Esther Perel: When You Choose Your Partner and Lose Your Family
6/21/20261 hr 1 min
From Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz-Beckham to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, we've watched family rifts play out publicly. But behind the headlines is a dilemma many people face in their own lives: what happens when the person you love doesn't fit into the family you come from?
This week, Kate Langbroek sits down with world-renowned relationship therapist Esther Perel to discuss one of the most emotionally complicated tensions of adulthood — choosing your partner while trying to maintain your relationship with your family.
Why do some parents struggle to accept their child's partner? Why can falling in love feel like betrayal? And when family conflict erupts, how do you protect your relationship without losing the people who raised you?
Together, Kate and Esther unpack family estrangement, difficult in-laws, loyalty, intimacy, and the relationship patterns we inherit from our parents — and whether it's possible to build a marriage that looks different from the one we grew up with.
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CREDITS:
Guest: Esther Perel
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Bree Player
Audio and Video Producer: Julian Rosario
Social Media Producer: Olivia Colman
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsEsther Perel· Guest0:00
Whatever the reasons for cut-offs, I think they are among the most impactful measures that you can do to a family system. And the way I know it is because there is not a family that has, that I've worked with that when this has happened, even in the generations before, doesn't tell it to me within the first three minutes.
Kate Langbroek· Host0:21
[instrumental music] Hi, I'm Kate Langbroek, and my guest today is Esther Perel. Esther is one of the world's most influential relationship therapists. She spent decades helping people understand love, desire, marriage, infidelity, intimacy, and family. Her books have become international bestsellers. Her TED Talks have been watched by millions. And through her podcast, Where Should We Begin?, she's invited us into the private conversations most people only have behind closed doors. What makes Esther's work so compelling is that she doesn't just talk about relationships, she talks about relationships as a reflection of the culture we live in, the families we come from, and the people we're trying to become. And lately, there's one story that seems to be playing out everywhere. We've watched it happen publicly with Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz, with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. An adult child falls in love, chooses a partner, and suddenly finds themselves caught between the family they came from and the family