When I'm Manic I Cheat

What you are about to hear is a classic session of Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel. None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel. And each episode is a one-time counseling session. For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names, and some identifiable characteristics. being removed, but their voices and their stories are real.

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You know, I was the good girl. Like I got married out of college. I was absent. I did all the right things. She'd played everything by the room. And he broke all the rules. So so many people had seen my marriage with Solid relationship. It's the opposite. We're the it's like kind of the hot mess. He did the one thing that was not to be part of marriage. five different encounters and I had sex And he tossed

entire structure of life. Her sense of identity, her expectations around me, Her sense of herself as a woman. I've been diagnosed bipolar and I think that that has a significant bearing on He's really interested in a non-monogamous relationship and he thinks that's the only way he can operate honestly.

So it's like all these really shocking revelations that I'm trying to figure out how to process The aching question that they bring, both of them is I Compatible. I see things in him that I have in me but I I almost wish I could express more of in my life. Like I love his He I love his spontaneity. He's he strikes me as kind of like a wild guy, you know, who loves new adventures and opportunities and just can easily put himself in situations that I might find uncomfortable.

And so when I'm with him I always feel like I can sort of just like go along for the ride and it feels really exhilarating. Um and I've always loved that about him, which is actually initially why at first For various reasons I kind of wrote him off as a romantic partner'cause I had I s I was, you know, very itemized and I had my boxes of what a partner would look like and he didn't really check them. But uh Wildness and spontaneity, great as a friend.

not reliable enough as a boyfriend. Yeah. Definitely and he wasn't he wasn't near as you see his face. Yeah. He wasn't nearly as religious as me at the time. And so all these things, you know. caused me to dismiss him initially. Um but our relationship grew and developed and And I changed. You changed a bit. I changed a lot. Yeah, yeah.

uh the wildness that you allude to sort of caught up with me. Um I almost saw myself as a prodigal son and I needed to kind of come back into the fold of conservative not conservative, but just Christianity that we'd been raised with and I was also getting older. Uh so, you know, three out of four of my brothers were teenage fathers and teenage husbands. And I was twenty I was going on twenty five and I was just thinking, Oh my gosh, I need to get my life together. I'm s getting so old and

I don't even know what I'm doing with my life. I'm I haven't even graduated college yet. I also Um have been diagnosed bipolar and that was just starting to catch up to me at twenty four, twenty-five. I had never really experienced it. I I would have the kind of hypomanias, but the deep depressions I did not have and the and the extreme manias I didn't have. And that was starting to hit me at about around twenty five.

um and was just trying to reassess my life and made the decision that I would surround myself with wholesome people and ideally Christian people. And I thought to myself, well who's wholesome that I know and no one that I know is even religious and I thought, oh That's right. She's Christian.

It all seemed ordained, it all seemed that it was by God. We were all we were v very tapped into that sort of way of thinking. I was effectively trying to be something like you and latch myself onto you, I feel like, and your goodness and your wholesomeness. Um Because that's what I felt that I wanted. And experienced as a divine intervention.

I felt that way. Well, I think part of it is like that that was sort of the religious community and context we were in where how fast everything happened for us at the time. felt very normal in terms of the people we surrounded ourselves with. And now we're in such a different space. We're even hearing about that I'm kind of like, oh my God, you know, I feel s like such a different person.

But I think it felt it didn't feel strange to us at all. And in fact, like you talking about your brothers that were kind of forced into getting married because they had, you know, kids when they were teenagers and we felt like downright old and adult getting married after getting our college degrees, you know. In a way, all these decisions that you have made you made with a lot of clarity and a lot of certainty.

Maybe in part because they were prescribed. That's what was expected. And therefore you didn't have to ask yourself. What does it mean for me? How do I respond to this? What do we want to do with that? And that clarity has accompanied you up to now. And now, for the first time, you have a question for which what is prescribed Doesn't fit the two of you.

They start by telling me their origin story. How they met and what drew them to each other. And how clear things were. There was a set step of progression. You meet, you fondle, if you want to have sex, you get married. a clear code of how you behave within marriage. This very clear idea that she had of life, he shattered it. and he interpreted his multiple affairs as a sign that he must be polyamorous.

Because she has been living no longer just in one culture with one value system. She begins to wonder maybe there is such a thing as an open marriage. Maybe that's gonna make him more honest. She thinks about her mother. Do you wish you had done what your mother did? Sort of just divorce and then no. No, I don't. Cause she, I think. I mean, I know that she was in a very different phase of life. She had three kids, and the nature of their affair was really different.

than ours. Mm-hmm. Um Meaning. My dad had would have like long term relationships with women, with like a singular sort of girlfriend. Um And so I think that just really wounded my mom'cause so so much of her love and identity still is derived from family. And so that felt like such a deep cut for her that I don't think she's recovered from still. You know, she's never wanted to date.

And so I don't want that. And at one point she even told me a few weeks after I found out and it makes me really sad for her but Um, a few weeks after told me he cheated, I said, I'm just sad, mom and she said, You're always gonna be sad And that really made me that broke my heart for her because it's been

Over twenty years for her. And I can't imagine like the depth of pain that I felt without him even being in a long-term relationship with someone. I can't imagine sitting in that kind of grief.

What m what sense did you make of it? What did it mean for you? Yeah. So I think that the desire Thoughts impulse toward uh like a voracious consuming of life has always kind of been in me. I think that sex falls into that category. I want you to talk to her. And I think that sex falls into that category. And I think that I effectively had to shut off that part of myself and manage. when we got married. And so I would take care of it myself. Solo I would

work out, I would throw myself into work or travel, or us, you know, at various times. Like we would buy books, we would try to work on it ourselves. So it wasn't like I was completely just, Oh, I won't I'll I'll neglect this, but it was like I'll work on it with you

also knowing that this was not something that you were trying to y you weren't really pressing for outside of me, so that caught up with me. And then year four and a half, year five, the chance that something might happen outside of my con outside of my of course I'm always in control, but the chance that I would just let it happen became greater and greater. I'm getting a sense that maybe the priority is not a conversation about polyamory. of conversation about bipolarity. Acceleration.

a sense of mania that comes with intense sexual arousal. But that arousal should not be confused with curiosity. We are in the midst of our session. But we need to take a brief break, so stay with us. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Quo. Spring cleaning can mean many things, from cleaning your home to managing your relationships. To getting your work life in order. So if you're a business owner and your communications feel cluttered, Quo says they can help tidy up. Quo spelled.

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Look for Aloha Protein Bars at your local grocery store or at aloha.com al-o-ha-a.com. Aloha? Taste. we didn't know what the issue was necessarily. And I was still under this I was still trying to flagellate myself, you know, of not being so sexually cued up all the time and how I wouldn't want to put my shit onto her, you know? And that was a that was a big part of it. You know, I thought that this was something that

was kind of a s a solo struggle that this is something that that was my problem and that you did not need to be involved in it if it wasn't your problem. And my problem was? That I was I think about sex all the time. Yeah. And I'm attracted to a lot of people. I want to be careful about not conflating. A possible discrepancy of desire between the two of you, with one of you being more interested than the other. Infidelity and bipolarity. Yeah, that's hard.

it we need to separate some of this. Now the conversation becomes layered. Mm-hmm. Very rather than everything subsumed you know, open close.

It may still be a conversation about open close, but what you're describing right now has nothing to do with monogamy. Okay. Huh. What happens with medication? You have you are on medication? Mm-hmm with him. And has that it takes us the peaks and valleys are far less. So it's just it's rolling hills now. Mm-hmm. And so I don't go into a severe manic state anymore and I I don't get depressed.

And you know, medication certainly lithium has helped that. I also maintain a job because that that offers stability. Um and So you have to show up every day? Yeah. There's a schedule, there's a structure. I see the same people and they're usually in the same mood and my moods will be different and they can sort of anchor me. Mm-hmm. Yep. Good. I know it's So she's no longer the only pole of stability. No.

That's good. Yeah. You know, she can continue to be, but you can't rely only on her as the anchor. That was not healthy at all. Mm-hmm. You needed the anchor and then you resented the anchor. Yeah. All right, so you have this is good. This is good. So you have a stable job. I meditate. Uh tr transcendental meditation. Do you do two times twenty minutes per day? I don't, I do one time in the morning. Okay. It's okay.

You're ta I'm not your pastor. I do one time in the morning. I do one time in the morning. Well, that's because that's what they ask you. Two times twenty minutes, it's like, oh my god, I can't do that. Uh no, but I do I do one time in the morning for twenty minutes. And Okay, can you take a deep breath just right now? Just take a deep breath. Now breathe in and count five. In, two, three, four, five, out. Two, three, four, five. When you rev up, it's good. I told you I was getting manic today.

You rev up and you you can feel it in your speech. You know Slow it down and there is nothing that will regulate you more than breath. Yeah. If you just say I'm getting manic, you don't know what to do with it. Manic is some overwhelming state. It's interesting because it just feels like I'm being normal. Likewise when I'm feeling hypersexual, it doesn't feel like I'm hypersexual. It feels like it's just this is how I always am.

It's okay. You're learning to m you know, if you had diabetes you'd learn to manage it. Mm-hmm. That's what you say. You think about sex, so you keep thinking about sex. Then you think about you think about how you're gonna think about sex when you're not thinking about sex because you're thinking about this whole conversation around monogamy, non-monogamy. And it's like, yeah, I mean we can have those conversations, that's good, and we need to, it's not going anywhere, but

How else can we mitigate that? Uh a little bit would be good. It's not even mitigated. I think your sexual Obsession is separate from a conversation about non-monogamy. And your non-monogamy isn't gonna solve your sexual obsessions. you stop drinking, you stop doing any other things. And so this is the one that's that takes care of all the soothing. Hm. My guess is you are

often revved. And you discover early on something that many people, boys more easily, discover, which is that if you masturbate, it relaxes you. And then slowly this activity be ge gets a name and it gets a meaning and it becomes sex, masturbation. It actually gets a word. Rather than just soothing. Falling asleep, relaxing.

And then gradually images and fantasies and other things begin to join it and everything gets mixed up. When you're anxious you masturbate. When you're happy you masturbate. When you're worried you masturbate. When you're sad you masturbate. When you're bored you masturbate. Everything leads to the same outlet.

You understand? And you know, then comes an ideology that says, Oh, if I was sexually free. You could be sexually free and in a p in a different relationship with your wife, but that is not gonna address The obsession, the compulsion, the feeling that when anything happens in my body, before I even know it's a feeling, it's just a sensation.

my mind fills up with those kinds of thoughts. Your mind could have filled up with lots of other kinds. It's more that you don't necessarily choose if you want that thought and you don't know when you have that thought how to switch it to another thought if you chose to. That's what distinguishes it between You know, so he has a rich, fertile, erotic mind. What's the issue? Versus he feels beleaguered by it. He feels like he gets taken hostage and he can't take himself out of it.

What I'm trying to tease out with him is the difference between the first time. Feelings and actions. And the fact that they don't necessarily have to be lumped together. You have a thought, therefore, you have a feeling, therefore, you must have. And then we look at his other resources because this is a strength based way of thinking for me. He has been able to stop a lot of things that used to compound his condition. Sexuality is the place where he feels

It has a different meaning for him. Drinking wasn't an issue. His food habits were not an issue. His sleeping, he was able to correct. A lot to change and to manage his health. and all of those resources will become handy in helping him when he feels in the grip to be able to redirect his energy and his attention. How do I bring in other thoughts? How do I deal with breath? How do I learn to bring in other stimulus? So that I don't feel like I'm helpless.

Yeah, I think that's the that's like the honest answer. I think I could just occupy my time a little bit more. Yeah, and I think that's w what's made when we do try to have conversations about non monogamy, it's what makes them so confusing because there's not this clear understanding of why exactly you want it or need it or you know it's kind of No you can't need non-monogamy. Yeah and that's it's either a cho it's a choice of life, of values, of what sexuality means, of what curiosity means.

even if you agree to consensual non monogamy, it is not going to address this. Sure. This is existing on its own since you're Eight years old. When you do act, is it act or is it act out? Sure. Is it a real choice or is it just like, you know, he didn't know what he didn't know what to do with himself?

Yeah and that's a different reality for her, to be with someone who is actually thinking about life and is conscientious about what he's doing, versus someone who is in the grip of impulse, of of obsession.

He's not really choosing. Right. Yeah. Uh I'll just say that I I absolutely want to be the first thing that you said. I want to be the conscientious thought out person in life. You've made a ton of progress. I guess I have. In terms of like treatment and self acceptance. Yeah, you don't see that you do, but you do. You have. Yeah. You went?

You don't see that you make progress, I guess. It's hard to see it when you're the one w living with But you have an amazing witness next to you. But here we are. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's been a ton of questions. She's witnessed a lot. Yes. We need to take a break, but please Stay with us. Support for where should we begin comes from Mint Mobile. We all like keeping our money right where we can see it.

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Hi, I'm Renee Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's gonna be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. bipolar infidelity, open relationships. They just feel so big and weighty.

it's hard because sometimes when I have those conversations I can see this like glazed look come over my friend's eyes of or my family of like I wouldn't know how to deal with that, you know? And s and so And then what happens to you? It makes me question my decision making a lot because I you can read them and they'll tell me like, you know, just be careful and take care of yourself. And it's it does scare me a little bit.

There's sense of caution about the situation, their sense of uncertainty. About about us getting back together potentially. Because I mainly I think for them, as soon as I told them that he cheated, that was it for a lot of them. You know. Really angry for me and just, you know, a lot of my close friends were like.

get out of there. It's done. I some friends would even say I hadn't told them I was getting a divorce and they'd say, I approve of your divorce. You know, like don't even question that y that's the ultimate betrayal. And then you sort of add the complexities of

It maybe it would be an open relationship. And they just think, Why would you be in an so are you just giving him permission to cheat on you essentially? These kinds of things, you know. Well if you wouldn't naturally be in an open relationship Why would you go in to one with someone who cheated on you already? And can you why is it the ultimate betrayal?

I think that's that's the cultural perception and that's thort their sort of perception that it is there anything worse that you could do in the context of a committed relationship? And I d I don't necessarily feel that way, you know, especially talking to him about it. I'm still upset about it and it wasn't it wasn't okay. But

I can understand why he did these things, even if I don't approve of them, you know. And I can see how there's also so many other things I love about him as a partner that don't d that aren't discounted because he made bad choices. I think he's the person that I we we've known each other for almost a decade now and we never run out of things to talk about, you know. We both just have this

mega curiosity about the world and this disposition to life where we want to learn more, we want to experience more things, we wanna talk to new people. We love traveling. We have the most fun when we travel together, you know. And I love I love our disposition toward the world together. Um

Yeah, and he's he's the first person I still wanna call if I have a really bad day, you know, these kinds of things. That ha I have a lot of other good friendships in my life, but our dynamic is very special to me. And he he does feel like a support system in so many ways. I know that If I need him, he'll be there, you know. If I really need something, I can always count on him. And he's also really open to

critiques, which I think is really amazing. Not that I'm always critiquing him, but there's not a defensiveness about Yeah, there's not a defensiveness about you, you know, like when we do have conversations and I call you out you're willing to own your bullshit, you know, and say, Yeah, I want it I w I want to do better. I love the

You have the sense of you want to improve and grow and learn. Um and I love all those things and I don't think that's a super easy thing to come by in anyone and and so can I Take this whole list. I can't talk to him. He's always defensive. Forget travelling. It's impossible. We've got nothing to tell each other. I cannot count on him. The last person I would call if I have a bad day is him.

Every time I suggest something he says no to everything. He's so utterly uninterested in things, and I find myself so curious and eager. And I really don't like his disposition to the world. And if you make this entire list to your friends, do they tell you divorce? Oh, I'm sure they would say, Don't be with that person. Yes, but they wouldn't instantly s ask you to leave him on the spot. Yeah. None of these things are necessarily like, okay, divorce without therapy. Right. Right. That's true.

What do you make of that? It does seem like we do live in a culture where we really, really value one form of sexual fidelity as the ultimate sign of commitment, which I think sex is very important, but obviously all these other things are really, really valuable to me in a relationship as well.

I don't think that he even knows. Sorry. I don't think you really know why you did what you did. There's a part of you that asks yourself Is this because I am inclined to because my spontaneous exploratory self leads me to want to experience sexuality with other partners as well? Or is it because that day I was revved up, and this person was there. And then it turned into a story of I'm curious and exploratory.

I would I would answer yes. Yes. To both. To both. Yes. What I would say is that I've always known, even when I was going to Catholic school, uh that this idea of

sex with one person for life just did not really make sense to me. I was also seeing my brothers have to be forced into a marriage because they had children with somebody that they went then went on to divorce three years later. So that was having an effect on me. So, you know I don't think I think that the idea of sexual exclusivity um has never really made a whole lot of sense to me.

when you couple in sort of a revved up state, it makes it far more likely for me to act out on those urges. Good. And my commitment to her and my fidelity to her, how would you describe it? I would describe it just as that. I would describe it as I am committed to you because I've chosen to be committed to you. And it is for many of the reasons that you listed. It's also for qualities in you that I would like to have more of in me that I really admire.

I knew quickly that I could commit to you in in some capacity or another for for the rest of my life. What I did not realize until marriage was the the sexuality bit would be difficult for me. I never have committed to anybody else. I've never wanted to. And I've and I've thought when I was twenty three years old that I could go my entire life without committing to another soul person. And then when I decided and I made the decision that I did want to commit to you, that was it for me.

You can let that sink in. Thanks for saying that. It's just It's hard to know what to do with it now, you know? Yeah. Like we know that we love each other, but But I don't want to be hurt like this again. Yeah. Likewise, I don't want to hurt anybody like that again. Yeah. That's a huge piece of this. So I can't promise sexual exclusivity to one person.

But I can promise that I'm not going to act in the shadows. You may choose not to. This is not about capability. So I can or I can't, right? Monogamy is a practice. It's a choice. I I I want to be really careful here. I don't know that the two of you are that different. Sexually speaking. You have decided you are incompatible. No, I don't see I don't see it. I see the meaning of sexuality is different, the role it plays, but not when you connect.

I also don't know that what we're talking about is should you be together or not. All of what you've addressed till now for me is part of marriage. Yeah. I like that. This is marriage. This stuff is what people need to deal with in the context of marriage. Sure. And I mean our our disposition towards each other, even though I feel like we try to we try to curb it to to act like we're not well we're not together right now. But our disposition is as as though we're together and working on it.

I wonder to what extent this notion of having to say we are not together right now is that's the statement to the world. Yeah. So that you don't think I'm weak. And I am gullible and I am a fool and I'm just some romantic and I'm a woman who allows herself to be stepped on and for you I show you I'm creating a boundary, we're not together. And internally you are actually embracing something that is much more complex.

And that doesn't mean you're weak and you're being stepped on and you're a fool and you're letting him w walk all over you, et cetera, et cetera, and you're not holding your ground and you're letting him make the power because he cheated first and then he brought in that conversation. I I see a uh an internal and external conversation inside of you that is

just as much with normativity as he's having. No, I think that's spot on. Yeah. It's a different set of norms you're arguing, but the two of you are having chats with norms. Sure. Yeah. Spot on. Yeah, absolutely I I do question my s and I think I think it's good to question ourselves, you know, consistently and not just assume that we're always, you know, our feelings are in the right. And so I really try to do that and have those dialogues with myself about

Well what works for us and you know and if my friends are challenging me and like, Really? Like this man cheated on you and you're you're gonna like have an open relationship that you're not even interested in and and they think I'm totally being stepped on. And so I think I have

In part to convince myself, but in part to tell them, well, we're not together and and we're working on it as this sort of I'm not being stepped on. I'm and But I feel like I am a little bit when it when when we're apart and I think about it, I can get really fixated on how how can I ever feel empowered in this relationship again? But then when we're talking face to face, I don't feel that, you know.

So I have this disconnect, and what should my values be in this situation? But then there's this relationship that I do want to keep working on. And that's a value too. I think so. I think a commitment to this relationship is a value. Even though it's hard, you know. But we we are still legally married and we made that commitment to each other. That does matter to me. Even though I think about it differently than when we made the vows, it's still that commitment still matters to me.

I don't know, I don't want to fool myself as well, you know? Maybe. I don't want to let my love for him allow me to make foolish decisions that do end up hurting me again in the future. Because I do think about it if You want love with minimum liability. Maybe. What you've just said is in part the definition of love. The risk aspect of it. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. Because I can when I think about potentially dating again, I'm I'm going back to the check boxes in my mind of like this time I would find a stable partner, you know, and sort of try to minimize the risk. One risk. You have not minimised the risk of the ten other things that you mentioned that you have. I think instead of spending our time defining sex and monogamy, that where we are landing is a different definition of love.

If you want love without hurt, or love without risk, or love without vulnerability, Or love without the fear of what the other person can do to you? Then we're not talking about love. Yeah. It's making me think about my mom again, because it's like she's made that decision. She's not gonna let love make a fool of her. And therefore there's no love in her life in that regard now. You can't take the risk out of it.

Or the pain you know, and it's like we'll probably run into other painful things that have nothing to do with infidelity, you know.

But it's so interesting you just brought up your mom because ten minutes ago I was gonna ask you, how has your mother's sadness shaped you? So I'm gonna ask it now. I think that you talk about your friends, but I would put mom in that conversation too. And you're right. You see her, she Made sure that nobody can ever hurt her again. But the price she pays. Yeah.

she often will tell me, Well, I you know, I've made the choice to never date again and the way she frames it is kind of in this very empowered way of like and I'm good because of it. Like I haven't been hurt because of it. Can you imagine the pain I would have been going through since then if I had? Um and I think that does stick with me of 'Cause there's so much about her I also look up to, so I think well may maybe that is the better model. Maybe I should just

go it alone like her and and be really strong and have accomplishments and relationships in other capacities. Cause I think it's easy for me to see love relationships as sort of fickle, unnecessary things. It's hard for me to see it as a value, to see maintaining a romantic relationship as a value, actually, now that I think about it. But he does. He's actually intensely emotionally monogamous. I think that is true. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. You may be sexually monogamous but you question the value of love. Yeah, I do. Perhaps that's just me trying to protect myself. You know? Um'cause if I say it's not important then it can't hurt me that much. And so after he told me about the cheating, I was, I didn't feel like I knew myself. I was shocked because I the the amount of emotion that I felt. the depths of like pain and sadness that would just leave me in bed. I'd I never knew I could be that person. And that scares me.

I have to a answer the question of is that worth it to me? Is that risk worth it, I guess? So you say when he hurt me, it reached so deep inside of me, I didn't recognize myself. And now Does it really make you see how much you love this man and how deep and complex of a person you are? Or you think, can't believe I could be so weak? Definitely the first, yeah. Yeah. But I had been telling myself the second that the emotions were a sign of foolishness and weakness. That's the legacy of your mom.

Yeah. So I'm gonna put her in this chair. Hi mom. See Doto she came here and she thought that this she came to discuss monogamy. And that's a piece of the discussion, but she also came to discuss the legacy. About what are the choices that women can make? So she's got a few things to tell you. Mom, I know that you love me and want to protect me and I know that y one of your biggest wishes is that I wouldn't go through what you went through. Bye.

It's already happened. I lived through it. I'm okay. And maybe even stronger from it. And We want to work through this and We're not ready for a relationship to be Ober. And I think we're in a place to maybe be more honest than we have been. And I want to give that a chance. And I know that of course it's a risk. Love is always a risk. But it's one that I I want to take.

This is not a situation in which one can experience maximum certainty. But it's very hard for her to maintain that confidence. of the external pressures that many women feel. if they say differently than the norm, they're seen as being stepped on, as being weak, as being, you know, persuaded by The powerful man. The fact that she may have her own powerful ideas about this. Yeah. When she tells you I'm not sure, what happens to you?

I I think I I think I take that with just an acceptance of what is when she says that she's not sure. I would suggest that you bring in a little bit more confidence of what you know you want. And that's not the conversation about consensual non-monogamy only. That's the conversation about I want us. See, a part of what she's grappling with. Is a very archaic power story. You heard me once.

How will I make sure that I don't later sit down ten years from now and it happened again and I will think I knew it, but I allowed this to happen to me again. And then on top of it, because you're in a hetero couple, you know, it's the man's story. And because you first cheated on me and then you introduced it as a nice concept, consensual concept, you already have won over me. And the whole thing is a story of power and protection.

Understandably so, but that's the story that you're dealing with. You're not having the same conversation. You don't even know you're having this conversation with her. But that's the conversation she's having with you and with the chorus, the Greek chorus on the side. No doubt. Yeah, no doubt. With Mama as the high priestess. an essential way that she can intervene on the conflict around power.

is if you express the remorse and the guilt for hurting her. Because if you acknowledge Deeply, your understanding of how much you hurt her, it lessens the power. Hurting you is the most it's the worst thing I've ever done to another person. I it's something that I've that is Hold her hands. It's something that's shifted how I m move through the world. And the fact that it happened to the person that I love the most and utterly committed to hurt all that much more. And I'm sorry for that.

And I'm sorry that I wasn't there in the in the aftermath. And so I I am I am deeply remorseful and feel deeply guilty for having hurt you like that. And I never want to do that to anybody again, most of all you. Yeah, that I mean that means a lot to hear. And it is reassuring. It makes it just makes me feel seen because. I think if I don't want to feel like being cheated on was a foolish thing, I feel like I need you to reassure me that.

That I wasn't stupid for hurting, you know, that it was something that was not okay, but it's not gonna be our future together. Yeah. His apologizing for hurting her is essential, but not enough. Where he has to go from here is in the full validation that the dilemma that she is in vis a vis her mother her friends, the society, the condition as a woman is something that he trusts upon her. It's his behavior that made her constantly now wonder, is she weak? Is she giving in? Is she engaging?

And he needs to own that. That part of her experience and join her in that she will feel less alone and more As a couple against the world. You just heard a classic session of Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel. We are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. To apply with your partner for a session on the podcast for the transcripts or show notes on each episode.

episode, or to sign up for Estera's monthly newsletter, go to EsteraPorel.com. Estera Perel is the author of Mating in Captivity in the State of Affairs. She also created a game of stories called Where Should We Begin? For details, go to her website, EstherPorel.com.