1. Embrace Self-Reflection and Personal Responsibility
When a relationship ends, it's vital to look beyond what the other person did wrong and consider your own role. Ask yourself: "Who were you in this relationship?", "What role did you play?", "What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to?", and "What things do you wish you had done differently?".
Focusing solely on the other person and adopting a passive, receptive stance means you're missing a significant part of the story and may even be more of the problem than them.
It's about understanding the dynamic and taking responsibility for your contributions without self-blame, while still holding the other person accountable without blaming them. This is not a "blame dance" but an inquiry into "what did I do that made you do what you then did to me?".
2. Understand Relationships as Dynamic Interactions (The "Figure Eight")
A relationship is not merely about two individual personalities, but "what happens in between" – the dynamic created by their interactions.
Individuals are not the same person with different partners; certain aspects of ourselves emerge depending on how others respond to us.
This dynamic is described as a "figure eight": "what I do that makes you do something that then makes you react to me a certain way that then draws that out of me that draws that out of View and each one actually creates the other". Recognising this helps understand one's contribution, for instance, to disconnection.
3. Cultivate Eroticism to Keep Relationships Alive
Eroticism is distinct from sexuality; it is "the Poetry that accompanies it," "the meaning we give to it," and "the story that's attached". You can have sex frequently and still feel nothing if eroticism is absent.
It embodies "the quality of imagination, curiosity, playfulness, mystery, risk-taking, novelty that people bring to their relationship".
To bring life to a relationship, engage in new things together and take risks beyond your comfort zone. Familiar, pleasant activities, while creating coziness and friendship, don't necessarily generate excitement or desire.
4. Embrace the Essential Role of Play and Humor
Playfulness is an "essential" quality that is often underestimated and least discussed.
Humor acts as an "essential solve and bomb" in relationships, providing perspective and allowing partners to re-ground themselves during arguments.
It encompasses flirting, teasing, making fun, and not taking yourselves too seriously.
The absence of humor can be a diagnostic sign in a relationship struggling in therapy.
Humor and play introduce "possibility," "change," and "healing" by challenging rigid, polarized systems that hold onto righteousness, victimization, or a singular "right" view.
Perel's personal experience during the pandemic demonstrated how her husband's humor diffused her intense fear, allowing them to continue building their life.
Play is seen as "problem solving, creativity, risk-taking, spontaneity," and "the other side of fear".
It serves as a "container" for taking risks and having conversations that might otherwise be avoided, especially with long-term partners, as people can be more daring with strangers than with those they live with.
Ultimately, play allows individuals to enter a "world of imagination" with different rules, acting as an "essential survival skill" by providing moments free from hypervigilance.
5. Diversify Connections and Calibrate Expectations
Based on the research of Eli Finkel, thriving relationships benefit from calibrating expectations and diversifying "intimate connections" – meaning people important to you who accompany you through life's stages, not necessarily sexual partners.
Taking risks and doing new things are also part of this research for fostering thriving relationships.