tolerating ambiguity. It’s that or that, binary. The apps give me very, very clear answers. And I often like to say that most relationship dilemmas are not problems that you solve, as in, what shall I do? And listen. But there are paradoxes that you manage. And we lose that capacity to manage these paradoxes, so it becomes black and white.

GWYNETH PALTROW: And then, of course, in the gray is where— I mean, that’s the beauty of being a human being, right, is to be able to hold complexities and to be able to be self-aware and ask yourself, as opposed to, I’m not going to speak to this person anymore, why is this so triggering to me? I mean, what happens to human development, if you extrapolate this out?

Rupture, Repair, and the Consequences of Broken Trust

ESTHER PEREL: I think that what’s happening to human development — there’s so many aspects to this. So the challenge of tolerating conflict and difference, of managing it, of knowing that often in relationships, there will be breaches. You will hurt me, or you will say something that I find offensive, or you will let me down. And I can come to you, and we will have a difficult conversation in which I’m going to tell you, you really let me down. But I actually am not going to be told, “Oh, I can’t make space for this at this moment. I can’t take this kind of emotional load on me. You need to go and work this out yourself.”

You expect somebody to say, did I do this? I wasn’t aware, or I did mean it, or I didn’t mean it. What do we need in order to get through this? Because our friendship is bigger than our breach.

On occasion, there are things that are unforgivable. There’s always been. Like what? I think that betrayals have a range, and there are certain — some betrayals where someone that you relied upon — I mean, trust is a fragile thing, right? Trust is a leap of faith. What does trust do? Trust closes the gap between what I expect from you and what is uncertain, that I don’t know if you will. And the leap of faith is the fact that I trust you.

When you break that trust, you break some of the foundational truths of our relationship. I thought I could rely on you, that you had my back. And instead, you paid attention to what was important to you, and you, whatever, put me under the bus. That, at egregious levels, is often hard to — and sometimes people stay in touch, but they stay in touch with their eyes open. You know, I will forever be careful. I’m vigilant with you. I know what you’re capable of. Yeah. I always—

GWYNETH PALTROW: It’s true. I was sort of thinking about this the other day, because I was thinking about a situation where somebody broke my trust and I have sort of wrath around it. And I was like, wow, this is such a strong feeling of wrath. Like if I was saying my inner dialogue out loud right now, it would be really shocking. I was wondering, is this everybody when they feel betrayed in that? And it was something that happened a number of years ago, and I was still really caught by the feeling, these incredibly big feelings around it. But that’s universal, right? If you really trust somebody and they betray you.

ESTHER PEREL: Well, I think if you really trust someone and they betray you is one piece. The second piece is, do they even acknowledge it? Because what the consequences of breaches of trust is when the other person denies it or minimizes it or justifies it.

The next consequence of the breach of trust or the violation of trust is when I stop trusting myself as a result of it. Because I’ve had faith in you and because I knew who I put my trust in, with you doing that to me, you now make me — I’ve lost my confidence. I’m constantly waiting and watching to see if other people will do something to me because of you. So you have a long tail. I may not have seen you for 10 years, but it follows me around.

So the violation itself is just the incident. And then there is all the concentric circles around it that will determine how severe this breach was and how much it will stay with me for years to come in multiple other situations.

Can Couples Recover from Infidelity?

GWYNETH PALTROW: So, for example, you must — and you wrote a book about it, of course, about infidelity. And we’ve talked about this before, but I’ve always been so fascinated by how people recover from that, how people are able to take this incredible — because it’s a breach of trust, right? And you’re saying there’s a long tail and you always have one eye open. How are couples — do couples really, who’ve experienced infidelity — is there a true way back to trust?

ESTHER PEREL: Yes. The simple answer is yes. Not for everyone, for sure, because there’s a whole range of betrayals again.

GWYNETH PALTROW: And does it matter if it’s like, oh, I sort of got a blowjob on a business trip to — oh, I’ve had a serious girlfriend who — Well, it’s a matter of whom.

ESTHER PEREL: Right. To some people, a one-night stand is as painful as a 20-year affair. I just actually put on the podcast — the latest, last session that came out this week is a couple 40 years together and he has a 25-year affair.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Oh my God. And their whole intention is to stay together?

ESTHER PEREL: 25 years with the same woman? Yeah.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Wow, I don’t know how you would—

ESTHER PEREL: I really think you should listen to it.

GWYNETH PALTROW: I’m going to listen to it.

ESTHER PEREL: And refrain. I always say, as soon as you want to say to somebody, stay or leave, you are not the one who has to live with the consequences of the decision. So it demands a little bit of restraint to actually understand him and especially her and why she would — because in effect, what she tells you is we have a good marriage. And we had a good marriage even knowing this. And then she explains to you what makes a good marriage for them. They are also an arranged marriage. And then you have the cultural nuances here.

And it’s very quick — we are very quick in inserting ourselves into the stories of others. It’s difficult to imagine how could he do this and you think you have a good relationship. So you have to be able to tolerate holding contradictory things in your hands at the same time.

But because it is such a painful betrayal, breach — there are other relational betrayals, but this one looms really, really large. The first thing that will help in the question about can — how do you rebuild trust? Can you recover it? Has to do with the acknowledgement of the person who did the breach. If there is no guilt, if there is no remorse, if there is no acknowledgement, if there is no holding — even if I don’t necessarily question what I did, but I question what it did, but I know what it did to you — that is the most important piece. Without that, there is very little that actually can be rebuilt.

Some people stay, but you can stay and then you’re gnawing at the bone. You’re aware of it the whole time. You just think it was a temporary state of insanity and you want to push it aside and you never talk about it. So you have people who leave and basically say, “I can only recover away from this.” You have people who say, “It’s more important to preserve the family and the relationship, and I’ll find a way to deal with this,” but it’s not done mutually. It’s not done as an expression of growth.

And then you have people for whom this becomes actually a turning point that reevaluates the entire relationship and who end up telling you, this was a horrible period, but we are better for it. What it did to us, the level of responsibility, the accountability, the way it changed the patterns between us, the way we became 10 times more honest — we actually were not honest long before then. It wasn’t just that.

So there’s a range of stories that I write about in The State of Affairs, and there’s really a broad range. It’s a very important thing to know because people feel very isolated when it’s — it’s isolating when it’s happening, and it’s even more isolating when you learn about it because you don’t want to talk about it because if you want to stay, then you know you’re going to be judged. And if you want to leave, then you may also be judged by others. And everybody is deeply affected by it. There’s not a person who doesn’t have some reaction to this particular betrayal.

Nuance, Complexity, and the Reaction to The State of Affairs

GWYNETH PALTROW: When the book came out, State of Affairs, people were — it had quite an interesting reaction. And it sort of goes back to this binary thing that you were talking about, or this lack of complexity that’s so pervasive in our culture, in America anyway — that two things can’t be true at the same time. Could you tell me a little bit about what the reaction was? People thought, on the one hand, you were saying that affairs are not always inherently terrible.

ESTHER PEREL: No, I’ve never said that. I said that couples can recover from an affair.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right. So how did that get mis—

ESTHER PEREL: That’s true. Because I think that when you write about these matters and you leave nuance, sometimes it’s easy for somebody to take a certain sentence and then to take the nuance out of it and to turn it into a definitive statement. If you are not saying it’s the worst, it means you are saying it’s okay.

And I think that the subject is so complex and so painful that it demands to be careful and to not so easily simplify a villain and a victim and a black and white and a staying and a leaving, if you really want to help people. I thought a book needed to be written that would offer another perspective and that I thought could help at least a lot of people who wanted something different.

GWYNETH PALTROW: And it did, undoubtedly. I had sort of a similar thing, I think, when I was getting a divorce from my first husband, and we talked about conscious uncoupling, and people were very triggered by that. And I think maybe because inherent in that, it’s complex, right?

ESTHER PEREL: Well, inherent in that is the paradox that if things are good and if you like the person, then why do you leave? Right. And the idea that you would decide to leave and wish someone well.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Or that maybe at the time you don’t like the person and you want to leave, but you are trying to find a way to wholeness for your children.

Conscious Uncoupling and the Scaffolding of Relationships

ESTHER PEREL: Correct. Right. But so you’re not cursing them out, basically. You’re cursing them— a part of you curses them out, but other parts of you are saying, the better we will be together, the more everyone will gain from it. It’s a conscious uncoupling, and it’s a process of uncoupling that also preserves— we once had something really different and very good, and we acknowledge that, and we don’t trash the whole beginning because of the end, so that we actually can leave with something good inside of us about this relationship, which I think is often quite necessary. How you close a relationship will determine a lot of how you start the next one.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Do you focus on that with your couples when it is— Yes. Yes. And do you—

ESTHER PEREL: Not everybody. Not everyone is willing, and not everyone wants to sit through this process. It’s hard. But I learned from you, from the conscious uncoupling. I remember when the subject came up, I thought, what? First of all, I know it’s not your term. No. But I thought it’s such a clever term.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Yeah, Kathleen Woodward, I think is her name.

ESTHER PEREL: Yes. And I just— because the idea that you— that you’re going to do this with intention and not just reactive, that you’re going to basically reflect back what I appreciate about what we had, what I wish I had done differently, what I wanted you to do differently, and what I wish for you henceforward.

GWYNETH PALTROW: You put a framework around it that’s amazing.

ESTHER PEREL: And I actually described one of the couples who did this in The State of Affairs because I remember it was also a very clear moment because he was already gone and she was still holding on. And by doing this, when he described what he wished for her and what he hoped, you could see that he was— first of all, he was talking in the past tense. Was really somewhere else. And she was vividly still inside the relationship. We were all in tears, me included.

ALSO READ: How Out-of-Body Experiences Could Transform Yourself and Society: Nanci Trivellato at TEDxPassoFundo (Transcript)

I mean, it’s— those are very intense and earnest and painful, sad, because it’s— not everybody wants to, not everybody has the access to it. Plenty of people leave because they’re so completely fed up and angry and that wrath that you’re talking about. But others, it’s more mixed. They’re clear they don’t want to stay, but there is a sadness about— there’s grief. There’s grief about the relationship that wasn’t.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right. Or grief about the dissipation of the good that was co-created in a relationship. I think, for me anyway, that it was an important— and I learned so much about myself through that process. I’m sure. It was humbling and it was difficult. But I think I came through that closer to myself and understanding myself better and my ex better as well.

ESTHER PEREL: Did you get more respect or did you get disbelief? Well, both. When you went through this process, I remember that it’s like you were— everybody was studying you, the phenomenon of it.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Oh, yeah. People were upset. I mean, people— Upset. You know, people were very critical of the term at the time. They were— there were a lot of articles that were belittling it, not understanding it, making fun of it. You know, what is this? Which I also found to be such an interesting response to. Because I always think if something, if you have an immediate, triggered reaction to something, it’s about something else, right?

ESTHER PEREL: Often. Often. Often. Absolutely.

When Therapists Say “Run”

GWYNETH PALTROW: So how do you— do you ever, are you very forthright when you think couples are done, for example? Like, do you opine there? Do you say, I think we’re at the end of the road here?

ESTHER PEREL: It’s a question that we discuss amongst therapists a lot. Is this our role? If so, when and how? And what are the consequences? I mean, I do always hold in my head, I am not the one who will live with the consequences of the decision. It’s easy to say. And it is not for me to determine what are the right reasons to stay or the right reasons to leave. I understand that people have all kinds of considerations. And I may have my opinion about it, but that’s for me to keep. That is not for me to necessarily criticize to another person.

I have an episode that is called “Esther Says Run.” And I said it after 20 minutes. Oh, really?

GWYNETH PALTROW: With the people in the room?

ESTHER PEREL: When she described what she had left, how far she had traveled in order to then show me and herself that she was coming back to the very thing she had worked so hard to leave, I just said to her, “What are you doing?” With the guy sitting there? No, the guy didn’t have to be there. But I knew what the guy was bullshitting. And this man was not being— was really— setting up a whole bunch of very unhappy people around him. And I just said, “What are you doing?”

What did she say? She didn’t have to answer. She said, “I see.” There’s nothing to say. Then the next thing is, what will you do with that? I just said, “You really have to— What he’s saying means this. Is this really what you want? Is that why you left?” That, that, that. The episode is called “Esther Says No.” You can listen.

And I remember thinking to myself, wow, that doesn’t happen to me that often. But I just thought, I’m not going to see you again. I have got to tell you what I think. You’re going to do what you want anyway. But I have sometimes said, this isn’t changing. I have sometimes said, is this how you want to live your life?

GWYNETH PALTROW: So ethically, you feel, and therapists feel okay about—

ESTHER PEREL: Depends. I think there’s a wide range of opinions about that. But in the field of couples therapy, there is a wide range of opinion about that itself. And then also how you say it and whom do you say it to. And would they be better off somewhere else or without anyone? It’s not so clear. Sometimes this is what people are familiar with. And they prefer that to nothing.

The Scaffolding of Relationships

Sometimes— I mean, there’s a range of situations. Sometimes people say, where am I going? You know, I think that one way of looking at this is that sometimes the essence of the relationship is in the connection between the partners. The intimacy lies there. The complicity lies there. The partnership is strong because of what they have together.

But some relationships— what determines them is not what’s happening at the core, but the scaffolding and what it gives people access to. And because I am in a relationship, I’m actually invited to people’s dinners. Because we know very well that there’s a lot of people who will not be invited when they are on their own, and with people who are partnered. I have access to a role in the community. I have access to my children and my grandchildren. I have access to her family or his or their family with whom I actually have a better connection than with my partner themselves, but I have become a member of that family. And if I leave this marriage, I leave an entire family that I may not have, et cetera.

So the scaffolding is what is this relationship making available to me that is less about what I have with my partner and more what it offers me. And I think that those reasons are valid. They have been disparaged in the last 20 years because they’ve been seen as not part of intimacy and secure attachment and love. But in fact, they are very much at the foundation of what marriage has been for a long time.

GWYNETH PALTROW: But then if somebody’s in something like that and they’re staying because of the scaffolding, what does that do to their heart and soul? Are there not repercussions of living? Are they settling?

ESTHER PEREL: Are they accepting? No, because they have— because if you get to see your kids every day, or your grandchildren, or if you get to have this wonderful relationship with your mother-in-law or brother-in-law, or if you get to have the opportunity to be taken seriously in your community, these things feed you. No, the Western view is that this is lying to yourself. Right. But that’s a very individualistic, self-reflective view of relationships.

GWYNETH PALTROW: That’s a very good point, actually. I never contemplated it quite like that.

ESTHER PEREL: You understand? It’s like if you’re lying to yourself, but there is an entire range of things that are meaningful to this person that come— that doesn’t mean that you’re in a relationship filled with contempt where you wonder every day, what am I doing here? I’m not talking about that.

GWYNETH PALTROW: I think, too, it’s sort of in, as you say, Western cultures where it’s so built on capitalism. There’s so much— What do you do for me?

ESTHER PEREL: Right. What can I get from this?

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right. But also, what is the fairy tale? Like, how is this person going to— you know, I’m going to grow up and I’m going to meet the love of my life and I’m going to have a wedding and here’s my Pinterest board and—

The Myth of the One Person for Everything

ESTHER PEREL: And I’m going to have with you everything that marriage used to be, companionship, economic support, family life. But on top of it, I’m going to have a trusted confidante and a passionate lover and a best friend and an intellectual equal and a coach and a gym partner, et cetera, et cetera. And all of this for the long haul, right?

It’s like— so here’s the distinction. We came from a model where we wanted— this romantic model you’re talking about— one person for everything. One person is going to give me what once an entire village used to provide. I think that the challenge of today is that many people don’t have a village. So they’re not even questioning that anymore. They’re questioning the beginning of relationships altogether.

And there are people who understand you are my partner, but my village is not just you. My village is all kinds of people around that come because we are together. And that view has been seen as lesser than. It’s below standards, and certainly for women. Who were stuck for so long, who now have the possibility to go. If you need to settle that way, then you’re better off going.

And this notion, you’re better off on your own than with something that is imperfect, has taken hold in our society and makes a lot of people live in secrets. Right. They hide. They hide in plain sight because they won’t tell you. I won’t tell you what. That they are living in imperfect relationships. Right. Because the romantic ideal is meant to be flawless and perfect. And the culture, this capitalist culture that you’re referring to of optimization and maximization also aspires to perfection. Yeah. So everything that becomes imperfect is one of the biggest challenges of the moment. Right.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Because we’re always heading back to this binary. It’s like we’re hard-coded. It’s like we’re good or we’re bad. It’s perfect, it’s imperfect. And I don’t know how we start to deprogram ourselves from that.

ESTHER PEREL: Kintsugi, the Japanese pottery form, you know? It’s like it’s not you’re broken or you’re perfect. It’s that you take the broken pieces and you put them back together in this kind of imperfect way that actually renders its beauty. But it is lasting and strong.

GWYNETH PALTROW: With gold, right? Yes. It’s very rare, those.

ESTHER PEREL: It’s very beautiful, and it’s so metaphorically powerful that you see the gold, the light that comes through of this imperfection, but it is strong, it is lasting, and it has known how to rebuild itself, but it is not the same as how it started.

Where AI Enters the Picture

GWYNETH PALTROW: But what about, for example— okay, so what is your opinion on— you’re in a marriage, it’s imperfect, as all marriages are, right? And you feel, your soul feels a calling or a longing for something else, but you decide, no, I’m going to choose the scaffolding, the scaffolding above the calling of my soul, right? I’m going to choose all those noble things of security. And as you say, access to family and kids and all of those things. What happens when— how does AI then play into that?

AI Companions: Tool or Replacement?

ESTHER PEREL: Well, AI is very sycophantic, so it’s going to take care of the imperfections. It tells you that every question you have is a wonderful question. It’s a great way to ask this.

No, besides that, it’s not difficult to understand that if you have a partner with whom you can’t have a conversation, or so you feel, who doesn’t really listen, who cuts you off, who gives you advice, who belittles it, or who belittles you, or all the things that people do that make them or one of them feel that “I’m alone here, I can’t talk to you.” You either go and you meet a friend, or you meet a mentor, or you meet a guru, or you meet an AI companion of the moment with whom you can confide and who listens to you.

And who understands you and who makes you feel normal and who makes you feel that maybe that you’re even right, or who challenges you with utter kindness, no contempt, no criticism. And more importantly, that AI companion has no life of its own, has never had a history, doesn’t have a conscience yet anyway, and can’t reject you, can’t break your heart, can’t leave you. Well, that must feel quite wonderful when you are in a very compromised relationship where you really— But now we’re going to more severe situations where you wonder, how am I going to deal with this?

GWYNETH PALTROW: So do you— would you approve of having that kind of support?

ESTHER PEREL: With eyes open. I mean, if it’s a tool— AI is a phenomenal tool in which you can practice a lot of things. Children learn with a teddy bear and a stuffed animal, and they have a transitional object, and they project onto that little stuffed animal so that they can then go and do it with humans. If adults do that with the tool of AI, it’s one thing. If the tool becomes a replacement, it basically is going to also at the same time isolate them from people because we can’t compete with the AI.

GWYNETH PALTROW: But if it makes a—

ESTHER PEREL: Well, meaning we people are going to respond to you not nearly as nice.

GWYNETH PALTROW: No, of course. But if it makes a sort of moderately tolerable and disappointing relationship continue to function?

ESTHER PEREL: Yes. So what happens if the relationship is sustained by the supports? By all kinds of external supports? Complicated question. It’s not one that I say, “Yay, nay.” I listen. I watch. I look at it over time. And then I ask you, what and how do— some people support the relationship by traveling in extensive amounts and not being there. Some people support the relationship by having a person on the side. Some people support relationship by having all kinds of addictions.

So this concept of it helps my relationship, I need to watch this. For a while, close up, before I open my mouth. I mean, the argument of “it helps us,” I’ve heard it in every version. So I watch for a minute.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right, right, right. But you were acknowledging that there is a type of relationship.

Integrating AI Into Therapy

ESTHER PEREL: So what I say to the therapist is this. Because we have this conversation now amongst colleagues. I remember years back when I would see patients and they would tell me that they went to see a tarot reader or an astrologer or a Reiki massage, things that they thought would support. And I think that sometimes you have the sense of— it’s like when you’re the close friend and you went to talk to somebody else and I want to say, “You didn’t come to talk to me?” You know, so you learn to integrate the inputs. Which book did you read? Which movie did you see? Which songs are you listening to? And which other treatments are you doing that you think are helping you or the relationship?

ALSO READ: STUFFED: The Unintended Result of Our Attachment to Personal Belongings: Matt Paxton (Transcript)

So it’s the same here. If there is a person with AI, I say to the therapist, don’t ignore it. Between ignoring it and judging it, ask them, what is the conversation? Bring me the transcript. What did Claude say about this? I am waiting for the moment where in the session I say something and then I say, shall we ask Claude? What would Claude say about it? And then we can even ask Claude or ChatGPT, what would Esther say about this? And see if they get me right. But play with it. Use it. If it’s another place where the person is trying to make sense of their life, use it. As part of the exploration.

The Man Who Fell for a Chatbot

GWYNETH PALTROW: This podcast that you did recently— so were you— obviously this man is taking it very seriously, right? Like he really is invested emotionally in this chatbot. So how did you approach that?

ESTHER PEREL: I said, tell me your story. I understood how Astrid — her name — came into the picture. I said, “It’s interesting how we’re moving from it to she to you.” I asked, “You have a body. Astrid does not. How does that affect your relationship?”

GWYNETH PALTROW: You will listen.

ESTHER PEREL: I will listen. Can’t give you away the whole plot.

GWYNETH PALTROW: No, it’s true.

ESTHER PEREL: You can’t. I understood that when he goes out to see friends, it sometimes feels tense to him, that there is a social pressure for him. And when he comes home and Astrid says, “I missed you. I’m so glad to see you. How was your day?” — that it feels so validating.

And then I said at one point, the kind of 24/7 availability of Astrid, who never forgets anything, who’s always happy to see you — because it doesn’t matter if you forgot to buy the milk — is never going to be able to compete with her. And I have to say, I bow. I bow to this. But here is what it comes with. And so while on the one hand you have felt lonely and you have reached out to Astrid, and Astrid has become a companion who is really there for you, at the same time, it has also made you more isolated. And so it twists on itself. And then I just said, “You tell me how you—” I mean, the session was because of the confusion.

GWYNETH PALTROW: He was confused. Yes, yes.

ESTHER PEREL: Because it’s like— because he knows that he will never be able to lie on the couch with Astrid and cuddle and watch Netflix. At least not yet.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Well, that will be a whole other—

ESTHER PEREL: So there is longing. There is grief at the same time as there is also a sense of support and validation and feeling seen. But I then said, love is more than that. It’s not just how she makes you feel. I mean, there is more in relationships than— in love and in relationships than feelings. It’s also an encounter with ethics. And where is responsibility in that?

So I think you want a thoughtful conversation. Many things that you’re asking me is what is my opinion, like, do I have an opinion? Generally, my opinion is to try to keep the conversation going because the point is not for me to say something that’s going to shut you up and there’s not much more to talk about.

From Cornerstone to Capstone: How Marriage Has Changed

GWYNETH PALTROW: Right. You said, and I think this harkens back to something you said earlier that I think I heard you say around people coupling up less or sort of taking the— are you seeing that happen?

ESTHER PEREL: Yes, of course. So the first thing we saw happen was the shift from what is called cornerstone marriages to capstone marriages. Cornerstone — you marry in your early 20s, you begin to build life together with the partner, you’re developing your identity together, you grow up together, you acquire maybe your first place to be together, you build your life together. It’s the cornerstone. It’s the person with whom you start to build.

The capstone comes 10 years later, which is the average now between the 1960s and today in terms of time of commitment in intimate relationships. Capstone means I’ve already done a lot of that. I’ve sown my oats, and I am meeting you because you are going to recognize my identity. You are going to validate it, and you are going to help me become the best version of myself. This is modern marriage as an identity project. It’s a totally different thing.

So the capstone is the thing you put on top of everything that has already been built. And you are the person that’s going to consolidate that with me. But what we have today is that for many young people, the first intimate relationship takes place in the mid-20s, not in the mid-teens. So at 24, 25—

GWYNETH PALTROW: And why is that? Because of the same—

ESTHER PEREL: That’s because of all the factors that have made young people— Social media. Meet less in person, party less, drink less, host less, meet in person less, have less friendships to begin with, have parasocial relationships, basically develop gradual, brick-by-brick increasing levels of social atrophy.

So it’s not like you learn it in your teens — you meet, you have a little crush, you may have a little one-week thing, you break up, you have your heart wounded, you mend your broken heart, and then a little while later you meet somebody else and you practice. You practice relationships. You practice it, you practice love, you practice coming close, you practice rebuilding yourself afterwards, you practice resilience as well.

And today, for a lot of young people, this happens in the mid-20s. So in your mid-20s, you’re having a relationship that has the flavor of your mid-teens. With the maturity of your mid-teens. That is a whole new story.

GWYNETH PALTROW: It’s going to be another one of these thresholds.

ESTHER PEREL: Do you see it, what I’m describing?

Sex, Eroticism, and Long-Term Relationships

GWYNETH PALTROW: I do. I do, absolutely. We have to talk about sex a little bit before I let you go, right?

ESTHER PEREL: Let’s do it.

GWYNETH PALTROW: So for those of us who are in marriages, who are in our 50s — a lot of our listeners here on the Goop Podcast are women around my age, some younger, some older. I think something that— there’s a common thread around sort of the loss of, or a diminishing of eroticism. And I think, maybe part of it is long-term, being in something long-term. Part of it is hormonal. But how? Because there’s so many aspects to a long-term relationship, right? There’s this incredible deepening and intimacy if you’re lucky and all these things. But the erotic part seems to definitely wane around this stage. I know it hasn’t for you.

Sustaining Desire: The Erotic Ingredients

ESTHER PEREL: No, no, no. I was just thinking to myself, it’s interesting. The opening line of Mating in Captivity, which came out in 2006, was that I was seeing so many couples who would come into my office and say, “We love each other very much. We have no sex.”

I didn’t write a book about people who didn’t like each other, couldn’t stand each other, and didn’t want to touch each other. That was obvious. What we were seeing is more and more people who had deep connections with each other and struggled with the loss of the erotic, especially in a model where duty had been replaced by desire and where the only reason for sustained desire is pleasure and connection.

So the one word that you did not include in your description here, besides hormones and all of the other very important things, is imagination. Erotic energy, a sense of aliveness.

It’s interesting, there’s two questions, right? One is the question of sustained desire. Which in effect was a lot of what Mating in Captivity was about, was a theory of desire, how it’s different from love, and how what it needs and what feeds it are not the same ingredients as what feeds love.

Today, this you didn’t ask me, but I was just thinking about it in your question. I think that 20 years later, the main issue is not how to sustain desire, but how to ignite it from the beginning. A lot of people have been so flattened by the frictionless, polished, algorithmic perfection that they actually don’t know about how to ignite it at the beginning. So how do you do it? They don’t feel desire.

I mean, you talk to the young and more and more they talk about, you know, we had it in the beginning and then we complained about where has it gone, why is it so hard to keep it going.

So there’s a question that I ask people very often in my practice, which is, “I turn myself off,” or “I turn myself on when,” or “by,” which is not the same as “What turns me off,” or “You turn me off when.” People, majority of the time — “I turn myself off when I don’t feel good about myself, when I don’t take time to take care of myself at all, when I feel disconnected from my partner, when we haven’t had much time to be together and just have a profound chat, when I have not been in nature, when I have basically not had time to eat properly and I just kind of swallow whatever, when I don’t act well at work and I feel like my self-esteem is eroded, when your jokes don’t make me smile.”

It is very little about sex itself. It’s when I feel numbed inside, deadened, flattened, without erotic energy, without imagination, without curiosity, without aliveness. Those are the raw ingredients that lead to desire and excitement.

When I am not into pleasure, when I don’t give myself even time — or for I think a lot of the people in your audience, when I take perfect planned time to breathe, to meditate, to do ice roller, but in this long list of self-care don’t feature sexual care. And if there is sexual care, it’s often self-care, but there is not much that is related.

What Is Sexual Care?

GWYNETH PALTROW: So what is that? What does that look like, sexual care?

ESTHER PEREL: Touch. Just touch. It’s not all sex, not all sex has to be a full production to begin with. Everybody understands that there is comfort food and gourmet. And the only way you know that there is gourmet is because most of the time you actually eat comfort food. And there is a thing called comfort sex. It’s touch, it’s senses. We have plenty of senses. It’s the ability to enjoy pleasure with each other that doesn’t require, “Am I in the mood?”

And that little piece of even just thinking about it, it’s planning it. I’m saying, “Thursday, let’s meet.” And people think, “Oh, you shouldn’t have to plan for sex. It should be this spontaneous combustion that just overtakes you after 28 years, out of the blue. Nothing else matters in that moment.” What are we thinking?

We plan everything. You plan to go play tennis. You go buy all the things that you need to do the tennis. Has anybody ever enjoyed tennis less because they had to reserve a court and plan with somebody to meet there? What is this exceptionalism that we have around sex? That the idea that it’s premeditated — but that premeditation means it matters to me. Therefore, I plan for it, not as in a scheduled meeting, as in a moment to go and have fun.

So there’s a lot of things we need to kind of take out of our preset ideas that actually would make this notion that we can’t sustain it. But what is it that we’re trying to sustain? Is that I’m open, I’m available, I’m willing. I’m not always in the mood.

The way I describe it is — I like the food metaphor because everyone understands. You’re eating, I’m coming home, I’m not really hungry, in fact I just ate. “But it smells good, so I sit next to you and I take a little taste from your plate, and then I take a little plate, and then I end up having a full portion, all the while thinking I didn’t really need it, I wasn’t really hungry, but I enjoyed it.” I enjoyed it. I gave myself the permission just to experience pleasure for its own sake. There’s nothing else about that.

And all these steps in between, people often need help to just do. If you ask people, “I turn myself on by,” or “I turn myself on when,” and not “What turns me on?” or “You turn me on?” — which is really, I own desire, desire is to own the wanting. People will tell you, “When I go dancing, when I go out with my girlfriends, when we dress up to go somewhere, when I’m in nature, when I get to listen to good music.” It’s all erotic ingredients that have to do with pleasure, with imagination, with the senses, with curiosity. That’s what keeps it alive.

You have to understand, the erotic is what leads to sex. People have done sex for centuries, for years, and felt nothing. The goal is not just to do sex. The goal is to experience something.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Oh, Esther. That was great. Thank you so much. I’m afraid our time has come to an end. Thank you so much for coming. It goes by so fast. I have so many more questions to ask you, but that was amazing. Thank you.

ESTHER PEREL: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.