Esther Perel: The Modern World Can Sap Your Life Force. Here's How To Recapture It.

This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody, how are we doing? Today I'm talking to a frequent flyer on this show, one of my favorite repeat guests, Esther Perrell, the legendary author and podcaster and psychotherapist. We're going to talk about how modern life can sap your life force and how to get it back.

Just in case you're unfamiliar with Esther, she's the best-selling author of several books, including Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs. She's also the host of the hit podcast, Where Should We Begin. And she's got a new substack, which I highly recommend. This conversation we talk about what Esther means by the term eroticism, which she says is often used way too narrowly, the danger of numbness. She introduces me to the term hostile dependency, which I'd never heard before and is

Totally fascinating. We talk about how loneliness has become normalized, how to rebuild community, which everybody's always telling us how to do, but how to actually do it. Rituals as a way to mark time and create meaning in your life, the tension between individualism, belonging, and responsibility to others, and why cutting people out of your life does not always go the way you think it might go. Before we dive in, just a super quick plug for my new app, which is called 10% with Dan Harris.

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