The uncomfortable question you should ask on every first date | Alain de Botton — Transcript

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1. 0:00Optimism is the enemy of love. If we think  that we will have a perfect love story, no,
2. 0:07it's not going to happen. We need to accept that  even a really good relationship has constant
3. 0:12moments of crisis. So pessimism is not an enemy  of love. Knowing that there is no such thing as
4. 0:19the right person actually helps you to find a  good enough person. You know, compatibility is
5. 0:27not a precondition of love. Compatibility  is the fruit of love. My name is Alain de
6. 0:34Botton. I'm a philosopher, psychotherapist, and  founder of the School of Life. The playbook for
7. 0:41a successful relationship. First of all, the  idea of a playbook sounds strange. The idea of
8. 0:48a playbook that you need to create to get in  a relationship sounds really odd. You think,
9. 0:53"I don't need a playbook. "I just need to head  on in there, get a dating app, "and off I go,
10. 0:57and a nice new pair of clothes." But isn't  it interesting, and wouldn't it be lovely,
11. 1:01to have a playbook that would be trying  to guide you to acquire the knowledge
12. 1:07that you need for love? So the idea that love is  a skill rather than an emotion is a strange one,
13. 1:14but I think an absolutely essential one in the  worldview that I'm positing. You know, if somebody
14. 1:19said, "I'm going to climb Mount Everest or K2,"  you would say, "Okay, how have you prepared for
15. 1:24this?" And you'd be expecting them to show up  with ropes, with training programs, with oxygen,
16. 1:30with specially prepared packs of food. You can get  the metaphor. We walk into the mountain of love
17. 1:37without sufficient preparation and equipment, and  then we're surprised that we routinely tumble off
18. 1:42the mountain and we blame the other person. We say  we didn't match the right person. We haven't found
19. 1:49our person. We go back on the dating app, and we  go ever further to try and find the right person.
20. 1:55Don't get me wrong, dating apps have their role.  Sometimes we need to scan and see who's out there
21. 2:00and find a person who halfway meets us where we  want to be. But once you've found a more or less
22. 2:06suitable person, that's when the work begins. And  the work is to turn a stranger into somebody that
23. 2:13you can understand and who can understand  you without bottling it, without panicking,
24. 2:18without throwing them in the bin, without saying,  "We can't work this out." If after five weeks in a
25. 2:23pleasant mini break in Copenhagen, we suddenly  have a conflict. No, the point is you need to
26. 2:28stay where you are and try and figure it out. But  most people give up too soon. They say, "We can't
27. 2:33possibly do this." And they run for the hills, go  back on the dating app, and find the next person
28. 2:38with whom they will then try out an equally  unfulfilling attempt to match their heart with
29. 2:43a stranger's. What we need to do is to start to  create right people rather than search for them.
30. 2:49And what does that mean to create a right person?  It means to work on yourself psychologically and
31. 2:55therapeutically so that you understand your script  from childhood and do not simply play it out onto
32. 3:02innocent person after innocent person, that you  take responsibility for the problems that you
33. 3:07are bringing into a relationship. At the School  of Life, which I founded, an institution that is
34. 3:13dedicated to emotional growth and development,  we tell our people that when they honor date
35. 3:17with somebody, among the first questions is to ask  people playfully, "How are you crazy?" What does
36. 3:23that mean? How are you crazy? Why is everybody  crazy? They're not necessarily crazy. Well,
37. 3:27all of us have stuff that we need to be on top of.  And if your person at dinner says to you, "Yeah,
38. 3:33I get the question. Yeah, I've got my crazy. And  my crazy is this. My crazy is that. My father,
39. 3:38my mother." This is turning out to be a safe  person. If the person goes, "How do you mean?
40. 3:43I can't possibly answer that question. That's  rude. You think I'm not right or imperfect." Run
41. 3:48for the hills. Drop it right there and then. I'm  exaggerating, but this is probably not a person
42. 3:54you should be hanging out with because none of  us need or can have perfect partners. But what
43. 4:00we can have and must search for and must try  to become is people who know enough about their
44. 4:06patterns to be able to warn their prospective  partners of what's going on and take averting
45. 4:13action. The beginning of therapeutic relationships  is to know that two people when entering a couple
46. 4:20are not entering without a lot of history. It is  essential that couples learn as much as possible
47. 4:30about that history so that they are ready for the  challenges and perplexities of love. A therapeutic
48. 4:36relationship requires that each partner get on top  of their dynamics, that date back to childhood,
49. 4:42and are able to discuss them with relative grace,  patience, and insight with their partner so that
50. 4:49when problems arise and they will, they can adopt  a therapeutic language. It is therapeutic to say,
51. 4:57for example, when there is a conflict, I hear your  point of view. It may not be mine, but I hear that
52. 5:03it's yours. It is not therapeutic to say, you're  wrong, you're an idiot, and you're just like your
53. 5:09mother or indeed like your father. This is not  therapeutic. I'm kidding, but I'm making a very
54. 5:14serious point. Indeed, we do not tend to talk to  each other in therapeutically informed language.
55. 5:20We shout, we scream, we blame, we shape shift,  we don't take responsibility. We do all sorts of
56. 5:26things that doom us in relationships. And then  we stand back and we say, we're surprised. We
57. 5:30are a society that is obsessed with finding  the right person without pausing to think,
58. 5:36how do I become the right person? How do I work on  myself? Understanding that cannot be done simply--
59. 5:43and this is paradoxical-- by being on your own.  This is another unbelievable mystery. You can't
60. 5:49understand yourself just by being with yourself.  You need other people. Why is that? It's like, why
61. 5:56do you need a mirror to see the back of your head?  Because we don't have eyes there. We need someone
62. 6:01to help us to see the things that are really  hard for us to see. And psychotherapy gives us
63. 6:07a forum in which we can come, tell the therapist  about what's going on in our lives, explain what
64. 6:14happened last Monday, explain what happened when  we took that trip to New York or Buffalo, wherever
65. 6:20it is, what happened, and then slowly pattern  recognition sets in. The therapist is able to go,
66. 6:26it's funny. In that last relationship you did  this, this new relationship you're doing that,
67. 6:31and you mentioned that your parent did something  that sounds kind of similar. So I wonder what's
68. 6:37going on. And then slowly, insight comes. We  start to put the pieces together. We think,
69. 6:41I'm up to something. I'm doing something. And  that way is liberation. You can start to break
70. 6:47the unconscious stories that we're living.  Psychotherapy works with this concept known as
71. 6:52defenses or defense mechanisms. In other words,  these are tools that our minds adopt to try and
72. 6:59shield themselves from accurate knowledge of their  own workings. And it's going to sound really odd,
73. 7:04like why don't we just embrace self-knowledge  with open arms? Why do we need to run away from
74. 7:10it? The answer is that knowledge of ourselves is  frightening. It's really awful to have to learn
75. 7:17certain things. It may make us very anxious. It  may make us so sorrowful. It may panic us. And so
76. 7:24we push away unwelcome information. I think that  we still perhaps can't quite bear how complicated
77. 7:30we are. We're very squeamish creatures. We don't  like to sit with ourselves. We don't like to sit
78. 7:37with our emotions. Self-knowledge remains an  enormously elusive goal. I think it is the most
79. 7:45important goal of life. To understand oneself  is literally the meaning of life. The ancient
80. 7:51Greeks knew this, "Know thyself" was the most  important command in ancient Greek culture and
81. 7:57philosophy. Know thyself, most important  thing you could do. If you said nowadays,
82. 8:02in a conversation with friends or colleagues,  "What's your goal? "Where are you trying to
83. 8:06get to next year? "What are you trying to do?"  Say, "Know thyself." People would go, "That's
84. 8:11a strange person there. "We don't know about this  person." It's not an acceptable goal. We know that
85. 8:18it's good to make money. We know that it's good to  travel to foreign countries, to learn how to fry
86. 8:23garlic and to learn salsa. It's not particularly  esteemed to know yourself. And that's why we
87. 8:30wander around strangers to ourselves and therefore  enormously confusing. And let's put it frankly,
88. 8:36dangerous to other people. Because a person who  doesn't understand themselves, if confronted with
89. 8:41their behavior will go, "It wasn't me. I didn't  do it. "Or I can't think or ask me tomorrow. "They
90. 8:48can't account for themselves. "They don't know  why they do the stuff they do. "They will simply,
91. 8:53in a relationship, for example, "bail out of a  relationship, going, "It's getting too intense.
92. 8:58"And why? "They don't know. "They don't understand  what they themselves are doing." Even though they
93. 9:03may have spent five years learning Spanish,  they may have taken an advanced degree in
94. 9:08Japanese. They may be very active in all sorts of  ways. They may have learned pottery. They may be
95. 9:14holding down a great job in marketing, something.  But the point is, they will not have learned the
96. 9:19really true constituents of emotional functioning  because they've been able to get away with it.
97. 9:24And part of the playbook of becoming a better  lover is to dial down your defense mechanisms,
98. 9:30to observe them. Typical defense mechanism is  to push responsibility onto other people, to
99. 9:35say it's your fault. For example, someone tries to  tell you something about yourself. Someone says,
100. 9:40"I think that you're a little bit this "when that  happens." And rather than going, "Thank you. "Let
101. 9:47me think about that." You go, "Why are you being  rude? "Or, "This is not a good time for me." Or,
102. 9:52"I can't absorb this now." In other words, you  push away information that might have helped you.
103. 9:57Not because it's false, but because it's difficult  to absorb. And that's often what happens to us.
104. 10:04All of us are involved in defense mechanisms.  All of us can't quite bear the full truth about
105. 10:10ourselves. It helps us to go to psychotherapy.  I know that, you know, AIs, you know,
106. 10:16deliver some aspects of therapy. It can be good at  points. The good thing about a real human being is
107. 10:22that they are not guided just by you. They've  got their own independent judgment. And also,
108. 10:27you're in a relationship with them. And that  relationship is part of what heals you because the
109. 10:32relationship with the therapist is a harbinger of  the relationship that you can then take out into
110. 10:38the world, a relationship of trust and mutual  understanding. This is something that AIs not
111. 10:43gonna be able to replace anytime soon. So we need  to understand ourselves. We need to understand
112. 10:48the past. And then we need a certain spirit. One  of the things that we need in that playbook of
113. 10:52love is a good sense of humor. That could sound  superfluous, like, "What on earth?" You know,
114. 10:56"Why do we need a sense of humor?" Well, a sense  of humor is a modesty about our capacity to
115. 11:00understand anything. And if we can signal to our  partners that, you know, we're a little stupid.
116. 11:06We don't get it. We don't have all the answers.  That is a wonderful emollient. It's a wonderful
117. 11:12lubricant to love because it just dials down the  temperature. If your partner is able to say, "Ah,
118. 11:19I may not have understood this. "I may not be  getting it. That's brilliant." And if they can
119. 11:23make a little joke too, that's great. You know, if  two people can learn to see each other as idiots,
120. 11:29but lovable idiots, that's a beautiful moment  in love. It could sound negative. It's not. It's
121. 11:34not. It's the most generous thing you can do. We  are two blind people helping each other to find
122. 11:40a way forward. If that's the spirit in which we  can enter love, that is a spirit of generosity,
123. 11:46a spirit of mutual forgiveness. Too often we  get on our high horses. This is the way it is.
124. 11:51I know the answer. This is what I think. That is  not a friend of love. So we need, if you like,
125. 11:57a modesty, a humorous modesty. Let me give  you another idea. Another thing that we need
126. 12:02in order to make love work is a certain degree  of pessimism. You know, optimism is the enemy of
127. 12:10love. If we think that we will have a perfect love  story, a love story with no ruffles in it, with no
128. 12:17kinks in it, no, it's not going to happen. We need  to accept that even a really good relationship has
129. 12:23constant moments of crisis. And that's okay.  The problem is not crisis. The problem is
130. 12:28how do we repair crises? Can we repair them with  forgiveness, with understanding, and most of all,
131. 12:33with curiosity? Can we get curious about why  we had a bust up? Can we be searching for why
132. 12:41our attachment patterns are not compatible? Can we  get interested in why we're difficult to love? And
133. 12:47that way will become easier to love. So pessimism  is not an enemy of love, knowing that there is
134. 12:54no such thing as the right person actually helps  you to find a good enough person. You know, a few
135. 13:02years ago, I read an essay that went viral. I  read it for the New York Times. It was called,
136. 13:07"Why You Will Marry The Wrong Person." Why did  that essay go viral? I think it went viral because
137. 13:13people all feel... Sorry, let me correct that.  Not all people, but many, many people feel that
138. 13:20they have married the wrong person. And they  panic about this and they feel so ashamed. So
139. 13:25here's an essay in the New York Times that says,  "Yeah, we're all going to marry the wrong person."
140. 13:30And you know what? It's okay. You don't need  to marry the right person. You need to marry
141. 13:35a good enough person. You know, compatibility  is not a precondition of love. Compatibility
142. 13:42is the fruit of love. If we get together with  someone and we find that there are differences,
143. 13:48right? They have one kind of attachment style.  We have another. They like golf. We like tennis.
144. 13:54They like the curtains to be green. We like the  curtains to be yellow. Whatever it is. Too often
145. 13:57in modern romantic dating culture, the answer  is get out. Just get out. Find someone else.
146. 14:03Find someone better. And that's why all the  technological tools are all about putting new
147. 14:08people in front of you. Of course, sometimes you  need to find new people. But as much as finding
148. 14:14new people, what you need to do is to learn to  live with the people who are in front of you,
149. 14:18with the people that you found. Many of us have  already found a good enough partner. And yet we
150. 14:23throw them in the bin because we are taught by  romantic culture that we can always find a perfect
151. 14:29person with whom it will click immediately. And  this is such a destructive idea. If you think,
152. 14:36you know what? The work starts here. The work  starts when you have a problem. Then you roll
153. 14:40up your sleeves and you think, okay, well, I know  that I, you know, broadly think this person is a
154. 14:45nice person. Now we're going to work at making  sure that it can work. And so we're going to
155. 14:50talk and we're going to take this problem apart.  We're going to become like engineers who've got
156. 14:54a malfunctioning machine. We're going to sort it  out. This sounds unromantic, doesn't it? Imagine,
157. 15:00imagine saying, in order to make my relationship  work, every evening I've talked for an hour in
158. 15:05really patient ways. You think, oh my God,  go to Vegas, find someone easier. Well,
159. 15:11good luck to you. Maybe you'll find that person.  But for some of us, especially some of us who've
160. 15:15come through difficult relationships, difficult  relationships in our past, we may need to go and
161. 15:19do that kind of excavation. Maybe that's fine.  I think that a good enough person is someone who
162. 15:25will engage with the business of working towards  compatibility. That they won't assume that you are
163. 15:33wrong just because there are problems. They will  know how to repair crises. They will know how to
164. 15:38be curious. They will know how to listen. They  will know how to be patient. That is compatible
165. 15:43with all sorts of problems. Sexual problems,  relational problems, administrative problems,
166. 15:47doesn't matter. You can work through them. So the  wrong person is someone who stonewalls, who always
167. 15:53blames you, who blanks out, who says, it's not  my responsibility, or it was easier with my ex,
168. 16:00and why are you so difficult, et cetera. These  people are trouble because they are refusing
169. 16:05the work of love. So it doesn't matter if you  have many, many difficulties. That's okay. The
170. 16:09problem is your attitude to the difficulties.  And the solution is an attitude of indulgence,
171. 16:16of curiosity, and of calm consideration of the  flaws that unite us all. We are all mad monkeys.
172. 16:23And so long as we've been kind towards the mad  monkey and all of us, we'll be okay. One of the
173. 16:29real problems, and there's simply no solution,  but we need to accept that there's a real problem,
174. 16:34is how long it takes to work out who we are as  lovers, as people interested in relationships, who
175. 16:43we are. It takes so long, and it takes especially  long to try and change our patterns. If we are
176. 16:49somebody who sabotages relationships every time  that love comes along, how long is that going to
177. 16:54take to unwind this? Well, it takes insight, but  then it takes, as it were, work, true work. And
178. 17:00sometimes people go to therapy for six sessions  or 12 sessions, and they go, "I haven't changed.
179. 17:05Therapy doesn't work." And let's come back to my  earlier example about language. Imagine that you
180. 17:12decided middle age, as an English speaker, to pick  up Korean or Finnish. And you went to six lessons,
181. 17:18and you tried to learn Finnish and Korean. And by  the end of six lessons, you could barely ask for,
182. 17:22you know, barely say your own name or say hello.  And then you blamed it on the whole process,
183. 17:26and you said, "I'm not learning this language.  It's rubbish." People would say, "You're being
184. 17:30too impatient." And I think that some of the same  holds true for rewiring our emotional language. We
185. 17:36can't pick this up in six sessions or 50 minutes.  It takes a long time. A pattern that was laid down
186. 17:41over decades is going to take many, many years to  figure it out. It's, I mean, believe me, it's bad
187. 17:48news. I wish it weren't so. Can we do anything  in the meantime? Yes, of course we can. We can,
188. 17:54you know, we can be learning and walking. We  don't have to pause and just sit by the roadside.
189. 17:58We can be starting on the path of relationships.  We can be starting from a, you know, relatively
190. 18:02young age. But we need to be doing the work  alongside, and we need to be able to at least do
191. 18:09the first thing, which is to say, "I'm learning.  I'm a learner." There's a real difference between
192. 18:14someone who goes, "I know it all," and someone who  knows that they are still learning. When Socrates,
193. 18:19the ancient Greek philosopher, was asked  why he was the wisest person in antiquity,
194. 18:23he said, "Because I know what I don't know." In  other words, that the birth of true wisdom is
195. 18:29associated with the knowledge of your ignorance.  I think that's the best way we can proceed also
196. 18:34in relation to our love lives. There are lots of  questions that we could learn to ask ourselves and
197. 18:39our partners in order to try and find a better  relationship. One of them is this. "When I get
198. 18:46close to you, how does that feel?" Right? "To  open up a window onto some of the complexities
199. 18:53that occur when somebody gets close." If  I love you, what part of you might worry?
200. 19:02Right? That's a good question. Does any part of  you worry? Another really useful question is,
201. 19:09"How do I respond when someone is trying to  communicate something to me? Do I stonewall or do
202. 19:15I accept? Am I able to pause and think the issue  might be with me? Or do I always have to go, 'I
203. 19:25can't answer that. It's the other person. You're  being unfair. You're putting me under pressure.'
204. 19:30What is your level of emotional dexterity?" So  that's a good question to be asking yourself as
205. 19:37well. Also, one of the really good questions in  any relationship is to say, "How have I annoyed
206. 19:43you? How have I frustrated you?" You know, a  lot of what happens between couples is there are
207. 19:48things that are bubbling away beneath the surface  that people can't find the courage to say. And
208. 19:54because they can't say them, the problem doesn't  improve. The problem gets worse. People can't have
209. 19:59sex anymore. A lot of the reason why people can't  have sex has got nothing to do with sex. It's to
210. 20:03do with the fact they feel disconnected and angry  and misunderstood. You can't have sex with someone
211. 20:08who you feel misunderstood by or you feel furious  with. What helps desire is trust. And the way to
212. 20:14build up trust is to communicate, and particularly  communicate, ruptures of trust. So if you want to
213. 20:20have good sex, don't get a candle, don't go to a  hotel, start to ask each other, "Have I annoyed
214. 20:26you? Is there something I've done that you'd like  to tell me?" And you say this patiently, not in
215. 20:31the middle of the night when you're stressed or  maybe you've drunk too much, but when you're calm,
216. 20:36when there's a sense of, you know, lightness  and forgiveness, use the right moment to ask
217. 20:42the right question. We're living in a world where  therapeutic language and insights have spread for
218. 20:48the first time far outside the consulting room.  There is mass adoption at a superficial level
219. 20:54of therapeutic language. And the area where we  find this most obviously is social media and in
220. 21:00particular Instagram, which is enormous. It's an  enormous force in the world. And it has brought
221. 21:05up a generation, I'd say, to speak in pseudo or  vaguely therapeutic terms. I don't mean that as
222. 21:13an insult. Some of these insights have been  fantastic. People are now able to talk about,
223. 21:17let's say, attachment theory, the, you know, the  mention of an avoidant attachment theory or an
224. 21:22anxious attachment theory in many circles  now doesn't create the puzzlement that it
225. 21:26was generating 15 years ago. 15 years ago, this  was not common knowledge. That was still in the
226. 21:30university, in textbooks and in the consulting  room. Now it's out in the world. And the medium
227. 21:35that has changed this, as I say, is social  media. What's the problem? I'll tell you one
228. 21:39of the problems. One of the problems is whose  fault it is. The tone of a lot of social media
229. 21:47posting blames the problem for the struggles in  relationships, fairly and squarely on the partner,
230. 21:53not on yourself. There is an obsession with  finding borderline people, narcissistic people,
231. 22:00avoidance, anxious people, out in the world. And  of course they exist. But the tone is the problem.
232. 22:06The tone says, get out. These are red flags and  everybody that you're meeting, the reason why you
233. 22:13haven't made a relationship work is because these  people are unbalanced psychologically. My answer
234. 22:19is this. If you are looking to find a person  with no problems at all, with no psychological
235. 22:25disturbances, good luck to you. If you're looking  to find somebody with no red flags, good luck to
236. 22:30you. Everybody has red flags. That's part of what  it means to be human. That's the story of Genesis.
237. 22:36A story of Genesis is Adam and Eve had some  red flags. That's what it is to be human being,
238. 22:42is somebody with a red flag. So the problem is  not the red flag, it's how you deal with it. And
239. 22:47this is what I worry that therapeutic culture on  social media doesn't train us to do. It doesn't
240. 22:52train us for patience. It doesn't train us to  think we might be the problem. It doesn't ask
241. 22:56us to think what we've brought to the situation.  It doesn't create an atmosphere of forgiveness.
242. 23:02The reason is very simple. Outrage sells. It's  more fun. It feels more spirited. It's punchier
243. 23:10to say that ex of yours, they're the avoidant,  they're crazy, they're narcissistic. It sounds
244. 23:17better and it leaves everybody happier.  But long term, it's not the solution.