It’s been a very busy time for Esther Perel. For the newest installment of 73 Questions, Vogue found the Belgium-born relationship therapist, bestselling author, and podcast host working remotely—and “more than ever”—from a light-flooded kitchen outside the city. Lately, two major themes have emerged from her sessions: “People either feel that they are on top of each other 24/7, way too much together, craving space,” she observes, or they are “longing for connection because there is too much space between them and their loved ones.”
So, how would she advise a couple stuck together mid-divorce? Or a parent quarantined with her daughter and son-in-law? Over the next 20 minutes, Perel addresses these questions and many more ... but where should we begin?
How about with her own COVID-19 tableau? “I’ve never spent that much time with my husband in [our] entire 30-something years together,” Perel says with a smile, before showing us a few of his paintings. (An amateur artist, Jack Saul is also a noted psychologist and trauma expert: “He deals with pain and I deal with pleasure, and on occasion, we meet,” Perel says.) But she misses her sons, who are sheltering-in-place elsewhere—“I’m touch-hungry!”—and reveals that she, like the rest of us, is constantly swinging from hope to fear. “Every therapist gets to experience some of the same things as the people that they work with,” she says. “We are no different.”
Still, she’s filled with valuable insights. Anyone quarantined alone, she says, would do well to find two people to speak to daily, or else reach out to next-door neighbors to see if anyone needs help. “If you can help somebody, you will be useful and you will have purpose and you won’t be nearly as alone.” Asked how being the daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors shaped her worldview, Perel speaks to the distinction between not being dead, and truly being alive. And on the pressure to make something out of this period? “I do think there is a moment now when people are sharpening their priorities,” she says—but it’s also fine to just “kvetch.”
And then, there’s the trivia! If you were curious, Perel loves a good horoscope reading, and she’ll take Jung over Freud, puppies over kittens, and heels over flats. She’s also hitchhiked across the United States (“Man, I saw this country like I will never see it again”), speaks nine (!) languages, and … has never seen Seinfeld or Friends?
“I’m not from here, sorry!” she exclaims, which, sure, we can accept—but there’s no time like a nation-wide lockdown, right?