“We have a new Olympus that we all want to climb and we don’t necessarily have the tools to climb it,” explains Antwerp-born psychotherapist Esther Perel in her trademark purr. The “Olympus” to which she refers encompasses the aspirations of modern-day relationships—on which Perel has emerged as a leading authority. In addition to her New York City private practice, her two bestselling books, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (which has evolved into an online course, Rekindling Desire) and The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity have endeared Perel to a global audience seeking guidance. Her latest foray is her most daring yet: Where Should We Begin? is a podcast that invites listeners into an unscripted therapy session between Perel and an anonymous couple in crisis. While their stories are singular, their struggles—with betrayal, desire and loss—offer an unflinching insight into the hurdles of contemporary intimacy. Here, Perel lays out the pitfalls and pressures that now come with romantic relationships, and presents her clear-eyed road map for coming “back to life” as a couple.

We seem to be in a paradoxical age where we’ve become increasingly connected yet more and more lonely. What’s been the impact of this shift upon our romantic relationships?
We’ve never had more expectations from our romantic relationships than we do today. One could say that romanticism is a new religion and there’s a conflation between our relationship needs and our spiritual needs. As Jungian analyst Robert Johnson says, we’re looking to romantic love for what we used to look for in the realm of the divine, which is transcendence and meaning and purpose and ecstasy. We want everything that stability and commitment and trust and belonging and anchoring provide, but we want the same relationship to also provide us with awe and mystery and excitement and novelty. That combination—plus the traditional needs of a family—somebody to raise your kids with, sign your checks with, share family life with and go visit your parents with—is an amazingly long list. And it doesn’t get shorter, it actually keeps getting longer.

Why are we now attaching this lengthy laundry list of needs and desires to our relationship?
We used to live within clearly defined structures. People had tight knots and the knots were difficult to undo and therefore everybody knew their place, their role and what was expected of them. Today, we’ve shifted from structure to network—and networks are loosely tied knots which you can come in and out of really easily. When you have that kind of fragmentation and atomization, your partner becomes the bulwark against the vicissitudes of life. They become the balm against the increasing existential isolation. And my claim has always been that people need community. No one person can sustain this, and relationships often crumble under the weight of expectations. Were those failures? Maybe not—maybe they actually accomplished more than many, many relationships of the past—but the list of expectations was so big that it looks like they didn’t succeed.

What are the symptoms of a couple in trouble?
Couples suffer because they are too enmeshed and in chronic friction, or because they are so far apart that the gap between them is too big. There’s either too much reactivity or too little. At these extremes, people will either feel like they’re suffocating—that they can’t take a step alone and they have no sovereignty and no sense of autonomy whatsoever without eliciting reactivity from the other person—or they will be so far apart that they feel completely disconnected.

How do you differentiate between a rocky period and a relationship that’s died?
All people, like the moon, have intermittent eclipses. They forget or are somewhat distant, or they are a bit taken with other things that are demanding their full attention. They get pulled. But the difference between couples who have energy and are alive, versus couples who are dead, is that they catch themselves and acknowledge it. They reinfuse new energy, new attention, focus, presence and initiative into the relationship so that it revitalizes itself.

[A relationship has died] when curiosity is completely gone, when there is indifference, when there is complacency, when there is a chronic lack of appreciation and in turn when there is chronic criticism. It’s not just the apathy, it’s a deep lack of interest in the other person. People feel degraded when they are next to somebody who is utterly uninterested in them, and only interested in what they can provide. The functions have become more important than the people: the roles they inhabit, the things they take care of, the stuff they’re in charge of. The relationship becomes massively practical and there’s less of an interest in more existential questions. Who is this person whose heart is beating next to me? What’s happening to them? What are they about, what are we about, where are we going, what’s on your mind these days, what keeps you awake at night, what do you worry about, what brings you tremendous joy?

As a therapist, how do you help couples restore intimacy?
If I want this car to drive, I need gasoline in the tank. The gasoline can be fear of loss, fear of being alone—I don’t care what it is, but I do need to feel that there is a motivation of some sort to improve things. It doesn’t have to be because you’re deeply in love with this person. The love will follow when you feel that you laugh more together, that you share more together, that you get along and you’re interested in each other, that you don’t just feel like you’re some kind of cooking machine or bank dispenser.

The degree to which a couple can still come back to life, revive and potentially even thrive, is determined by how they respond to the intervention that you give them. For those that are too close, it’s about creating a degree of separateness and sovereignty, and for those who are so far apart and indifferent to each other, it’s about creating a sense of empathy and curiosity. The degree to which they can do it—or not—is what tells you how much space for change and growth there is in the relationship.