16:00

when there's

16:02

dissatisfaction in the relationship

16:04

in any way. So

16:07

maybe that's fantasizing about leaving,

16:09

going somewhere, fantasizing about other

16:11

people. I

16:14

feel like that feels very familiar to me. How

16:19

does it work? How

16:22

does the fantasizing work? Yeah,

16:24

what do you think about, how do

16:26

you behave? Yeah,

16:29

I think for me, it's really just sort of

16:31

like about being alone in some ways, just being

16:34

able to do what I want or be with

16:36

who I want. What's

16:40

the soliloquy? How

16:42

do you speak to yourself when you are

16:44

in that fantasy? If I met that

16:46

part of you, right

16:48

here, it sits in this

16:50

chair. Actually, you can change chairs. Come sit

16:53

here. I

16:55

wanna meet the fantasy. Yeah, I like this. Yeah.

17:02

Sometimes it's not

17:04

just thinking about being in a different place.

17:08

One has a very clear idea of where one

17:10

is, what one is doing, who

17:12

one is with. And

17:15

basically, if you have frequent

17:18

flight fantasies and you're with

17:20

someone who has frequent abandonment

17:23

fears, you have the

17:25

perfect fit for creating a

17:28

very unpleasant situation. So may

17:30

I meet the fantasy and could you

17:33

introduce yourself to me? Because

17:36

you've been doing that for a long time. You're

17:38

very familiar to this man, right? Yeah,

17:40

yeah. Probably since

17:43

I was, I don't

17:45

know, like 13 or 14. Do

17:48

you see yourself there? Yeah, I do. You

17:50

remember? Hi, nice to meet you. What's

17:54

your name? My name is... I

18:05

could have called this avoidant attachment, escape,

18:10

dissociation, denial. So

18:12

many words, clinical diagnostic

18:15

words. But I

18:17

thought there's something more poetic in talking

18:19

about it as a fantasy because as

18:22

a child, he experienced it

18:24

as a fantasy. He

18:27

imagined himself in a different character, in

18:29

a different life, with a different plot.

18:33

And because he's already experiencing

18:35

himself and she has already

18:37

described him as the guy

18:39

who checks out, then

18:42

that checking out becomes a

18:44

very frozen experience. But

18:47

when I talk about fantasy and I ask

18:49

him what's the name of that part

18:51

of you, he immediately knows how to

18:53

call that part of him. He relates.

18:57

Changing the language is an

18:59

attempt to open up that

19:01

more avoidant flight

19:04

state. And so from

19:07

there we start. So

19:15

you just one day appeared in

19:17

the life of this young boy

19:19

and helped him with what?

19:22

Where did you want to take him and what did you want to

19:24

take him out of? Well,

19:28

yeah, I think when I first

19:30

came online, it was because

19:33

of his parents

19:36

getting divorced and

19:38

trying to protect him

19:42

from not getting hurt. And

19:45

so bringing him, not

19:48

spending a lot of time with the family, investing

19:50

in friends and romantic relationships,

19:53

really looking for romantic

19:55

relationships. Yeah, and

19:58

then I think over the years. it

20:01

just became like when like relationships

20:03

would end, I was,

20:05

would take him to South America for

20:07

a year or there was a lot

20:09

of like adventure and exploration and

20:14

finding comfort or

20:16

finding stability as

20:18

something to be a little bit wary

20:20

of, to be a little bit almost

20:23

fearful of. And so I

20:25

think always kind of wanting to infuse

20:28

his life with some novelty of

20:31

like, what can we see next? Who

20:33

can we meet? And I think

20:35

not, yeah, not wanting to

20:37

get into like a

20:39

stable life of just like

20:41

things changing, things need to change kind

20:44

of constantly for him. So

20:48

if you can create stories

20:51

with him where his

20:53

life changes all the time, he does not

20:56

have to worry that someone else will change

20:58

his life. Yeah.

21:04

That sounds, yeah, that's right. And

21:07

how does that play out in his relationships?

21:11

Yeah, I think in relationships, it just

21:13

plays out like a

21:15

lack of commitment. It

21:17

kind of gets to a point where maybe

21:19

some boredom sets in and

21:22

then we kind of

21:24

give him these like pathways out

21:27

to- What do you tell him? How

21:29

do you speak to him? You could do better. This

21:32

isn't the end point. We

21:35

should think about things that you

21:37

have wanted to do. You have, and what? This

21:40

is boring. This is conventional. You're

21:43

not really listening to yourself right

21:46

now. There's other things out there.

21:48

There's better things out there. How old

21:50

are you if I may ask? Okay.

21:55

What happened to his family after

21:57

his parents divorced? So

22:01

his parents divorced and

22:04

his dad moved out of

22:06

the house. What

22:09

were the circumstances? Of

22:11

the divorce. It was very

22:13

emotional and volatile.

22:16

It just was

22:19

a series of really

22:22

volatile encounters in the

22:24

house between his

22:26

parents. When

22:29

my dad was gone, when his

22:31

dad was gone, it was kind

22:34

of seeing him become

22:36

this ultra responsible

22:39

person, almost taking on a parental

22:42

role for his younger sisters. I

22:45

think he just, at the time, felt

22:48

that what he could do was

22:52

just try to protect his

22:54

sisters, just try to do

22:58

anything he could to make sure

23:00

that they didn't experience pain

23:04

or discomfort. A

23:06

lot of that was taking

23:09

them out of the house, was

23:11

taking them out of that place where there

23:13

was a lot of strife. How

23:17

many? How many

23:19

sisters? Three. Three

23:21

younger sisters. Can

23:26

I ask you something? I

23:29

just wondered if that's where he

23:31

learned to

23:34

check out, to kind of

23:36

take his gaze and move it as far

23:38

away. Three sisters

23:40

and a 13 year old is a lot. Meaning

23:45

three sisters and a 13 year old

23:47

who feels responsible to protect

23:49

the three sisters. That

23:52

is a full blown training

23:55

in how to respond to other people's

23:57

feelings. kind

24:00

of keep one's own tucked. Because

24:07

he's telling me that it's very hard

24:09

for him to actually just

24:12

be there rather than

24:14

either checking out or feeling

24:16

responsible. It's

24:20

like either he feels like should have nothing to

24:23

do with him. Either he feels

24:25

that it has everything to do with him. So

24:27

it's very hard for him to just

24:30

let somebody else experience something. Not

24:33

somebody else, women. Women

24:35

with whom he's intimately connected. Both

24:42

of them, she and him,

24:45

experienced a divorce that left

24:47

them feeling very

24:49

alone. Saddled

24:52

with responsibility over herself

24:54

and saddled with responsibility for

24:56

him over his sisters. He

25:00

felt a lot. It would

25:02

be so easy to think of him as

25:04

he can't handle her feelings, but it's

25:08

because he feels them very much. And

25:11

each of them responded

25:14

to the changes in their life

25:17

in a different direction. His became,

25:19

I get out of it, and

25:22

Herb's became, who can be

25:24

here with me? His

25:26

was, I better be alone. Hers

25:29

was, how can I not be alone?

25:31

And so she becomes the pursuer. He

25:34

becomes the withdrawal. One of

25:36

the most universal dimensions

25:38

of relatedness that we find

25:41

in couples worldwide. And

25:47

you, fantasy, you

25:50

have a very nice way of coming in and

25:52

you just say, oh, you're being bored. You

25:55

use the word of boredom and adventure. That's

25:58

very nice, but it's kind of literature. for

26:00

a 13-year-old. Mm-hmm.

26:04

That's interesting. And

26:08

you still speak with him with the same

26:10

language. What

26:14

do you mean, you say more

26:16

about that? Let's go in the

26:18

woods and have an adventure and

26:20

be independent and be a hero

26:22

and not be here burdened and

26:25

saddled with all these women's emotions

26:27

that I have to be responsible

26:29

for. Come on, come with me!

26:35

Yep, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

26:41

Yeah, that feels right. You know,

26:43

this... I'm bored, you

26:46

know. Let's have an adventure. I'm thinking... I'm

26:49

bored is not the same as... I

26:52

feel overwhelmed. It's not

26:54

the same as... I

26:56

feel responsible. This

27:02

is one of those moments where when I listen to it,

27:05

I think, oh, shit,

27:07

I wish I had just stayed quiet and

27:09

let him take this in. I

27:13

didn't have to say anything. It's

27:16

very clear to me that he needed to hear

27:18

me say this. He needed to hear an adult

27:20

speak to him in

27:22

ways that the adults were absent in his life.

27:24

And at the same time, I

27:26

wish I had left him. A

27:30

little longer with this, so that

27:32

he could absorb it and

27:34

embody it and

27:36

be with it. Anything?

27:48

I guess I would say one way that it's shown

27:50

up regularly in our

27:53

time together is

27:55

very frequent musing about leaving New York

27:57

City and not wanting to do

27:59

it together. and not being sure about

28:01

where you're going. So it was

28:04

multiple times weekly mentioning that.

28:06

And that was obviously

28:08

very triggering for me. Yeah,

28:11

that's something I've noticed as well.

28:13

And Carl is

28:15

very much like, it's an

28:17

anxious energy. There's a

28:19

lot of restlessness.

28:23

Part of what I think she experiences

28:25

with you is that you

28:28

go back and forth. And half the time

28:30

she has to figure out who she's in

28:32

relationship with. Yeah. One

28:37

of the things that I noticed, to me it

28:39

feels like when we are

28:41

experiencing a new high in intimacy,

28:44

and things are especially intimate

28:47

and close, a

28:50

very large fight will end up happening. And

28:53

really leave

28:56

me feeling very destabilized and confused. So

29:02

when you have a new

29:04

experience of intimacy, where

29:06

you get closer, he

29:09

creates a fight to

29:12

create more distance and to push you away. Or

29:15

maybe Carl comes in and

29:17

makes sure that there is a fight so that

29:19

he can be loyal and

29:21

faithful to Carl and

29:24

more distant from you. I

29:27

totally don't discount that

29:29

at all. What brought

29:31

you together? And what brought

29:33

the transition from

29:35

friendship to lovers? What

29:40

drew you to him? What

29:43

drew me to him was he was just

29:45

so funny and so curious and I liked

29:47

the way that you thought and looked at

29:49

the world. And I felt really

29:52

seen by you and understood by you. And

29:54

you were just an easy, comfortable

29:57

presence to be around. like

38:00

it's tacky. Yeah,

38:08

it's interesting because I don't, I don't know if

38:10

I experienced it as like, when you're saying like

38:12

tacky or, I don't necessarily

38:14

feel that way. So, I don't

38:17

know. You've said that though. Yeah,

38:19

no, I mean, I can't

38:21

counter that. And yeah, I'm really

38:25

sorry. Yeah,

38:29

we shouldn't say that. But what happens

38:31

to you? In those moments?

38:33

Yeah. Yeah, I think it sort of like feels like

38:36

the pattern that we were talking about. I

38:38

feel like it's just so

38:40

overt. That's

38:42

how I experience it. It's like very overt

38:45

that I get like, almost

38:47

just like want to avoid it altogether.

38:51

But yeah, but also, I think she's

38:54

also the first person I really

38:56

dated that has been, I

38:59

think, so open about their sexuality

39:01

and open about their

39:03

desire. It's kind of just

39:05

dawning on me that like, I

39:08

don't really have much experience of

39:11

women talking this openly about sex

39:15

and their desire. But

39:19

I do experience it as that like,

39:22

kind of being put upon or all

39:25

these like expectations. Too

39:30

bad. Yeah, which isn't. Imagine

39:33

how flattered

39:35

you could be and desirous

39:38

you could feel and desired

39:41

you could feel. Yeah.

39:49

In an adult world, you

39:54

would welcome this. Yeah. Why

39:59

don't I? Right. She's

40:01

into me, she likes it, she wants

40:03

more, she's enjoying it. Yeah.

40:07

That's a very

40:10

nice, but

40:13

it doesn't reach you there. Yeah, no, it

40:15

doesn't. It reaches you in a place that

40:18

is not adult, that

40:23

is way too reminiscent of family. Yeah.

40:29

And you translate it all as

40:31

emotional neediness, and

40:35

you find yourself

40:37

withholding, rather than

40:39

responding to someone who says, come play with

40:42

me. Yeah, yeah. And

40:44

you say, be right there, me too, want to

40:46

play. Right.

40:48

It gets distorted. The whole thing, from the

40:50

moment it leaves her to the time it

40:53

reaches you, takes on a

40:55

whole other meaning. Do

40:58

you, do

41:00

my... Oh, you're absolutely

41:03

right. That I can't receive that,

41:05

that I can't be

41:08

open and excited about that. Yeah,

41:10

I do experience it as, yeah,

41:13

neediness, even though that's not even the language

41:15

that I think about it, but

41:17

yeah, that is, I think, it's like a judgment.

41:21

And the neediness overpowers? Yeah,

41:24

or it's a compulsion, where

41:28

it's just something that needs to happen

41:31

every time we're together. When

41:34

you use the word compulsion, it often

41:36

can mean, she wants

41:38

to be with me because she needs something,

41:40

but it's not really about me. Yes.

41:44

That's the way I feel. How does

41:46

that land on you? I

41:52

don't really know how to counteract

41:54

that belief. I don't know how

41:56

to prove that belief

41:58

wrong. That's

42:00

not true. There

42:05

have been very long periods of my life where I've

42:07

not felt sexual at all. And it's

42:09

because of a lack of sexual chemistry

42:11

in the relationship. My

42:16

desire is to

42:21

be close and have fun with you.

42:25

It's not just about me

42:28

getting off. And

42:30

I feel like that's obvious in the

42:33

dynamics of our sex. The

42:37

question that just popped into my head is,

42:40

do you experience his refusal differently

42:42

from how you experience the refusal

42:44

of your other partners? Your

42:47

female partners? The

42:56

circumstances are different, so it feels

42:58

different. But there is like a

43:00

rejection. But similarly,

43:03

or you assign a different meaning to it? I

43:05

assign a different meaning to it. Say

43:09

more. She

43:16

wouldn't have sex with me because I

43:19

don't really masturbate. And

43:22

she said that she

43:24

felt like I was using her and

43:27

that I had this sexual dysfunction that I

43:29

needed to figure out before she would. She

43:33

was comfortable engaging with me because she wanted to engage

43:35

with me because it was fun and enjoyable. But

43:39

I wanted to engage with her because I had

43:42

no other way to express my sexuality. And so

43:44

until I was able to get in touch with

43:46

myself that way, we couldn't be

43:48

intimate. Okay.

43:54

And with him? Well,

43:57

I mean, like I said, it just feels... Like

44:00

it has a tinge of sexism to it. So

44:03

I assigned that to it. Like you're

44:06

uncomfortable with women's sexuality. It's

44:08

the meaning that I've assigned to it. I

44:12

shouldn't be so overtly sexual. But

44:18

I sense is that this is about

44:20

how you interpret. I

44:23

mean, basically you are responding to a number

44:28

of things that she once asked,

44:30

says from the place of expectations.

44:35

Pressure, demand,

44:39

invasion. Lots

44:43

of associations to the women you grew

44:45

up with. If

44:50

she says nice things, she

44:52

puts pressure. If she initiates

44:54

sex, she's needy. If

44:57

she has tears, she is

44:59

manipulative. You

45:04

can interchange them. If

45:07

she is wanting to

45:09

have a conversation, she's

45:13

choking me. And you

45:15

have a set of very strong reactions

45:19

that are all there taking

45:21

you away constantly. But they're taking

45:23

you away in response to

45:26

how you interpret what she's doing.

45:29

Yeah. Everyone, and

45:32

that's just a thought, you know?

45:34

But I have a sense that

45:37

everyone has relationship issues

45:40

that they're gonna need to address at some point in

45:42

their life. We all do. And

45:46

the main question is with whom? Is

45:51

she the person with whom you're going to, we

45:55

negotiate your relationship to Carl and

45:59

your ex-wife? exit strategies?

46:04

Is he the person with whom you're going

46:06

to negotiate,

46:11

what would you say? You're

46:15

asking if I see that he is the one? That

46:19

he's the one that you want to address

46:22

the relational questions that travel

46:25

with you. Absolutely,

46:28

yeah. So

46:31

instead of, is this the person I want to be

46:33

with? Is this the person that

46:35

I want to address the relational

46:37

issues that I carry with me? Once

46:41

I address those, I will know if it's the

46:43

person I want to be with. But at some

46:45

point, we stop

46:47

somewhere and we begin to put

46:51

the pieces together. Yeah. Where

47:00

should we begin with Esther Perel is produced

47:02

by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox

47:04

Media Podcast Network, in partnership with New York

47:06

Magazine and The Cut. Our

47:09

production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen

47:14

Muller and Julian Hatton. Original

47:18

music and additional production by Paul

47:20

Schneider. And we're here to help you

47:23

with the production of the production of the original

47:26

music and additional production by Paul Schneider.

47:30

And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin

47:32

are Esther Perel and Jesse

47:34

Baker. We'd

47:36

also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary

47:38

Alice Miller and Jack Saul.