How Many Times Can I Forgive You? AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

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Episode: How Many Times Can I Forgive You?

Author: Esther Perel Global Media
Duration: 01:03:14

Episode Shownotes

A year after explosive revelations of cheating and the existence of a 14 year old son her partner never told her about, a woman receives a call about a fresh round of betrayal. She is humiliated and in crisis, while her partner’s ability to compartmentalize has rendered him a ghost

in his own life. They love each other and parent two boys but may not be able to find a shared reality in which to move forward. If you have an individual question you would like to talk through with Esther, please send a voice memo to [email protected]. If you would like to apply for a couples session with Esther, please click here: https://bit.ly/40fGHIU. Esther’s two new courses on desire are now available inside The Desire Bundle. Go to https://www.estherperel.com/course-bundles/the-desire-bundle to learn more about Bringing Desire Back and Playing with Desire. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In the episode titled 'How Many Times Can I Forgive You?' from the podcast 'Where Should We Begin?' hosted by Esther Perel, a woman confronts profound emotional turmoil after discovering her partner's infidelity and the existence of a hidden child. A year later, she faces further betrayal, grappling with feelings of humiliation and confusion. Despite their mutual love and responsibilities as parents, they struggle to reconcile trust and vulnerability, reflecting on the complexities of love, betrayal, and the challenging nature of forgiveness in intimate relationships.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (How Many Times Can I Forgive You? ) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:02 Speaker_03
None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel. Each episode of Where Should We Begin is a one-time counseling session.

00:00:10 Speaker_03
For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices and their stories are real.

00:00:24 Speaker_00
Support for this show comes from Amazon Prime. However you plan to make the most of the holiday season, you can do it with Amazon Prime. Whether it's last minute ingredients and stocking stuffers, or a themed puzzle to solve with the family.

00:00:38 Speaker_00
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00:00:52 Speaker_00
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00:01:05 Speaker_05
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00:02:22 Speaker_08
Last May, I got a call from someone that told me her friend had been in a relationship with my partner for two years, but I had absolutely no idea. And then I also found out he had a child, 14 years old, I had no idea about.

00:02:43 Speaker_08
July 24th, I got another call. Hey, I've been friends with your partner and actually been sleeping with him. Both of them were friends that he had that had no idea that he had a family. Never told them that he had a family. So it was just like beyond.

00:03:00 Speaker_05
She's coming in on the heels of yet another revelation, of yet another affair, after having found out that there was a 14-year-old son that she never knew about that her partner had.

00:03:14 Speaker_08
I mean, I'm so sad and angry. Just the level of humiliation, like feeling like, so, like, again? Like, are you kidding me? Like, am I an idiot? Like, am I totally blind? Like, I need somebody else, like, tell me if I am delusional.

00:03:32 Speaker_05
She's bereft. She's in crisis. She thinks they are in crisis. There's imminent decisions to be made. And there's a sense of urgency about what has just been revealed. He says none of this.

00:03:50 Speaker_06
I think I've always had a lot of trust issues. I'd want to work on being more vulnerable. I feel like I've been an adult since I was like 13, 14, just because that's kind of how I was raised. I've always had a life of hiding.

00:04:07 Speaker_06
Nobody knows anything about me because I don't trust anybody. And sometimes that gets really hard. I don't even know how to explain it. I struggle with it. And it's kind of a worry because I don't want to end with my partner.

00:04:24 Speaker_05
How can you have one person talk about so many shattering revelations where the other person doesn't even mention them? It was like, what is this session going to be about? And if he doesn't mention it, can he even acknowledge it?

00:04:41 Speaker_05
If he can even acknowledge it, can he express any sense of remorse for it? I mean, where is he at?

00:04:48 Speaker_05
And what instantly becomes clear is that as I begin to meet him, I enter a web of secrets, a veiled reality where no two pieces of his life have any contact with each other. So he keeps it all in little pockets, hidden from everywhere.

00:05:09 Speaker_05
Nobody knows the next person he knows. And I have to say that this was a very intense experience for me to speak with someone who showed such a way of living as a ghost in his own life. What would you like us to do here?

00:05:37 Speaker_05
What would make this a useful conversation, a helpful conversation?

00:05:42 Speaker_07
I guess maybe clarity on some things. To understand a little bit more than I did when I got here.

00:05:51 Speaker_04
And I would like more clarity on?

00:05:56 Speaker_07
Relationships. I guess past relationships. Like how they affect my current relationship. Um, my parents' relationship that in turn affects my relationship.

00:06:10 Speaker_05
What's something specific from your family relationships that you say, that thing has gone with me?

00:06:19 Speaker_07
Uh, a lot of like selfishness, I guess.

00:06:28 Speaker_05
That's a big word. Who was the master of selfishness at home? Everybody probably can you give me a sense?

00:06:37 Speaker_07
Yeah, my my dad was on his own since he was a teenager since he was like 14 Couldn't read or write But he was smart.

00:06:45 Speaker_07
He was handy and then my mom worked in a bank and my mother was like business She was like high up in a bank for like a very long time.

00:06:54 Speaker_07
So they were like complete opposites, but my dad's kind of selfishness was more of I don't want to go back to ever being poor again and So I have to like kind of hoard everything. And it doesn't matter if anybody needs something.

00:07:09 Speaker_07
Not like if you want something, but if you need something. My mother would have to go, you need to give me money for it so I can get school stuff. And I think in turn that I grew up a lot on my own.

00:07:22 Speaker_07
I had my parents, I had both my parents till I was an adult. But I did a lot of things on my own.

00:07:30 Speaker_05
Tell me if I hear this accurately. I learned to take care of myself. They were there, but I was on my own. But neither did they offer me an ear to my needs. And neither did I learn how to listen to the needs of others, especially of my partner here.

00:07:57 Speaker_07
Yeah. And I'm sure of a lot of people.

00:08:01 Speaker_05
I know what I need to do, but I don't know what to do when you need something from me.

00:08:07 Speaker_07
Oh, yeah, correct. Or how to ask for it if I do need something.

00:08:12 Speaker_04
Right.

00:08:13 Speaker_07
If I need to move a sofa or something, I just try to figure it out on my own because I could probably ask somebody, but... I don't. I know.

00:08:24 Speaker_05
Because it doesn't even occur to me.

00:08:28 Speaker_07
I'm like, yeah, they're probably busy. They're going to say no anyway, so I'm not going to.

00:08:31 Speaker_05
So you internalized your dad's voice. They're going to say no anyway, so why not?

00:08:36 Speaker_07
They're going to say no anyway, so I'll just, I'll figure it out.

00:08:39 Speaker_05
OK. So refuse helped, though, too.

00:08:42 Speaker_07
Refuse?

00:08:42 Speaker_09
Yeah, I guess so. It's not, I mean, boy, you might refuse.

00:08:48 Speaker_05
You just added something. Not only do you not ask for help, but you refuse it. Do you not say when you're upset, or when you're mad, or when you're frustrated, or when you're hurt, that's part of the, you have to handle everything yourself?

00:09:03 Speaker_07
Yeah, I'm kind of just the same all the time. Like, she is mad, like I'm not, like I don't get excited about things. I'm just like, you know, it was okay, it was good. I don't want to get too excited, to come down from being excited.

00:09:20 Speaker_07
So if I can just kind of stay in the middle.

00:09:23 Speaker_05
That's an amazing strategy. So I don't let myself get too excited, neither on the positive side nor on the negative side, so I can stay in the middle and keep things in control and not get too hurt or too disappointed or too shaken out of my boots.

00:09:47 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:09:48 Speaker_05
So you're a master compartmentalizer.

00:09:51 Speaker_07
Sometime I have to be, and I guess the times when I shouldn't be, I still am.

00:09:58 Speaker_05
Right. That is the essence. Nobody becomes a master at something without thinking that they have a good reason. But then they make the reason everywhere, and so they begin to have the same behavior even when it's not necessary.

00:10:15 Speaker_05
Can I ask you where are some particular places where you've compartmentalized?

00:10:21 Speaker_07
Work. Which I guess that makes me just a little better at my job sometimes because I can do that.

00:10:28 Speaker_05
Work how so?

00:10:29 Speaker_07
Just work like on, you know, we have like dead bodies and stuff and big fires and like I don't get to like Jacked up off it, fire's over, fire's over. Some guys like, I'm gonna be up for 15 hours now. So their adrenaline's still going.

00:10:48 Speaker_07
I'm like, it's over, it's over. Back car accidents and stuff like that. I did it in my family. I have an older son. That was kind of a separate.

00:11:05 Speaker_09
I just learned about him a year ago and he's 14. So that's compartmentalized. And the other relationships you've had?

00:11:18 Speaker_07
Yeah, I kind of, I've always had multiple something. Nothing's ever been together.

00:11:26 Speaker_05
It's multiple women or multiple cars?

00:11:29 Speaker_07
Everything.

00:11:30 Speaker_05
Everything.

00:11:31 Speaker_07
Yeah. Work life, out of work life. We're friends, out of work friends. Nobody knows each other. Nobody knows anything.

00:11:41 Speaker_05
And the multiple friends are known to her, yes?

00:11:46 Speaker_07
She knows some of my friends.

00:11:48 Speaker_09
Some of them, well then I learned these two people were both friends that had no idea that we existed, that he had a family, none. He said not one word, so I didn't know these people existed. And they didn't know we existed.

00:12:00 Speaker_07
These are people I've known for years. For years.

00:12:05 Speaker_05
They're friends, they're lovers, they're what?

00:12:08 Speaker_07
They were just friends for the very long time. And then, yeah, those two different situations a year apart from each other.

00:12:18 Speaker_05
And they became lovers.

00:12:20 Speaker_07
Yeah, I guess that's the term. Yes.

00:12:23 Speaker_05
Okay. When I start to work with couples who come in in the immediate aftermath of the crisis of an affair, I always think, how do I create a container that can hold two very, very different experiences of the same thing?

00:12:48 Speaker_05
And that means what he did to her, and then also what it meant for him. And this one starts to feel like it's going to be a hard one to hold because there's so much.

00:13:01 Speaker_05
After talking with him about his family of origin, about how he equates the challenges from his childhood as the strengths at his job, about some of the secrets that have trickled out,

00:13:19 Speaker_05
I start to feel like we at least have now an agreement about some of the basic facts. And so now I want to hear from her. Thank you. That was a long intro. And I would just love to bring you into the conversation. Do you hear him often speak like that?

00:13:46 Speaker_09
A little bit. When I first found out about all of this, well, the first time when I learned about this friend and his son on the same day. And this woman is the mother of the child? No. So there is yet another person.

00:14:03 Speaker_09
The mother of the child was an ex from a long time ago. They got together apparently one time while we were on a break 15 years ago. How long have you been together? We met over 20 years ago, but it's been off and on for a long time.

00:14:23 Speaker_05
Throughout or only in the first years?

00:14:26 Speaker_09
Um, the first few years were definitely off and on. And then I'm the last 14 years have been pretty steady except for, it was a brief period of time, maybe seven years ago or something where we were broken up for a little bit.

00:14:42 Speaker_07
Yeah, that's, that's right.

00:14:46 Speaker_09
So when that happened last year and my, everything came shattering down, I learned about that he had this other life with people he didn't talk about us at all.

00:14:58 Speaker_09
This woman had no idea, his friend thought she was friends with him for a while, had no idea that we existed. It was a terrible time and we had some conversations where it seemed like he was opening up. We were acknowledging all the compartmentalizing.

00:15:13 Speaker_09
How did you find out, if I may ask? I got a call when I was with her family on a Sunday morning around 9 o'clock. Someone called me. Said, oh, my friend's been in a relationship. Oh, and by the way, did you know he has a 14-year-old son? I was like...

00:15:26 Speaker_09
No, and then he admitted it, well, admitted the child, we were with our children, it was horrible. And then I came home to pictures on my doorstep, she had left, started emailing me, it was awful.

00:15:45 Speaker_05
Pictures of them. Yeah. To show to you that they had a relationship.

00:15:50 Speaker_09
Yeah, she wanted to.

00:15:51 Speaker_05
Which you did not know.

00:15:52 Speaker_09
No, until the day before, so she left. And she did not know about you. We went to, started going to couples therapy.

00:16:01 Speaker_09
Didn't really feel like it was going anywhere, but I thought we had some good conversations and I felt really, I was really in a lot of pain, but I felt like he was doing the right thing.

00:16:10 Speaker_09
I was not suspicious for a second until four weeks ago where I get another phone call. I just got off to work. I had a call from a number and I immediately felt like dread answer the phone. Hi, I'm so and so.

00:16:24 Speaker_09
I'm I've been in a relationship for the last, you know, off and on. And I was like, wait, what is my friend? But we've been sleeping down like, wait a second. We've been sleeping together. It turns out they had. When was the last time they found it?

00:16:40 Speaker_09
It was the day before we went on a trip. It was just and I immediately just had to told the work I had an emergency and left and he left work and I just got home and started screaming.

00:16:52 Speaker_09
So it turns out he almost immediately started doing the exact same thing. It was the same story. Another unattractive single mother with probably low self-esteem who thought he was so nice and so wonderful.

00:17:04 Speaker_09
And then she kept calling me and then I was like, oh, she's trying to tell me how this was a meaningful thing and this had been going on. And then she left a bunch of stuff in our driveway. Pictures and cards and it was just awful.

00:17:18 Speaker_09
And that was like exactly four weeks ago.

00:17:20 Speaker_04
Oh, wow.

00:17:22 Speaker_09
So you're in the thick of this. Yes. And I've already been through and I just feel like completely between numb, filled with rage and very sad. Of course. I'm just like blown away. If you could do this again, like blown away.

00:17:37 Speaker_09
Like, I just feel like I'm with a stranger. I feel like a sense of disgust. I've never felt like last year I felt hopeful. Now I'm just like, I don't know who you are. I don't know what's going on. I'm very mad at myself for not seeing this.

00:17:55 Speaker_09
I feel like this is insanity. Like, this behavior is so insane. Like, this is not OK. And I know he feels bad, so I'm like, something is very wrong. There's no trust, like none. I trust him to take care of our children. I don't trust him like that again.

00:18:13 Speaker_09
Like, I feel like a total fool. I haven't told one person about this. I can't tell my friends. It's humiliating. I feel like we love each other very much. I am very afraid of the future. We have to figure out, like, the kids and the house.

00:18:30 Speaker_09
And we really, it just doesn't feel real. It doesn't even feel like what I want. I, yeah, I just feel like I'm going crazy.

00:18:37 Speaker_05
all of this superposition of contradictory feelings that just come knocking at you, all, all, all normal and there for a while. Unfortunately.

00:18:49 Speaker_09
That's why it's like, again, like I already was just coming out of it and then you like.

00:18:53 Speaker_05
And by the way, still not about you.

00:18:55 Speaker_09
I believe that.

00:18:57 Speaker_05
I'm sorry. It makes it harder sometimes, but still not about you. That doesn't mean that you want to live with it. And I don't know what you will decide.

00:19:07 Speaker_09
Like, I'm scared. I really... Don't know who he is.

00:19:13 Speaker_05
Yeah.

00:19:15 Speaker_09
And what he's capable of. No. It's like, did I fall in love with, like, a con man? Like, he just can make things up and... I don't know. He can want to change, but if he can't change, then nothing's gonna happen. It's gonna end.

00:19:28 Speaker_09
It's like, am I supposed to just wait here and hope that he doesn't do it again? I don't know.

00:19:37 Speaker_05
It's very important to lift the pressure that in this one session she will figure out what she wants to do with her life. A first session where things are being revealed and laid out like that, sometimes for the first time,

00:20:00 Speaker_05
I see my role primarily as creating a safe container for two very different experiences that are coexisting. But also, it's about providing structure, calmness, and reassurance. You are flooded, overwhelmed, confused.

00:20:25 Speaker_05
There is no decision to be made in the moment. And that's okay, because she's often surrounded by people who instantly say, what are you going to do? And that is not always so helpful. We have to take a brief break. Stay with us.

00:20:59 Speaker_05
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00:24:34 Speaker_05
When you hear what she just said, what happens to you? How does it land on you?

00:24:40 Speaker_07
Um, I just, I try to listen. It makes me feel terrible as a person and as a partner. Like, it makes me feel terrible. I know that I'm better than that as a person. It sucks. It makes me feel like a loser that I can make her feel like that.

00:24:56 Speaker_07
That would make anybody feel like that. It makes me sad. I think sometimes it makes me a little nervous, but I think sometimes the nervousness is trying to figure out where it comes from, where it stems from.

00:25:09 Speaker_07
Because most of the time you're just like, yeah, whatever. It's just like, you're just living life. It's not really affecting anybody.

00:25:14 Speaker_05
No, it's affecting quite a few people. You open their hearts.

00:25:20 Speaker_07
Yeah, but before that, like, you're just out, you're just living.

00:25:25 Speaker_05
What do you understand about the nature of your relationships with the women? I mean, what happens to you? Here you are asking me this very poignant question.

00:25:39 Speaker_05
What of my family is lingering with me, basically influencing how I respond to the barrenness that I felt emotionally in my family? We were a practical family in which there was very little room for emotion.

00:26:06 Speaker_05
I learned to shut it all down, but that doesn't mean it disappears. It goes underground. I'm listening to this. It is an interesting moment. He began to articulate his remorse and his guilt. And I begin to notice his squirm, his sadness, his overwhelm.

00:26:31 Speaker_05
And normally, I would continue. It's okay. That's what happens when you begin to really take in the magnitude of your actions. But with him, I went to a safer place. I basically went back to his original question.

00:26:49 Speaker_05
What about my family history is setting me up for the kind of behaviors that I have today and that I can't make sense of?

00:27:03 Speaker_07
I mean, that's, I think it was, we moved when I was 14. And like, we just moved and, well, me and my mother moved, but it would just happen. And it wasn't like, this is an explanation.

00:27:18 Speaker_07
So at that point I was like, oh, I guess nobody cares what I'm going to think about this.

00:27:22 Speaker_05
They divorced? They separated?

00:27:24 Speaker_07
They separated for, we moved for six months. And then we moved back, like, oh, we're moving back. So I'm like, all right, I guess we're moving back. Nobody asked me anything.

00:27:33 Speaker_05
Meaning that your world was being toppled upside down and you had no idea what was happening.

00:27:40 Speaker_07
I didn't know what was happening, but we moved and I went to school the next day. That's all I knew what to do. Probably since then, I was like, nobody's going to ask my opinion on anything or nobody's going to be concerned.

00:27:54 Speaker_07
I'm just going to figure it out. But no one ever asked, how was your day? This is strange. It was awful, but I would just, I guess this is what life is. So I kind of spent like a solo warrior for forever.

00:28:20 Speaker_05
I listen to you talk about this emotional desert. I hear you talk about the solo warrior and how nobody asked me how was my day or nobody said a word when they uprooted me and threw me in a whole new reality and it's as if one didn't exist.

00:28:42 Speaker_05
But then you have established these relationships with women who I'm sure ask you your day and how things are. And you almost keep it on the side, secret, cherished, like a treasure chest of your own so that nobody can touch it.

00:29:05 Speaker_05
Of course you leave a group of women totally distraught and broken afterwards, but in the experience it's as if you went and hidden in the back room of your life you went to create

00:29:22 Speaker_05
Love the tenderness the openness That you've been craving for your whole life. There is such a big need it's so much more than what one person could potentially even give you that You created this amazing Stage of love Tell me how that reaches you um

00:29:51 Speaker_07
I think the words make sense. I can draw a picture of it in my head.

00:29:56 Speaker_05
Okay, tell me what you see. And this will help her too. Because it will help her make sense of this.

00:30:05 Speaker_05
That this is not just about being a con artist and a psychopath, but that actually this little boy went and created in his backyard these little universes.

00:30:19 Speaker_07
I suppose you ought to hang out.

00:30:21 Speaker_05
Tell me first what you saw.

00:30:24 Speaker_07
That's what I saw. A person hanging out with nothing around. And then finding one thing that I could fit into my hand. I could put this in my pocket and go with this. Nobody sees it. It's just there.

00:30:38 Speaker_07
So it's kind of like happiness and joy and things that I don't show.

00:30:47 Speaker_05
It's lonely in there.

00:30:52 Speaker_07
You get used to it.

00:30:55 Speaker_05
I know you did, but let it come right now.

00:30:58 Speaker_07
It's lonely, but... But I think life is... No, don't talk yet.

00:31:06 Speaker_05
...kind of lonely. It was very lonely. It was beyond lonely.

00:31:11 Speaker_07
In a lot of ways, yes. Because... We always had people all around.

00:31:20 Speaker_05
Yes, but people who don't see you.

00:31:24 Speaker_07
Sometimes loneliness... I would stay in my apartment for Christmas, just me by myself. This is normal.

00:31:30 Speaker_05
No, it's not normal.

00:31:32 Speaker_07
Well, it felt normal.

00:31:33 Speaker_05
I know it felt normal. It's not normal, and it's not normal to feel so lonely with people who are right next to you, in the midst of them.

00:31:46 Speaker_05
When I listen to this piece in the session, I can hear some people say to me, but you are feeling bad for the bad guy. And where are her feelings? And when is he going to take responsibility for what he did to her?

00:32:05 Speaker_05
And here's what was going on in my head. I need to see if he can experience some compassion for the child that he was and for the feelings that he had so that he can respond today for her feelings and for what she's going through.

00:32:28 Speaker_05
Otherwise, he can't express the remorse without instantly feeling such guilt and being such a loser and feeling so bad about himself that he can't feel bad for what he did to her. I want you to go back to that image.

00:32:51 Speaker_05
I carry my secret friends in my pocket. You know, this is what kids do. Your five and a half year old may have an imaginary friend too. And you went and you created imaginary friends. Of course, they're real.

00:33:09 Speaker_05
And they give you a smile on your face that nobody even knows where the smile comes from. You know, affairs have meanings. They exist for a reason. These kind of affairs, right? Of women who come to tell you, we had a whole relationship.

00:33:29 Speaker_05
He promised things. I didn't know you existed. And you became a secret friend too. If everybody's secret, I can't lose it. Nobody can take it away from me. This is more trauma than calm.

00:33:56 Speaker_09
Yeah. I feel like the both times, like the first question I asked him last year was like, did you love this person? He's like, no, of course not. Are you crazy? Like a friend. I was not like at all. Like I am with you. It wasn't holding hands. It wasn't.

00:34:15 Speaker_09
Okay.

00:34:16 Speaker_05
He may not, but he certainly enjoyed them loving him.

00:34:21 Speaker_09
Oh, absolutely. I feel like that's kind of what I thought.

00:34:23 Speaker_05
I mean, enjoyed is a trite word. He nourished himself on them loving him.

00:34:28 Speaker_09
Clearly. And that's also what feels so crazy now finding out about this number two. It's like the same kind of person. It almost feels like the same, the exact same.

00:34:37 Speaker_05
But they have to be mothers. They have children. Yes. Both of them are single mothers. Yes. The point is that you're not a mother. You're the partner. Which is good. But there is the search for the mother, for a certain kind of motherly love.

00:34:59 Speaker_05
He doesn't need to love them. He needs them to love him. Why do you have to have sex with them?

00:35:05 Speaker_09
Like that is part of also what's so baffling is like, we had sex like every day. So like, you still wanted more? Like you had to go get more sex? Like what? Like you had sex with someone else? while we were having sex, like, regularly.

00:35:23 Speaker_09
Because you think that I was doing that every day.

00:35:24 Speaker_08
It doesn't matter.

00:35:25 Speaker_09
You did it at all. But the point is, this isn't the story of two people that hadn't been connected or hadn't felt, like, attracted to each other. That's not our story.

00:35:34 Speaker_09
That makes me feel insecure and grossed out and... You need to give her a little bit more meat on the bone.

00:35:42 Speaker_05
You can't just say, I don't need a reason and then leave it at that. Because your partner is bereft, broken inside.

00:35:53 Speaker_07
I just say, she goes, you had to have that much sex. I'm like, no.

00:36:01 Speaker_05
No, but it's not the quantity or the frequency that matters.

00:36:04 Speaker_07
No, she said, why do you have sex? I'm not going to say that I don't enjoy having sex. That would be a lie.

00:36:12 Speaker_05
No, but the question is what was the nature of your relationships with these women? If we don't know what it means for you, she can't make sense of this. Making sense is just the beginning.

00:36:27 Speaker_05
It's just some basic understanding so that she doesn't go crazy. And what does it did to her is Did you think of her when you were leaving the house? What were you thinking when you would come back into the house?

00:36:44 Speaker_07
Oh, I felt awful. I felt awful every day.

00:36:46 Speaker_05
See, all of that she needs to know. Because when you are with other people... One of the main first things anyone would be thinking is, did you think of me? Did I still exist in your universe? Or did I vanish in one of your pockets?

00:37:07 Speaker_07
No, I felt like a horrible person.

00:37:09 Speaker_05
Tell her more. I tell you there's not enough.

00:37:12 Speaker_07
I woke up, I felt awful every day. In general, I felt like a bad person, but that made me feel worse because I'm not unhappy. I love our relationship, and I love our family, and that made me feel even worse.

00:37:32 Speaker_07
Because it was like, it was making the situation worse.

00:37:37 Speaker_09
You're still not explaining, like, why sex? Like, why are you going and having sex? Or why'd you have to fuck them? Like, you were friends. Why did you... Why?

00:37:45 Speaker_07
It wasn't, like, on the checklist of, like... No, but, like, what makes, like, what... How do you, like... Probably out having drinks. We're not having a conversation of like, hey, at this time.

00:37:56 Speaker_05
No, that's not what I mean. What do you know about how you needed to create another secret friend?

00:38:08 Speaker_07
What do I know about it?

00:38:09 Speaker_05
Yeah. Because you lose one secret friend. And on the heels of that, you go and you create another. The sex is what makes it secretive.

00:38:23 Speaker_05
The sex is connecting, the sex is intimacy, the sex is tenderness, the sex is a lot of things that men need to call sex because they can't call it other things.

00:38:36 Speaker_05
So at the moment that you lose that friend in your pocket, as you said, you basically took another friend and put her in the category emotional nurturer, Mom.

00:38:53 Speaker_07
I don't know if I was the nurturer, I don't know.

00:38:57 Speaker_09
I got to read every card.

00:38:59 Speaker_05
And is it dead or am I off?

00:39:02 Speaker_09
It was definitely like, there was a sweetness, like, thanks for being a good friend. Like, it wasn't the things he was saying to me. I saw her drop her stuff off. My phone went off, that someone was at our door.

00:39:13 Speaker_09
I'm at work and I pull up the phone and I'm just shaking. I can see her car pull into my driveway and I see her start unloading her car. And I'm watching her from the doorbell. getting obviously furious.

00:39:26 Speaker_09
And she must have printed off every picture she probably had and printed off every card. And part of why she's making an argument, why she's, you know, she knows she meant so much to him is, look, I'll show you all the cards.

00:39:39 Speaker_09
So I was like, oh my gosh, it's gonna be the same thing. If it's the same kind of stuff he says to me, I'm gonna like, really, I can't take it. Like if it's like, I love you, and it wasn't that.

00:39:47 Speaker_09
It was definitely more of a friend, it was like, you mean, your friendship means so much to me. Thanks for being there for me. It was a lot of that. Very sweet things he said. It wasn't the same things, but I was still just like, why?

00:40:03 Speaker_09
The Mother's Day card, the Valentine's Day card. But yeah, I think that was, she obviously wanted me to see all the evidence that this was obviously like a good friend. This was an emotional thing.

00:40:13 Speaker_09
And when she called me, she was like, oh, you know, I've seen him cry a bunch of times. Like, okay, thank you for telling me, but whatever.

00:40:24 Speaker_05
She wants to know what is so special about these women and what does it say about her. And I said to her earlier, it's not about you.

00:40:34 Speaker_05
I mean, when I imagine the scene of the women bringing those boxes with the pictures and the Mother's Day cards that he wrote to them, this is a stage. He creates this whole theater where these mothers can talk about how special

00:40:52 Speaker_05
this boy now man is, and come to show evidence of the uniqueness of their relationship, evidence of how important he is, anything but the invisibility that he felt at home. They are exposing him. They are making it public.

00:41:12 Speaker_05
They are strewing it all over her driveway for her to see, not how important they were, which is a piece of it too, but also how important he was. And I start to think that that is part of why they are mothers.

00:41:32 Speaker_05
What he's doing there is very much a quest and a longing that he felt as a boy.

00:41:39 Speaker_05
And the sex becomes the language through which he can make this into an adult experience, because no one wants to experience the regression of feeling like that nine-year-old or that 14-year-old kid.

00:41:58 Speaker_05
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00:44:03 Speaker_05
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00:45:13 Speaker_05
We fuss over every single detail of the show. We sort through thousands of applicants each year to pick the stories that we share with you. And the conversations that I have with couples start off as

00:45:29 Speaker_05
three-hour sessions and then we thoughtfully edit them to one hour and then go back and listen to then add the notes and sometimes even a critique of the session.

00:45:42 Speaker_05
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00:45:56 Speaker_05
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00:46:15 Speaker_05
It's an expensive and quite time-consuming effort to create Where Should We Begin, and which we gladly undertake because you tell us time and again how valuable these conversations are to you, how they accompany you in critical moments of your life, how you see yourselves even in stories that have nothing to do with yours, and how it has helped you.

00:46:40 Speaker_05
And that is probably the most affirming thing people can come and tell me. So now we need to ask you for more, and for your help. And you can do your part not only by listening, but by joining my office hours subscription on Apple Podcasts.

00:46:57 Speaker_05
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00:47:02 Speaker_05
and all the Esther callings, and more importantly, a way to continue the conversations with me on all the topics that come up in these sessions, from sexlessness, to work conflicts, to infidelity, to secrets, to betrayals, all sorts of relational betrayals.

00:47:22 Speaker_05
to ending relationships. And we offer follow-ups with the couples because people always ask me, you know, do you see them again? Do you hear from them? Do you know where this session landed?

00:47:35 Speaker_05
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00:47:50 Speaker_05
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00:48:02 Speaker_05
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00:48:15 Speaker_09
And his mother had a stroke eight years ago and he was living with her, taking care of her. He did not leave, like even once we got pregnant with our son, I was living by myself with our son.

00:48:28 Speaker_09
It was so not what I wanted, but he would not leave his mother's house. He wouldn't move in with us fully until she was moved out. Once she moved, he moved in fully with us. His dad also died five months after our son was born.

00:48:42 Speaker_09
It was like a lot, what stuff he's gone through. I mean, he was caring for his mother, like bathing his mother, like intense stuff. So I was like, okay.

00:48:51 Speaker_05
Did mom finally recognize you? Did her heart ever open up or did you do all of that?

00:48:58 Speaker_07
No, I just did it.

00:48:59 Speaker_05
I know you did it, but you don't just did it. You did it. It's amazing, right?

00:49:04 Speaker_07
She thanked me a couple of times.

00:49:08 Speaker_05
Listen, I'm going to say something that you, of course, know as well. Some of the most deprived children are the most devoted. They got the least and they give the most. And they try to tell you, I just did the right thing.

00:49:29 Speaker_05
But no, that's not what it is about. And that's part of why she comes back. Because in the midst of you're doing this very hurtful behavior, she knows there is a golden heart. And she's shaking her head, so I'm getting my cues.

00:49:54 Speaker_09
Yeah, no, I know, but it's like, there's no time I want to go back to, because it always felt like this was too hard. That's why I was like, I think I can't do this anymore.

00:50:02 Speaker_05
But right now, if I understood what you said, a voice inside of you says, you should get out. But another voice inside of you says, I don't want to do that. Because we actually have an unusual maybe, but a very deep, strong connection, a family.

00:50:27 Speaker_05
And I feel loved by him. And there's another voice that says, if you stay, you're weak. If you stay, you're naive. If you stay, you will humiliate yourself. And then there's another one that says, I don't care. Maybe there is strength in staying.

00:50:43 Speaker_05
Maybe there is growth in staying. It goes back and forth like this. You can take her more than the hand if you want. You can come closer. That's right. Because you see, you're doing the hurtful behavior and she walks around with her own shame.

00:51:13 Speaker_05
How can I let this happen? How did I not see this? And what if it happens again? And what's wrong with me that I love this person? Is he really as good as I think he is or am I completely wrong, completely mistaken?

00:51:27 Speaker_05
And I'm with a compulsive liar and I think he's the kindest person. It's a mindfuck. It's a heartbreak and a mindfuck. You want to add?

00:51:42 Speaker_09
I also feel like, I feel like we owe our sons, like, we have these two brown boys. They're like the world to me and us. Like, I just, it breaks my heart to think, like, did I just create the situation for these kids that didn't, have a choice.

00:52:02 Speaker_09
Like I want them to have to see a good example, like love and unconditional love. And he does not, you can see that he's not where he doesn't get it. Like I get, I could say, see, it's just not where he comes from. I get transactional.

00:52:17 Speaker_09
Like there's a lot of, I feel like, and he's tough and just can be short tempered. Also can be very loving with them, like very loving and very tender and very sweet.

00:52:33 Speaker_05
And the older... And where does he get that?

00:52:36 Speaker_09
Where does he get that? Mm-hmm. I don't know. I'm sweet. I know you can be. I know you are. That's why, like, I'm here. I'm not gonna, like... I'm not a total masochist.

00:52:51 Speaker_05
There is the little boy that you probably were that was very sweet and sensitive and in need of mom and dad. And then there is the boy that you became because that's how he adapted to his circumstances.

00:53:12 Speaker_05
And you've learned to live life from the place of the kid that adapted. But you've yearned in all kinds of ways to have a space to be that other person.

00:53:25 Speaker_04
I need a hobby.

00:53:31 Speaker_09
No, I know, like I can sense that he wants to be like, he is an emotional person. Like you just, and we want to connect more. You are an emotional person and I'm,

00:53:39 Speaker_09
I am not, by no means am I trying, you know, I, I, communications, like, it's not easy for me either, and I want, I really wanted to work on that, like, with you, and I thought that's what we were doing last year, and it just, like, did not.

00:53:54 Speaker_09
We weren't. It didn't happen.

00:53:57 Speaker_05
And it's clear that the relationship needs to change. And that fundamentally, nobody here really wants to go anywhere. Neither you.

00:54:10 Speaker_05
But you need to find another way to bring the kindness and the tenderness and the motherliness in your life in a way that doesn't hurt and destroy your relationship and your family.

00:54:27 Speaker_05
To go and find what you didn't get in your family and then destroy your current family would be an irony.

00:54:38 Speaker_09
It's still like, it's still scary to me. It's like, then what? Okay, then what? Then if that's your coping skill is have sex with a homely looking middle-aged woman, single mom.

00:54:47 Speaker_07
I wasn't doing things to take care of my own self.

00:54:50 Speaker_09
So that's another thing that we've been talking about a lot. Ever since his dad died, you could see him not taking care of himself. And that was always very, like, concerning to me. You'd stop exercising, you started drinking more, like,

00:55:03 Speaker_09
you were gaining weight, like you were just not in a good place. And I would, oh, do you want to go do this? It was always no, no, no, no, no.

00:55:10 Speaker_05
Do you ever wonder if there's been a lingering depression?

00:55:19 Speaker_07
Um, I know it's not something I'm over.

00:55:21 Speaker_05
Right. And you don't call it depression because you put yourself in shutdown mode. And if you don't feel anything, then you don't feel that you're depressed either. It's just that you're shut down. And you say no to life and to the world.

00:55:36 Speaker_07
Well, yeah, a lot of it was, I got a lot of anger about it.

00:55:40 Speaker_05
About what?

00:55:41 Speaker_07
My dad dying.

00:55:42 Speaker_04
Right. Tell me more.

00:55:43 Speaker_07
Oh.

00:55:49 Speaker_09
You are wonderful. No, no.

00:55:54 Speaker_05
He usually finds it easier to be angry than sad. So let him be sad.

00:56:01 Speaker_07
I think I was so angry because I felt so alone. And it was fast. It was like extremely fast. I had to do everything myself. And I don't know how to get over that. Because I'm really angry about it. And I don't know how to change it to something else.

00:56:40 Speaker_05
I have to do everything myself with my dad. Meaning?

00:56:47 Speaker_07
Everything. But then, you know, then once he passed away, we had the memorial service and everybody was gone. So everything else was the house and selling and fixing and paying for everything.

00:57:05 Speaker_07
That was a year and a half of my life that I feel like just angry about it. And I want everybody else to be angry now. It just made me angry. It makes me angry. It still makes me angry. Because since then, no one's talked about it.

00:57:25 Speaker_07
No one's asked me one thing about it. And that was in 2019. Am I hearing you?

00:57:38 Speaker_05
I'm angry that I needed to take care of everything, that nobody asks me ever how I am, that nobody asks me if I need anything, that I don't even know how to tell them if I was to need anything, that I am there taking care of people who I have so many feelings about how they didn't take care of me.

00:58:00 Speaker_05
It's unfair. It's lonely. It's burdensome. And you get angry in part because nobody has to ask you, you show up. You feel good about that. But underneath is the other side, which is that you don't know how to ask for anything.

00:58:26 Speaker_05
And at one point, it overflows.

00:58:33 Speaker_07
Yeah, it gets overwhelming.

00:58:34 Speaker_05
I'm there for everyone. And who's there for me? Nobody has to ask me to be there for others. And nobody offers to be there for me. And when they do, I don't know what to do with it. I reject it. Neither can I receive and neither can I ask.

00:58:51 Speaker_05
That's a core issue.

00:58:53 Speaker_09
And I think it's like also, of course, you were amazing to both your parents and you were there for them, like no questions asked. Also, when our oldest was an infant, when his dad got sick and I asked, do you want your dad to meet him? He said, no.

00:59:09 Speaker_09
His parents never met our children and his mother only met our children the day I got that call last year. She didn't know they existed either. Your children?

00:59:21 Speaker_05
This is layers of layers of secrets.

00:59:23 Speaker_09
Yeah, so the parents didn't know either.

00:59:26 Speaker_05
Because you didn't want to give them any pleasure? They didn't deserve it?

00:59:31 Speaker_07
I didn't think so. I didn't think that they deserved it. Right, you were angry at them, so you were not gonna... It wasn't gonna be like how her family is. My family was the same way. We didn't go around my dad's family. They were crazy. They were crazy.

00:59:48 Speaker_07
And we were all my mom's family.

00:59:52 Speaker_05
But you're angry at your parents. And at the same time, you have acted out of enormous devotion and obligation. And one thing I do know about affairs is that they are completely free choice. If there's one thing an affair never is, it's an obligation.

01:00:15 Speaker_05
It's a very selfish act. It's for you. And many affairs take place on the heels of illness and death. They live in the shadow of that. It's as if you have zero control over illness and death.

01:00:33 Speaker_05
Then an affair becomes this very chosen, free choice, life affirming experience. hurtful to the one next to you. And if you want this not to happen again, the anger piece is at the core.

01:00:58 Speaker_07
Yeah. I don't know how to get over it.

01:01:03 Speaker_05
It's not like whisk it away. One doesn't just get over and let go. You have good reasons to be angry, first of all.

01:01:13 Speaker_05
So the first piece is to acknowledge it, to not try to push it out of the system, to give it the room that it's been asking, but to understand what it represents. especially because you choose mothers.

01:01:29 Speaker_05
And the mother piece is as important as the woman piece. So you want to ask, so then why do they have sex? Because the sex is what distinguishes the boy from the man. That's just one thought. There's loads of reasons why these two people had sex.

01:01:49 Speaker_05
But in the story, you don't just want to be a little boy going to look for mommy. So in the erotic version of this plot, sex becomes the thing that turns it into an adult story. And then he can continue to say, I never need anything from anyone.

01:02:12 Speaker_05
Which is obviously not true. They both are asking questions about the role of sex in his affairs. Not if there is sex, not how much, how often, but why. What does it say about her? What does it say about him?

01:02:35 Speaker_05
And when I describe to him the notion that it allows him to be a man and not a boy, I also think that for many people in these situations, sex allows you to have needs without being needy.

01:02:53 Speaker_05
But those needs are expressed as wants, as preferences, they are eroticized and they become a kind of a concealed language. because our sexual preferences often are a coded language for our deepest emotional needs.

01:03:19 Speaker_03
If you want to know where their session goes from here, we followed up with them a few months after. You can look for it later this week on Astaire's Office Hours on Apple subscriptions.

01:03:32 Speaker_03
Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut.

01:03:41 Speaker_03
Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julian Atten. original music, and additional production by Paul Schneider.

01:03:53 Speaker_03
And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul.

01:04:09 Speaker_01
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