Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - Esther Calling - Love is a Trap

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

He gets to a certain point in relationships before he starts fantasizing about his ex-boyfriends or other future partners. Esther talks him through what he might be holding onto from his childhood that makes his otherwise healthy relationships feel stifling. 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]. For the first time on the U.S. stage, Esther invites you to an evening unlike any other. Join her as she shines a light on the cultural shifts transforming relationships and helps us rethink how we connect, how we desire – and even how we love. To find a city near you, go to https://www.estherperel.com/tour2024 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

In my initial email, I referenced a scenario where I was in a new relationship with a guy who was perfect. We had an amazing relationship. The communication was good. The romance was there. There was curiosity between us. But, you know, after a couple of months, this feeling crept in of desire for my ex. And that desire slowly just got louder and louder and louder. This voice in my head telling me that this ex-partner was my soulmate, that I needed to be with them. I start new relationships.

They start well. They start healthy. They're fun. They're exciting. And then either the past creeps in, so I have a hard time letting go of either previous partners or previous flings, or I start to fantasize life with other people that I may not even necessarily know and it just erodes the relationships that I do have and I usually end up exiting those relationships I end up in this pool of like regret that I know I've just let this amazing person go and it's just a continuous cycle that I'm looking to explore, hopefully break or become better equipped to deal with for my future relationships. anything you would like to add no look it is still very relevant it's accurate it's you know

i can't hide from it that's that's exactly how i feel in the kind of scenario that keeps repeating itself what do you know about it i mean you're describing a pattern you're describing a sequence what do you know about what drives the sequence for me it's i understand the timing of it It usually happens when you kind of start to pivot out of that, I guess, honeymoon phase. You know, we haven't had our first proper fight. We haven't really had any kind of test of the relationship in any way. I think that it's also to do with my ability to kind of shut out the external world. The feelings that do pop up, they're to do with desire for other people as well.

So in the example that I referenced there, I referenced two partners, a current one and an ex-partner. The reality of that scenario was that when the ex-partner in my mind no longer going, like no one desiring me as a person, that's kind of when those intrusive thoughts came in. I think it's a loss of desire from someone and that triggers me to start to think maybe I should be with them, maybe I should be with somebody else. In my mind, that's kind of the tipping point usually. There's one thing I would suggest we switch.

None of this is external. Even if you think that other people, exes or potential other partners or imaginative, imaginary figures are external. What drives this whole thing is internal. When you want me, there's a moment at which I suddenly feel like I need to flee. When you stop wanting me and I begin to feel the anxiety of the rejection or of the aloneness, then I become the pursuer. Yeah, it does sound essentially how it happens.

As I've gotten older and I've had more experience with relationships, I have become more aware of it. But I guess in previous relationships, instead of talking to my partners about it I just excellent because I've had this notion that you know I can't put them through this I can't like explain this to them out of some fear of I guess confrontation or maybe even rejection are you in your late 20s? I'm in my late 20s.

You don't do this with friends? No, my friendships are strong, they're long-lasting. Other avenues in my life, I have consistent, long relationships with people that I would perceive as healthy and very fulfilling. And it's my romantic relationships where I'm falling short. There is a saying that there are only two relationships who really resemble each other. And that's the one we had with our original caregivers or parents and the ones we have with our romantic partners. Most of us manage to elude our patterns when it comes to our friends because there's just enough distance that allows us not to have to repeat certain things.

An obvious question then becomes, where else have you known this besides in your romantic relationships not the similarity because it's not about desire but it is about the in out push pull pursuer distancer and the kind of fraught experience around your attachment to them you know i think when i do hear that question my automatic response is obviously my parents. It was pretty awful. You know, it was a loveless relationship. They are amazing people as individuals. They did an amazing job raising their kids. But as a couple and as an example of what a relationship should be,

they were never meant to be together. They got together when they were in their early 20s. They had kids and they just never were able to navigate being able to either split or make a healthy relationship work. What did you see? A lot of anger, a lot of resentment, a lot of fighting, a lot of crying, a lot of emotion, a lot of volatility. Just such small, insignificant things would trigger

these gargantuan responses. So, you know, my dad was late to dinner. It would be World War II. You know, he was never physical, but yeah, some of these fights were massive. And as a young child, that was kind of like my first view of what a relationship should be, I guess. How many kids? Just two. But my brother is significantly older than me. So by the time I was 10, he was already living at home.

So it was kind of like an only child situation for a significant period of my early childhood. And did they sometimes kind of draw you in, not in the middle of a fight necessarily, but in telling you how they felt? No, it's definitely one thing that my family are not brilliant at is telling anyone how they feel. It was always maybe go and cry in a bedroom or leave the house. It was never, let's talk about this or you know let's explain

what just happened it is did you have equal sympathy for both or did you find yourself leaning more toward one than the other i think as a child my automatic kind of my sympathy went toward my mother tell me more at that point probably coming to terms with being gay my default or my i would kind of just go towards my mother she was very nurturing as a mother she was very open and loving and i think that's where I would just kind of place myself I think just easier to relate to her as a child as I've grown older and I've become more aware of my parents and who they are as people I sympathize with my father more just him as a person he's a brilliant man. He's funny. He's caring. He's kind. And a lot of these big fights, my mother reacting to dad not coming to dinner on time.

Or, yeah, as a young child, it was definitely the nurturing mother, kind of that feminine energy that I guess gravitated towards. If you were to describe the sequence between your parents, how would you describe it? It's kind of hard for me to describe what their sequence is because their sequence is that they just stayed together. Yes, their sequence is that they are trapped. They're trapped, yeah, exactly. Being trapped is what makes you bold, okay? You come in that two-month period. It's just on the edge.

It's before the first fight. It's before the first argument. And once the first one arrives, all you can imagine is mayhem. And you go from honeymoon to trap. And you're describing your parents in a state of entrapment. And you're describing how you, somewhere along the line, to yourself maybe, to others, but primarily to yourself, made a vow that you would never be trapped. You would never be in that kind of a misery. But you don't really know how not to be in the misery except fleeing. And so it's meant as an act of self-protection, but it becomes such

an expression of avoidance that in the end you find yourself alone. And so one of the tricks for not being alone is to fantasize about the ex or about the next. Yeah, that's definitely the sequence. When you have a fight with friends, I'm just curious, you know to disagree, you know to get into an argument, you know how to repair, you know how to say what you want.

I imagine, yes? With friends. Yeah, I would say that I communicate well, I resolve conflicts well, I nurture my friendships well. Beautiful. So this lives inside of you. You don't approach friendships with fear and trepidation and foreboding, whereas you approach romantic relationships

with that. 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. Let me ask you something. Did your relationships to the men change when your relationship with your dad improved? Yes, they did. There was a lot of resentment towards my parents and I think that was probably a byproduct of me not being fully comfortable withance and obviously being okay with who I was I was able

to build that relationship back with my dad and I'd see him as the brilliant person that I see him as now. Did he accept you? Yeah there was like early on I always knew that my parents were never going to like being gay was never going to be an issue. I have a gay older brother and my parents have always been very forward with their support of the gay community, even when I wasn't a part of it. But I think what made it difficult for me was that I think there was an expectation that I was going to be the straight kid, just purely because my brother had already came out. He'd been accepted. They're like, okay, you know, one is gay, but hey, we've got one more to go.

And that's how I kind of perceived the situation at the time. And then? And then I spent a lot of time going back and forth, hiding who I was. I think it made it probably a little harder for me because I was actually dating women up until the point where I did come out. Same pattern with the women? No, not necessarily. I had long-term relationships, obviously, with this voice in my head saying that,

hey, you find men attractive. So no risks of getting entrapped there. Exactly. Because that's not where I belong. I think I knew at some point that this wasn't going to be my life story. But yeah, to answer your question, my relationship with my dad did get a lot better

and has continued to get better with age as well and how did it change your relationship with your partners did it well yeah so obviously the the first few months of me dating a man seriously I wasn't out to my parents you know I think I use that relationship as kind of a leverage to have that conversation I don't think I would have been at a point to just go hey I'm I'm gay and yeah so I I use that that relationship to come out to my parents. Was your brother helpful? Not really, no. He's lived overseas for a significant period of time.

And in a similar fashion to my parents, I had a strained relationship with him. After I came out, his response was which I've known for a while, he never offered any kind of like support, which I think to his, I guess, sort of defense, you know, he was allowing me to find my own way and to kind of take my time and not feel pressured. But for me, it felt like I was kind of just left on my own, yeah, to kind of deal with this and work through it.

Yeah. Have you ever spoken with your parents about their misery, about what it was like to grow up with their incessant fighting, about how you perceive their loneliness? No, I haven't. And I think the conversation would be easier with my father than my mother. Why is that? I think for my mother, it's just for a long time now,

probably since my early childhood, she's been medicating with alcohol. She's been through quite a lot and i think a way for her to deal with that is with alcohol i don't think she has the tools or the desire to kind of seek external help i just i worry that that conversation too much and it would i guess trigger this alcohol consumption self-medication i hear you i hear also that you see your mom as the more brittle the more fragile and the person who sees herself as the victim. He comes late for dinner and she feels diminished by his lateness, but it never occurs to her to ask herself if there's something in the way that she reacts that may make him want to stay out later. Yeah, definitely. He stays out later and pays the price of not knowing his son as much as he would like and as much as

his son would like to know him and so the son is home with mom for whom he has developed very deep feelings that are very mixed a part of him resents her for her reactivity and a part of him feels very responsible to make sure that he doesn't make it worse for her because he never knows what she can actually handle and what she can't. And a part of him feels deeply caring for her, because she's the nurturing, kind, accepting mother. And a part of him feels guilty, because sometimes all he wants is to get away from her. But he feels guilty about it, because he knows that she may not be able to take care of herself well, and that she's self-harming. And so between the guilt and the resentment and the love and the sense of responsibility,

he finds himself entwined in a complex set of contradictory feelings for her and all of that sits in the background when he falls in love with any other man yeah like i can't put it any different that's exactly how it is but say it in your voice in my own words i i would say that I am overwhelmed with these feelings towards specifically my mother. It's kind of almost a feeling of helplessness in some ways because I just don't have the tools to kind of navigate feelings that I have toward her and I don't have the tools to kind of help her either and it's this one of the pieces by one of the I guess the parting words that my parents always said to me when I moved out of home is that you know we'll be fine. Go and live your life. We will be okay. And it just feels like I can't do that. And what I think is this sense of being helpless and overwhelmed and confused,

it just filters into my romantic relationships because I see myself when I'm in these relationships and they're good and they're healthy and I feel like I'm in love it feels like at any particular point or any unspoken point that that might just turn and I will end up being my mother or my father and that's I think that's how I liken those two relationships and how it impacts me. When you tell me, this is happening in all my relationships, I recognize the pattern. I basically enter a state of panic. I don't know what the panic is about, but I have a state of panic.

And I start to deflect. The fact that it has to do with desire and fantasies about the next or about others, that's just the mechanism with which you're doing it. Don't get caught there. Because you get along with the people, because the relationship is good, you can't say, I have communication issues. So you find something about, I start to fantasize about others, but basically I start fleeing. And if you think it's a conversation about desire, you may miss the point.

So then the first question I have is what are you replaying? What makes you bold? What's the panic and if it's recurrent it's a logical next step to say tell me about home i i think in my most recent dating or like my last relationship that I had, it moved very quick. And up until a certain point, I was thrilled with that. I, you know, it was kind of like this whirlwind. There was a point that I remember quite vividly, and it was a discussion around my partner starting to feel anxious

within the relationship. About wanting to know where it's going? No. So we were committed at that point. We traveled overseas. We said we loved each other. And that was all very genuine. And when I reflect on me in that relationship at that period of time,

that's how I want to be consistently, I suppose. But the anxiety conversation came up that my partner at the time didn't really understand what that anxiety was or what was triggering it. For me, I was comfortable with that conversation to try to offer my assistance, to try to kind of get an understanding of what the trigger points for that anxiety could be. And he didn't have the answers and he didn't really want to be in a position to kind of

talk through that with me. And I think after a few failed attempts at trying to get an understanding of what that anxiety was and what it meant, I think that's when I started to pull away. And that's when I, you know, these... So when he talked to me about his anxiety, but was not willing or able to explore it with me, what happened to me? Don't tell me just what you did. Tell me also, if you me just what you did tell me also if you can what you experienced I think I

experienced at the time frustration and shortly thereafter I think I started to wonder whether this relationship was right and I should start to have that thought process of should I stay should I go and then eventually the thoughts of this person that I was with before my ex I think we were really well suited I get it but I'm gonna slow you down for a moment. Is that okay? Please. All right. Because you can describe the steps. And I would like to see if we can go underneath the surface for a moment

so that you get a different awareness of what is driving you. We are in the midst of our session and there is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break, so stay with us. He says I'm anxious. Your first response is, I'm curious. I'm interested. I care. And as you try to go back with him in the conversation,

and he isn't able to join you, you get frustrated. That frustration is like an open door to the history with your mom entering inside your internal home. From frustration, what follows? Responsibility, fear, annoyance, impatance impatience resentment which one i would say fear fear of yeah shit i'm gonna find myself once again yeah in a position where i'm going to start pulling away from this person i'm, no. Before I'm going to start pulling away, pulling away is a response to something. It's not the initial behavior. Pulling away happens to me when I'm in front of this man

who I thought I loved freely and I suddenly start to once again experience this overwhelming sense of responsibility and helplessness and burden and weightiness yeah i think burden is a good way to describe that this feeling of like my parents and all those complex feelings it's an additional burden on top of that I think when I'm in a good like healthy relation not healthy like in those early stages it's easy there's no baggage there's no additional stress and then when I start you know when anxiety creeps in or whatever the the trigger is I think

I just see that as potentially the straw that's going to break the camel's back in regards to stress or burden. Right. So remember, the desire to flee is commensurate with the size of the burden and the responsibility that creeps up inside of you. Oh shit, I'm once again going to have to take care, carry, hold, feel responsible, but then not be able to manage the responsibility, so feel overwhelmed and helpless. Oh gosh, I got to go. I got to get out of here. I got to get out of here as fast as I can because if I stay one extra minute, I'm going to be swallowed up alive. Yeah.

You feel it in your body? I do, yeah. Where? It's kind of like a clenching inside of my stomach when I hear that said out loud. Yeah. Can you stand up for a moment so I can see the belly and the clench? It's okay.

Just stand by. Yes. Yeah. And just put your hands there, right there where you had them. Just breathe into this because it takes over and there is just nowhere to go but out yeah

yes and see if you can breathe inside, into, you can sit you can sit back if you can breathe into your hands not just up here but literally expand your ribcage and just make space.

Because your whole experience is an experience of contraction. And you don't differentiate between your mom, your dad, especially your mom, and your lovers. It's as if the past and the present collapse. It's hard to hear. Because you thought, I'm gone, I'm out of the house, I left all of this behind? Yeah, I think... What the fuck, this is all inside of me what the fuck yeah i i think i felt okay by the time like you know me moving out me having my independent life having this you know

relationship with them that was you know not there every day you know i'm i can kind of come and go as i please and regulate my interactions with them i think i thought oh i definitely thought that that was going to help but i don't think it has and yeah it's it is just a what the f but the good thing about this what do you call it wtf yes yes i i spell it out that's why is that you know now, with a little bit more clarity, what is actually playing out inside of you. When I get close to someone, the closeness triggers a reenactment of the trap that my parents were in and that I experienced

in the overwhelming sense of responsibility I carried for mom. And I need to learn to experience closeness and bring in different associations. You know, my logical mind has always been... No, there's nothing logical about this thing. This is all in your belly, in your gut, not in your head, which is why the story you tell about me coming close, honeymoon, then moving away, fantasizing,

that's the storyline. But that doesn't tell the actual driver underneath, which is another story. Yes. So when you want to flee, you'll ask yourself, what just happened to me? What did I just feel?

How did the past just intrude on the present? And what can I do in this moment to anchor me in the present in my life? Because maybe this guy was anxious, but that doesn't mean he was becoming another version of your mom. Yeah. And you, another version of her son,

or he was becoming whoever he was and you were becoming mom or dad. See, there's very few characters in this story. We need new characters. It's a small story, yeah. Yeah. No, it's a deep story. Deep story. It's a deep story.

It's a painful story. But it can open up and bring in new characters, new parts. I think I'm ready for some new characters. Can I tell you something? The beauty of making this a story about sex and about desire is that it puts you in an adult storyline. Adults talk about desire and sex and fantasies for others and all of that. And so it covers up the fact that it is the story of the little boy because it plays itself out in a pseudo version of an adult.

Sex is a good cover-up for that. I agree. I think when I, like even when I described that relationship, I was like, the sex was amazing. The adult connection was amazing,

but I still fled. I still had those, that process. Is he around? The relationship is strained. There was a lot of hurt. There was a lot of hurt. There was a lot of, you know, I think, in a sense, blindsided by this, you know, sudden departure.

You said that, you know, I'd prefer that we didn't talk. And that does hurt. Unless you can one day go and tell him what you've learned about yourself that he became the subject of and had nothing to do with him i i still have very strong feelings towards him but for us to re-spark that no we're not talking about re-sparking. We're talking about accountability. Talking about just clarifying and apologizing. Sometimes I like to say he was recruited for a play that he didn't audition for. Neither did I, by the sound of it. Your drama, you are able to begin to connect the dots.

And that's the beginning. That's really so that you actually know what happens to me. What happens to me at the end is that I flee. But the first things is a host of very old feelings get triggered inside of me. And they bring me back to a place of overwhelm, helpless, anger, guilt, fear. It's a big maelstrom of contradictory feelings. It's a mess. And it's intense and it's painful. I first need to go and clear that up a little bit.

So that I can free myself to be in my own relationship and not feel like I'm branded. Yeah. I imagine it's a story that's well told by not just myself. You're not alone. Yeah. You're really not alone. But we have strange ways to protect ourselves sometimes. We create other storyboards to not see the real story. And we all

do that. Me included. I'm going to let you go here. Thank you so much. Thank you, Esther. I hope this was helpful. It was. Thank you. 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, Eva Walchover, Destry Sibley, Huwete Gatana, Sabrina Farhi, Eleanor Kagan, 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, Jen Marler,

and Jack Saul.