Couples therapist Esther Perel has been recognized as one of the world’s most original and insightful thinkers about couples, sexuality, and the peculiar paradoxes besetting modern marriage in the Western world. In this clip from her Networker Symposium keynote, she talks about the complicated and contradictory needs that are shaping Millennial marriage and commitment today.

By Susan Johnson - Neuroscientists have recently established emotion is the prime force shaping how we cope with life’s challenges. Psychotherapists are beginning to learn how to work with emotion, rather than trying to control it or creating change through purely cognitive or behavioral means.

By Esther Perel - Feminism has given women a new narrative, but it hasn’t offered men a particularly new one that they can identify with. Ultimately, the lives of women will not change until the lives of men come along. What can therapists contribute to the current conversation about our gender politics and the meaning of masculinity and femininity today?

By Terry Real - Factions of men and women these days are feeling a powerful pull toward many of the notions of traditional masculinity. What we’re witnessing is a reassertion of its most difficult and harmful traits. And yet we psychotherapists, as a field, have remained largely silent about this resurgence. Is neutrality in these times really in our clients’ best interests?

By Elizabeth Young - A whirlwind romance turns into a troubled relationship.

By David Seaburn - Both doing psychotherapy and the writing of fiction are about stories. The essence of the art of both pursuits is the openness to the possibility that, no matter how small, no matter how fleeting, things might not only be different, but, perhaps, better.

By Susan Johnson - In couples therapy, the heart of the matter rarely concerns the content of a couple's arguments, but almost always concerns the strength and responsiveness of the attachment relationship they have. The bottom-line test of that relationship is in the answer to a fundamental question each is asking the other: Are you really there for me?

By Ellen Wachtel - In couples therapy, if we can help each partner be a better therapist for the other, all three of us can feel more helpful and effective. My favorite way is to start by using a particular exercise to provide a window into each partner’s psyche.

By Chris Lyford - There’s no question that today’s porn is a far cry from the heyday of girlie magazines, back-alley strip clubs, and curtained-off rooms in the local video store. But is porn’s unprecedented ubiquity and accessibility affecting our mental health?

By Tammy Nelson - Far from being evidence of pathology or marital bankruptcy, a woman’s affair can be a way of expressing a desire for an entirely different self. Sometimes, understanding an affair as an unconscious bid for self-empowerment, relief from bad sex, or a response to a lack of choices or personal freedom is an important first step toward a fuller, more mature selfhood.