How Many Times Can I Forgive You?

None of the voices in this series are ongoing patience 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. You know that feeling when too many things fall through the cracks? Monday.com was built for that gap. The AI work platform where people and agents work side by side to deliver more together. Create your first Monday agent today at Monday.com. Your favorite fall flavors are back at Starbucks. 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. 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. Last May, I got a call from someone that told me her friend. It 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 it. To lie 24, they got another call. They had been friends with your partner and actually been sleeping with him. Both of them were friends. 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. 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. I mean, I'm so sad and angry. Just the level of humiliation, like, feeling like so again, like, are you kidding me? Like, am I? Maybe you're totally fine with anything else. Tell me if I am delusional. 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. 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 in the felt since I was, like, 13-14, just because that's kind of how I was raised. I've always had a life of hype, like nobody knows anything about me, because I don't trust anybody. And sometimes that did 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. 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? If he can even acknowledge it, can he express any sense of remorse for it? I mean, where is he at? 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. 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? What would make this a useful conversation, a helpful conversation? I guess maybe a clarity on some things. To understand a little bit more than I did when I got here. And I would like more clarity on relationships, I guess past relationships, how they affect my current relationship, my parents' relationship that in turn affects my relationship. What's something specific from your family relationships that you say that thing has gone with me? A lot of selfishness, I guess. That's a big word. Who was the master of selfishness at home? Everybody probably. Can you give me a sense? Yeah, my dad was on his own since he was a teenager, since he was like 14. He couldn't read it right, but he was smart, 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. So it was like complete opposites, but my dad's trying to selfishness was more of, I don't want to go back to being poor again. So I have to like kind of hoard everything, and it doesn't matter if anybody needs something, not leave 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 of my own. I had my parents, I had both my parents, till I was an adult, but I did a lot of things on my own. 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. And I'm sure of a lot of people. I know what I need to do, but I know what to do when you need something from me. Oh yeah, correct. Well, I'll have to ask for it if I do need something. If I need to move so far, or somebody just try to figure out on my own, because I could probably ask somebody about it. I don't. I don't. It doesn't even occur to me. Well, yeah, they're probably busy, they're going to say no anyway, so I'm not going to. So you internalized your dad's voice. They're going to say no anyways. They're going to say no anyway, so I'll figure it out. Okay. So refuse help, though, too. Refuse? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I refuse. You just added something. Not only do you not ask for help, but you refuse it. You're not saying when you're upset, or when you're mad, or when you frustrated, or when you hurt, that's part of the, you have to handle everything yourself. Yeah, I'm kind of just saying what the time, like, she is mad, like, I'm not, like, I'm excited about things, like, I'm just saying, I was okay, it was, it was good. I don't want to get too excited to come down from being excited. So I can just kind of stay in the middle. It'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. Yeah. So you're a master compartmentalizer. Sometimes I have to be, and I guess the times when I shouldn't be, I still am. 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. When I ask you, where are some particular places where you've compartmentalized? Where? Which I guess that makes me just a little better at my job sometimes, because I can do that. Work also. Just work, like, on, you know, with, like, dead bodies and stuff and big fires and, like, I'm, I don't get to, like, jacked up off it and fires over and fires over. Some guys, I want to be up for 15 hours now because they're journaling and so going on that. It's over, it's over. Backcar accidents and stuff like that, like, I did it on my family. I have an older son that was kind of a separate. I just learned about him a year ago, and he's 14. So that's compartmentalized and the other relationships he has. Yeah, I kind of, I've always had multiple something, nothing's ever been together. It's multiple women or multiple cars. Everything. Everything. Yeah. Work life, auto-work life, work friends, auto-work friends. Nobody knows each other, nobody knows anything. And the multiple friends are known to her, yes? Do you know some of my friends? Some of them, well then I learned these two people were both friends that had no idea that we existed. They had a family, none. He said not one word, so I didn't know these people existed. And they didn't know what we existed. These are people I know for years. They're friends, they're lovers, they're what? They were just friends for the very long time. And then, yeah, there was two different situations, a year apart from each other. And they became lovers? Yeah, yes that's true. Yes. 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 variants? Three, very different experiences of the same thing. 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. 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. 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. It was a long intro, and I would just love to bring you into the conversation. Do you hear him often speak like that at a little bit? It's when I first found out about all of this, well the first time, and 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. The mother of the child was an ex from a long time ago. They got together, apparently, one time, well 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. But I swelt or only in the first years. The first few years were definitely off and on, and then the last 14 years have been pretty study, except for it was a brief period of time, maybe seven years ago, or something where we were broken up for a little bit. Yeah, that's right. So when that happened last year, and my everything came shattering down, I learned about that he had this other life of people he didn't talk about us at all. This woman, I had no idea, this friend, thought she was friends with him for a lot of no idea that we existed. It was a terrible time, and we had some conversations where he seemed like he was opening up. We were acknowledging all the compartmentalizing. How did you find out? I got a call when I was with her family on a Sunday morning, around 9 o'clock, someone called me. So my friend's been in a relationship, and by the way, do you know he has a 14-year-old son? I was like, no. And then he admitted it, well, admitted the child, we were with our children and it was horrible. And then I came home to pictures on my doorstep. She had left, started emailing me, it was awful. Pictures of them? Yeah. To show to you that they had a relationship, which you did not know until the day before. So she was. And she did not know about you. Right. So I went to the start of going to couples therapy. I 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. I was not suspicious for a second until four weeks ago, where I get another phone call. I just got to work. I had a call from a number, and I immediately felt like dread, answer the phone. "Hi, I'm so-and-so, I've been in a relationship for the last, you know, off and on." And I was like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait." It's my friend, but we'd been sleeping together, like, "Wait, is it?" I think that sleeping together, it turns out they had, say, when was the last time? And I found it, it was the day before we went on a trip. It was just, and I mean, it just had to work ahead and emergency and left, and he left work. And I just got home and started screaming. So it turns out he almost immediately started doing the exact same thing. It was the same story, another unattractive single mother, with probably a little self-esteem who thought he was so nice and so wonderful. And then she kept calling me, and then I was like, "Oh, she's trying to tell me how this was meaningful thing and this had been going on." And then she left a bunch of stuff in our driveway, pictures and cardboards, and it was just awful. And that was exactly four weeks ago. So you're in the thick of this? Yes. And I've already been to the night, 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, like, again, like blown away, like, I just feel like I'm a stranger, I feel like a sense of disgust. I've never felt like last year, I felt hopeful, and 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, so for not seeing this, I feel like this insanity, like this behavior is so insane, like, this is not okay. And he's, I know he feels bad, so I'm like, "What is, like, something is very wrong. There's no trust." Like, "No, I trust him to take care of our children." I don't trust him, like, that, again, like, I feel like 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 in the house, 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. All of this superposition of contradictory feelings that just come knocking at you, all, all normal, and therefore, a while, unfortunate here. That's why it's, like, again, like, I already was just coming out of it, and then you, like, and by the way, it's still not about you. I believe that. 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. Like, I'm scared. I really don't know who he is, and what he's capable of. Oh, 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, or if he can't change, and nothing is going to happen, it's going to end. It's like, am I supposed to just wait here and hope that he doesn't do it again? I don't know. 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, I see my role primarily as creating a safe container for two very different experiences that are co-existing, but also it's about providing structure, calmness and reassurance. You are flooded, overwhelmed, confused. There is no decision to be made in the moment, and that's okay, because she is 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. Part for the show comes from Neutralfall, the #1 dermatologist recommended Hair Growth Supplement Brand, and it's the #1 Hair Growth Supplement Brand, personally used by dermatologists. Summer is full of vacations, we can getaways and spending more time outdoors. Throughout it all, the last thing you want to worry about is your hair. Neutrophole might be just what your hair needs. 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And when they come back, their details are already saved. One tap and they're done. Because when the time comes to make your first sale, you want to make things as easy for your customers as possible. Which Shopify handening the setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on your next steps. Whether that's planning your next campaign, developing your newest offering, or taking a well-deserved nap. And Shopify says they power millions of businesses worldwide from household names like Mattel and Jim Schard to small businesses just getting started. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/estere. And Shopify says, "They power millions of businesses worldwide from household names like Mattel and Jim Schard to small businesses just getting started." With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Shopify.com/estere. When you hear what she just said, what happens to you? How does it land on you? I try to listen. It makes me feel terrible as a person. And as a partner. 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. That would make anybody feel like that. And 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. What it stems from. Because most of them are just like, "Yeah, it's just like, yeah, just living life. It's not really affecting anybody." No, it's affecting. Until it does. Quite a few people, you open their hearts. Yeah, but before that, like, you're just out. You're just living. 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, what of my family is lingering with me, basically influencing how I respond to the beariness that I felt emotionally in my family? We were a practical family in which there was very little room for emotion. 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. 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. 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? I think it was removed when I was 14. We just moved. For me, my mother moved. But it would just happen. It wasn't like, this is an explanation. So at that point, I was like, yes, nobody cares what I'm going to think about this. The divorce, the separated? They separated for it. We moved for six months. We moved back. We were moving back. Nobody asked me anything. Meaning that your world was being toppled upside down and you had no idea what was happening. I know what was happening, but we moved and I went to school the next day. That's all you knew what to do. Probably since then, I was like, no one's going to ask my opinion on anything or why it's going to be concerned. I'm just going to figure it out. But I didn't know it ever asked, how was your day or is this strange? It was awful, but I guess this is what life does. So I can't just be like a solo warrior for forever. I listened to you talk about this emotional desert. I hear you talk about the solo warrior. 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. 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. 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 the 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. I think the words make sense. I can throw a picture of it in my head. Tell me what you see. And this will help her to, because it will help her make sense of this, 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. Tell me first what you saw. That's why 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, I'm good with this. Nobody sees it, it's just there. So it's kind of like happiness and joy and things that I don't show. It's lonely in there. You get used to it. I know you did, but let it come right now. It's lonely, but I think life is kind of lonely. It was very lonely, it was beyond lonely. And a lot of ways, yes, because we've had people around. Yes, but people who don't see you. What? Sometimes lonely. When I would stay in my apartment for Christmas, which is me by myself, this is normal. No, it's not normal. Well, feeling normal. 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. 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 it going to take responsibility for what he did to her? 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." 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. I carry my secret friends in my pocket, you know, this is what kids do. You're five and a half years old, you may have an imaginary friend, too. And you went and you created imaginary friends. Of course, they're real. 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. 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. 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, "Of course not." He's like a friend. It was not like at all. Like I am with you. It wasn't holding hands. It wasn't. Okay. He's like, "He may not, but he certainly enjoyed them loving him." Oh, absolutely. I feel like that's kind of what I know. And he enjoyed his right word. He nourished himself and them loving him. 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. But they have to be mothers. They have children. Yes, both of them are single mothers. Yes. And 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. He doesn't need to love them. He needs them to love him. The Almighty have to have sex with them. Like that is part of also what's so baffling is like, "We're sex like every day." So like, you'd still want it for us, like you had to go get more sex. Like, what? Like, you had sex with someone else while we were having sex. Regularly. I was thinking that was doing that every day. That's why you did it. That's why you did it all. But the point is, it's isn't the story. It's two people that hadn't been connected or hadn't felt like attracted to each other. That's not our story. That makes me feel insecure and grossed out. You need to give her a little bit more. A bit on the bone. You can't just say, "I don't need a reason," and then leave it at that. Because your partner is bereft, broken inside. I'd just say that she was, "You had to have that much sex," I mean, no. No, but it's not the quantity or the frequency that matters. No, she said, "Why do you have sex?" I mean, I'm not going to say that I don't enjoy having sex. That would be a lie. 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. It's just some basic understanding so that she doesn't go crazy. And what is it 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? Oh, I felt awful. I felt awful over there. 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?" Well, I felt like a horrible person. Tell her more. I told you there's not enough. 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 I made me feel even worse because it was like, I'm just making the situation worse. You just know, I'm explaining why sex, like, why are you going and having sex, or why do you have to fuck them, like, you were friends, or why did you, why? It wasn't like I'm checklist of, like, no, but, like, what makes, like, how do you, like, probably all having drinks, and having a conversation of, like, hey, at this time, I'm black. What do you know about how you needed to create another secret friend? What do I know about it? 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. The sex is connecting, the sex is intimacy, the sex is tenderness, the sex is a lot of things that man need to call sex because they can't call it other things. 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. I don't know if I was nurturer, I don't know. I don't know. I got to read a record. Yeah. And it is, is it that or is it, am I off? It's definitely, like, there was a sweetness, like, thanks for being a good friend. Like, it wasn't, there wasn't the things you were saying to me. I saw her drop her stuff off, my phone went off, that's almost at our door. I'm at work and I pull up the phone, 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. She must have printed off every picture she probably had and printed off every card. And she's part of what she's making why she's, you know, she knows that she meant so much. I was like, I'll show you all the cards. It's like, oh my god, it's going to be the same thing, but it's the same kind of stuff he says to me, I'm going to like, really, I can't take it. Like, if it's like, I love you, it wasn't that. It was, it was definitely more of a friend, it was like, you meet your friends, it means so much to me, thanks for being there for me, it was a lot of that. Um, very sweet things, he said. It wasn't the same, the same things, but I was still just like, well, hi, hit her. 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. And when she comes, oh, you know, I've seen him cry a bunch of times, like, okay, thank you for telling me, but whatever. She wants to know what is so special about this woman and what does it say about her? And I said to her earlier, it's not about you. 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 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. They are screwing 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. What he's doing there is very much a question alonging that he felt as a boy 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. We are in the midst of our session and there is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break, so stay with us. With Shopify handling the setup and checkout, you have more time to focus on your next steps. And Shopify says they power millions of businesses worldwide from household names like Mattel and Jim Shardt to small businesses just getting started. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business, so go make it one. Start you free trail at Shopify.com/estere With share my trip from Uber, you can send your live trip location to the ones who matter most, like Dan and Hannah, who always wait up to make sure their daughter gets back to her college dorm room. Or Tiffany, who's running late as usual, and her friends are tracking her trip to make sure she's actually on her way. Look, she's right there. She's three minutes away. Or Sam, who never goes anywhere without her roommate knowing exactly where she is. Some journeys are meant to be shared. Share your ride in real time with share my trip on Uber. One more way Uber is putting safety at every turn. Learn more on the Uber app. 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 couple start off as three hour sessions. And then we thoughtfully edit them to one hour. And then go back and listen to them at the notes. And sometimes even a critique of the session. It's kind of what is in my head as I listen to the session that I didn't say in the session. We create original music and sound design to bring the sessions to life. Where should we begin? It involves a whole team who have been there since the beginning with me to bring my office to you. It's about eight years that we are telling the stories of raw, intimate encounter between people that you are invited to listen in, like a fly on the wall. 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. 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 hour subscription on Apple Podcasts. A subscription to where should we begin gives you an add free version of these sessions 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, to ending relationships. And we offer follow-ups with the couples because people always ask me, do you see them again? Do you hear from them? Do you know where this session landed? So I go back to the couples and I ask them for a follow-up which they share with us and which I then share with you. And just like our relationships, what you see isn't as important as what you do. So I've heard you say how much you enjoy the program, how much it adds to your understanding of your own relationships. But now it's time for me to do an offer and an ask which means click on the subscribe button to the where should we begin show page. I'd love to see you in Esther's office hours. 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. It was so not what I wanted but he would not leave his mother's house. He wouldn't move them 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. 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. She's like a kind of lee record miss you. Did her heart ever open up or did you do all of that? No, I just did it. I know you did it but you don't just did it. It's amazing, right? She'd take me a couple times. 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 but now that's not what it is about. And that's part of where 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. Yeah, no, I know. It's like I don't 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. 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 and I feel loved by him. And there's another voice that says if you stay your weak, if you stay your 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, 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. Because you see you're doing the hurtful behavior and she walks around with her own shame. 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? And I'm with a compulsive liar and I think he is the kindest person. It's a mind-fuck. It's a heartbreak and a mind-fuck. You want to end? I also feel like I feel like we owe our sons like we have these two brown boys. I they're like the world to me and us like I just it breaks my heart to think like did I just create situation for these kids that didn't have a choice? Like I want them to have to see a good example like love and uncondition. and he does not, you can see that he's not where he, he doesn't get it. Like, I can say see it, just not where he comes from. I can transactional, like there's a lot of, I feel like, and he's tough, and just can be short tempered, it also can be very loving with them. Like very loving and very tender and very sweet. And the old-- - Where does he get that? - Where does he get that? - Mm-hmm. - I don't know. - I'm sweet. - I know you, you can be. I know you are. That's why I would come here, I'm not gonna like, not total massacres. - 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. 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. - I need a hobby. - No, I know, like I can sense it, he wants to be like, he is an emotional person. Like you just, we want to connect more, you are an emotional person. And I'm, by no means am I trying to, you know, I'm, communication's 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, we weren't. It didn't happen. - And it's clear that the relationship needs to change. And that fundamentally nobody here really wants to go anywhere. Neither you. 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. To go and find what you didn't get in your family, and then destroy your current family would be an irony. - It's still like, it's still scary to me. It's like, then what, okay, then what? Then if that's your coping skills, have sex with the homely looking middle-aged woman from the mom. - I wasn't doing things to take care of my own self. - 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 concerning to me. You'd stop exercising, you started drinking more, like you were gaining weight, like you were just not in a good place. And I would, oh, you want to go do this? It was always, no, no, no, no, no. - Do you ever wonder if there's been a linger in depression? - Um, I know it's not something I'm over. - 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. - Yeah, a lot of you was, I was a lot of anger about it. - About what? - My dad dying. - All right, tell me more. - Mom. - You're wonderful to live in clear. - Usually it finds it easier to be angry than sad, so, let him be sad. - I think I was so angry because I felt so alone. And it was fast, it was like, you should feel me less. 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. - I have to do everything myself with my dad, meaning? - 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 that was a year and a half of my life that I feel like just angry about it and everything. I want everybody else to be angry now. It just makes me angry. It makes me angry, it still makes me angry. Because since then no one's stopped the water. No one's asked me one thing or one. And I was in 2019. - Am I hearing you? I'm angry that I need 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 am so many feelings about how they didn't take care of me. It's unfair, it's lonely, it's burdensome. And you're getting 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. And at one point, it overflows. - Yeah, it gets overwhelming. - And therefore 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 it, neither can I ask. That's a core issue. - And that'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, my dad got sick, and I asked you, "Want your dad to meet him?" He said, "No." 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? This is layers of layers of secrets. - Yeah, so the parents didn't know either. - Because you didn't want to give them any pleasure. They didn't deserve it. - I didn't think so. I didn't think that they deserved it. - Right, you were angry at them, so you weren't 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, per se, they were crazy. And we weren't around my mom's family, but. - 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, is an obligation. 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. Then an affair becomes this very chosen, free choice, life affirming experience. Hurtful to the one next to you. And if you want, it's not to happen again. The anger piece is at a core. - Yeah, I don't know how to get over it. - 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. 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, 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 where distinguishes the boy from the man. That's just one thought. There's loads of reasons why these two people had sex. 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. Continue to say, "I never need anything from anyone." She 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? 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. 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 coded language for our deepest emotional needs. 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 Esther's office hours on Apple subscriptions. Where should we begin with Esther Porel is produced by Magnificent Noise, where part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, in partnership with New York Magazine and the Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destri Cibli, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Juliana. Original music, an additional production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Porel and Jessie Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Sol. Ball is here, and that means the pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. 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