Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - Esther Calling - My Mom Should Have Set a Different Example

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Esther speaks to a woman who is experiencing a kind of a double story. She resents her mother for the choices she made and the example she set, while also wondering if she keeps choosing the safe person as a way to combat those childhood feelings of abandonment. Esther helps her untangle these complicated feelings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I grew up both in a family and a culture where having multiple partners and not being emotionally committed, it's normalized. I've learned through my life that going for the safe person is the safest option for me and when I ever have been after something that is exciting I end up getting hurt. I have been married for less than two years. My husband is one of those safe people. I have two questions. The first one is how can I forgive people around me when I was growing up and especially my mother who didn't give me the best relationship example. And second is how can I heal this so it doesn't affect the current relationship I am in. Take another one. ¿Empezamos? Sí.

Okay. What do you want to add as you hear it now i obviously i'm old enough to make decisions and recognized that those experiences were the choice of other people. But I don't know how deep and rooted these things are inside of me that I keep trying to go to the other side. Let me ask you, because you make a lot of allusions and I don't really know. I can guess, but I may guess wrong. So if it's okay with you, I want to ask you to be more specific.

So in the country where I was born, men usually have this fame of being players. And that was the case also in my family. I grew up living with my grandfather, my mother's brother, and they all had multiple girlfriends or women on the side. My mom, she was with my father and my father was an alcoholic. I saw them fighting. My father drunk many times. I saw him being arrested. I always saw from her that she didn't take time to just heal and went to the next husband or the next partner, I saw from the part of the man that they're not trustworthy. And from my mother's side that you still need a man even though you cannot trust them.

So as I grew up, I always had multiple partners, not at the same time, but I dated someone and I would just get enough and jump to the next person. And my husband is the person who I have been the longest with. And I found myself lately feeling like I need to explore other things. So the men that you grow up with are unreliable. They are roamers. The women don't like them, but at the same time don't feel that they can't live without them. And so when one is no good, they find the next one. And you experience mom as, on the one hand, blaming the man, on the other hand, being dependent on finding continuously another man.

And so you say, I'm going to find a better man. I'm going to find someone who's trustworthy, reliable, stable. I'm not going to put myself in the same position as her. Yes. Yeah? Yes. Okay. Anytime you've had conversations,

you've ever had conversations about all of this with her or all of this happens in your own head as you grow up? I've always felt so much responsibility on my mom. Every time I've had a subject that I need to talk to her, something that hurt me, I end up hurting her. So many times I just choose not to tell her so I don't hurt her more. And you end up hurting her because? Because she didn't mean to give me and my sister that example. She didn't mean to hurt me. So she makes it about her?

Yeah. And she wants you to understand how bad she feels that she made you feel bad, but it's all about her yeah okay did she leave the country with you or you left alone the first time we left together okay and this continues till today no uh when i moved uh to the u US, I did it by myself. And I've had the best time in my life. I was always my mother's daughter. She has the same career as I do.

So I was always in an environment where she was the most experienced one. So always like under her wing a little bit, except for when I came here and I came by myself and everything I have accomplished, little or big, has been on my own for the first time. That feels great. Yes. Yes, it does. Yes. So there are the things that you're able to do by yourself separately and differently from her,

but then there are parts of her and of what you've watched and learned from her that seem to be traveling with you. Yes. And what are those? I think just being dependent on men. That's the biggest one. I don't, and I always get haunted by the experiences that I've lived or I have seen with her.

So I don't know right now if what I feel towards my husband, if this feeling that I need something else is from my own self or it's something that I learned. Well, first you learned it and then it became yours. That's possible too.

But when you say dependence what is it what kind of dependence because when is it are we talking economic dependence are we talking woman is incomplete unless she has a man by her side are we talking the man defines her what what dependency are we talking about um I think just emotional. I'm very financially independent. Yeah, I think now that I look at it, I have such a different personality and way of seeing the world than my partner. But he's so good to me

that I don't think that I'm ever going to find someone who loves me that much the way he does. That brings tears to you. So what are the tears saying? That I never felt that I deserve someone who loved me this much, and if I lose this, I might not get it again. And I never felt that I deserved because. How did I learn that? Because I was never given that love from my father's side,

and I never saw my mom getting that love for her too. Did she give it to you? In a way yeah yeah I used to think it was a generational thing where my mom we were never allowed to talk about feelings or things that hurt us, I wasn't allowed to cry. I was always told if I had tears in my eyes, I was always told to not cry. And I don't know, I guess I didn't... I wasn't given a lot of opportunity to just express myself. How does crying feel at this very moment?

It's just liberating. Okay, we can cry. I understand so much about her because I know my grandmother, she was a very tough woman. She was very cold to my mom very demanding and this is the example that my mother grew up with my mom was abused when she was a girl by her own family she was abused as a woman by my. I try to understand how her life has been.

And that's why I don't like telling her. I still have pain inside of me. And I want to forgive her or forgive this part of me that is resented to her. And you resent her for? For putting me on the side and always giving the next man more attention. Okay, okay. So in a way, it's a double story, right? It's as much about how you saw her turn herself into a pretzel to seduce and attract the next man, and the messages that that convey to you about who comes first and what is important in the life of a woman.

But it is also the neglect leaving you to fend for yourself, to find other parental figures because she was too busy to define herself as a woman, and therefore was not invested enough to apply herself to the role of herself as a mother. Does that describe it?

Yes. Yes. So you have the feeling of the daughter in response to the mother, who wasn't there as much as you wanted and needed her to be. And then you have the feeling of yourself as a woman, who saw this woman basically try to fend for herself, but continuously find herself in self-destructive stories. And then you also came up with a kind of a division

that they are passionate but unstable men, and then they are stable but boring men and you've divided the world in a very unfortunate way the world of men for that matter and when you talk about your husband and you say he's kind he's generous, he loves me, he admires me, he stands by me. And yet what? So now let's talk about the turmoil inside of you rather than you defining him as stable but boring. I guess I'm not very stable myself.

Emotionally, I have so many passions and I have no containment a lot of the time. You know, I've always been one thing regarding my career. And I've found myself discovering all the things that I'm passionate about. And one day I'm thinking, oh, I want to study this. And all I talk about is that thing that I want to do, the new thing, and how I'm going to get it. And then a week passes and I'm like, you know what? No, I really like this other thing. So I think I'm a mess.

And when I discover something that I'm a mess and when I discover something that I'm interested in I instantly imagine myself becoming that thing I don't just say I enjoy something or I'm curious about something

I want to basically change my entire life and make a whole new choice and so i find myself continuously imagining myself in different professions in different relationships in different countries in different lives in different identities and i merge on the spot with the latest passion and there is strength in this and there is versatility in this but there is also a wanderingness in there because i could be anything anytime anywhere all the time and i feel not anchored enough and then i find a partner who is a very strong anchor for me.

And then I start to rebel against him because I have outsourced the very thing that I need inside of me. And then I begin to think that he's the one who's restricting me. Yeah, I feel I've put myself in the victim role for a long time and never realized i never heard this that you're telling me say it in your own words but how how would you say it i would say that because I never had stability, emotional stability in my life. I don't know how to have that inside of me now. And the real stability makes me feel scared. Of? Pulling in the same patterns.

If I stay in one place, I'm going to end up being like my mom. We have to take a brief break. Stay with us. Shall I ask you to talk to me about your husband so that I get a more fleshed out version of him rather than this very narrow reductionistic, you know, stable and boring category? Or shall I explore more with your distrust that you may have a better grasp of reality than your mother and that this is less about you and him and more about you and her. And so I was wondering, which is the first fork we need to take in the road? I want to go with my mom. I know why I chose the person I'm married to. He's a very, I don't know, cut to the chase person.

We knew each other for a few years before we started dating. It was a very quick, out of the blue attraction. We never felt attraction towards each other before. One day just happened and everything happened very quickly after that I moved here and I was by myself for a year and then he came and we got married he has no interest in the outside world he's not great making friends or connecting with other people he's very interested in me so I also feel this responsibility that I am the only thing he has and I feel it kind of puts me in a very similar situation that I was with my mom growing up.

That's the part that scares me. Right, right. That's been addressed with him? Yes. Because here's the thing that does jump at me. He may not be interested in the world outside openly, and he may not be someone who makes friends and connects with people.

And he may come as the person who is stable and single-minded focused. But yet he picked you. And he picked you after he knew you for quite a few years. So it's not like he picked a mysterious you. So anybody who presents as that stable and that uninterested in the outside world, but pick someone like you, who is very interested in the outside world, responds to any stimuli that comes your way, has outsourced as well. So he may be the introvert, but he has outsourced his connection to the world to you.

And so he may not be as stable as we think or as boring as we think, let's put it like that. You know, so you outsource stability to him and he outsources passion, spontaneity, improvisation, curiosity, playfulness to you. And so this relationship has all the necessary ingredients, but it needs a redistribution between the two protagonists so that it doesn't become polarized, that you become Mrs. Passion and he becomes Mr. Boring. Because you need his parts and he needs your parts. This gives me hope. I understand.

You understand? Anybody who wants stability and just wants stability wouldn't pick you. Yeah, and he's here. But if he was just about stability and boredom, he wouldn't have left his whole life. That doesn't change that when you experience someone who is completely living in the margin of you, that that doesn't bring back a sense of responsibility for their well-being, even though his well-being is very different from your mother's well-being. But the structure is the same.

You find yourself once again with a feeling of burden and responsibility. But you were going to talk about her. And you landed on him. That was the easier part so uh after after my father my mom got married to my sister's father and this man became my new father how old were you? I was six. And my sister was born when I was eight. So it was two years of, you know, building that relationship and feeling like very stable. After my sister was born,

this man just transformed into a different person. And I kept hearing fights with my mom and him about my mom giving me too much attention and not taking care of my baby sister and all this, you know, like power fights of who gets priority, if the eight-year-old or the newborn. At that point, my grandparents took a lot of care of me. I have memories of many years just sleeping in my grandmother's bedroom, just being picked up by them at school, things like that. The relationship lasted around 10 years, and when it ended, this man cut me off completely so he didn't want anything

to do with me with my mom or my family he only wanted to do uh with his daughter I felt like I lost a father there as well then my mom she became mess, which I understand for many years. This was the only time where my mom was by herself and she was very heartbroken. And I guess this is where I started to take care of her. got into very bad relationships just short adventures married men close family anyway it was it was very messy and for some reason I knew everything about it and I was her confident she met this man and two months after they were already living together in the house where I was living too and they have been together until now they're still together. I always thought that you know after all of her experiences she would take some time to know the new person and she just jumped at it and

this man's just not the person I would have liked to see my mom with let's just say that because my mom had a very good career at that point and um she married someone that wasn't intellectually or financially or in any way matching with her I don't know it just it paid me to see that she was settling that's the way I saw it from outside. Of course, it's not my right to make any decisions for her, but I thought my mom deserves so much better than this. Are you wondering if you settled? Yes, all the time. So when you look at her, you see yourself.

And you think, what, my partner is not meeting me, neither artistically nor intellectually. I wanted an anchor. What is it that you see in you when you look at her that makes you think that you are one and the same? My partner, he's intellectually matching with me. I feel like I have this, it comes back to the same, like I have this eagerness to explore and eat the world and new things.

And he joins you? Is he curious with you? He started to be more curious. That's something I have come to realize. And he joins you? Is he curious with you? He started to be more curious. That's something I have come to realize. He's very supportive of my craziness. He's always curious about what I think of my things. I don't necessarily see him making these type of decisions for himself. When you think about freedom, you think about doing the things you like to do or trying new things. Or do you sometimes also think that freedom can come from choosing not to do certain things?

I haven't had a lot of opportunity to choose, I think, in my life. So to be able to choose, I need to just go out and have many possibilities, I guess. Are you talking about other men? Are you talking about what? What are the things that you find yourself drawn to that he's by your side?

And what are the things that you start to experience that you're being secretive? What's what? I think professionally, I think that's the biggest one. I've started to do things that are not what I always started to do. And I really have found a lot of passion in doing other things. I guess I want to have knowledge of different things. So, like, I feel alone in a lot of ways. So I try to diversify diversify myself so that no one has so much power over me so that no

one can totally rattle my life by leaving yeah so that I don't find myself too vulnerable and too dependent on any one person, one source, one career path. It makes sense that with the history that you have, that you would say, I don't let myself lean too much in one direction, even though you lean on him. When you lean on him, you don't get scared. Not of him. get scared that of yourself but not of his not being someone that you can lean on yeah so i don't trust that if i notice

that i'm leaning too much in one place i'm going to make myself jump because I'm going to scare myself to suddenly realize that all my weight is on one leg. And I'm going to try to rebalance myself and try to shuffle some weight onto the other side by doing something drastic. 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. Sometimes it comes out of nowhere and it happens in all senses. I went to a work trip a few months ago and it was the last day there was a dancing party and I was having such a great time with my

co-workers with the people I met there and I was just feeling free I was you know I was in my element dancing and by the end of the party this guy came to me and he was you know let's go to everyone else so the after party and he just started he was talking to me the whole night and he was showing so much interest in me and he was so curious about me and it just that that one thing just it just switched, it just switched everything. I couldn't stop thinking of this person just because he was so interested in me. I wasn't even thinking of being with someone else or being interested in someone else. And it just happened. And that's why you send your question in now yeah i always ask myself why now

then you tell me i had so many experiences where i had no attention where i felt all on my own where my mother was so self-absorbed that when somebody puts the entire focus on me, I feel like I exist. I grow taller. I feel alive. I feel seen. And here's the challenge. How can I experience it, appreciate it,

and keep it for what it is? This is wonderful. It feels great. But this doesn't have to throw my entire life into question. I even asked my husband when I came back if we could be in an open relationship. I was this close to just ruin everything. What did your husband say?

He was so upset. Just me mentioning it, it was, it threw him off. And just, he didn't speak to me for days. The good thing that came out of that is that now he's taking therapy. And he started therapy because? Because he felt shaken by the thought of... That his stable life may not be as stable. Yes.

And that the need for stability that he thought his wife needs so desperately can be overthrown in just a few hours. Things are not nearly as fixed as we sometimes want to see them. But that's true for you and for him. And then when you saw yourself suddenly willing to throw your entire life up in the air because of the nice attention that this man bestowed upon you, that's when you suddenly thought, oh shit, I'm no different from my mom. The latest lad will make me turn myself into. So it had an awakening for you, for the two of you, and for him.

We should maybe send a thank you note to the guy. He was effective, but in many ways that he didn't anticipate. Keep your head on your shoulders. Oh, wow. Emotionally, sometimes I just, I feel like everything is bad with my life with me and the next day I'm just ecstatic I'm so happy so you're saying my mood can shift and my life hasn't changed but my mood changes and the same life one day seen as the best thing i could ever imagine and the next day as the worst thing i could ever imagine but that's about my mood my mood distorts my reality it's not like my life

is different the next day and some days i feel blessed and some days I feel trapped. And some days I feel like I'm myself and some days I feel like I've been hijacked in the stories of others. And some days I appreciate my partner and my choice and it makes perfect sense. And the next day I question the whole thing and I'm ready to toss the whole thing. And I think if you stick to the descriptive you may have a better way of saying here are certain things I want to change or I want to try to understand better and see to what extent I can

change you are in a big transition in your life. And you are recently in a new country, recently in a new marriage, recently in post-studies in your career. And so a lot of things are happening for you. And that involves asking, what are the parts of my relationship story or even my sexual story that I want to hold on to, that I want to develop further, that I want to maintain? And what are the parts of my relationship story that I would like to leave behind, to let go of, and to change? We all have a relationship story and there are pieces of it that we probably want to hold on to, even if it's things that you learn

on the basis of what you missed. Our resources don't always come from what you got. Sometimes our resources and our resilience comes from what we didn't get. Or we got a piece of it that we like and another piece of it that we think we could let go of some. And this letting go and holding on is part of where I see where you are right at this moment. Let me ask you this. When you're in a bad day, do you remember that you have good days or they feel like they've disappeared? Or that the good days are just an illusion and the real stuff is the dark?

No, I remember that I have good days. Okay. So that's great. Because that means that the two parts, the light and dark, what you call the good and bad, they live inside of you, but they know each other. That's a very good thing when they know each other, when they've met. Sometimes they haven't met. When one takes over, the other one completely vanishes. Yeah. All right.

So then you can start to have a conversation between the two and if we continued the conversation which unfortunately we can't that would be what what would the part that says you made good choices what does it say to the part of you that says my life is a mess i made a mistake how did i not not know? How did I not see? What's wrong? How do they talk to each other? I just, I have conversations with myself, I guess. Yes. Yeah, a part of me is like, oh, you really messed up.

And the other part of me is like, no, it's all good. It's not a big deal. No, but you really messed up. No, it's really not a big deal. So I talk to myself out of the bad thoughts, I guess. Yes, yes. So you're not just having a blaming self. You're having a self that is a mediator. Yeah. And mediates between two parts that sometimes become slightly too sure of themselves.

I love the point of view that I have now about my relationship and how we actually complement each other more than I ever thought. And about my mom, just say say one more thing about how you see the complementarity just want to hear you yeah um that my my husband's stability and grounding is something that I'm using for myself, and it's actually helping myself and my adventurousness, and it's feeding him as well. That's right. So it's not only him giving to me. If all he wanted was a calm and square and structured life, he wouldn't be here, nor with you.

There's a lot more we could talk about, but we have to leave it at that. What I will ask you is, in a week or so, send me a voice message with what you've been thinking and what's happened. Okay. So I know where this lands. Okay.

All right? Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. 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,

Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julian Hatt. 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.