Before We Got Together I Identified As Gay

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. For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed. But their voices and their stories are real. Fall is here, and that means the Pumpkin Spice Latte is back at Starbucks. It's the one we've been waiting for. So whether you're a fan of the original Pumpkin Spice Latte or ready to mix it up with an iced pumpkin cream chai, the new iced pumpkin cream matcha, or the new iced pumpkin cream shaken espresso, you can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks. Your favorite fall flavors are back at Starbucks. The one and only Pumpkin Spice Latte and the deliciously smooth Iced Pecan Crunch Latte. They have arrived and are ready to sip all season long. Or find a new favorite, like the new Iced Banana Bread Latte that tastes just like fall in a cup. You can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks. They're a young couple in terms of their experience together. And they're a young couple in terms of where they each are at in their lives. Their studies. Defining themselves. Finding their path. And dealing with the legacies of their family that is still so present for them. Individually and also as a couple. So they're defining themselves and they're defining their relationship. I think one of the unique facets of our relationship is us working through what it means to be queer and to be straight. Until we got together, I identified as gay. It's been really difficult for me and my identity to figure out what this means for me personally. They seek clarity with each other. But they don't always have the clarity with themselves. I've floated the idea of some sort of non-monogamy. And he's really, really not down for that. I come to a stopping point in conversations about polyamory. Because it feels uncomfortable to me. I want to feel more comfortable committing and being able to freely be myself. And I just feel confused about the whole thing. So much of what we're going to do is define the terms, but also step outside of the terms that have become too stale and too hermetic. And open up conversations. As is often important to do in a relationship, and especially a relationship in transition. They are at the verge of moving into a new phase. Having moved in together, potentially moving and living close to his family. And so the compromises of the present will have implications for the future. And all of that is coming to a head right now in this session. So what are the pronouns we use? I'll use "be-them" and I use "he-him". Okay, just tell me a little bit the story of your relationship. So we met when we were both working at the same preschool. I was working at the desk and doing after school stuff. And he was a teacher in the room right next to the desk. I was extremely hung over every single day. I was in the bottom of my addiction. And at the school, he was the golden child teacher. Everyone defers to him. What do we do? We're having a hard situation in this. Oh, let's bring this kid to this one, to this guy. It's true. It's true, right? Sometimes they would-- Sometimes. That's a lot of credit, but thank you. And then-- You undersell yourself. Yeah, and then there was an end of the year staff party. But so do you. I don't have things that I can-- he's like this totally golden person. And I've got this rap sheet of, this is when I was hospitalized the first time. This is when my parents, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and-- But you have a story between the two of you, right? I asked you about the relationship story. And basically, you started by with this theme of, he's the golden child, and I am the troubled one. Yeah. And that was-- and for so long, this seemed to have been the primary features of my self-presentation. And the way that I defined myself and still defined myself. At that time. It's just through that lens of-- Which was? Of-- What was the definition? It was just the routine of how much I drank, how horrible I would feel, and then shaming myself for continuing that cycle, not knowing how to get out of it, so continuing it. I didn't have a lot of a social life. Starting at what age? I started drugs when I was-- when I was 13, and then when I was in high school, just like, it got really intense. And then in college, I-- ironically, I didn't have as much access to drugs in college as I did in high school, so I relied a lot more on drinking. And then I just couldn't get out of it. And I would do these things with myself where I would say, if I can go this long without drinking, or if I can go this many nights drinking only this amount, then I've succeeded. And like, I don't have a problem with it. And then if I could do that, which I rarely could, I would congratulate myself by letting myself just go-- just no limits at all, and then perpetuate the cycle. Alcoholism and addiction run in my family on both sides. Who worried about you? Who watched over you? I mean, I did. Like, I had to-- I was the one who decided I needed to go to rehab, because he was either that or I was going to die. And I felt like I was dying every day, and I felt resigned to that fact. My brother was drinking a lot, my stepmom was drinking a lot, and those were the people in my life. My dad died when I was-- I had been in college for a week, and I-- and he died, and he was the most stable, parental figure. And then my mom has always been very, like, unpredictable. Is that-- did you just search for a nice word? Yeah, maybe. I don't want to be hyperbolic, but I also-- I think that she has traits of, like, a narcissistic personality disorder, and along with-- like, substance abuse herself. So she would pass out every night on the couch, and that was just part of us growing up. My parents were divorced. And she would kind of lure us into spending time with her by giving us alcohol, too. Yeah, so after my dad died, that was, like, the anchor person was gone. So I had to, like, watch out for myself, but I didn't know how. OK. I didn't know how to do that, and I was not very good at it until I made myself ask for help. The act itself of knowing I need help and I need other help than what is available around me here is a real sign of strength. I hope you've been told that. Yeah, I've had to work hard on becoming proud of myself. When I say it's not so simple, that if you were able to find treatment, if you were able to seek out help, that, too, is a strength. I hear that they didn't really absorb it. There is something about them after years of being in treatments. And indeed-- There is something about them after years of being in detox centers and in rehabs that has strengthened their identity as a patient. And part of what I'm trying to do is help them see that they're not just a patient. They're also a person with lots of resources. It is a more hopeful and more generative view of themselves. And I wish I had been able to do a little more of that. And I had been able to really show my empathy and my compassion but also my challenge for the acceptance of the perennial role as the patient. And when I listened to my conversation with them, I felt that I had missed that. How many years are you together? Two and a half. And may I ask how old you are? I'm 29. I'm 24. Alcoholism is just in your family or that's a thing you share? It's definitely a shared thing. I've had alcoholism on both sides of my family and my father is an alcoholic. He was a kind of a yelly person. Yelly? Yelly? That's such a nice euphemism. Say it as it is. There's a smoothie incident that stands out as kind of a good example where one of the morning rituals for a while in my household was my dad would make us smoothies. And at one point, as children do, a fight ensued with my brother and I about who would get the first smoothie or something. And my dad's response was to take the smoothie and throw it, which we kind of laughed at at the time. Laughter as a counter to fear? Yeah, no. And I think a lot of the way that we dealt with things was either the approach of like leaving the house and sneaking beneath the windows so that he couldn't see that we were going somewhere. Just this fear response and like treading very carefully and giving a wide berth so that nothing blew the dynamite. And then mom packed up the kids and just? I mean, first, my mom was very upfront with my dad and had sat down and had a conversation of this is what I'm seeing. Like, I'm noticing this tendency to get aggressive, to get manic, to get really loud and unforgiving of your children. That conversation was met with a lot of like pushback and denial and no, that's not me. And so we after that, we began to feel more afraid. And so we left while he was on a work trip. So, yeah, my relationship with alcoholism is mostly adult children of alcoholics. And they have a bucket list of things that a child or an adult child of an alcoholic might be characterized by. And I was going down that list and like, oh, wow, this is me. Give me a shoe? I feel the need to be careful with my performance and hold things together and be kind of the both the curator of things and also like the manager in a way. Because? In part, I'm an older sibling. And for me, that meant like I need to model for my siblings how to deal with some of the hard things that we're seeing as children. And I think that's what I was trying to do. and it's weird, and I didn't think it was going to go anywhere. I thought I was going to go on a date with a nice guy because you're nice, and I like you. And you like sushi. And I liked you, but I was like, I don't know in what way I like you, and I didn't know in what way you liked me, and I was gay. Present. I mean, yeah, like I still, I don't know. Was? I don't know. Like I still, it feels disingenuous to call myself gay when I'm with a cis guy, cis straight guy, and I feel really connected to that community still, and all my friends are gay, and like I do not want to end our relationship, and I don't want to move away from our relationship, and I fear that I won't be able to connect with that side of my life anymore or again. So we've talked about are there ways in which we can structure our relationship differently. This is also the most monogamous relationship I've been in. And so we've talked about non-monogamy. That's just been sort of a recurring conversation that comes up every few months, and we have a lot of emotions about it, and then we put it down. Both carry a lot of trauma. The early years around neglect and unpredictability and the sense of aloneness that they each felt and the lack of structure in their life. One of the ways to look at the complementarity is that through them, he can loosen the grip a little bit. This grip that became his survival strategy, but that he has longed to be able to loosen a little. And through him, they can become more anchored, more grounded without having to live in an unravelled situation of addiction and excess that constantly tries to rein itself in, but doesn't know how. And in that sense, they can give each other so much to help each of them transcend the legacies of their family. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Quince. Hate to break it to you, but now that it's August, that means summer is almost over. 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So whether you're a fan of the original Pumpkin Spice Latte or ready to mix it up with an iced pumpkin cream chai, the new Iced Pumpkin Cream Matcha or the new Iced Pumpkin Cream Shaken Espresso, you can find your favourite taste of fall only at Starbucks. The emotions are? For me, a lot of it, it comes from a time when I'm feeling particularly trapped, I think. And it doesn't have to be trapped in the relationship, although it does mean that, but it means trapped in other ways in my life, too. Like I'm feeling particularly isolated or depressed or haven't seen my friends in a long time, don't feel like I have community, don't feel understood, or whatever it may be, but I'm feeling disconnected. You're talking about the queer part. Yeah. You're mixing two things. Yes. Yeah. It's one thing to say, when I feel disconnected, lonely, cut off from my friends, trapped, depressed, I think non-monogamy. That's one conversation. It can be monogamous and exclusive, and it can be non. Yeah. The queer part can be poly and it can be mono. So these are two different things. And the one thing I notice is that when you start a conversation, you link it to everything. One conversation is about how do I integrate my queerness into this relationship? Does it have a place? What would it look like? The other conversation is, I notice that I bring up monogamy, polyamory, non-exclusivity, when I experience things that actually have nothing to do with the monogamy. But it becomes monogamous. Yeah. It becomes the, you know, this is the place where I suddenly can put all my trapped feelings. And that was a very insightful comment. It actually has not much to do with our relationship when I bring this in. That doesn't mean the conversation isn't in itself important as well. So part of what makes these conversations difficult between the two of you is that you don't stick to something. Well, we don't want to try anything. That too could be. But what I just heard here is, so much is put into one breath that you don't know what you're talking about in the end. So, we want to talk about monogamy, we want to talk about queer woman with cis straight guy. We want to talk about the fears of long-term relationships. We want to talk about what is the move that we want to make, you know, which piece. If we have all of them in one, we can't have any. What do you think? The conversation, for me, the conversation about polyamory is one that brings up at least three things. One is a reminder of how important your identity is to you as a person who is queer. And as a person, like, always growing in your understanding of relationships. That's one. On my emotionality side, it's extreme fear and reticence. And also, like, a similar catastrophic feeling of, like, not only, like, engaging in polyamory, or, like, initiating a polyamorous relationship, but also the conversation itself is rupturous. My mind always takes me to inadequacy. And, like, we can talk about. How those things are not connected. Like, my adequateness as a partner does not have to do with your queerness. That's the feeling. But, like, that's where my heart goes. And, like, it's really hard. And I know this. Yeah, we've talked about it a lot. And, like, it's more. It's not even a question of, like, how do we talk about polyamory? It's, like, how do we talk about talking about polyamory? And it's. I've also never. Seen a long-lived relationship with a polyamorous couple. I've never seen a model. And my models for it are also media. Like, House of Cards is one model. Like, it's a terrible model, but it's. Well, we know. I mean, I see what you're saying. But, like, there's other examples, but, like, not. I haven't seen it work. In your circle. In my circle. In your. Yeah. In your young circle. Yeah. In his young straight circle. I know so many people who it works for in my young queer community. I feel like with the straightness comes a lot of other stuff where it's, like, this is how things are. There's not as much questioning of how things are. And that's kind of how I've lived my entire life. People in straight relationships have a much longer historical legacy of how things should be. Yeah. And it's. Less creativity. More continuity, less creativity. And sexually, too. Like. Well, also less disclosure about how things work in a relationship. Like. Yeah. At least the way I've seen things play out forever. Like, there's plenty of monogamous relationships that really don't work. But, like. When I asked you what gets you worked up, you said there's something about the conversation itself. It gets me intensely worried. with them yeah it's it's adequacy it's feeling like if i am not the way society tells me to be is as a romantic partner you have to be this this this is this you have to as a romantic partner you have to be so multifaceted and if you if you aren't like lover counselor family pick your role um to your partner it you're not functioning right and when i think about polyamory it's as though if if we don't function right it's just going to disassemble if like somebody else comes into this like your interest in them is going to like pass your attention to them and then you're going to be like oh my god i'm not going to be able to do this right and then you're going to be like oh my god i'm not going to be able to do this right so charged and scary. Just to add other images, other associations, and try and emphasize. Can I suggest something? I don't know if the metaphor is going to work, but I want to try one. Because I'm a foreigner. I spend a lot of time with foreigners, immigrants of all sorts. We all have parts of us that our closest people sometimes have never known. And they all know that we have other parts to us. But we live with certain parts of us in that relationship. And we live with other parts of us with other relationships. You could call that polyamory, right? We bring those other parts with others who speak our languages. And we go back. We travel. We go home. And sometimes we travel alone so that we don't have to live in translation. But you can be in the relationship with certain parts of you. And know that. That doesn't mean that it's a truncated self. It's a flexible self. It's a self that made choices about certain parts of itself. And was willing to live with the loss, to live with the compromise, to live with the longing, and so on. And somebody else would say, "One should never do that." But many people do make commitments with people outside of their culture, nationality, language, continent. Does that metaphor add something? - Yeah, it does. - I feel like that explains how I feel. It's always hard to verbalize it 'cause it centers it around like, "In our relationship, blah, blah." But it's really in other relationships, I can flesh that part of myself out. I can breathe that part. - And do you maintain a connection to that community? - All of my friends are part of that community. - Okay. And do the two of you spend time in that world too? - We don't overlap friends, like at all. - In general? - Yeah. Not as a rule. It just hasn't happened. - Right, so that may be something that needs to change. If you want to be with him and you want to maintain a connection to that world, he needs to visit that world with you. Visit is a nice word. He needs to spend time there, live there, speak that language, look at the norms, be at ease, you know, and be the foreigner on occasion. If a foreigner is the right image for you, you know. - It's just, yeah, I don't know. The people that, like, the people that I know who have examples of really successful, like polyamorous relationships, I don't know are people that you'd be friends with. On your own. - I mean, we have. - No, but on his own is not the criteria. Criteria is not that those are people you would have met by yourself. Those are people you each bring to each other. And if that component is missing, that's a piece that can be developed because that will become a step in between. That's a bridge. Part of why you can't imagine what that life would look like is because it's based on a very tiny sample, some of which is not even. - Yeah. - Not even real people. - Yeah. - You have to visit. And it's one thing to know and to say, I know there's a whole lot of person here, but I don't, but you don't live with it. It's like when you go with your partner and the partner is actually speaking another language with a bunch of their locals. And for once, you're the foreigner. And that's a dance that foreigners, mixed couples, US, non-US, to be able to localize it here, experience daily. So it's an active part. Even though that person isn't living in that country, that person brings parts of that country into the relationship. That country, that religion, that culture, that. - Yeah, it's super helpful for me. And that is a part that you need to bring in in a more active way. So that it doesn't become, I'm with you and I lose it, or I go to that and I lose you. Anything that becomes this kind of either/or where both options feel intolerable will make you not have the conversation. - Seems like that's a theme of black and white thinking. - Yeah. - I can't even think about the conversation itself because all I'm thinking is, you know, my inadequacy. There's no place to move in that. You will choke. You will cry. You will both look at each other. It will feel impossible. You will feel like you don't want the relationship to end. And then you will bury the conversation. And then you will be, what I like to call, bliss but stuck. Everything is fine, everything is fine, but we avoid this big issue. We avoid this big issue. And then when we talk about the big issue, or when we even think about having to talk about the big issue, we both become so completely panicked at the thought of what this may mean to the dissolution of our relationship, which we don't want, so we don't talk about it. Then we get down, then we forget about it, and then we go back and we are in bliss but stuck. - Yeah. - Meanwhile, life takes us forward and now we have moved on. And now we have moved in, and now we have a dog, and now we're thinking about moving closer to his family. And now I'm wondering, does that mean I'm gonna have to get married too? And then you start to feel like life is happening to you. - Yeah. - The purpose of today is to put these subjects on the table and to make them feel less tense, impossible, choking, to the point where they have to be constantly suppressed. - Yeah. - If we manage to give you a little more of that flexibility or to open this up, this is the open of today, is to open up the conversation. Not what you're gonna do with your whole life. We're not gonna do that in one session. - Yeah. - But if you can open the conversation so that you don't every time feel when it comes up that it feels so choking and scary, then you will have left with something important. The goal is not to create an analogy between immigration and polyamory. It is not my role to decide with them about monogamy or polyamory at this moment in their relationship. My goal is to open up the conversation, no matter which way they go, before they can talk about opening up the relationship. And I think that's important. Because if they don't want to open up the relationship, if that's what they ever choose to do, they both need to feel that they can open up the conversation. So, how does all of this fit with sex? - It was an adjustment for me. - To have sober sex or to have sex with a cisgender straight guy? - Both. Both. - And having it be sober sex made it a lot better and a lot easier for me to feel connected, physically connected, like in my body. That's not something that I was used to. And it was just really hard. It was hard to shift in that way. And there were things that I wanted to try or wanted to do that he wasn't comfortable with, isn't comfortable with. And that's okay. I'm not gonna make you try things. But that's another aspect of like, I guess I'm a person who wants to like try everything once. And we get into this thing of, how do you know that you don't like this thing? Or how do you know that you wouldn't like it if you tried it? And he's like, I don't need to know. And that doesn't compete with me. I'm like, I need to know. I need to know if I like it or not. I need to know by trying it and doing it and getting all of these experiences so I can have like an index. - I like to try in order to know. - Yeah. - I need to know before I try. - Yeah, I agree. trying and not trying is not necessary. It's not necessarily queer straight related. It can be, but it exists among two people, period. - Yeah, I don't think that it's inherently queer. And I do think that for me, it's part of my fairness is that sort of experimenting with relationships and experimenting with sex and like different ways of living and different ways of being with another person or other people. - So queerness became a part of you in a space where playfulness exploration was much more prevalent than in the straight part of the world. - Yeah, and that's coming from an outside view because I didn't have a straight relationship. Like I never. - That's what you imagined the straight world to be. It does it the same way all the time. - Right. - Because that's how they, in this case, he has done it all the time. - Yeah. - But it's an interesting thing. You drive uncertainty and yet you find yourself this person and this person's wanting that they would be able to do it. - Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm. - Yeah. - And what you bring to your life is your ability to tolerate more uncertainty and not as a negative experience. - Yeah. - And exploration and curiosity and playfulness and mystery are all active engagements with the unknown. And the unknown in your life has been a source of great stress and anxiety and sadness. But there's a part of you somewhere that would like to explore this with positive anticipation. And that's where they come in. And if you say no in advance, 'cause why should I? 'Cause I already know, 'cause I don't want to, when you don't know. But that's the system that's been put in place to make sure that you could carry all this responsibility that was put on you from such an early age over all the people in your family. You couldn't explore much. - It's the positive anticipation thing that really struck a chord with me. 'Cause it's like, there's definitely anticipation, but it's hard for me to frame it as, yeah. - That's correct, that's correct. It's usually seen as, you know, and this is where they come in. This is one of the gifts they will give in your life. Sexually speaking as well. You can start with the sex because it's a playful, playful arena to be in the sandbox together. And we don't always know why we pick someone, but there's always a reason. And it's not always an obvious one. You know, they focus on their self-destructive side, but they could also focus on their more exploratory side. Talking about the self-destructive side is beginning to be old. It's also a part of you you know well, and have talked to every shrink about. - So I know how to talk about it. - Yes, but one feels that you've done that many times. One knows this is a rehearsed story. This doesn't mean it's not an important one, but it's a familiar one. - I know how to say it without feeling it. - Right, versus the exploratory one, the one that is more nimble, the one that can make you feel. - The one that can make you feel. - The one and only Pumpkin Spice Latte and the deliciously smooth Iced Pecan Crunch Latte have arrived and are ready to sip all season long. The one and only Pumpkin Spice Latte and the deliciously smooth Iced Pecan Crunch Latte have arrived and are ready to sip all season long. You can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks.