Welcome, Todd!

Todd Baratz, our guest for this episode, is a renowned psychotherapist and sex therapist whose innovative approach to mental health and relationships has established him as a leading figure in his field. In addition to his clinical practice, Baratz is a prolific writer and speaker. His insights are regularly featured in various media outlets, where he discusses topics ranging from romantic relationships to individual mental wellness. He lives in New York City and Los Angeles. Learn more on Instagram under his handle @YourDiagnonsense.

Some of the questions Todd fields in today’s episode are:

1. Your Instagram account seems to be a response to the rise of relationship advice and mental health advice proliferating on social media. At this moment, is there one piece of advice that you still see floating around that you wish you could just laser evaporate off the face of the Earth?

2. There is a particular relationship fantasy that is becoming easier to knock down as a straw man: the very Disney, hyperromantic, sweep-you-off-your-feet happily ever after story. But it seems like when you look at internet culture, you’ve identified the rise of a new relationship fantasy, marked by things such as expecting a partner to validate you 100% of the time, or needing a partner to communicate their emotions in the same way that you do. Can you talk more about this new set of relationship expectations that you see people holding? 

3. You argue that society tends to over-pathologize normal day-to-day struggles. What are “cultural diagnoses?” 

4. You have made the argument that we are too quick to judge ourselves for being too clingy, especially early on in a relationship or when we’re in the dating process. You encourage people to be more clingy instead - can you speak to that? 

5. You mention in the book that you often advocate for people to embrace a “good enough” relationship, and that this invites opposition and arguments from people on social media. Can you tell us how you define a “good enough” relationship, and why you think this concept can be so uncomfortable for people? 

6. You share quite a bit about your personal experiences with the pain of cheating and infidelity. And despite having experienced quite a bit of pain, you take the stance that cheating isn’t necessarily something to quickly condemn - that infidelity is complicated, it is here to stay, and that we should work on understanding it first. What do you wish that we all understood about infidelity on a cultural level? 

7. You go deep into sharing the story of a ten year romantic relationship that sounds like it was both life giving and frustrating, both supportive and deeply painful at times. In reading your telling of the end of that relationship and the disentangling process, I really got the sense of your being pulled in two directions. It seems like there were multiple line in the sand moments for you - realizing that there was a point where there was just no trust left in the relationship, realizing that the too of you were too different from each other, too enmeshed – but then you also spend a lot of time recognizing the areas where you could have approached the relationship in a different way, where you could have been more tolerant, and where if you had changed yourself things could have turned out differently. Now that you’re a few years out from that relationship, I was wondering where your heart lands now. When you think about that relationship, does it fall under the category of a “good enough” relationship?