How to Resolve Conflicts in Relationships: A Conversation with Esther Perel

December 19, 2025·53 min·4 clips

Esther Perel reveals that almost every relationship fight comes down to just three things: power, trust, and recognition.

John Donvan begins with a departure from the usual Open to Debate setup. The show is revisiting his 2024 conversation with Esther Perel, a listener favorite that won a New York Festival's Radio Award as a talk program. This one is not about foreign policy. Donvan turns toward the conflicts people have with loved ones, especially when they are spending close time together. The format changes with the subject. It is a conversation, not a debate. Perel joins as a psychotherapist and podcast host whose work centers on one-on-one relationships, including relationships with sexual or erotic dimensions. Donvan first names the show's familiar ground: foreign policy, economics, cultural trends, and philosophical political disputes. Then the episode moves into a smaller room, where the stakes can still feel pretty high. The conversation keeps coming back to what people carry into conflict. Perel and Donvan talk about messaging, circumstance, support, and the pressure to stand on one's own. Loyalty becomes one way to read a relationship. So do beliefs about family first, how one person's behavior affects others, and the cultural force behind those expectations. From there, Perel widens the lens without making it feel abstract. Gender, age, birth order, and power dynamics all show up as old material people bring into present arguments. Leaving a relationship is culturally coded too. Some people are taught they may exit. Others are taught to make it work at nearly any cost. Children bring another layer. Perel asks whether a household acts democratically, whether every opinion counts, or whether authority moves in a straight vertical line. Emotion has house rules as well. Sadness may be welcome where anger is not. Idleness may feel almost forbidden in homes built around practicality, busyness, and productivity. When Donvan asks about cultural research, Perel points to conversation, colleagues, practices, rituals, and different ways of understanding grief, trauma, and care. The final turn is repair. Since the topic is conflict, she says repair has to be part of it. Debate participants can go home separately. Families and couples usually have to figure out what happens after the fight.

As heard by us

Esther Perel turns relationship conflict into a clear map of culture, family rules, emotion, and repair.

Open to Debate steps away from public policy and treats relationship conflict as a system people inherit before they ever start arguing. John Donvan sets up the shift cleanly, then lets Esther Perel trace how loyalty, authority, gender, age, birth order, emotional permission,…

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Esther Perel on why the arguments you have at home are harder to win than any debate.

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