Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - Esther Calling - Four Affairs, Four Divorces. Why Do I Keep Doing This?

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Four affairs and four divorces later, she is searching for answers as to why she can’t stop leaving in such an abrupt way. Despite longing for a life partner, she questions her ability to maintain a healthy and stable relationship. Esther seeks to uncover the root of these issues and help her forge a new path forward as she embarks on what she hopes is her final relationship. Esther Callings are a one-time, 45-60 minute interventional phone call with Esther. They are edited for time, clarity, and anonymity. If you have a question you would like to talk through with Esther, send a voice memo to [e-mail]. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know, I've been reflecting on my past relationship. I've been thinking about all the challenges I faced, and despite my desire for a stable, fulfilling partnership, I find myself repeating patterns that have led to pain and failure. I've been married four times, I'm 46 now, and each marriage ended in divorce. In my first marriage, I'm 46 now, and each marriage ended in divorce. In my first marriage, I experienced physical abuse, and in my third, emotional abuse. My second and fourth husbands, they were good men whom I deeply respected,

and yet I still betrayed their trust through infidelity. I ended all my marriages by cheating on my husbands. I was not happy in my sexual life with any of them until my current relationship, which is with a married man who became my affair three and a half years ago when I decided to quit my fourth marriage. Now he is on the way out of his marriage and it kind of gets serious between us. And I feel that I start to create problems for us because as I understand myself I fear to make this relationship serious because I'm afraid that I will step into the same pattern as I had before. Despite my longing for a

life partner I question really my ability to maintain a healthy and stable relationship and I question why I ended all my relationships before by cheating. I've realized that this is a pattern, like maybe already when it was a second marriage, because it always started the same and it continued the same with different, totally different men. What do you mean by it started the same? I mean, it started nicely, bright and with feelings. And like every time I was hoping that, yes, that's the Mr. Right.

Looking back, I understand that I was choosing my next man as a contradiction to the previous one, because the previous one didn't happen to be happy marriage. And it's really hard to say, but I feel I was always looking for love, the love which would give me a feeling that I don't have to fight for it or that I don't have to prove I'm good enough to be loved. My childhood was not easy. My mother was sick with cancer all my childhood and my dad was always working. I was alone lots of hours every day entertaining myself. And I escaped home when I was 18. So I ran away basically because I had more restrictions and things which were forbidden at home than those things which were allowed to do.

So I really wanted freedom, but I didn't go free. So I ended up in the relationship with a man who was older than me. And basically, I was going from one relationship to another. And I started, of course, to question, like, is it something I'm desperately looking for and cannot find does it exist what I'm looking for at all something is wrong with me that I do not manage to go for like to to search properly I don't know how shall I say it like where am I failing and why can't I just see that it's not gonna work within like a short period of time why do I dedicate years for such relationships why do I going for a fair to end it up

so it feels like I can't actually go and say, okay, let's divorce, it's not working, or let's break up. So I'm making myself a bad guy at the end. So you find Mr. Right, but you become Mrs. Not Right? Yeah, looks like it. And what comes first? Extricating yourself through the affairs or deciding that you want to end and then finding the best sure bet to do so?

I think first I decide that it's going to end. Yes. And I think that for me, I was catching myself on the thought that if I actually can look at another man, it means that, yeah, my feelings are over. Oh, really? Do the lovers become your next husbands? No. So the lovers are just exit strategies? Yes. So it was always very short term.

So except for this last one? Yes. This last one is very special. Yes. But you are basically, if I understood you well, saying to me, as we now have a clear slate to be with each other, I am so afraid that I'm going to mess it up. Yes. That I would rather he not be available. Yes.

Me choosing this relationship, which I have now, I was very conscious when I was going for it. So basically, I opened computer and I didn't know that such sites exist, websites, you know, for married people. So I really didn't know. And I just Googled website for married people for sex or something. I don't remember how I did it, right? I type it, but it suddenly it appeared and I was shocked how many people are there married people looking for affairs and I spent just two days on that website because I became overwhelmed of the attention and amount of messages I was receiving. And on the day when I was already on the way out, I just scrolled down and stopped, and that was it.

I didn't have sex with my fourth husband for three years before actually I went for this. And when I realized that, okay, I just need to figure out, am I frigid, like something is wrong with me? So, and I thought that I don't want to go find someone who is not married because it may cause troubles for me and that it's better on the safe side that we both are married. So that was the idea which I had that in my head.

It started like very symmetrical. So we both wanted the same and it was an escape for both of us. I have a very sick child. My second daughter is a handicapped child and my relationship at home was difficult despite of the fact that my ex-husband is a very nice man but we just it didn't work between us we were not talking almost at all and as I mentioned we didn't have any sexual life for years and it was approximately same situation on his side so when we were meeting each other once per week or once per two weeks, we just had a very great time escaping.

Then in some months it started. So we started to establish feelings for each other and it became more and more serious. And that was the very first long affair for both of us. I think we both somehow tried to fight this because I had my fears, he had his fears. They are where we are now, so it feels that it can become something. But I have this fear inside me that am I certain that this is going to work? Or is it going to fail again?

Is it that? Or do you have it? I was waiting to see how you're going to finish the sentence. Because the four marriages, the constant factor is you. There may be four very different men, but there's four times the same woman. And you probably can begin to identify what are some of the things that happened to you. When? In the relationships. I don't know how long they last. I don't know what happens when you check out, when you give up, when you start to feel like I have to escape, like you left and escaped home.

When you start to feel that you are talking to these men and experiencing them like you experienced your father. When you start to think, you know, will this succeed? You have no idea. You're right to think, I'm not sure of anything. You shouldn't be. But you have questions about what's it with me? I mean, you don't seem to have a challenge finding people. But every time you find yourself running and bolting, that's probably the first question for me. Because what you're asking me is what's inside of me that's driving me? Is there something broken? Is there something that I'm not aware of? Is there something I should watch out for? Because I'm my worst enemy at this point.

Yes. I undermine myself. And I could go on. I could do six, seven, eight. But it's not like I don't pay a price. And I do meet and I do fall in love and I do go into La La Land and I do marry every one of them. And of course, they all marry me too.

And I don't know what they think when I tell them about the previous ones. But every single one of them thinks that maybe they all marry me too and I don't know what they think when I tell them about the previous ones but every single one of them thinks that maybe they'll be different or I'll be different with them and so everybody's in magical thinking land there's a lot of fiction here and and now there's someone that you care about deeply who is leaving his family to be with you. And you kind of say, I don't want him to destroy all of that for me if it's going to be another short-term investment.

Mm-hmm. We have to take a brief break, so stay with us and let's see where this goes. So, what do you know? What do you know about your experience? Not so much about what you do. The affairs is the strategy. The affairs is the symptom. The affairs is not the cause.

What happens to you in those attachments that you form and in the way that you need to sever them very abruptly. I never had many relationships. These four relationships, they have been long, all of them. They took me years. So it's been five, seven, five, and five. So I've been really trying to save all of them, despite of the fact that usually in approximately one or two years, it would be already obvious it's not going to work.

And when you say it's not going to work, or even when you say I'm looking for love, you're looking for what? What's the fantasy that every single one of these men is going to what? Rescue you from what? I don't think I actually was looking for rescuing, but I think I was looking for freedom. Looking at all them four, they actually put me in prison, but in another type. So the first one was really dominating, dominating badly. Like he was eight years older and I was 18. He was trying to change me by all means, you know, like change me what my mother made of me and change into something else. But I don't think I really knew who I am because I was not allowed to say

no. I was not allowed to say I don't want to do this or that. I was punished. I was beaten. I wasn't used to actually express my desires. I'm not sure that I actually knew what my desires are. I was so used to do what I was told to. And that's why this first relationship, I felt even comfortable in it. Like, because, yeah, it was another person who was saying to me what I should do. Like your dad had done.

No, my mom. My father was working a lot. He's actually a great person. And I was, but I didn't know him really when I was a child. So we found each other much later in my life when my mom died. And not very long time ago, I asked him, like, where have you been? Like, why don't I remember you? And he said that, well, yeah, he traveled a lot. He was working, basically constantly working. And my mom, she was dealing with cancer and with two children. And your mom is the one that put the restrictions.

Yes. Yes. So every time I met a man, I thought I would finally experience freedom. But every time I found myself back in another version of the prison that was familiar to me, in which somebody dictates to me,

either through soft power, either through overt power, either through being a perpetrator, either through being a victim. Exactly. Because if I take my last marriage, there my ex-husband became basically my teenage child. So he was a very nice person, but he didn't manage to take care of himself really

while we were together. And I had him, I had two of my children, where my youngest one is a handicapped child and his son from the first marriage. First wife died of cancer as well. And so I got suddenly many kids whom i had to take care of and i've been constantly working i've been arranging activities for children buying clothes for everyone including my husband, ordering hairdresser visits for him as well. And then I realized, okay, that's not life. I remember I came home after work late and he was

very good at cooking. So he loved taking care of kids and making food. So I felt we switched the roles and I stopped feeling myself as a woman and maybe that's why our sex life stopped as well because you cannot have sex with your son basically and that's a horrible horrible terrible feeling and I remember I was on the couch in front of the TV and I thought, okay, and that's it. So this is how my life is going to be. And I really loved life, all my life, despite of everything what happened to me, all the challenges I had. And I just wanted so much to at least allow myself to think, can it be different? But interestingly, you come to me asking me, why do I cheat repeatedly? Why do I leave my marriages with the affairs?

Or why do I resort to affairs, period? And then why do I resort to affairs as a marital escape? And I have another question. I mean, it actually is quite obvious to me, and that doesn't mean it's true, but that's the thought that came to me, that if in every marriage you find yourself either the mother or the daughter, then living with an affair is living as a woman. Oh, that's so beautifully said, Esther. Now you suddenly made me not feeling guilty.

But my goal is not about cleansing your conscience my hope is to help you make sense if there is a question it is why do i find myself continuously hoping to leave the relationship i had with my mom but actually recreating it in all its glory in multiple colors and forms. That's the question. The fact that I use sex and infidelity to leave, because it's actually more sex than anything else, is because once I become sexual, I feel free. Once I am sexual, I am not in a child role, either restricted, beaten up, abused, clamored, and I'm not in a motherly role because as a mom, I'm also not having sex. So it takes the form of the affairs and your partners will experience it as such. But if you ask, what is the meaning? Why is this my strategy?

Why don't I leave simply saying I want out? Because I don't feel free enough to leave. So basically they end up saying we're gone. I mean, I am the one instigating it, but they're participating. And I leave through the use of sex because sex represents for me being a woman, not a child or a mom, and being free, even if it's short term. It makes sense. The real question is, why am I trapped in constantly putting myself with the same kind of people. They may be different in color, race, religion, language, etc. But the relationship I develop with each and every one of them

always lands me in the same spot. That's the question. Yeah. The question is about how do I enter, not how do I exit. What do you think of this? I think it's very, very true. You're absolutely right. In two marriages, I felt myself as a daughter, and in other two marriages, I felt myself as a mother. They all started that I felt myself as a woman, But when we moved together, so the situation started to change.

But the question which remains is, was it me who influenced those men to become either children or my fathers? Or it was something what I didn't saw in the beginning of the relationship. This relationship which I have now, it hasn't been six months or one year. It has been three and a half years when usually all my previous relationships would end, basically, almost. I've been really learning myself during the last two years, trying to work on my traumas, my childhood traumas. I worked with a therapist and spent time on learning what do I really like

and what gives me pleasure, really trying to meet myself because I felt that I've been trying to please everyone in my life. First, I tried to please my parents, then my husbands, my employers. In this relationship, I don't have to. So we are in a very, quite amazing partnership. And that feels very good. And this is something what I'm so afraid to destroy by some move, which I will not even understand.

Such as? That's a good question. What's your fantasy of the fatal blow? It has always been a moment when feelings started to get weaker with everyone. And I cannot say what exactly happened, which brought me to the point that feelings started to fade away. It fades from what to what? I start stopping loving.

And I feel what instead? Emptiness, irritation. I want to isolate myself, to be on my own, to have my own space, to not be around. But very often, first, what I stop wanting

is physical connection, physical sex, yes. And what do you think that represents? I don't know. Help me, please. How old were you when your mom died? I was 30. 30?

30, three zero, yes. So she's been sick for 25 years, basically. So she had some remissions, but cancer would come back, like three times, I think. It has been three rounds. And what was the soundtrack that would go in your head when you would think of her? You are so sad. you are so angry, you are so gray, you never smile, you never want to celebrate a birthday, you're never happy about

Christmas or New Year's Eve, you never want to have presents. You never want me to be around. You like my friends more than me. You call them nice names and you never call me that. So I can continue. Keep going. Keep going. And I feel, I feel sad. I feel so sorry for small me because I understand that she had a very tough life, most of her life. Like many years of terrible sickness and having two children to raise. And we didn't live in a very easy environment that time because I was 13 when the Soviet Union collapsed and we had no food for a period of time. So it was long queues and just to get food home,

that was a big problem. So in a sense, it's been through a lot, but I feel that it damaged me. I didn't learn how the love looks like, really. I haven't seen that between her and my father. And I didn't experience how the love looks like between a parent and a child either. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you start to distance and to remove yourself and to shut down sexually and to withhold your own affections what precipitates it what inside of you predisposes you to that cut off

well i'm i guess i'm looking for calmness like to be in my own world and uh to be safe Be safe to, like, when I'm with myself, I'm safe. What is it that you notice a year into your marriages that is giving you the cue? Time to withdraw, time to cut off, time to shut down sexually. Disappointments. Okay, that's what it is. One disappointment after another disappointment after another. I always gave chances, hopes.

And especially in the last one, I learned to speak out and talk about things which I find difficult or I don't like or I would like to have a different but I believe I always had a had hopes which maybe not always have been realistic tell me more because the person who doesn't know what love is learns love from where from books movies and all that is artificial. Somebody made it up. And then when you meet real people, you maybe want them to be that character. You see some features in them, but then real life happens and you start getting disappointed because the person is not as you imagined it from the very beginning. So that's the rescue. Yeah.

The rescue is you will pick me up and drop me into perfect love land without any boo-boos, no frictions, no fractures, never disappointment. I'll give you everything I have and you'll transport me to this haven where I am cherished and adored and desired and made to feel valued. And when it starts to become clear that that's not going to happen, I basically raise my sails and off I go. Yeah. We are in the midst of our session and there is still so much to talk about.

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make your website look exactly how you want it to be. They even have tools that help you create a custom logo. And they make it easy to create a place where people can schedule an appointment with you, browse your services, or learn more about why you do what you do. Visit squarespace.com slash Esther for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code Esther to save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. I start by withdrawing sexually. Why?

Besides the fact that I have a sense I'm the girl or I'm the parent, I withhold sex because I see it as a currency for love. It's not just I deprive myself of my own pleasure on anything. It's simply you don't deserve this and I'm not giving you squat. Fuck you. You're not there for me and I don't give you because even though I like it and I enjoy it, in the context of marriage, it's part of marital duty. It's the thing I do when I'm nice.

That sounds very sad, that sex is a duty. Well, not always, but it means that I do the things I do to be nice. You tell me. I'm thinking out loud and I may be off. But I'm watching your eyes while I talk. I don't think I ever punished any of them with saying no if I'd really want it. Oh, but I didn't want anymore. But I did want it. Yes, yes, yes.

No, no. I'm very clear. The wanting grows the moment you start to withdraw. It is like the, it's the alarm system. Yeah. It's the place where I know that I'm open, that I give myself to you, that I invite you in. And when I experience my disappointments,

it's the first thing that closes up. Does it mean that I actually punished them with that and that it was in my power that I can give myself to somebody else? You tell me. You don't experience it as punishing. You experience it as punishing. You experience it more as lack of connection and self-protection. They may experience it as punishing,

but for you that's not the verb that resonates. No, that's true. I know that. I think it's more the feeling of you hurt me, I protect myself. I protect myself by not wanting to be touched by you. Stay away. Don't come close. Does that resonate? Yes. That was surely an escape. This is how I named it for myself as well. I never had affairs as well for a very long time,

so usually it would take a month, and then I'm off, out of the marriage. But when this last affair started, so that was, I called it an escape. Do your husbands know them? I mean, do they know of the affairs? No. They don't know.

So one day you come and you just say, I want out? Basically, yes. Yes. After I did that, then I had like enough energy or power inside me to say that, yes, now it's over. And then what would happen? They would say, yé, né. They would fight. They would hope to convince you would happen? They would say, yeah, no. They would fight. They would hope to convince you to stay.

They would say, go ahead. Most of them were trying to convince me to try more and stay and work on the marriage and such. already like a couple of years after I started to express my disappointments or needs in something what they were not giving me. And I was trying, actually, I was asking, let's work on it. And none of them would do that. And then we come to the point like in two years time that I'm saying okay it's over and then they are willing actually to start doing something and but for me when it's done it's done already so this is kind of no return point and especially if basically cheated already I went for an affair. So for me, it's a no-go for coming back. Because?

Mostly because that I'm going for an affair already when it's totally empty. Right. I mean, I'm on my way out and I need something to strengthen me so I'm not completely alone. So I have someone else who really is with me, even if it's just for the transition. And those are exit strategies.

To call them affairs is just a means to an end. Yeah. And they may last for a couple of months afterwards and then that's it. They did their job. I feel empowered. I feel like they have a man by my side. I am not alone. And I basically accomplished my mission.

And mission is an escape? Yeah, yeah, yeah. To get out of there as fast as I can. To go where? To go for? Because if you go to the next one, yes, with the same magical thinking, with the same fantasy of what romantic love should basically protect me from ever feeling alone, ever feeling disappointed, ever feeling needy or unmet, ever feeling those longings that I had my whole life.

You get to forget something once, maybe twice, by the third time, some very old feelings begin to come back up, and it starts to feel so familiar. And it's a kind of an emotional desert in which we are tied by what? By dependency, by need, by caretaking, by duty, by responsibility. Yeah, that was a lot of. Okay. All words you used for mom and you and it's quite fantastic how scotch-free your

father is he's basically just seen as the man who worked he's on he's untouched I think he was he was the one who actually knew what he wants, how he wants it, and how to live a good life. Yes, but he left her with the two children and is not held accountable. He was providing the family. That was kind of normal, you know, that time in that country. It was a usual thing that men worked. They were giving money to the wife and going back to work. And women would be taking care of everything, like children and household.

And my mother, she had her own traumas, her own childhood, her own issues, her troubles with her mother. I really don't know why she was coping with staying alone for long periods of time and being sick and taking care of us and me and my sister. I never saw them close. I never saw them loving. I never saw them close. I never saw them loving. I never saw them like... I don't remember us sitting around the table

and talking with each other even. So it was a cold home. Did you see it at your friend's home? Oh, yes. My neighbor and we were often visiting each other and I was always so... I don't know if the word jealous is right to use in this particular circumstance, but I really like,

I was admiring how her parents were looking at each other. And you know what's interesting, her father, he was a pilot. My current boyfriend, he's a pilot too. And he even reminds me a little bit how my friend's father looked like. And what does that mean for you? I'm always happy when I think about it because that home, maybe that was the only real life not books and not movies but actually a real relationship which is so where the love was so obvious love for children how they loved their daughters and how they expressed their love how they, how they celebrated all the holidays. And that was something what I definitely desired for myself.

How are you with your daughters? Oh, I love them very much. I love them very much, but I do not control them. Well, the youngest one, she is a handicap. So she's in like 50% home and 50% in the special institution. And she doesn't talk and it's not much of like such communication with her. But my oldest one, she's 19 and she's moving out this summer. I love her very much, of course.

And I've been very different with her comparing to how my mother was with me. And how has it been for her to travel these multiple marital units? She is a daughter of my second husband. She has got her trauma, I guess, because of that, especially because of my third husband, the father of my second daughter, because that relationship was extremely difficult. But my fourth marriage, she was already a teenager when it happened.

And it was easier, I guess, for me. I was always open with her. I don't know, but I've never been afraid of showing my feelings to her and explaining things. And it can be that she will have to work with a therapist later on as well. But you're saying, I have been trying with the therapist to address how my relationship with my mother and the emotional desert that I felt I was living in has accompanied me in the course of my life. How it completely created idealistic expectations for me in what love is, you know, in a very childlike way, that love

should be a permanent state of enthusiasm, that it should have no ripples and no cracks. And that it in a way didn't prepare me except for knowing how to leave. I don't know much what to do when I have disappointments, when I'm sad, when I'm hurt. And it's not that I don't tell the partners, but I don't know how you told and I don't know who you chose to tell it to. So then I realized at one point I'm going to go. And then I basically start preparing myself

for a year or two on how to extricate myself from here financially, emotionally, logistically. And then I basically, the affair is just a fatal blow. I just bring the big gun to make sure that I succeed and that there is no return possible. I am completely shut down to any of these men. They can talk to me anything they want. Nothing enters anymore. I've opened another little window to another guy on the side, but to the husbands, I'm completely

done. And now I am with someone and it's been a bit of a different pattern. And so here's the question for me, how do I learn? Because once we are just us and we've cleared all the families, because it's families that are involved, what will happen to us? As long as there is other people, when he disappoints me, I can also think of it structurally. It's because he's not available. It's because he's flying. It's because we have still divorces to go through, et cetera. But once it's just him and I, does this put me back in exactly the same situation where I put myself completely at the mercy of everything he says and does to prove our love, and then basically put myself in this most vulnerable place where I am just the recipient of what he will or will not bestow upon me.

And that's the structure that needs to shift. As long as there are obstacles, I can kind of rationalize the shortcomings, the disappointments, the letdowns, etc. But once we're just us, I don't want to put him in the same examination because I know he will fail because everybody does, because nobody's perfect. No man will undo the legacy of your mother. You will. How? I'm not capable of answering that after one hour like this, honestly. What I did think is, when they hurt you,

the sadness and the anger that come up like a volcano, much of it doesn't belong to them. It belongs to you and her. And if that rage, which is a combination of sadness and helplessness and anger, erupts inside of you, then in some interesting way she remains in control of your life. You may have left, you may have run five times, four times in marriages and many others,

but in effect she continues to have the control that you so ardently have hoped to escape. Still, even now. In those moments. I hope so much that I actually already kind of worked through this mother thing connection and managed to cut it, at least with forgiveness. To her. Right.

But it's the moments when the man that has been identified as the source of love, redemption, and repair, when he misses, and even when he misses again, that's the moment. But does it mean that it's all my fault, that all my marriage is collapsed? Not at all. No, but you came to ask me about your part. And when you are in them and you're about to leave them,

you tell yourself the story as they let you down. They became abusive. They became infantilized. They didn't do their part. They made it impossible for you to tolerate this. When you're with them, you don't think, what am I doing? You think, what are they doing to me? And how am I reacting to that?

When you're with me, you say, this is true, but it sits on a set of expectations. So I'm basically escaping not them, but I'm escaping my feelings, what's hurting me. Unexpressed expectations are predetermined resentments. When you meet them, you idealize them and you put on them a host of things which they don't even know. And then they fall from grace.

How shall I know that now it's different? I don't know. I wish I could tell you everything like that after an hour, but I can't. I would be saying just generalities and that wouldn't be fair to you. So here's a perfect example of a conversation that will end with a frustration. So you want to know, is it different? This is the moment. You can make it different.

You know, it's interesting because I kind of, I felt, it was a moment I felt like so much lighter. And now I feel again like, oh, welcome to life. Yes, exactly. You think that the heaviness is a disappointment. And it doesn't feel good, but it's not, by definition, a tear. Hmm. 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, it 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, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julian Hatton.

Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider. 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.