Will This Heartbreak Ever End?

Just for me to hear it directly from you rather than in writing, just tell me the question and a little bit about the context of your question. Of course. Yeah, so my first relationship ended around a year ago now and as I'm 29 right now it ended when I was 28 and I've been having a really hard time ever since. with ups and downs. Luckily it hasn't all been completely depressing, but it has been quite a hard time.

and i reconnected several times after the breakup with my ex and that didn't help but that's also part of the issue i think and the question that i have is how do i let go of someone that is not into me in a romantic sense anymore. And I know that's for the better because the relationship was very hard and had many toxic dynamics.

that were not good for either of us and so my primary question is how to let go of heartbreak that is your first heartbreak at the age of 29 which complicates things maybe a bit And of course there are way more details to this in my own history as well that led up to this point. Support for the show comes from Paramount+. Now streaming on Paramount+, hunted by hackers, stalked by assassins, and wounded by international police, Tony and Ziva are on the run and getting some action.

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What's important for me to know about your first love, the ending, the troubles of the relationship, the relationship school that you went to? in your childhood. What is important for me to know? I think that the relationship itself and it took some time for me to notice. but looked somewhat familiar to the relationship that my parents have still to this day. Which is? Emotionally detached from each other as well.

which also had an effect on me and my siblings. And although they did their very best, they also, and primarily my mother, came from quite troubled backgrounds. with large families and also no emotional or very little emotional availability from their parents. And that's something that when I was younger I never really stood still by. until my sister first asked me the same question, like, do you ever feel unheard by, emotionally unheard or not seen by my parents?

And she first asked me that when I was like 18. And I didn't really connect to that question very much. So I told my sister. What are you talking about? Exactly, more or less. I was like, well, no, I was just too occupied with my own things at the time and I didn't have any real relationship experience back then. So I was just doing my things, enjoying myself with my friends and things like that. So, yeah, I was surprised. Like, no, I have no clue what you're talking about, basically.

Over the last couple of years, that made more sense already, also before my relationship with my now ex-girlfriend. But now that that relationship concluded and also somewhat during the relationship, I... felt so seen in that relationship by my first girlfriend that I attached myself way too quickly to the relationship as well. And that was a dynamic that we created together.

It felt somewhat like love bombing, if you could say it like that. But I was just as much there as my ex-girlfriend was. So yeah, I think that's a little bit of context in regards to my youth. So I didn't know... That I missed love, closeness, connection. Affection as well. Physical affection. Affection, yes. But when I met her, everything in me... was screaming, longing, and yearning for all of it. Big gulps. Yeah, very much so.

I allowed it, I welcomed it, I scared myself, I scared her, or none of the above. No, no, because I started dating and I was still a virgin before I started dating and that was at 26. I started dating and I met several wonderful girls, but none of them worked out. And I think I met around seven or eight girls that I dated at least a couple of times, most of them.

um some a little more some a little less and then i met my ex-girlfriend and i was also so desperately looking for a relationship which wasn't healthy but i had no experience whatsoever so I was just like a fish looking for food in an open ocean without any food. And then I met her and she came out of... Hold on, hold on. I was like a fish looking for food. in an open ocean where there was no food. That is quite an image. Describe it for me. Yeah, so there were a couple of dates.

back then that i attached the first one actually which also felt quite wonderful after like the second date we We kissed and after a couple of more dates we ended up in bed and that was my first time in that sense. I had experimented way before that time when I was younger, but it had nothing to do with love. So that was the real first time. And how was that for you?

Slow down, slow down, slow down. You're telling me so many things and so many important things. Is it okay if we slow down a little bit? Of course, yeah. If you can help me with that, it'll be great. So let's take a deep breath first of all. Just to bring a different rhythm inside your body. So this was your first, maybe not your first sexual experience, but your first partnered experience that involved love. Yeah.

You were a virgin, you were not a virgin. I was a virgin. It was not my first sexual experience, but I was still a virgin. And how was that for you? Was she? Or she had more experience than you? No, I believe she came out of a relationship of eight years, so she had quite a lot of experience. And I was quite open about the fact that I didn't have any experience. And that first time was...

Both beautiful, a little awkward, and a little forced almost on my end. Meaning I didn't really want to, but I thought I should. Meaning what? No, no, I wanted to, but the fourth bit is actually with a problem that I discovered and I didn't really know that it was a larger issue until then.

But it was that I had great trouble getting to an orgasm. And that was my first time. So I didn't think too much of it. But I almost, like in my head, I had that picture of... it must happen like it is supposed to happen like i'm a man like so it was yeah it was in that sense forced uh in my own um in my own mind and i felt that I was taking long in achieving an orgasm or in ejaculating? In, I think, achieving an orgasm. They're not the same.

And you experienced that how? You were surprised, you were curious, you were anxious, you were worried, you were... What did that represent, if anything? I think I was somewhat worried that it would not happen. Before? No, not before. didn't have the experience to really know until then. And there came a point while we were intimate, me and that first girl that I dated back then. And she came to a point where she said...

Like you don't have to orgasm per se. Like we don't have to force anything. And rationally, that made complete sense. But emotionally, I was like, I'm not sure if I really felt like a failure.

But I felt like, yeah, but it should happen, right? Like, why can't it happen? And that made it forced. And in the end, I'm not even sure if it happened anymore. Or if it happened, I did it myself. And I... came to know after other girls that i dated that that was a larger issue i think it's mostly caused by stress or performance anxiety or however you want to call it something along those lines

What do you call it? I think I would call it... Yeah, there's a beautiful Dutch word for it. I'm not sure if you know the English translation, foul angst. Fear of failure. Fear of failure, yeah. I think that's maybe one of the key factors there. I would call it fear of failure to perform. And what I noticed when I eventually met my ex-girlfriend.

I had that same issue and initially the first time we were intimate she was somewhat shocked that I tried to finish myself because I can imagine you don't encounter men with this issue.

every day like there are most likely other men that have similar issues there are men that have issues with coming too soon but she was quite surprised and we talked about that and i explained that i've never been able to come from penetration before and then we started working on that and I stopped masturbating and after a month she was able to let me come and then things improved and we were able to or I was able to come.

during penetration and i think part of that was the fact that we fell in love so quickly almost unhealthy quickly that i was on cloud nine basically I was out of this world, like I just switched to a new job. I found my first girlfriend back then. We were not official, but things were going really great. So I just, I was elevated by that feeling.

There's nothing wrong with that. No, I know. There's nothing wrong with that. That's why we call it falling in love. We don't call it, you know, climbing step by step. No. Tell me something just on this issue itself. You had experience with orgasm and ejaculation, but primarily through masturbation. Yeah. you basically have learned how to let go with yourself, but not with a partner until then.

There are trust issues involved, there are control issues involved, and there are basically consequences of bad habituation. when you spend many years primarily masturbating, you develop a certain habit of pressure, friction, speed, you name it, and it becomes exactly... The default. Yeah, tailor-made. Yeah. You know, as you exactly like it, and you don't have to temper with anyone else, and you don't have to synchronize, and you don't have to...

Learn how to stay connected to your own pleasure, to your own sensations, while at the same time staying connected with the other person. But it sounds like you were able to create that together, both of you. And you were on cloud nine because it's a beautiful feeling and you had a new job and a new girlfriend and a very elated experience of nascent love. And so far, so good.

So when does it start to turn that you say, I miss the woman, I don't miss the relationship. Or I miss the beginning, I don't miss what followed. Yeah, so I think that the relationship itself became quite difficult early on. Difficult means what? Yeah, my ex-girlfriend two months prior to... uh us meeting for the first time it came out of a what you would call a situationship i think that lasted i'm not sure how long exactly but four to five maybe six months

which was also quite hard on her and was quite toxic for as far as I have heard her stories. And I think that she, from the very start, was... very scared of me leaving very early on. And after a couple of dates with my ex-girlfriend, she sent me a screenshot, I believe, of her deleting her Tinder account. We met through Tinder.

And I sent a screen recording of me deleting my dating apps. But I had paid for Tinder Platinum for six months and I still had three months remaining. So I deleted the apps, but I didn't delete the account. And she was quite surprised to hear that after the next date and asked me, like, why do you need a backup? Why do you need to keep your account as a backup?

And I was like, well, we've only met a couple of times and I really enjoyed spending time with you, but I have no clue how this will go. So under some pressure, I also deleted the accounts because I did view all the... excitement of the connection that i had with her so that was the first little kind of discussion it was not really a fight but like i

I can also voice my opinion as well. So I voiced my opinion and I was like, well, I don't need a backup, but it's just because I paid for six months and that's expensive. So who knows what happens here? I will not use it. But I think that she didn't really trust me not using it. of because of previous experiences she had quite a few of relationships and dates and many of them had their own issues like many relationships that still have i realized that of course

Tell me if I hear you well. When we met, there was a lot of beautiful elixir between us, but also very quickly, did we bring to each other? Anxieties, insecurities, vulnerabilities, fear of abandonment, fear of lack of attention, fear of neglect. that kind of pre-existed, even meeting. We brought them in the suitcase and we opened the suitcase right in front of the other and said, help me. You could say that. Save me. Cure me. Yeah.

take all these bad feelings away from me. And both of you did so? Yeah. What did you learn about yourself? And what did you discover? Since you're the one... who I'm talking to. What did you discover about what you missed, what you wanted, what you needed, what you hadn't had? Yeah, let's start with that. I think... couple of things that stood out to me pretty early on um that at the moment or at that moment i didn't fully comprehend yet but after a couple of months i

started to slowly understand that the lack of affection that I lacked I think in childhood as well but also in my like adolescence and growing up and becoming a teenager and my early 20s. the affection that I received from her matched the affection that suited my inner child, to say it like that, that suited my mental being.

It was the ocean with nutrients. Yeah, that was the ocean with nutrients, exactly. And also our conversations, which could both go very in-depth about our insecurities and our... like our path and things that I've missed and that she missed in previous partners or also in childhood. And sharing those experiences, but also the feeling of... That's primarily for me was so profound, the feeling of feeling so safe with someone else to open up and be completely vulnerable and to feel like...

or to feel myself like I was finally completely myself, if that makes sense. And when I, like, that relationship got so difficult so quick. There almost was no hair on my head thinking that I would ever let that feeling go. There was one time that I also considered ending it because it cost me like all of my energy basically.

And still I couldn't do it. Still I could not break that relationship because of, I think, because of the feelings of loss that I would have to endure for the affection that I would lose. the emotional intimacy that I would lose. We have to take a brief break, so stay with us and let's see where this goes.

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How did it end? Just to get a sense of the full circle. How did it end? So it officially ended January of last year. And it ended... uh there was no at that point no particular event that caused the breakup but i think and i had seen that like throughout the relationship that my ex-girlfriend also had to deal with a lot of internal emotions around the relationship as well. I think those were both a combination of the relationship itself and the past experiences that she had.

It was right around Christmas 2023. And we were heading to her parents, actually. And this is just one of the more clearer bits that I remember. And she discussed with me that she thought that we should end this after Christmas and that we should just do Christmas for our parents because of everything they had organized. We should just do that and after that. call it quits. And that was not the first time we broke up for a week earlier that year. But you would break up because what?

What would create the cycle? I understand that you try to break up a few times and you would come back or she would come back. So what was the circle? When you say it became bad quick, I mean, you're very clear. It became bad quick, but I just couldn't bear the thought of losing. The physical affection, the connection, the emotional intimacy, even though it was becoming more and more fraught and I could rely on it less and less.

I was holding on to what it once had been and what I now knew it could be possible and what I wanted to find my way back to. But that's not how it happened. So if you gave me... When you say that Christmas stands out, why this start wind should end? That was part of the conversation. Every time there was an issue, one of you would say, this will never work.

something happened that said this is fraught. This is not possible. And just be as concrete as can be. I mean, I know I'm fishing with a broad net. I understand, yeah. So in the beginning of the relationship when we would face difficulties.

We would both get into discussions that would end in dynamics, such as she would expect things of me that I felt like I couldn't give to her at that point. More time together, while the relationship was already quite... difficult in the beginning I was quite avoidant I would say somewhat avoidant in the beginning primarily and she was quite anxious so she would need more closeness I would pull back a little because the relationship got

sour points or sour bits quite quickly. I still loved her dearly and I didn't want to lose the connection, but I felt like I needed a little bit of space to get my head back on my body. And that would mean that she would think that I was just putting away and like that the relationship didn't matter to me or not as much as it mattered to her back then.

And that dynamic changed over time, like at the second part, let's say, like the second half of our relationship. I wouldn't enter that dynamic anymore. I would just like hear, try to hear her points because I... also felt unheard at many occasions when I tried to voice my perspective and I saw that her emotions were quite serious and

She could get really emotional and that's also something that she was very honest about from the very start that she could get very emotional in both positive and negative ways. And I just tried to deal, the second half of the relationship, I tried to deal with the... turmoil of the of the relationship basically and do what and do what so for example the fact that um i made an uh

only fence account long ago which i had used long ago and which i still had did not use in the relationship but she asked me in the middle of the night i believe we were going to bed late that night

And she asked me whether or not I have an OnlyFans account. I'm not sure how she came to that, but I think she was also looking for reasons. And this is also where my intimacy issue comes into play, which also... made her insecure about me maybe being with another woman having somebody else on my mind i think that that plays into why she was thinking things like that like is there something else going on here that i don't know

And she asked that and I told her, well, I still have an account, but I have not used it ever since. And also not when I was dating, I believe. And she was quite shocked by that. And the fact that I didn't tell her and then. She wanted to look at my phone and I would become quite defensive because I was like, why don't you trust me? Because we've had trust issues before. So I felt...

Yeah, not seen before. There was also an instance where we were intimate together and she found a hair around my genitalia. And she was convinced that it was somebody else's. And I think this also comes into an insecurity bit about our intimacy being so hot and cold as well, because we developed. I'm going all over the place. So if you want to intervene, let me know. I will. How did you know? Yeah, because I know when I start to explain this that I go all over the place.

But you get lost a little bit. You get lost and you create a kind of a distance between you and the emotions. So... You're telling me there were trust issues from the start, that you may not have done big things, but you did just enough to elicit her worry and her... distrust and her suspicion. And then she would do just enough to instigate your distancing.

You're not being emotionally available as you had well learned. And so quite early on, each of you set the other one up in their most vulnerable parts. You withdraw, she gets suspicious and agitated. What was the presence? Were there other women involved? Was there porn involved? Was there anything to... play around all of this? I had a couple of dates before my ex-girlfriend and I still had a couple on my Instagram followers list and I followed them.

But they were not on my mind at all anymore. I might think of them occasionally, but not in a romantic sense or anything like that. I watched porn back in the days before I started dating. And while I was dating, I... You watched every once in a while or daily activity? Before I started dating, I think I watched almost daily with periods of maybe a week.

of now watching and then a week of each each day of the week and then maybe every other day so that fluctuated a little but quite frequently and how did it end

I asked you that before, but I don't think we got to the answer. The relationship. Yeah. I mean, how did it... There is the beginning of a series of endings, and then there is the final ending.

So to speak. And then there is the ending inside that hasn't happened. Yeah. So there are three endings here. Yeah. The real... ending of the relationship i would say we officially broke up in january of 2024 and then we tried um i i called her maybe three or four times each week once after the relationship ended and she was quite clear that she did not want to continue and i just kept over analyzing the end of the relationship and after i called her that fourth time

we ended that conversation that which also lasted a couple of hours i believe and a couple of days later she asked me to visit her and to talk and she wanted to to see and try if he could fix things a less time one less time so we tried that from like february of 2024 until a little bit into march of that year and then it's finally

really ended I would say may I stop you? yeah one thing I'm hearing you say is I grew up in a very detached way with people that were kind and loving, but not particularly expressive or emotionally atoned. Part of what I think you're telling me is when I start to feel, it's like opening a faucet at maximum capacity on the spot. I don't open the faucet a little bit and then increase the stream. I open it right to the maximum. And the first feeling becomes a watershed.

instantly leading to obsession. Yeah, I think there's some truth to that at least because... What I tried to say earlier, that first girl that I dated, I noticed that I very quickly developed a lot of feelings for her. And I was quite aware of that as well. So I had that rational part of my brain saying,

This does not make sense. I know that you're head over heels right now. But this is reality. And this is just the first girl that you dated. So get your head back on. This is most likely not real. And it ended up not being real. And it took a couple of weeks and I was somewhat sad about that. And then I continued dating and I moved on. But it's very, it is very real. The feelings are very real. Oh, yeah.

Maybe what you'd say is, I just met this person, on what basis am I already imagining a whole life, etc.? But the feelings are very real, and there is no filter. It's very interesting, the gap between how you emotionally rush into something, flood it, flood yourself. Try to hold back with reason, but don't succeed one or the other. Go at full speed. And then sexually, you practice in some way delayed gratification.

You hold in, you hold in, you hold in with the person. It's the exact opposite from what happens to you emotionally. Yeah. In one place, you're like... gushing out and in the other one you're holding holding holding and only alone under complete supervision and control of your own hands can you let go and wonder if you've ever thought about that the gap between the emotional gush and the sexual withholding. I don't think so, actually. Not in that way.

But it makes complete sense. Sit with this for a minute. You don't have to answer me right here. But just let this land and tell me if what how.

I think that the thing you just described as well, as soon as I get the chance almost or feel safe enough, of my emotion gushing out and... like just becoming a waterfall basically that sense of safety that i feel at that moment feels so um or for me is so rare that I think the fact that I have the problem with getting to an orgasm is more or less, or maybe even harder, of a...

of a hurdle to overcome. I think those two are interconnected as well because as soon as I felt more and more comfortable with my ex-girlfriend. I noticed and I knew that from the very start that it was most likely something that happens in my head. So the more unfiltered. Or what you may call out of control. I don't think it's about that. But the more, the bigger the emotional watershed, the bigger the sexual restraint.

I think so. Maybe. You're controlling one with the other. Do you mean that the bigger the emotional connection almost, the harder the... Is that what you mean? Yeah, but I'm not just talking about... the quality of the connection. I'm also talking about the fact that you feel completely taken over. It's an obsession. Now, falling in love is an obsession. It has all the features of an obsession, but it's a qualitative connection, resemblance.

Part of what happens is that after that, we start to ground ourselves a little bit. You know, terra ferma. Let me put my feet and ground myself so that... I am not like a leaf that can be blown in every direction at any moment by anything the other person says, does or doesn't. And because we have a regulatory system inside of us, sometimes our mind regulates our body and sometimes our body regulates our mind.

I mean, they go back and forth in a very interdependent way with each other. But I'm just noticing the contrast between the flooding of the emotional and the restraining of the sexual. I think that's one part of the question deeper in me, is how to gain control over both the emotion. And my body as well, and get those two in balance. I think that I am cool. It's not about gaining control. It's about not losing the connection with yourself.

while you are experiencing an intense connection with someone else. It's about staying grounded. If you stood now with me in the office, I would ask you to stand and I would come and I would just push against you. And you would actually resist by staying steady. while at the same time welcoming the push, rather than falling backwards, because it feels so unstable, so chaotic. So without structure, you know, we have always a structure and a loose movement.

We go back and forth between structure and spontaneity, between what happens and what is built. And what you experience is it becomes all. And the build gets lost. And that gets scary. Yeah. We'll be back with a session right after this. And while we love our sponsors, if you want to listen to this session ad-free, click the Try Free button to subscribe to Astaire's Office Hours on Apple Podcasts.

Hey, Alex Heath here, founder of Sources.News and a contributor at The Verge. And I'm Ellis Hamburger, tech reporter turned industry insider, working closely with today's hottest AI startups. We're excited to announce the launch of our new show, Access, with the Vox Media Podcast Network. Access is the tech industry's inside conversation with Silicon Valley's most influential leaders.

From the tech titans of today to tomorrow's most visionary builders. It's a show made by insiders for everyone who wants a glimpse into the future. In our first episode, Alex interviewed Mark Zuckerberg about Meta's latest smart glasses, the AI race, and what's next for the social media giant. I mean, didn't you just tell Trump you were going to spend like 600 billion? I mean, that's... I did. Yeah, through 2028, which is... That's a lot of money.

It is. And if we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously. But what I'd say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side. You can find The Access Pod now on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sometimes it feels like people don't know how to act anymore.

Post-pandemic, I feel like people are still like, oh, human contact? How do we do this? People openly scrolling on their phones in movie theaters, not even trying to hide it anymore. I've seen someone smoking a cigarette. on the subway. Like, get away from me is the energy right now. I'm not even getting the pleasantries no more and it hurts. If people seem less polite now, it all goes back to, yes, you guessed it,

The pandemic. Nearly half of the country believes that people's behavior is more rude than it was before the pandemic. This week on Explain It To Me, why we've become a nation of jerks. New episodes on Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts.

So you end your relationship, because I'm going back to your original question, and you say it wasn't really good what happened there. I don't exactly understand why you call it so toxic and negative and hard. But at the same time, when you say I can't get over it, means what? I look for her in every other woman. I keep remembering the good and I forget where we landed and where we ended. I can't accept the failure.

What are we holding on to? I always felt I also had some self-esteem issues. Like I had severe acne in the past, which also left scarring on my chest and my back. that played a huge role in why I always pushed women away romantically.

Until there came a point where I had a child wish and I hope to start a family one day and find a partner and hopefully for a long term. So I had to... pushed through my own insecurities and started dating and each time i met a new girl things improved in that sense and after six months of dating and finding my ex-girlfriend, I felt so exhausted and it almost felt like the coming of Jesus that I found that girl and that we had...

such great chemistry, it felt like, and we did at the time, that I now am so afraid that I know that I can find love again. It's not that I rashly don't know that, but emotionally, my emotions just... continue to end up with her in my mind. So I keep holding on to the things that we have and thinking about how difficult it might be to find that elsewhere.

forgetting the fact, recently I know, but forgetting the fact that it might be way more healthy than the relationship that I had with my ex and I understand that.

that relationship was so complex that you maybe don't it's hard to get a grasp of what exactly that toxicity means but I also don't want to show her under the bus and I made mistakes she made mistakes we both have experiences that we carried over and carried into a relationship and now for me the most difficult part and the thing that I struggle with the most is the fact of that I feel inadequate that I feel

that I'm also scared about how hard it can be to find a woman that is willing to accept me for who I am and the right person. will accept that of course but accept me for who i am and the struggles that i have with intimacy because i love to be intimate and i i love the the body of a woman that i love

But with that, I can completely understand that for many women, that can be a great obstacle. That's something that plays in my mind as well. Like how I'm overcoming the fact that I need to start dating again. I hope to.

find someone who accepts that and is willing to discover that with me which is also a beautiful thing actually I agree I agree but and no but and this may not be A watershed. This one may start very differently. Love stories, I was just thinking they're like pieces of music. Yeah. They start in a different key. with a different rhythm, with a different volume, with a different introduction, you've known one. Yeah. It's the first one. It's a very, very important one.

But it's not by definition the one that shapes everything that follows. No. You know? I know that. So the next encounter may be much slower. The next encounter, you may basically say, hey, I want to tell you something about me sexually and emotionally. It changes as we get more connected. But at first... I enjoy pleasing you more than anything, but it may not be in this one predictable heteronormative way that we are all taught is the neck plus ultra.

And to actually, instead of hoping it doesn't happen and trying to hide it, you actually put it right up there as something about you that you know and that changes with time. It's the same thing in reverse. When a man has rapid ejaculation, they sometimes need to say, you know, I need to get really comfortable and things change. But sometimes at first I get a little, you know.

ahead of myself and I don't really stay grounded enough in my own body. I think that just talking about it as a performance anxiety misses the boat. That's kind of, you know, adhering to... a whole set of male competencies that you need to be able to perform. Performing is much less important than the pleasing. Please them and you'll perform perfectly fine.

It doesn't matter what you do. And put the focus not on can I perform and can I be adequate and can I be competent and will my body betray me and will I not be able to control this and will my way into orgasm. That in itself usually kind of makes it worse. So less performance, more pleasing. But also different love stories, different musical introductions. different rhythm, different ambiance and therefore different lyrics, different words, different story.

Anybody will talk about, you know, what have you learned from your relationship history? That's a beautiful question one can ask you. What's a mistake you hope you won't make again? What's something that you would like to do that you didn't do last time? Or be more than do. And as you grow older, everybody will come with more stories and you will come with more stories.

And that will become your relationship resume. Yeah. The one that you don't bring to work, that doesn't talk about all the jobs you've had, but the one that determines so much about how you live. Yeah. You asked me, how do I get over my first relationship? And I don't know that that's exactly what we did. But tell me, since we arrive at the end, what is this conversation like for you?

Very, I would say, almost refreshing in a sense, what I get out of this talk right now, right? I think perspective, most of all. How you just explained how the issue that I have around my sexuality, how that can actually also bring depth to my personality. and bringing my personality and that depth to a new partner. So that's also something along the lines of the insecurities that I have around the scars that the acne left. That's also something that I...

almost started to wear as a trophy, like, yeah, but this is me, so take it or leave it. No. This is not me. This is... Me at this particular moment of my life with you in this situation. You're not static. You're not unchangeable. And you're just learning. You're learning a whole new realm of experience. Definitely. So that sentence of you take me as I am, take it or leave it, you accept me because this is it, this is me.

Ain't going to help you. That doesn't mean you find someone who constantly criticizes you. But you don't put yourself into a box. And I'm saying this in a very short way because we have to stop. But don't put yourself into a box. Let yourself grow. Let yourself process. Let yourself learn. Let yourself make bad mistakes or simply mistakes for that matter.

or choices that you don't think lead anywhere, be a good friend to yourself, in that sense. Speak to yourself the way you would speak if a friend was doing the same thing. That's also something that I've quite a lot of work on. So it's not one thing. It's developmental, meaning it's history of life, story of life. And I'm just going to put three dots at the end of the sentence because we won't be able to put a nice bow here. No, no, no.

I've learned a lot over the last year and I still do. And there are many times that I feel actually so alive because of this heartbreak as well. Maybe sounds a little weird. In pain, but alive. These two go very much together as well. Thank you so much. Thank you too. This was an Esther calling, a one-time intervention phone call, recorded remotely from Two Points somewhere in the world.

If you have a question you'd like to explore with Esther, could be answered in a 40 or 50 minute phone call, send her a voice message and Esther might just call you. Send your question to producer at estherperel.com.

Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destry Sibley, And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul.