Esther answers a user question about gender expectations from a reader in Denmark.

“Why does gender still play such a defining role in our society?” – Nicolas, Copenhagen, Denmark 
One of the oldest origin stories in our culture lays the ground for our binary system of gender: Adam and Eve. The Old Testament set up this duality of man and woman. And old stories are deeply rooted in us.
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From the very moment a woman is pregnant, we ask: is it a boy or a girl? We create two categories with very little room for anything outside of these prescribed definitions.
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My colleague Jean Malpas who studies transgender children, and will speak about his work on the TED stage in May, explains that gender is one of the fundamental ways we humanize each other. By assigning gender we turn something abstract (a fetus) into a concrete concept that will accompany us throughout our entire life. Gender is the story. The story that culture has bestowed upon us – a legacy that comes laden with expectations. Expectations of how a man and a woman must be, must think, must act.
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You and I know these stories well. For instance: men are described as rabid biological creatures always looking for a sexual outlet. But for women, it is expected that sexuality is more subjective, that desire is complicated and conditional. These are just a few of the narratives we have learnt. But if you look closely at yourself and the people you know, you will find these narratives are riddled with contradictions and that individuals are far more nuanced.
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So what happens if you don’t meet the cultural narrative of your gender? If you are a woman who doesn’t like clothes shopping, for instance, or don’t use “feminine” gestures. What if you are a man who hates sports? You may feel in conflict. You may feel deficient, insufficient and incomplete.
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So how do we approach gender today? One of the greatest challenges is that we have seen gender as being consistent with the body and the sex that we were assigned as a baby. But we are finally beginning to understand that gender is not an assignation, that biology is not destiny. Or as transgender man Sawyer DeVuyst aptly describes it: “Gender is who you go to bed as and sexuality is who you go to bed with.”
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As I talked about in my Language of Gender piece, the gender revolution has arrived. We have a whole new lexicon to choose from. And with it, freedom for self-expression. So, let’s turn the page and create a new story for ourselves.
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What stories about gender have you learnt that have accompanied you throughout life? In what ways have they shaped, helped or hindered you? I would love to know your thoughts.

Social distancing. Flatten the curve. Shelter at home. Three months ago, we had never even heard of these terms. Now, they’ve become defining features of our lives. We’ve embraced this vocabulary as a means of understanding this surreal period we’re living through. In our fight against a microscopic threat, this new lexicon gives us vivid imagery of ways to protect ourselves and survive. 

It’s time we expand that lexicon of our physical health to include our mental health. The unprecedented crisis caused by the novel coronavirus has left us with an equally unprecedented set of unfamiliar emotions. High highs and low lows float atop a steady undercurrent of constant dread. Even when we allow ourselves to see the positive aspects of quarantine—the slowing down, the opportunity to reconnect with ourselves, our families, and our loved ones—we can’t help but feel this unbearable “thing” underneath it all. But what is it? 

“It” isn’t any one thing. We have a tendency to call it “stress,” but it’s multi-dimensional. Breaking it down into parts—and giving those parts names—is crucial to our health, safety, and sanity. We’re not “working from home,” we’re trying to adapt to an entirely new worldview while working, learning, teaching, partnering, parenting, and more, on top of each other, in the midst of a global crisis. We’re not tired; we’re burned out. We’re not “waiting for things to return to normal,” we’re obsessing about what “normal” will even be after this. And for that matter, when is “after” going to come?

Prolonged Uncertainty

We’re dealing with Prolonged Uncertainty—the sense that, not only do we feel uncertain, we don’t know when our feeling of uncertainty will end. We wonder if we’ll be furloughed, face salary reductions, or lose our jobs (if we haven’t already). It was hard enough as a single mom on $28K/year. What now? And what will happen to the workers whom we depend on for food and resources? We dream about when we can safely leave our homes, see our loved ones and go back to the places that color our daily lives. We miss our favorite barista, our hairdresser, that waiter who always remembers us. Will we ever get to hold the person with whom we’ve been chatting on Hinge or Tinder? Will our businesses reopen? If we can’t sufficiently support the neighborhood joints we love, will they disappear? Can I take another day of teaching my kid when this style of learning doesn’t mesh well with them? Will the news ever give us a break? Will we ever stop being so paralyzed with fear and anxiety?

Ambiguous Loss

This is loss on a massive, ubiquitous scale. But it’s not simply “I had X and now it’s gone,” it’s Ambiguous Loss, the sense that we have lost so many intangible elements of our normal lives that we can hardly identify what we’re missing. My colleague Pauline Boss coined this term to describe situations in which we’ve lost a loved one mentally but not physically, like Alzheimers, or vise versa, like deployment. Right now, the Ambiguous Loss is cumulative. It’s a loss of the way we have lived; the boundaries between work, home, school, and more; our plans, weddings, trips, birthday parties; and a loss of safety and trust in our leadership. And because it is ambiguous, it is difficult to know what we are mourning. Grief expert David Kessler has described this as “the loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection,” and says that “we are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”

Anticipatory Grief 

Tragically, many of us are grieving the loss of loved ones who we couldn’t touch or even be near at the end. Heroic doctors and nurses have taken on an additional burden—facilitating video chats between patients and their families so they can say goodbye. Death doulas like Sierra Campbell are conducting funerals on Zoom, which may be the first time that funerals are actually recorded and can be rewatched. Many others are experiencing Anticipatory Grief, the realization that we could lose our loved ones. For those of us alone in quarantine, we’re grieving the loss of all direct human connection. And those of us who have lived with too much neglect and loneliness are being triggered again and losing hope that we won’t always need to be so self-reliant. 

Stress

All of these feelings live inside the catch-all term of “Stress.” As Dr. Elissa Epel, a stress scientist and Professor and Vice Chair of adult psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, at UC San Francisco, explains: stress is really sadness, helplessness, despair, and grief. After weeks in quarantine, we know that all of the many emotions that comprise our Prolonged Uncertainty, Ambiguous Loss, and Anticipatory Grief are always looking for a place to land. Sometimes we dump our emotional load on the people who are right next to us. And we know that’s not helping anyone. 

Who Copes Well in Crisis?

Surprise: it’s not those who always look on the bright side, as explained in a recent New York Times Op-Ed by Emily Esfahani Smith. It’s those who cultivate an attitude of Tragic Optimism, a term coined by Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist from Vienna, which refers to the ability to maintain hope and find meaning in crisis. UNC Charlotte’s Lawrence Calhoun uses the term Post-Traumatic Growth to describe the best possible outcome of engaging in Tragic Optimism. Positive psychology calls this Benefit Finding, but I like how Mr. Frankl described it: “the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive.” 

If we can cultivate Tragic Optimism, we have a chance to experience Post-Traumatic Growth. And if we do it together, we can become Collectively Resilient. Similar to post-9/11, this is a time when many of us who’ve been raised on the idea of self-reliance and self-control are actually realizing that we are interdependent and in need of support. This is a time for Mass Mutual Reliance. 

So What Can We Do About It?

The first step in stress-regulation is our ability to identify and articulate our feelings, whether it’s to ourselves, our diaries, or our loved ones. 

• Don’t just say “I’m stressed!” Try to put your feelings into words. 
• Otherwise it makes you more stressed and contributes to a state of Empathic Distress—if you are not aware and accepting of your own feelings, then you won’t connect with the feelings of the people around you. You may even shut them down because you don’t allow your own. 
• Identify your stress triggers and check in with each emotion: guilt, shame, helplessness, despair, irritation, anger, inadequacy, confusion, disconnection, loneliness, ambivalence—as well as gratitude, love, respect, and compassion.

Do small, rapid interventions. 

• Pay attention to what you’re paying attention to: news, arguments, and otherwise.  
• Get outside the best you can. 
• Short term strategies start in your body; a bodied-up ritual involving breathing and stretching will help you relax and restore. 
• Reassure yourself that you are okay right now. 
• Focus on one breath at a time. 
• Know that thriving doesn’t always mean being productive. 

Resist advice to only be forward-looking. 

• Now is a time to look back at the stories that have been passed on in our families and cultures that deal with adversity and triumph. 
• This is not the first time we have risen to meet the challenge. 
• Some of us have grown up with chaos and loss and are finding that we’re well-prepared for this moment. (A friend told me that she can finally be proud of her OCD, the perfect character structure for this occasion.)

Share these stories and seek them out. 

• Check on each other. Who has reached out to you out of the blue recently? Whom have you reached out to?
• Organize or join a meaningful group. Virtual groups are keeping us social, active, accountable, and are an incredible shared resource. Parents should talk to other parents. Children should talk to other children. Alcoholics Anonymous and AA have great free groups online, as does the mens’ group EVRYMAN. 
• Start a Zoom yoga group, film club, or whatever else you’re into. 
• And check out my resources list for groups, helpful articles, and free virtual events. 
• Call people while you’re cooking, walking, or even taking a bath. That’s what happens in normal life. Leave the camera on while you clean. We love when people stand in the kitchen to keep us company while we cook and clean. We don’t have to give that up. 

Volunteer.

• Nothing can take us out of our depression, guilt, or boredom like helping others. It gives us a sense of purpose. Just look around you. 
• Who needs a latex-glove covered helping hand?
• There are tons of organizations that need your help virtually. 

Make Advanced Care Plans, Funerals, and Memorials. 

• One of the important things I’ve done recently with my husband and sons is to not just talk about other people dying, but to bring the conversation into our own family. 
• We’ve been working with Sierra Campbell at Nurture.co to have critical conversations about advanced care directives and end of life planning. (Believe it or not, this was our Sunday brunch.)
• This may seem scary but having a plan is going to help you with the many feelings you’re experiencing. Because it creates structure, you may find it surprisingly calming.

You may wake up tomorrow with a brand new feeling, a heightened anxiety or even a heightened hopefulness. You can be five years old, home from school indefinitely, or fifty years old, navigating the technological challenges that spring up when our whole world has moved online. No matter our age or stage, when our mental state feels unfamiliar, we feel out of control. Do your pulse checks. Get in your body. Identify what you’re feeling. Communicate with your loved ones. Reach out to strangers. Respond. And don’t forget to breathe. We’re all taking it day by day.

“When I’m not interested in sex, it often makes me feel like less of a man. In fact, my wife wants it more than me so I came up with the excuse of chronic back pain. I think it’s easier for her to accept. What’s wrong with me?” – David, Clifton, New Jersey
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As we talk about the modern man this month, David’s question strikes me as particularly apropos given the pressures on the man. Let’s start by debunking some of our most dear assumptions about men.
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Men are under pressure in life, and in the bedroom, to be untiring, masterful and dominant. It’s assumed men are always up for sex and women’s interest is much less, and subjective. It’s time we stop this oversimplification of men.
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For many men, identity and self-esteem are bound up with sexuality. This explains why David is more likely to feel ashamed when he has no desire. The way I see it is that the status of men is at once so valuable and so precarious that it must be won over and over again. The real fear I hear from many men (mostly heterosexual) is not that they are becoming too much like a woman but that they are less of a man.
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Throughout the month we will talk about the stereotypes surrounding masculinity and the shifting roles of men. But to start, here are some tips I hope will help David and many men out there.
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Bring your Partner into the Conversation
David, your wife might buy your story about back pain but underneath she is wondering about her lack of desirability. You are not the only one feeling insecure. It’s time to talk with your wife. Maybe you are exhausted at the end of each day and find it hard to shift gears. Or you have worries about your performance. Perhaps you are afraid you don’t turn her on. Something inside of you is turning you off.
Whatever it is, open the conversation, without blame or defensiveness and reveal how you feel and start talking about what turns you on and what blocks you. My post on Role Play and Fantasy can help to open up conversations about sex. 
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Check your Mood
Here is a radical revelation: men and women feel the same way about sex. If a person is anxious, depressed, distracted, or feels unattractive, regardless of their gender, they are less likely to be turned on. So check your mood. David may find the answer lies there. And as I often say, sex in a long-relationship is something you have to plan for. This may help to shift the pressure off you alone and help you find playful ways to alter your mood.
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Stop Thinking about Sex
I would advise David to put himself more into his body and do less ruminating, which takes us out of the experience of pleasure. Forget about “the act” and think about simple starting points to give the other person pleasure, like a shoulder rub. Stop worrying about whether you’re turned on in the moment. And find ways (dancing, exercise, and other physical hobbies that fulfill you) that let you fully inhabit your body.

What is so different about relationships today? Why does modern love seem so damn hard? How do we keep passion alive? Why do people cheat? How can you avoid an affair? When trust is broken, can it be healed? Are relationship skills universal or can you be a different person at home than you are at work?

Echoed with breathless anticipation, these are among the most common questions posed to me at dinner parties, happy hours, patient sessions and in the yoga waiting room. 

‍However, across all of them, there is one question that remains my favorite: Where do we learn to love and how?‍

“To love” is a skill that is cultivated, not merely a state of enthusiasm. It is dynamic and active. Imbued with intention and responsibility. And it is a verb.
As a person that speaks nine languages, I’ve learned how important it is to practice the basic verbs (of a new language). These are the first we learn for speech and I’ve come to believe that they are also the first we learn in love.

I pay special attention to seven:

• to ask
• to take
• to receive
• to give
• to share
• to refuse
• to play/imagine 

When we learn these verbs as children, some grow strong while others grow weak. As adults, they become built them into the foundations of our defense mechanisms and our survival strategies; our strengths and our vulnerabilities.

So, if you want a modern history lesson in how you learned to love, I’d advise you to take a look at your verbs.

Ask yourself: Which of these verbs is strongest for you? And which is weakest? Is there one that could use a little extra care? Since all of them come into play when we face the everyday demands of love, conflict and connection you may find some are a bit more robust than others.

As you embark on this self assessment, take notice of which relational skills need a little extra practice. And I challenge you to pick one verb this month and make it a focus. Give it massaging, caring, effort to build that muscle.

And then report back to me on my social media channels. Tell me what verb you are working on and the creative ideas you have for greater mastery of it. I’d love to hear -- and I’m sure the people I’ve met at dinner parties, happy hours and at the yoga studio could use some inspiration too.

“What’s a podcast?” I asked over tea at Morandi in New York City. Across from me was Jesse Baker, a radio veteran who had been in the trenches at NPR before moving to Audible to become the Vice President of Original Content, as well as June Cohen from TED. At the time, I was consulting for the Showtime series The Affair, a “he said/she said” kind of story where viewers experience the drama from each character’s unique perspective. Jesse and June believed that my work on the show could translate well in an audio-only format—relationship stories as told by partners with different recollections, which I would unpack and analyze. There would be story arcs and character development. There would be nothing to see or touch or taste. One would simply listen and let their mind fill in the blanks. A podcast, I was learning, was a sensual experience. Any detail beyond sound would be up to the listener. That intrigued me.

But I didn’t want to do a he said/she said show. It was a great idea, but truthfully, the highly-orchestrated narrative isn’t half as interesting as what really happens inside the office of a couple’s therapist. Inside my office, couples don’t just offer two conflicting points of view of the same stories. Nor is it how we regale our friends with our relationship tribulations behind our partners’ backs to blow off steam. Instead, it’s the stories that we recount in conjunction with our partners. In the therapist’s office, the real dance of couples is laid bare: each partner’s story shapes the other’s, and the more one partner emphasizes their side, the more the other partner digs into their own. The listener shapes the speaker and the speaker shapes the listener. Suddenly, or not so suddenly, two people who have shared so much in common are incapable of seeing into each other’s eyes. Standing on opposite shores, the sea of bitterness that has formed between them feels unbridgeable. Many of the people I work with want to fight for their love, if only they could stop fighting. 

Back then, as Jesse tells it, I quietly listened to her pitch, didn’t say much, and at the end of the meeting, I got up, put on my bicycle helmet, and said “You can come to my office. We will record real sessions, with real couples, but they cannot be my patients. We’ll have to find them.” I wanted to do something bold and creative with my craft, but it could not interfere with HIPAA compliance. Couples would need to apply with the knowledge that their three hour therapy session would be recorded for a public-facing project, and that their anonymous participation would mean that, when the three hours were up, we would never see each other again. 

Step into my Office: Inviting the Public into Couples Therapy

Where Should We Begin? was conceived with that very idea—where should we begin? On one hand, the podcast was a version of a training practice I had been doing for three decades—recording real life therapy sessions and playing them back for my teachers, as part of their supervision of me, and for my students as part of their learning process. On the other hand, I had only just learned what a podcast even was, remember? I had known for awhile that I wanted to open the office and take therapy into the public square, but this would be the opposite: taking the public into the office. Therapy is so often a practice of privilege, accessible and affordable to very few. This would be an opportunity to democratize therapy and to empower couples to embrace the reality of relational dynamics so that they could improve their own. 

Plus, in a moment of increasingly performative displays of perfect coupledom on social media, the podcast would be 100% the genuine article. From a very young age, we are conditioned to form unrealistic images of relationships. As we grow up, fairytales are replaced by filtered photos of endless honeymoons. Romantic comedies and dramas beam to us from an alternate universe which promises that any relational dilemma can be solved in ninety minutes. That fallacy breeds feelings of isolation. Because of this, it’s even more important that we know what other peoples’ relationships are really like. Hearing others’ experiences can help us with our own. And what if we could spend thirty minutes on the train or in our car, or even together, late at night after the kids are asleep, and listen to how real couples’ navigate the most complex challenges of partnership? How could that transparency be not simply an exercise in voyeurism, but an exercise in collective relational healing? 

We would start the way all my sessions start: with couples filling out an intake questionnaire before coming to meet in my office. But this time, Jesse and her talented team would conduct pre-interviews, select the couples, record the sessions, edit the audio, and use their magic to transform it all into engaging and informative episodes. None of us knew what we were getting into, but after one trial session, we never looked back. For our very first attempt, Jesse and our producer/sound designer, Paul Schneider—who has acted as midwife for WSWB since those early halcyon days of experimentation—rigged up microphones and then sat outside the door in my waiting area.

“Paul and I listened to the session for three hours, and cried and texted our partners,” Jesse told me recently. “And we were just like, whatever this is, this is magic. Forget the show I wanted to make. What’s happening in this office, the world has to hear.” 

Listening to Couples Therapy with an Introspective Lens

Four years on, Where Should We Begin? has been listened to by millions of people all over the globe. The podcast is ever-evolving in its breadth: part therapy, part educational technology, part journalism, and part storytelling. To me, it’s also a public health campaign for relationships. I think people come for the look into another’s world and stay for what they learn about their own. The more deeply they listen, the more they see themselves in their own mirror. The more they hear real couples navigating real problems, the more they feel empowered to heal their own. Whether one listens alone, or in parallel with a partner or friends, I encourage people to use the podcast as a map for exploring difficult relational conversations. Pick a few points you want to discuss and bring it into your relationship or your circle of friends. Consider taking it a step further by exploring your own intimacy inventory and sharing your answers with one another. 

After years of fine-tuning our methodology, season four has arrived. In our most racially, economically, sexually, and culturally diverse season yet, it is our hope that everyone can see themselves in the extraordinary people who have entrusted us with their stories. This new season is all about the ins and out of love as experienced by these partners: the husband and wife who met as religious teens and married as virgins now grappling with a desire to open their marriage; interracial couples dealing with racism in their extended families; a woman struggling to come out and her partner who is tired of waiting; a chronic philanderer and the woman who wants to know if he’s in or out for good; a couple yanked out of innocence when his erratic behavior is finally identified as bipolar disorder; and so many more. Beginning June 25, you can listen to the series as well as read extensive show notes for each episode here. 

Each episode contains a human story wrapped up in a sonic context. Paul has done an exceptional job of translating my love for composers such as Maurice Ravel and Erik Satie, as well as the nuanced sounds of both anguish and progress in the room, into operatic soundscapes that reflect the conversations taking place. Listeners often tell me that the radical intimacy and vulnerability they experience in Where Should We Begin? “almost feels too close,” as if they “shouldn’t be there, but can’t leave.” To them I say, sit with the feeling and then go deeper. Feeling too close is a sign that you’re getting closer to why the podcast may have piqued your interest in the first place. Pay attention to that.

At a time in the western world, when we often have premarital sex as a given, contraception in hand, and the permission for sexual connection and pleasure at home, desire seems to be flatlining. We don’t know why it is so difficult to sustain desire, and we want to want. 

Many of us, when it comes to sexuality, tend to do what we think we should do rather than what we’d like to be doing (and this is not just a statement about women). We get stuck in ruts and disconnect from our imaginations. We would love to experience new things with our partners but we can be afraid to invite ourselves or them. A minor annoyance or a major impasse can both be catalysts for shutting down sexually. Sometimes we’re “not in the mood;” other times we wonder if we’ve lost what once made us desirable to our partners.

We tend to think of these as sexual issues. Really, it’s an erotic dilemma. Contrary to what we are taught, eroticism isn’t purely sexual; it is sexuality transformed and socialized by the human imagination. The imagination creates the plot. Flirtation, longing, and anticipation all play within our mind’s eye. This is where our erotic faculties live. And eroticism is a time machine. It’s activated by the pains and pleasures of our complicated pasts. It breeds hope and possibilities for the future. It makes us feel utterly present. 

Don’t know what I mean? Think about a favorite activity. Let’s say, you love to play soccer, tennis, or ping-pong. Last time, you won your game. Thinking about that win gets you excited about the next time you’ll play. At home, you wash your gear. You text your teammates to schedule practice. You check the weather. There’s a whole ritual that builds anticipation. 

So why, when it comes to sex, do people seem to think that just saying “do you want to have sex” after doing the dishes is a sufficient warm up? 
Play ball, people! Engaging in eroticism enables us to maintain a sense of aliveness, vibrancy, and vitality. As Octavio Paz has implied, eroticism is the poetry of the body the way that poetry is the eroticism of language. Don’t let a difficult phase be a death sentence for your sex life or your relationship. Together, you can come through it. Consider the following five ways to create meaningful connections with your partner. 

Expand your definition of eroticism

The erotic landscape is vastly larger, richer, and more intricate than the physiology of sex, or any repertoire of sexual techniques. It’s worth repeating: the central agent of eroticism is our imaginations. The most overlooked erotic organ is our mind. We can anticipate, dream, and give meaning. If sex is a collection of urges and acts, the erotic is a receptacle for our hopes, fears, expectations, and struggles. It’s about the quality of the experience, not frequency and performance. If you want to feel transported, you have to take risks. I’m not talking about danger; I’m talking about vulnerability of exposure and exploration that heightens trust. Deep eroticism is intimate; deep intimacy is erotic.

Cultivate pleasure for its own sake 

Playing it safe gets it done, but if you want a sense of renewal and excitement, step outside of your comfort zone. Creating meaningful connection often requires adjusting the context in which intimacy is taking place. Try to:

• Create the right ambiance. Think again of the soccer game. Nobody expects to play on a littered field. We pay attention to the space, light, and mood. Upkeep of our space ensures we’re ready to play at any time. 
• Switch up your routines. No matter how effective our rituals are, if we don’t change it up a bit, they inevitably become boring. Take out separate email addresses just for love notes to each other, take a class, go on walks together at night.

Create meaningful connection through play

Couples who are plagued by sexual boredom would be well to explore the hidden fantasies and desires that turn them on. A great way to do this is to engage in sexual play. Here are some ways to initiate: 

• Make lists of sexual turn-ons, such as grooming, good foreplay, emotional sensitivity. Put the list in an envelope, seal it, and put it under the pillow. 
• Pick objects that represent experiences when you each felt intense pleasure and excitement. Then pick other ones that represent when you each felt numb, shut down, closed off, and fearful. Let those objects tell your stories. I assure you: you will say and hear things you haven’t before. 
• If you had to direct an erotic scene, what would that scene be like? Encourage each other to be detailed. Highly granular. Every detail matters in the realm of pleasure.

Get Away From Performance-Driven Sex

At this moment, getting it done, being efficient, and our obsession with optimatization creates an anti-erotic culture. Sex is not about the orgasm nor does it end with the orgasm. Stop focusing on the physicality of it. Linger. Take your time. Savor. Let things unfold and not be so goal-orientated. And, by the way, foreplay starts at the end of the previous orgasm.

Explore your erotic blueprints

Tell me how you were loved; I will tell you how you make love. The psychology of our desires often lies buried in the details of our childhood and in our relationships with our caregivers. It didn’t start when we found our partners. What gives us intense pleasure sometimes comes from very dimly-lit places inside of ourselves, and from experiences that were actually quite painful. Our imagination compensates for what was missing, and for what may be missing now. Sexual fantasies reveal our deepest emotional needs. Provided you are in a healthy enough relationship to go there, explore the roots of your sexuality with my free Intimacy Inventory. Within it, you’ll find a series of questions and conversation topics that will give you deeper insights into yourself and each other.

Exploring our physical, mental, and emotional depths enables us to deepen our intimacy. Feeling busy, tired, or stressed notwithstanding, it’s this kind of understanding of ourselves and our partners that will help us overcome the obstacles to our desires and bring home the erotic. Have fun.

MYTH 1: There’s only one person out there for me. 

Dating to find “The One” is extremely limiting—and often leads to major disappointment. There is never going to be one perfect person whose love is so powerful that it checks every box, heals all our wounds, and makes us want to delete all the apps. And putting that pressure on a romantic connection, especially early on, can prevent a dalliance from developing into something more. Perfection is the enemy of the good, especially in relationships. Why do we carry these expectations of potential partners when we know that we’re not perfect either? Instead of looking for perfection, look for potential. Great potential is fundamental to meaningful growth, and couples are supposed to grow and change. There is a difference, as Justin Lehmiller explains, between “destiny relationships” and “developmental relationships.” Developmental relationships are the ones that ebb and flow, navigating life’s many issues, and growing from them. Destiny relationships—those of fate and perfection and “the one”—often break when the mythology of perfect love with “the one" reveals itself in the cracks of our relationships.

MYTH 2: At a certain point, dating should lead to marriage.

There have been multiple people with whom we have had a life and, for a time, maybe we did. But people we love are not necessarily the same people we can make a life with. Life stories are not the same as love stories. It’s a different set of ingredients, different aspirations. We can have an incredible romantic interlude for a few months, totally disconnected from our realities, and it can be a perfect, beautiful love. But it has little to do with the intricate scaffolding that supports a life together. Viewing marriage as the ultimate goal of a romantic connection reduces a complex set of needs and stuffs it into a social construct that doesn’t serve every type of relationship we can have. What would have happened if our goal in every previous relationship was to get married? It’s likely we would have suffocated the relationship or ended up in an unhappy marriage. Relationships address many human needs, but very few of them can accommodate all of our needs. Marriage can be great, of course, and asking for commitment and exclusivity is a normal part of many relationships—but remember: putting a ring on it doesn’t automatically make two people more compatible as life partners.

MYTH 3: I haven’t found the right person yet.

For those of us who jump from relationship to relationship, a pattern sometimes emerges. We pursue a new relationship for a few months while in seduction mode and then find ourselves bored, disinterested, disappointed, and looking for the next person to come along. Why? Is it because “we haven’t found the right person yet,” or is it because we’re not yet familiar with our own attachment style? Love, desire, connection—all of the things that make us want to stay and go deeper with someone—are not induced by another person. They are co-created. Instead of asking whether we’ve found the right person, learn what it would be like to be in a relationship in which both partners are mutually interested in being good for each other. It’s not just the other person’s responsibility to woo us, maintain our attention, heal us, and help us grow. Love can do many things but it can’t do everything and neither can our partners. Love is a verb, not a permanent state of enthusiasm—and it takes everyone in the relationship to sustain and grow it. 

MYTH 4: If I try harder with the person I’m interested in, they will eventually come around.  

There are times when we need to show the person we’re dating how deeply we feel for them and there are times when we need to stop. When we struggle to know which is which, it can help to ask ourselves: Am I trying to prove how much I care about this person because they’re doubting it? Because they need a push to realize what we have together? Or am I struggling with my own feelings of rejection? Is this about our connection or is this about me? Can I privately deal with this unbearable rejection or do I feel entitled to another shot? If so, why? We have a tendency to respond to disconnection by gripping tighter, even when we see that our behavior isn’t yielding our desired outcome. There are many reasons why someone with whom we felt we had a deep connection may seem to inexplicably slip away. But there is a difference between trying harder and self-degradation. And no amount of self-degradation will provoke the true feeling of love in another person. Modern love and desire is about free will. We can’t make people love us. We can invite the love of another. We can behave in ways that invite people to appreciate us, to realize the beauty of what we share, and to let the feeling of love grow inside from a glimmer to a flame. If the person we like isn’t interested, we have to let them lose us. 

MYTH 5: I’ll never love again.

“Brain studies have shown that the withdrawal of romantic love activates the same mechanisms in our brain that get activated when addicts are withdrawing from substances like cocaine or opioids,” Guy Winch shares in his TED Talk. “Almost every one of us will have our heart broken.” It’s an experience that can make us never want to try again. But this is the voice of heartbreak. It conveniently highlights the good parts and disregards the shortcomings. Being realistic with ourselves about the shortcomings, however, can help us heal and determine what we want in future relationships. The person who broke our heart wasn’t “the one”—not only because the concept of “the one” is flawed—but because there are many people we can love and who will love us. It takes time to heal, but love is not a finite resource. Bonus: if and when we find a partner who makes us believe in love again—we’ll be grateful that the other ones didn’t work out.

“Hope is belief in the plausibility of the possible, not only the necessity of the probable.” - Moses Maimonides

‍

Hope believes that what is probable is not inevitable. 

David beats Goliath. 

The underdog wins. 

Hope accompanies us in the doctor’s office and out of it, hanging on every shred of statistics that help us believe it’s going to be okay even when the odds are stacked against us. 

We hold on to hope that our loved one will return from war, from an affair, from their depression. 

Hope is what gets us out of bed the morning after a really tough day. 

‍But where does hope come from—and how do we practice it?‍

1. Acknowledge the Light & the Dark

‍Hope is not blind optimism nor is it blissful ignorance. It’s more complex. When we come up against a dark wall, hope is the light that shines through its cracks. Hope comes from acknowledging that the darkness and the light are intertwined and, in most cases, inseparable. Practicing hope requires observing life’s dualities: the end and the beginning are both possible and they’re often happening simultaneously. 

Stress researcher Elissa Epel calls hope the foundation of stress resilience. In parts of her new book, “The Stress Prescription,” she looks at hope through the lens of climate crisis specifically. She notes that, today, “to be alive means we will experience heartache and suffering for the changes and losses in our ecosystem, [and] at the same time we can still appreciate and experience awe in the beauty of nature, the preciousness of life.”

‍“Hope enables us to face loss and pain,” Epel says, “and to build a better future.” This mentality can be applied to many of our current dilemmas, from war, illness, and famine, to relational issues, existential dread, and our very real mental health crisis. When hopelessness creeps in, the practice here is to try to observe those thoughts and feelings without succumbing to them—and to seek hope in the situation or find it elsewhere. When you're heartbroken, surround yourself with people who remind you that you’re worthy and loved. When your child is bawling, hold them tight, tell them it’s okay to be sad and they’re not alone. After doom scrolling climate crisis headlines, please go take a walk outside. Be present with all that is worth saving. Acknowledge the darkness. Remember the light and find it again and again.  ‍

2. Make a Hopefulness Plan‍

“Hope is the alchemy that turns a life around,” says psychotherapist and grief expert Julia Samuel. “It isn’t just a feeling; it is a realistic plan—and a plan B supported by the belief that you can make it happen.” The challenge, of course, is actually doing the plan. ‍

‍The idea of making a hopefulness plan needn’t overwhelm you. You don’t need to draw a big map of how you’re going to fix your whole life. Samuel says to focus on one hope at a time. Set yourself up in a cozy setting, take a few deep breaths, and write down one issue with which you are grappling. In this example, let’s use “I’m lonely.” 

Next, write a statement of hope connected to the issue. “I hope to make friends.” Picture what making friends could look and feel like. What are you doing together in this picture? What is one aspect of this picture you can focus on and make a plan around? Perhaps in your picture, you are singing with people or playing a sport or quietly making art side by side. What would you need to do to make this picture a reality? Samuel suggests joining a free, local choir with weekly rehearsals. You could join a kickball team or a tennis club. You could sign yourself up for ceramics classes. Find the action in the picture and make it real.‍

Closing your eyes and envisioning a picture of hope—full of the colors, sounds, textures, and feelings that you want to experience—directly creates the uplifting feeling you desire. But turning that picture into a decision, and turning that decision into a plan, turns hope into a practice.‍

3. Create a Record of Resilience

Making a Hopefulness Plan can inspire us to rise to the occasion and see that plan through, but it also requires flexibility when things don’t go exactly as we hoped they would. It’s important to remember that you have struggled and faced disappointment and hurt before and have come out on the other side. Spend some time collecting and reflecting on those instances. 

‍Hephzibah Kaplan, director of the London Art Therapy Centre, emphasizes the connection between hope and our memories of having survived. She draws a contrast between passive hope and active hope. “Passive hope is without substance, drive, or depth,” she says. “It is empty. It has little memory. It is dreaming without direction, intention, or motivation, and is full of failures.” Active hope, on the other hand, “is a can-do attitude with self-belief in one’s resources—including one’s experiences overcoming adversity and surviving risks.”‍

‍Look back at what you have survived and write it down. Now, look even further back. Mine the stories of adversity and survival in your family and community. Psychologist and trauma expert, Jack Saul, highlights that collective trauma requires collective healing. He often asks people to share stories of resilience that have been passed down from generation to generation. Make a record of these stories that you can return to when you need an extra shot of hope. There’s nothing like a good dose of intergenerational survival and revival to remind us that we, too, will get through this. As a matter of fact, it’s probably the reason we’re here.

4. Use your Gifts to Help Others

The research is rather unanimous: one of the most powerful antidepressants and sources of hope and purpose is to do good for others. Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin calls it “do good, feel good!” Depending on your skillset, she suggests helping a non-profit tackle a big project, teaching a child to ride a bike, volunteering at a food bank, or mentoring someone at work or in your community. If those kinds of actions seem too overwhelming, she recommends picking up trash from the sidewalk or watching an online first-aid training video. 

In his column for The Atlantic, Harvard business professor and host of the How to Build a Happy Life podcast, Arthur C. Brooks, shares his research about the differences between optimism and hope. But he also lays out a plan for “How to Be More Hopeful,” as the headline of his column promises. After “imagine a better future, and detail what makes it so,” he recommends “envisioning yourself taking action,” and finally “act.” He suggests “volunteering at a soup kitchen one day a week, advocating for better policies in your city’s government, or making the plight of people experiencing homelessness more visible in your community. Avoid illusions of being the invincible savior,” he warns. “Instead, imagine helping one real person, convincing one policy maker, or increasing the compassion of one fellow citizen.” ‍

‍Or, you could start even closer to home. Do you have a family member or friend struggling? Would you know if they were? Your hopeful action could be a compassionate check in. You could even combine these ideas: “I was just thinking about you and I hope you’re doing well. Either way, I’m here. I’m looking to do some volunteer work and wondering if you’d like to join me. There are lots of options and I’d love to “do good/feel good” together. Sending you love.”

If you’re experiencing anxiety at the very idea of talking to a stranger—or an acquaintance or colleague that you haven’t seen in awhile—this guide is for you. 

There are many reasons why starting a conversation with someone outside of your inner circle may seem intimidating, unnecessary, or even a bit annoying, depending on your mood. Maybe you’re shy, don’t know what to say, or are afraid of potential rejection. Maybe you prefer solitude. Maybe you feel more comfortable observing and listening than participating. Maybe you feel that you don’t have anything to add. But small talk of all kinds is an unavoidable part of life. And, when done well, it can be a sweet, touching, and thrilling experience. It’s a bridge between your life and the lives of others. 

Small talk can be a moment to establish instant commonality and quench curiosity. It can also be the first step to building a deep, meaningful connection to another. It can be a quick conversation with a stranger in line, talking to your cab driver, catching up with a co-worker on a Monday morning, or even spotting a lovely person across the room and approaching them for the very first time. Talking to somebody who you initially judged on looks alone can also instantly flip your biases and expand your perspective. No matter the situation, learning how to start conversations with confidence improves your overall well-being.

Building Confidence Requires Practice

Feeling confident around other people starts with feeling confident in yourself—and it takes practice. YouTube has countless videos of confidence-building affirmations that you can listen to with your eyes closed whenever you’d like. Search for ones that are spoken in a soothing tone. Focus on your breath as you listen and repeat each affirmation. Doing this before you head out of the house can have a profound effect on how you feel in the world. 

Confidence is a mindset. For some, that mindset is ever-present; for others, it takes some work to get there. If listening to affirmations isn’t your thing or if you’d like to try another practice, play with the following questions: 

• What are some things you like about yourself? 
• What are you good at? 
• What would you like to be better at?
• What are some challenges you have overcome for which you are proud of yourself?
• What’s a new challenge you’d like to take on?
  

These questions are meant to be answered on your own, though feel free to ask a close friend or family member how they would answer these questions about you. Sometimes it helps to get an outside perspective, especially if we’re struggling with self-esteem. The people who love us are often much kinder to us than we are to ourselves.

Start with what’s right in front of you.

Every situation has a context. You can draw from that context because it is the thing you’re sharing with the other person at that very moment.

• If you’re in a museum, discuss the artwork around you. 
• If you’re at the market, ask if they know how to pick the perfect apple. 
• If you’re in a club, talk about the music. 
• If you’re in a café, ask if they have a favorite item on the menu.
  

Don’t judge the topic you choose too harshly. We all know that talking about the weather is often considered tedious, but if you and another person are caught together in the rain, the rain is the context that brought you together. If you’re sitting next to someone on a park bench on a beautiful day, you can be confident that you both enjoy going to the park and sitting in the sunshine. From there, you can ask if this is their favorite way to spend a beautiful day; if they brought a good book with them; or if they can recommend a great restaurant near the park. If they want to engage, they will. If they don’t, they won’t. If they seem to be engaging only to be polite, pick up on the social cue and leave them be. It’s not personal. They may be an introvert or prefer solitude. These situations are great practice because, in most cases, you’ll never see this person again.

If you’re shy, nervous, or out of practice—it’s okay to say so.

Do not think that you’re the only person who doesn’t know how to approach people or that everybody else always knows the right thing to say. Flowing conversation doesn’t come naturally for many people, especially now. We live in a time when many of us often resort to  looking at our phones rather than talking with the people around us. This dynamic not great for our socializing muscles, but engaging in small talk is the best way to exercise that muscle. You can even say to someone else “I can’t believe how much time I just spent looking at my phone. I guess sometimes it feels easier than talking to other people. Do you ever feel that way?” 

Remember that you are a mystery to others just as they are a mystery to you. When you’re feeling introverted, it may seem like the whole world can see you blush. But most people have a degree of shyness, and by acknowledging your own nerves, you may be putting them at ease, too. 

Look for commonalities.

The best questions for starting a conversation with confidence are the simplest. Focus on questions that help you find something in common with the other person, whether it’s a significant place, activity, or interest. 

Some of the best small talk can come from finding out that you grew up in the same area as another person, that you know the same diner or ice cream shop, that your school played each other in sports, that you share some sort of similar culture. 

The opposite is true, too—two immigrants from vastly different countries may bond over the fact that they're both in line at a bodega in the new city they now both call home. 

You don’t have to look too hard for things in common. A simple and polite “where are you from?” or “have you hiked this trail before?” can go a long way. 

Embrace differences.

If questions such as “where are you from?” or “have you hiked this trail before?” yield surprising results that you have nothing in common with, embrace it. “Wow, I’ve never heard of that area” or “I’ve always wondered what it’s like to grow up there; did you enjoy it?” or “Oh, your friend dragged you on this hike? What activities do you prefer?” 

And if you find yourself in an uncomfortable conversation, ask yourself: 

• Do I want to excuse myself from this conversation? 
• Or do I want to use this as an opportunity to challenge myself to learn how this person came to think or behave this way?
  

There’s no pressure either way. That’s the beauty of small talk. Once you have the tools to start conversations with confidence, you’ll soon learn how to end conversations with confidence, too.