Esther Perel is a psychotherapist, a best-selling author, and the host of the podcast Where Should We Begin? She’s also a leading expert on contemporary relationships. Every other week on the show, Perel plays a voice-mail from a listener who has reached out with a specific problem, then returns their call to offer advice. This column is adapted from the podcast — which is now part of the Vox Media Podcast Network — and you can listen and follow for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
The Message
Caller: I was in a relationship with this wonderful person for about a year. He was kind, sweet, and genuine. Loving. We had a lot of beautiful experiences together and a lot of our relationship felt special and true, but there was one obstacle that we couldn’t quite figure out how to overcome.
When we first started dating, I learned that he is very close friends with his ex-girlfriend. When I learned that, I disclosed to him my previous relationship history, which was that my ex-boyfriend had cheated on me with his respective ex-girlfriend. We were both sympathetic to each other’s circumstances and wanted to make it work. I didn’t want him to have to end or put restrictions on his friendship with his ex, nor did he want me to feel uncomfortable. He assured me that it was a purely platonic relationship and I believed him.
But as our relationship developed, I continued to learn more about theirs and how large a person his ex was in his life, and how closely their lives were intertwined. It was hard for me to see how I fit in his life and if our relationship could ever be as important and intimate as theirs was. The discomfort I had with his ex-girlfriend made me very hesitant and very fearful. We had a lot of discussions about it, but recently we decided to end the relationship because neither of us could see a way to move forward. So my question is, in this relationship or in any relationship, how can two people meet each other’s needs without having to sacrifice a part of themselves? And how can I, in future relationships, move past my fears and truly let someone into my life the way I really want to?
The Call
Esther Perel: How long ago did you record this question?
Caller: I think two months ago, a little more.
Esther: And it was just as you were ending?
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: So where do I find you today?
Caller: Today, I think I’m in about the same place. I think I’d like to focus more on the future, instead of dwelling in what could have been. I guess I’m still trying to figure out in my head how to meet each other when we have opposing ideas of what we want, if that makes sense. It doesn’t have to be this specific circumstance, but it seems that this one specifically was very difficult.
Esther: It’s a beautiful question first of all, but it is presented in an either-or way. My needs or his needs, my sacrifice or his sacrifice. What I’m imagining is how we actually open up to questions. Is it the fact that he had a very close relationship with somebody, in this instance a woman? Is it the fact that she was an ex? Would it be different if she hadn’t been an ex? In what way would it be different if it was a man? Would it be different if you have a very close girlfriend with whom you share maybe even more than what you share sometimes with him? Is it about having close, intimate connections with other people? Or is it about the fact that he wasn’t making you enough of a priority in the way that you wanted to experience with him? But it has not much to do with the fact that there was another person. If there had not been another person, maybe the same thing would have occurred.
Caller: Right.
Esther: So those are pieces for which I’m sure you have thoughts. They come up for me just to be able to understand more. What was the context where this question emerged?
Caller: I think it’s a little bit of both. I think it is an ex-romantic relationship that was uncomfortable for me because he did have —
Esther: And that had ended a long time before you met? Or that ended as you met?
Caller: About a year before we met.
Esther: Okay.
Caller: Because he did have a close friend who was a girl, but they had never dated, and I felt more comfortable with that. I feel like there were times throughout the relationship that I didn’t feel like I was a priority compared to his ex-girlfriend.
Esther: And how would he respond to that? Meaning, was he able to hear you, to respond to the longing, the fear, the sadness, the loneliness, the aspiration, or was he trying to protect his rights, his freedom, his individuality, and being all defensive about it and trying to tell you have nothing to worry about and why you’re making such a big deal? See, that’s the context. The question doesn’t exist outside of the dynamic relationship in which it gets played out and that is different than just, you know, how do we not make sacrifices? We all make sacrifices when we enter a relationship, if you want to call it that.
Caller: Right. Yeah, I don’t think he was ever defensive, or he never questioned why I felt the way I felt. He was very responsive to that. I don’t know that he necessarily understood how I felt, but he allowed me to feel how I felt, which was good. But I don’t think he was willing to change that relationship until he knew it was going to work with our relationship. He wasn’t really willing to let go of it until he knew something else could kind of fill it in, if that makes sense. I think it’s just because they were so intimate. It was hard to …
Esther: Did you ever meet her?
Caller: … Let go of. Yes, once.
Esther: Once or many times?
Caller: Just once.
Esther: Why is that?
Caller: At the beginning, I didn’t really want to meet her because it was uncomfortable for me. And then later on, it was kind of weird that I wasn’t meeting her because he and I were getting closer in our relationship and he was obviously good friends with her, and it was just odd. I think he knew I would feel uncomfortable, so he never really made an effort to make an invitation, which is not his fault. It’s just I think he was trying to be more protective.
Esther: Of whom?
Caller: Probably of me.
Esther: Which is, in a way, by not meeting her and interacting with her as one of the people that are close to him, she became bigger in size and the threat became bigger. Your relationship with him lived at the center of his friendship with her, and his friendship with her lived in the shadow of your relationship with him. She loomed large as this threat that was competing with you, that was taking something away from you, that was preventing him to be with you. He had ended that relationship a year earlier because it was about a friendship and a deep connection, but not about a romantic relationship, which he had with you and you with him. What did he do that made you say, “I am not enough of a priority,” or “I don’t feel like I have my place here,” or “I feel like there’s somebody who’s roaming around that I’m constantly having to contend with and compete with, that I feel jealous about, or that I feel is not letting me find my place?” How did that become like that?
Caller: I think it was more of a transparency issue. He wouldn’t tell me how often they saw each other or when they saw each other. Later on, I found out that they saw each other quite often and talked every day. I think as I slowly got to learn those things, it just felt more threatening, I guess, even if it was something innocent. Every time I found out something, I would wonder what else there was that he was leaving out.
Esther: And if I asked him the same question, how would he answer?
Caller: The question of what?
Esther: “What happened to your relationship?” You met this woman. You were together for almost a year. In her experience, there was a relationship with someone that you had dated that felt ever-present, incomplete, unfinished, and intrusive in your relationship with her. What do you think about that? You’re smiling because you suddenly are hearing him and seeing him.
Caller: A little bit, I think. I do believe that it was innocent for him. They were.
Esther: Innocent means what? That you shouldn’t be scared of it?
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: That’s what innocent means? But scared of what? It’s not like you thought they’re having a secret relationship behind your back, or was it that you were thinking?
Caller: No, it wasn’t that. I guess it was more I was scared I would never mean to him what she meant to him. I think for him, they were just friends and they were very close. They weren’t physically intimate, but they were emotionally intimate. It was a friendship, which I know is a very beautiful thing, and I know he wanted to keep it. It’s important. I understand that. I think he just couldn’t help me to see that, I guess.
Esther: And to receive his love without it having to be compared to his relationship with her, but as something that was unique and different in its own way.
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: Why was he not able to do that? What was it for you that said, She means something that I don’t know if I will ever mean to him? Versus, I mean, something else. In a way, that was painful to you because you ended up leaving him, because something about that just ate at you the whole time.
Caller: Yes. I don’t know that he could have done anything. I think it’s more about letting me in his life, maybe. Integrating me into his life. I think I just wanted to be a big part of his life like she was.
Esther: And he would say what to that? You are?
Caller: He would say he wants me to be, but I don’t feel that we ever got to that point.
Esther: He would say so or you say so.
Caller: Both.
Esther: Okay. And he would say, You’re not a bigger part in my life because you don’t want to come with me, you don’t want to enter, you don’t want to see her?
Caller: Not that I don’t want to, I did want to. I think I was just very hesitant because I was scared. So I took baby, baby steps instead of leaping in.
Esther: You say I was scared in part because it was hard for me to trust, partly because I had an ex-boyfriend myself who cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend. So this didn’t come out of nowhere.
Caller: No. They were very different people as well. From the beginning it felt different, but there was an underlying fear from my past relationship.
Esther: And you say, He tried to help me with my fear, but I don’t know that he could have done more. There was something that I struggled with or held on to that goes beyond the ex-boyfriend. You’ve had other experiences that make trust fraught?
Caller: I think so. I don’t know that I have a specific example, but I’m always hesitant when entering into a new relationship. It takes me a long time to open up and really kind of let go of all my fears.
Esther: Where did you learn to be so cautious? Apprehensive?
Caller: I don’t really know. I think I’ve always been a bit fearful and cautious. It’s a little bit of my personality where I need to think everything through and make sure I have all the facts lined up so I can make the best decision. I think I just tend to question a lot of things, whether it’s with work or relationships or anything. That’s just how I’ve always been.
Esther: But you know when we say, “That’s how I’ve always been,” that means that I had to learn to be this way very early on. That means it became a coping style. It emerged in a context, in the reality of my life. So that’s what I’m asking, is if it’s been there so long that you say, “It’s how I’ve always been,” then there was a need very early on to not take things as a given, to question things, to be very careful when you connect with people, to not trust people offhand. That didn’t come from nowhere. So, since you’re smiling in recognition, what did you just think about?
Caller: I know it didn’t come out of nowhere, but I can’t pinpoint a time in my life when …
Esther: No, it’s not a time. It’s not an event that makes me become this way. It’s an environment. I don’t know where you grew up. I don’t know with whom you grew up. Maybe you tell me a bit and we can explore together.
Caller: I grew up in a nuclear household, mom, dad, brother. They’re still married. They are good parents. They can be strict but loving.
Esther: In what country?
Caller: My brother and I were born here, but my parents are from Taiwan. Because they are obviously from a different country, a different culture, they have very different viewpoints than my brother and I do.
Esther: Give me an example. Of course, it makes sense, but give me what’s one of them that stands out for you.
Caller: I don’t know, this is a silly one, but I think my parents have a very firm idea of what is right and wrong in terms of ethically. Even when I go home to my parents’ house and I want to stay out later than 9 p.m., my dad can get angry and say, “Well, that’s not good, you should come home.” I obviously don’t think it’s wrong to stay out late, but he does. That can be with anything, school or work or relationships, that he has very rigid rules that sometimes just don’t make sense to me at all.
Esther: And what would he have said about a boyfriend that stays very close to the ex-girlfriend?
Caller: Probably that it’s not right.
Esther: And you found yourself caught between your thoughts, your values, your ethics and his or theirs?
Caller: Yeah, I think I come across that fairly often in my adult life.
Esther: I would love to think differently, but I’m not able to fully trust myself. And their voices and their values loom large inside of me. I don’t want to be mistaken and foolish to think that the world is different from the one that they have presented me with.
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: Say that in your own words.
Caller: I’ve grown up and have been raised in a certain way that my parents have taught me. I think because I respect them so much and want them to approve of me, I question whenever my own values don’t align with theirs.
Esther: That’s very beautifully and clearly said. That is a different dilemma than the one you came in with.
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: It changes the question. This is not about how two people can be true to themselves and deal with their respective sacrifices. This is, “How do I carve out my own identity, my own values, my own worldview and trust it and maintain my connection with my parents and my respect for them, especially when I don’t necessarily align with them? A part of me is entirely shaped by them and their world and their culture and how good they have done by their ideas and their beliefs. But a part of me has grown up here in a different culture that has a more ambiguous view around right and wrong in relationships. I found myself with my boyfriend, me voicing my parents’ views and him voicing the views I would voice to my parents. I became them and he became me. I don’t tell them everything I do.”
Caller: That’s true.
Esther: Right? “I don’t tell them the things that I think will make them uncomfortable. I don’t tell them the things that I think will needlessly make them react because it’s just staying out late or whatever the just is that is supposed to say ‘it’s innocent.’” It’s a very interesting choice of word. “Then he became me, explaining himself to me the way I explain myself to them.” Somewhat?
Caller: Yes, definitely.
Esther: You describe it.
Caller: My relationship with my parents, or …
Esther: Anywhere you want to take this.
Caller: I think it is very …
Esther: I see a face that recognizes this. The moment I said, “You don’t tell them everywhere you go and how late you stay out,” it became very clear to you. You saw a whole constellation in front of you. I was trying to see what you see and feel a little of what you’re feeling.
Caller: I think I do withhold information from my parents because I think I know how they’ll react. It will just make them upset and we’ll get in an argument or they’ll start lecturing me. I keep things from them, so I don’t feel like they really know the full me, because a chunk of it would just be not aligned with their values.
Esther: Is your brother a witness, an accomplice?
Caller: He’s much better about it. He does whatever he wants and is open about it and my parents have to accept it. Whereas I do what I want, but hide it from them so they don’t find out.
Esther: Mm-hmm. Who’s the oldest?
Caller: My brother.
Esther: And why do you think he can do it? Because he’s older? Because he’s a man? Because he’s always been bolder? Because he doesn’t care if they are upset in the way you are? Because he doesn’t feel so guilty or because he hides his guilt?
Caller: I think because he’s bolder and he doesn’t care as much what what they think.
Esther: Are their expectations different for their son than from their daughter? Or not?
Caller: To a certain extent, yes. I think they’re more protective of me.
Esther: So he can stay out ’til ten.
Caller: Yeah, he’s a guy and he’s older. I’m the younger one and I’m a girl. They give him more leniency to a certain extent. I think I’m still stuck in this box I want to get out of, but …
Esther: The box is what? I do what I want but I’m continuously wondering, “Perhaps they are right? What if I’m mistaken? What if I trust the wrong people? What if I don’t collect the right evidence?”
Caller: I think all of those. I’m in this box, but what if I’m wrong? What if I’m not doing it the right way? What if their way is better?
Esther: What would your brother respond to that?
Caller: I think he would just say to just do it and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. You do it another way.
Esther: And you would say …
Caller: In my head, I ask myself all of the “what if”s. I get stuck before I can even make a decision.
Esther: So, you see, a part of me is hearing this as a cultural conversation. Depending on the kind of immigration, sometimes it’s safer to be more on the side of risk assessment than risk-taking. You and your brother are expressing different aspects of cultural ambivalence. But they are all part of the same larger whole. That often happens in a family where each child is enacting one aspect of the cultural conversation between the values that we grew up with that came from our family of origin, from our culture of origin, and the values of the society in which we’ve been growing up and living. What does freedom really look like in a system that embraces loyalty — that’s one piece of what I’m hearing. And then the other part is, do you wonder if you made a mistake by ending the relationship? Is that a part of what you’re asking?
Caller: I think at the time and with what I could deal with, it was the right decision. Now I’d just like to move forward and work on myself. I don’t know if in the future it would be different — it’s not something I’m opposed to — but I think for now, it’s not right in this moment.
Esther: When you answer me this way, I understand more what it means to say, “I never felt that I would be the most important person in his life. If I am about to differ from my parents and not do as they would want me to do, then being the most important person to him becomes of utmost importance. Because if I separate myself a little more from them, I find the strength and the confidence to do so by receiving the full set of arms from him. Otherwise, I end up feeling like I’m floating in nowhere land.” It’s like letting go of one side of the pool to get to the other side. Sometimes we do it when there’s someone standing at the other side.
Caller: I guess I’d like to do it whether or not there is someone on the other side.
Esther: Maybe. When you say it like that, you’re saying, or at least that’s how I hear it — I’m never right. I’m just hearing things, just so we are clear. You tell me, “Yes, this works, this resonates, this rings a bell.” But when you say it like that, you’re saying, “I don’t want to do it because I depend on him. I don’t want to leave my dependence on her to then depend on someone else.” But that’s not necessarily the way it works. We meet people in the course of our lives who help us leave one side of the pool and reach the other. They give us strength, they translate, they help us live with the unknown, they help us manage the uncertainty. Maybe at some point later in your life, but at this moment, it’s okay to have somebody wait on the other side of the pool. When you will have done it a few times, then you can swim back and forth. But the first time, I think it helps us to know that there is someone on the other side. You probably have done that with education and with work. You have had people waiting for you on the other side of the pool in other areas of your life and you didn’t think of it negatively.
Caller: Right.
Esther: You saw it as a great resource, a teacher, a coach, a friend, a mentor, an author, whatever. It’s not that different in love. When you learn a new vocabulary of love or relationship or gender relation or any of those major aspects of relational life, it’s helpful to have a translator, an intermediary. You’re not supposed to do it all alone. In a way, in our conversation today, I am an intermediary as well. Between different vocabularies of relationships, different vocabularies also of how we create family loyalty, while at the same time allowing for individuality and some freedom. Basically, the question that you posed in relation to him in your voice message is the question that you’ve been grappling with in your family of origin.
Caller: Yeah, that’s true.
Esther: You hear the similarity?
Caller: Yes.
Esther: Tell me.
Caller: How can I be my own person and individual with my own beliefs and set of values while still staying loyal and integrating myself into this family? It seems very hard to me.
Esther: Where in your body do you feel it?
Caller: I think in my gut.
Esther: A knot, a pit?
Caller: A pit.
Esther: Describe the pit.
Caller: It feels like nervousness, I guess. Anxiety.
Esther: So I am the pit and what’s my role? What do I do for her?
Caller: I guess to keep me aligned with my parents. Maybe if I’m straying too far away from what they would do, it’s pulling me back, making me nervous of, “Is this right? Is this what I should be doing?”
Esther: So that’s a useful function. It’s a role of discernment, of cautiousness, of evaluation. Of value alignment, integrity. So that’s a pit for good.
Caller: Yeah, but I think it holds me back sometimes.
Esther: So it’s a pit that invites me to examine myself, but not necessarily to stop myself. It’s a pit that says, “Hey, take a moment, look back, look around, look inside,” and maybe the pit doesn’t need to change as much as my relationship to the pit. My conversation with my nervousness. I could invite a conversation with my nervousness, a conversation with my pit, rather than feeling that the pit is there to take me over, to stop me in my tracks, to imbue me with fears, with guilt, with uncertainty, with self-doubt.
Caller: Okay.
Esther: You know, you made me think of something. One sentence my mother told me when I grew up was always what helped her in the most difficult moments of her life: never to forget where she came from, who she was. And it was a sentence she repeated to me a lot. It’s like a compass. But she never told me what it meant for where I was going. So I remember sometimes having the same, my version of the pit, where I was just like, “Can I do this? Can I take this risk? Can I do something I’m not sure I’m capable of doing? Can I do something that I know for fact she would probably oppose? Can I not follow exactly the track that she had for me because she thought it was the safest one? Was there maybe another one that was just as safe or differently safe?”
I think it’s trial and error. I think it’s a constant conversation with what you call that nervousness, that alarm system. It’s a conversation with many other people who are experiencing a similar cross-cultural experience, multilingual experience, in which sometimes our parents, in order to do right by us, presented themselves as more sure than they perhaps ever were because that’s what they needed to do. But in fact, nobody is that certain about these existential realities, because they are by their nature not fixed.
It’s very helpful to have other people who translate constantly in their life between one set of norms and another, one value system and another, one sensibility and another, one sense of aesthetics and another. Sometimes it’s felt as a problem, but it is often just a more complex and rich tapestry. That’s for your future, I’m now talking. It helps to be with someone who understands that richness and that back and forth, multiple truths and multiple realities. How does that land?
Caller: I get it. I think it’s just maybe difficult to put into practice.
Esther: This is not something you do and you resolve and it changes. It is a dialogue with yourself and with the world around you that will continue. One day, depending on what you do professionally, depending if you ever have kids, this comes back. It’s a theme in your life. It’s not just a problem, it’s a theme. It’s part of the life you’re going to live. You will have this conversation over and over, but it won’t always be as tight and tense. Sometimes it will be heavy, sometimes it will make you feel, I’m so alone with this. Who else understands this? And sometimes you will meet others and they understand it so well.
Caller: It feels like you’re saying that I’m building as I go. Maybe it’s a little bit of my parents, a little bit of me, a little bit of my friends. There’s no right or wrong. It’s just what I make of it.
Esther: Which becomes a right as well. You’re very thoughtful. You’re not careless. You’re not reckless. You’re not outright rejecting your parents. You’re not outright rejecting the world you live in. You’re in a constant negotiation. So I wouldn’t worry so much about not doing the right thing because you’re very clearly looking for other ways to experience what can be right without experiencing it as a rejection of your parents. How do you honor them, build on it, expand it somewhat because your reality is different from theirs? That means more opportunities and sometimes more land mines.
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: How is this conversation?
Caller: Eye-opening.
Esther: What about it?
Caller: That I still have a lot to work through. Not that it’s a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing. I thought it was just something that I had to deal with, but I can change it. I can use it how I want to.
Esther: It’s not only that you have something to work through. You have a lot to work with. But if you want to be able to try new things, you may need to learn not how to be more certain, but how to live with more uncertainty. You want to match your parents with the same level of certainty that they have presented to you about what you call right and wrong. If you want to try new things, if you want to explore, experiment, make different choices than the ones that they clearly uphold, then it’s not about how do you become as certain as them, but it’s how do you allow yourself to live with some of the uncertainty that comes when you explore, when you take risks, when you make changes. And that uncertainty is not a weakness.
Caller: It’s just life.
Esther: You said it! It’s the life that you choose to live. That uncertainty is an element of life. Once you decide to open up things, to question things, to not just repeat, then it does invite the ability to tolerate uncertainty, which is a piece of what you had with your boyfriend.
Caller: So just being able to sit with it.
Esther: Yeah, but it’s not passive sitting. It’s “What do I need to help me with it? Which witnesses do I need in my life? What are the reassurances that help me? What are the risks I take?” So it’s not that I’m sitting with it and I’m just letting it wash over me. It’s an active engagement with the unknown.
Caller: Okay.
Esther: It’s a beautiful thing to watch you take things in, think, absorb, try to find a place where to store it. Decide if you want to keep it in the lobby or bring it to the bedroom. Your face is telling me this whole story of what you do with everything you’re hearing here. Yay, nay, a little bit, not really, maybe, I don’t know yet, where should I put that? It’s a whole triage system.
Caller: It’s a lot.
Esther: It’s beautiful. I would like you to experience with me what you’re trying to become more comfortable doing with your parents, which is don’t take what I say just like that at face value. Examine it, question it, reject some of it, absorb some of it, explore some of it further, be curious about it. It’s a whole set of active engagements. And that doesn’t mean you have to be a hundred percent sure that you disagree or that you agree. It just means, “I take what Perel is telling me and I’m cooking with it. I’m not just swallowing it.”
By Esther Perel , 2024-04-08 18:00:53
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