Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - Was I Used for a Visa?

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

She comes to Esther reeling from the end of a five-year relationship marked by love, deceit, and manipulation. After discovering her partner’s infidelities and hearing a therapist describe him as a possible psychopath or narcissist, she struggles to understand what was real. Together, they work to untangle the conflicting truths, rebuild her trust in her own perceptions, and explore how she can approach love with greater clarity. 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]. Producer’s Note: When our anonymous guests do a session with Esther for the podcast, it is an act of generosity for everyone who listens. These sessions are meant not only to support the people in the room with Esther, but all of us who learn from their stories. Our stories have many chapters, and what you hear is just one moment in someone’s journey. So even though the sessions are anonymous, please remember that real people are behind them and they may be reading your comments. Also, please join me on Entre Nous, my new home on Substack for anyone who wants to live, love, and work with more connection and imagination. I invite you to sign up and become a free or paid member at estherperel.substack.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi Esther. I was in a nearly five-year life partnership with someone that I am now very concerned, used me for a visa. I sponsored this person for permanent residency here in Australia, but unfortunately about a year ago, they walked out and then I subsequently found out they had been cheating on me the entire relationship. This was really deeply distressing to me because at the time, this was my deepest experience of love that I'd ever had. Deep care, love and kindness. I've never really believed anyone loved me as much as this person did. And I've never really believed more in a connection between myself and another person.

So I was deeply shocked. At the time, this person characterized their behaviour as something they didn't really understand, as self-sabotage, and as something to do with their family history. But a therapist I was seeing at the time said to me that she was pretty convinced that I had been used for a visa, had been completely manipulated,

that this person was a psychopath or a narcissist, and that I didn't see the relationship myself or him clearly because I was just so desperate to be loved and that I don't really know what real love feels like or should look like. Facts have come to light that probably support the psychological

psychologist's assessment, and yet there's a part of me that wants to hold on to the felt experience of love. I'm just wondering Esther, if you can help me unpack whether I should believe my psychologist's assessment, whether I don't really see myself or relationships clearly, and how do I move forward if I don't really know what real love feels like? Thank you. What are the top 10 global risks we should be thinking about for 2026? Long term, you are giving away the store to countries that operate more effectively in the law of the jungle. I'm Prit Bharara, and this week, Ian Bremmer, founder and president of the Eurasia Group, joins me to discuss his annual risk report and how we can make sense of the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and the capture of Nicholas Maduro. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.

You're listening. Do you recognize your sense? Yeah, I think I've dissected it so much. I almost feel, I think in that voice note, kind of detached from it, but listening to it, yeah, brings it back. It still feels kind of unbelievable to me, the story. And the piece that feels unbelievable is what? How could I be with somebody who counts me? Is the feeling I felt real?

I think the relationship and my experience in it is completely polarised from the facts that came to light. Sometimes I just feel still shocked and I try to reconcile the person that I knew and then when I have these memories, I try to fixate on, was there a sign? Is that really him? is that, like, feeling I had was it totally off?

Tell me a little bit the story of your relationship. Yeah. So I live in Melbourne, in Australia, which I think is important to know because we went through one of the world's longest and strictest lockdowns in 2020. And I think that frames the relationship in some ways. We met just after the first lockdown before the second. very long lockdown. So our first date was at his house in his bedroom

where we made like a little Italian dinner situation. And it was very, I felt and I think he felt, well, I don't know what he felt, but at the time I interpreted him to feel very connected very quickly. He told me about his mother's passing. She had died from suicide when he was 21. And he told me that. because he wore her wedding ring as a necklace on him. And it was a shock, I think, to my partner

when she died by suicide because they were extremely close. And how many years after her death did you meet him? Nine. And he was very angry about it. He wouldn't want to talk about it. He was very, just angry. And I felt as the relationship went along, he became much more open to talking about her. her favorite music was George Michael and he would start to play it on the record player and we would dance in the living room and he would just talk more about her and I felt like he was, I felt that through our relationship he had in some ways connected with me in a way like with her in the sense that we had just a very like loving bond. There was a lot of physical affection in that was very like, wherever I went, he was like very, wanted to be very close.

It felt like we cherished each other. But after about a year, we had lots of problems with sex where he just didn't, he just couldn't get aroused. I personally thought it had to do with this idea of love and sex for him being quite separated. I sensed this attachment with him. but I also, it took him so long to even start talking about his mom and being able to share and talk about missing her and talking about their relationship and how, you know, how much

he missed her and just instead of being angry, this like opening up, I sense that the love and the sex was related to this. Did you check it with him? I tried to talk to him about this. He did not want to go there. He kept saying to me, so because the reason I bring up the COVID thing is because it's also happened as we moved in together in another lockdown. And his description or like explanation was that he'd lost his libido, that he just felt like the walls were caving in. We had visa issues. And he kept proposing to do student visas. And I didn't want to do that because I didn't think he wanted to study. It's a lot of money. And then they put a cap on how much you can earn

afterwards. And so I took it upon myself to call a lawyer who advised us to do a partner visa. And I pushed him for the partner visa, to be honest, because I just wanted to not have the insecurity of the visa issues going on. I just wanted to... Partner visa means that you make a request for him? Yeah. In Australia, marriage. and de facto are the same rights. So being married doesn't give you any more legal rights than just being in a de facto relationship.

And a partner visa is essentially like a marriage visa. It's the same like in the US to get married for a visa. It's the same thing. Early on in our relationship, he brought up the visa issues in terms of not wanting to be in the relationship or at least saying, I don't know what's happening with my visa.

and I said, I understand that I had lived for a long time in Europe, I had dealt with visa issues, I had known what it had been like to be not sure if you want to stay or go somewhere and that impacting relationships. So I had said, if you're here for a good time and not a long time and you just want to be free and date lots of people, I get that. Or also, if you're scared that you will get attached and then if the visa doesn't work out, then it's not just the disappointment of the visa, it's also the disappointment of the relationship ending. So it's love or the visa? Yeah. And I just felt like for me, I could sense I had a strong connection to him. I didn't know if it was going to turn into a relationship, but I wanted a relationship on the table.

How did you experience his sexual distancing from you? You've spent, a year now trying to understand reinterpret make meaning and try to deal with your heartbreak on one side with your feeling

deceived on the other and then with your feeling like you were a fool on yet another angle and the more you try to put all the pieces together

and the more the heartbreak is deeper. And what I'm not clear is, do you want to know is my thinking valid, accurate, legit? Does it make sense what I'm thinking? Or are you saying, how does one square feeling deeply cared for and loved to then find out that the person we thought loved

us deeply was lying to us throughout the relationship. I think I would know to listen to you differently or better if I have a better sense as to what it is that you hope for in our conversation and where you are at this point in your life. Is it how to let go? Is it how to make sense? is it how to trust your own feelings about yourself so that you don't think, how do I know that when I feel something it's real? They're not all the same.

They're all inside of you. I totally understand that. But we have one conversation and I think we may be able to hone in on one of these aspects. I think it's for me this idea of what I felt to be so real. And that realness wasn't what I felt to be like, you know, fireworks or like crazy romance, but actually safety and like feeling so connected to another person and feeling like that in that moment you're deeply seen and seeing the other person. And you think on his side it was a performance.

What leads you to question was any of this true or real? Well, my thinking was more along these lines of, I guess, what I said earlier, love and sex not being able to be for him, something he could do together. And the more that he fell in love and felt safe, the less he wanted to have sex. Also, in the beginning. How to make love with the woman you love. Yes, I don't think he knew that. And I also feel, this is my felt sense, that when we did have sex in the beginning, it was not loving. It was for him quite aggressive almost, always from behind, pulling hair, like very, it wasn't

like facing each other, never eye contact. When we weren't having sex, that's all he wanted. Lots of spooning, looking at each other's eyes, heaps and heaps of closeness. It was like in sex he wanted no closeness, no intimacy. That was my sense of it. And that was throughout? Yes, that was throughout. So that tells you one thing is that this did not intensify

because he felt closer to you. This was there from day one. This disconnect between... Well, you can call it a disconnect or you can call it, if I create you from behind, I don't want to. to see your face. I don't want to look into your eyes. I want to be able to be more ruthless. That ruthlessness intensifies my excitement. I don't want tender. That's a totally different vocabulary. Tender will come after or before or around, but not in that experience itself.

It may have something to do with the disconnect, and sometimes it has nothing to do with a disconnect, but it says my vocabulary, the way I get a connection. The way I get a disconnect. excited. What frees me, what allows me to let go is a certain kind of objectification, is a certain kind of ruthlessness that is highly charged and pleasurable. When I spoon, when I look at you in the eyes, when I hold you, when I caress you, that's a different range of expression. And potentially, because I don't know the man in his book, it becomes more. more of the intimate, tender, caring, vulnerable. Vulnerable doesn't go with lust.

But when you say that this was there from the start, then it's less as he became more intimate with me and as he began to experience a certain type of intimacy with me that he had known with his mom, he felt less and less attracted to me and desirous of me. because it began to almost feel slightly incestuous, and nobody wants in their good mind to have sex with their mom.

So they started to feel like two separate experiences. And he began to be more and more sexually removed from me, and he took his sexuality somewhere else. I think so. And I felt, I felt, like sex was impossible, as in like, I also lost it. As in like ick, like too much, too close, too, to entrap? Not for me, but I felt, I felt this block like we weren't that.

We were something else like, but I never for a moment question that he didn't love me because the physical touch and the desire to be close to me and the desire to like kiss me and be all in my body and smells. So what makes you question it now? Well, what this therapist said to me, she said that he was a psychopath because the things that came out, so how I found out was after he walked out. How did he walk out? About six months before we broke up.

He called me from Bali. We'd been in Bali together and he stayed on. He was a photographer. he stayed on to do some work, and he called me bawling his eyes out, saying I'm so sad about our sex life, I don't know what to do about it, just uncontrollably crying, like hysterical almost. And I was quite shocked, but in a way I was also happy because I was like, oh, great, we can talk about this now because for so long he wouldn't want to talk about it, just, oh, it's COVID, I've got no libido, it has nothing to do with you. I still find you attractive.

So I was like, great, we can talk about this now. but I'm a bit worried because you're so upset. It to me signals that you don't think that this is something we can solve. And it's not the first time you're experiencing this either. What do you mean by that? You're not the first person with whom the love lust split. I don't know if that's the case because I was his first long-term serious relationship. Before that, I think he'd only been in.

open things or not committed things. He'd never brought anyone home to his parents before as far as I know. So, I question everything at this moment. Yes, I still question everything. So yeah, so he called me from Bali, bawling his eyes out. And I said, I actually think we can solve this. This is great. Now you want to talk about it. I said, I feel like we're not sexual anymore. Like I don't see you as sexually. You don't, the whole, yeah, the, the, the vocabulary, the tone of our relationship is loving, but it's not. And I said, we need to create some desire. Tension, yes, exactly.

And so then we tried to do that for, say, like, yeah, three, six months. And then he sat me down and. What did you try to do? Well, we bought the Esteprelle course, but we made it through one episode. as this is not a testament to your course. It was, I think, that we didn't really do it. We did one episode. And then he went traveling to Japan.

And I had just finished my master's, and I was handing in my PhD proposal. And I really wanted to celebrate that because it's a big thing to hand in the proposal and get a scholarship. And he went out and was out late, and I was really upset. and when he came home, I said, I don't know if this is working. And I meant like what we're doing right now, but I felt something like snap in the air almost. He took the opportunity. And he said in a very small voice, maybe like half an hour later in bed, you don't have to love me,

you don't have to put up with my bullshit or something. And I was like, what, what's going on? I said, that's not what I was trying to say. I was just saying this isn't working. Like you've talked about this sex life thing. You want to fix it. And now you're like not even wanting to be there to celebrate for me the next day. You're going to be hung over.

And he just closed up and said, I don't know what you're talking about. And then the next day we kind of spoke a bit more. And I said, look, if we're not having sex and you're not putting effort in, then we're like, flatmates. Like we need to work on this. He went to Japan, came back and said, I don't feel the same things for you anymore. I just don't have to feel love anymore.

I was a bit shocked, but I was also trying to, in that moment, I really loved him. And I was like, your happiness is important to me. If you don't feel that way, I don't know what I can do about that. But I'd like to go to therapy to break up well because I thought we were soulmates. Like, this is the most I've ever been loved by someone, and the most I've ever loved someone, and I thought that was mutual, and I don't know how that just goes away. But I think if that's what you want to do, then we need to do that. Then the next day he came back and was like, oh, no, like, it's all coming back to me.

Can I touch you? He still, he wanted the touch. He couldn't like deal with the, then we were broken up, you know, or that we were breaking up. And he was like, can I touch you? Actually, I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave. I'm not broken. You're not broken. We can fix this. and to which I said there seems to be a lot going on. I think maybe it would be a good idea for you to move out for a little bit and us to go to therapy. I want to fix this. I'll do everything in my power to fix this, but it seems like something's going on and I think we need like just a little bit of space to work through that. Then the next day he came back and said, no, no, I think I need to do this on my own.

I need to break up. And then it was basically at that for a week until I like said, I can't do this anymore. like this is like whiplash. You have to get out, you have to move out. We have to take a brief break. So stay with us. And let's see where this goes. Support for where should we begin comes from Quince.

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That's Shopify.com slash ester. Here you're first This New Year with Shopify by your side And then As soon as he moved out It was like the bricks started to

Like the house started to fall down I heard from someone that he'd been texting girls He then said to me Yes but it was just in a friendly way And for me it signals how unhappy I was And I think this is related to sex And I think I haven't been in love

Or there's been something going on with the sex thing To which I was like Well that takes us all the way back to like the first year of our relationship like what are you saying and then he just went back and forth and then eventually I rang a friend of his from work who he'd stopped speaking to six months earlier and she said are you sitting down um I don't know and basically said that a girl at work had put in a harassment claim about him that he'd been an 18 year old girl taking photos of her originally for work, but then in our house taking photos of her and crossing boundaries by

like, you know, flirting with her and she was 18. He's 35 at this point or 34 at this point. And then it turned out that he'd also been doing only fans shoots for women. I confronted him about this and he admitted to everything. And then he said, I'll meet up with you, I'll tell you everything you want to know. And we sat for six hours. And he told me that he'd been sleeping with people since the beginning of the relationship, like literally from the very beginning. He slept with his ex-girlfriend. And we'd had a therapist appointment booked because before I found out all this stuff, again, I wanted to break up well. I didn't think he would come. He came. But I was just hysterical because at this point, the therapist had basically said to me,

I think he's just a complete liar, sociopath, narcissist, whatever. You need to cut contact with him. He's dangerous. You just need me here to cut the contact between the two of you. But in the part in the therapy, he said, I felt like a deep sense of peace with you. I feel like you did too, which resonated with me because I felt very soothed when I was around him. But then I just used the therapy session to like cut contact with him. I said, I don't want to be in contact with you anymore because I was just,

his therapist was basically saying to me, yeah, he's just completely manipulating. It's just completely pulling the wall over your eyes. Nothing he's saying is real. This is in one session? Yeah, but weirdly in the session, because of the way we were communicating, she suddenly was like, huh, okay, actually maybe there's a real connection here is what she said in this session. Because he was, I was incredibly distressed. And when he told me about his, all this cheating, I was saying to him, like, I feel really, like,

incredibly distressed and having some, like, pretty dark thoughts. And in the six-hour conversation, he was like, I'm really concerned. I want to, like, tell your dad that you're this distressed because I'm, I can't, if someone dies again, if someone is even remotely suicidal, like, he was getting really anxious about it. And I was just saying, I would never do that. to my family, but I'm in like, I'm really distressed. Like, this is really, this is awful, these things I'm hearing about you, like, to hear that your partner has harassed young girls. Like, this is, I'm, like, completely overwhelmed. And in the session, he was, like,

kind of bursting to tell this therapist, like, she's really distressed and I just want to make sure that she's nothing, you know. So the therapist then at the end was kind of like, you know, trying to reassure him that I was okay. And as we left the therapy session, he was like, and we please hug and he was just like crying and then he was like, I just keep seeing you swinging from a roof because his mom hung herself in their family house. And we were just, yeah, crying and he was like, I love you, I love you, I love you. And then we left. And so then I thought, okay, maybe the therapist has been wrong. But then I contacted the person he'd originally slept with in the very beginning,

which was someone he'd been dating just before me. and I said to her, you know, can you give me some information about how this, you know, what was he like or what had happened? And she said, no, we didn't sleep together after we broke up. She said, but I did see him six months ago and he told me that your relationship is dead and that he, you know, he's going to break up with you. And then afterwards he texted me and said, did I want to have sex? So I went to my therapist and said, he's lied. about that he slept with this person in the beginning. Why would he do that? And then the therapist said, because he's a psychopath. And I said, but in the session, you were saying that you thought

that there was maybe a genuine connection with us? And she said, no, no, no, I sense that he was not being authentic. He's not an authentic person. You just want to be loved so much. You just want to believe it so much that you're not seeing things clearly. And then from then on, I was like stuck with these two different stories and I couldn't reconcile them and I went on like a fact-finding mission. I called his family. His family reassured me that these characters weren't consistent with who they knew and they were deeply shocked but had also said that since his mum's suicide, he'd never really gotten over it.

His dad was like, we are just growing further and further apart since you broke up. So the fact-finding, all the fact-finding hasn't given you. the peace of mind that you are yearning for. Yeah. So I'm afraid that if I let you go through the whole story, we will not have much of a conversation. And part of it is because if he lied, then everything was a lie, then everything I felt was a lure, then I am a fool.

if he didn't lie, then what I did feel was real, then my experience is valid. You see, it's like very much an either-or. There are people who are at the same time loving and lying. There are people who care and at the same time can't tolerate the closeness that comes from the caring. There is people like you who most of the time, everything you described, you had your head on your shoulders quite well. It's not like you were transported in some thing that made no sense.

At some point, his behavior became erratic enough or consistently avoiding enough that you went to ask people and you got a good sense. You said we need to work on it. You said we need to have some space between us. You said you need to move up. I mean, it's not like this notion that because you're deeply yearning for love, you lost your mind. I don't see that. Okay?

No. But of course, we are left with the question is how could I feel all of that when he was half there and half somewhere else? Because sometimes the half that people give us is plentiful. So what do you make of that statement? You didn't notice anything because you're so craving? I'm not questioning what this therapist told you. I'm questioning how you heard the statement.

You so much wanted to be loved that you didn't see a thing. Yeah, and I'm so like molded for a narcissist that I don't even notice that I'm accommodating them to such a degree. So how are you molded for a narcissist? And I mean, what is it that you're supposed to recognize about yourself in her statement? Yeah, so I had seen her like one or two times before, and I had let her know that my mom has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and that she can erupt and be quite rageful. And so I guess I learned very early on to take care of her feelings and walk on eggshells and manage the displeasure or anger.

But when I was nine, my mum told me that she thought that she was diagnosed with Borderline. I don't know if I was nine or ten or seven. And this is also like something that I witnessed a lot with my mum, which was, you know, really crossing boundaries where she would lean on me like a friend or an adult. I guess. So the therapist was sort of saying, you know, I brought to the therapist to say, well, he didn't behave like a narcissist in the relationship. He was taking care of me a lot. And I felt it was very equal. And when I would criticize him or say something wasn't working, he was always very, okay, yep, I hear you. What can we do? How can we work on things? She said, no, no, no, no. I think that's just because you were very good at, like, pleasing him

and like keeping the narcissism contained because of what you witness with your mom. And what do you think about that? I think tried so hard to try to ask these questions and piece it together. I think in, I think, yes, in some instances, I am hyper aware of people's things like a displeasure or whatever else. And I think I probably did do tried a lot to please him. But also I think I'm someone who's quite vocal. and if things are not working or there's things that I don't like or I'm pissed off or whatever, I also am saying that to my partner.

But I also think there was something about the way I approached these conversations with him that I think probably, yeah, did diffuse some of this, if you want to call it, narcissism. I don't call it. I don't know him and I am a little careful about putting big labels on people. people, from love addict on you to narcissist on him. So I don't know enough. It could be this and it could be a number of other things too. So I don't think it would be right on my part to deliberate about this.

But if you tell me, I learned how to diffuse things as a kid and I continued to do so as an adult, even that, you know, Many of our biggest assets also sometimes are our challenges. But that doesn't mean that they're not also assets. The ability to diffuse is in and of itself, not a problem. It's the excess of it, the constant use of it, the feeling that you have to, the pressure to do it, because otherwise bad things can happen. That becomes the issue.

not the trade in and of itself. And I never felt with him that I was walking on eggshells. I never felt that fear or anxiety that he was going to be angry. And in some ways I felt like he needed me, like with his mom, to provide stability, but he never asked me for it or made it my responsibility. That's for me what my interpretation of the relationship was, but I just can't get out of my head this idea that nothing was real. We are in the midst of our session.

There is still so much to talk about. So stay with us. Support for where should we begin comes from Monarch. No one can blame you if you went a little overboard in your holiday spending. But if you're ready to get back on track, then it might be time to try Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. That's because unlike most other personal finance apps, Monarch is built to make you proactive, not just reactive.

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Yeah. I want to just believe my interpretation and assessment of everything. But I feel as though if I was in some mastermind manipulation, that I'm then somehow still being manipulated because I'm believing the love was real. And when I called his family, he wrote me to say, why are you talking to my family? And I let him know this therapist had said this and how upset I was. And he said, okay, I understand you're upset. And I don't know what else I can do to make you believe that everything was real,

that I loved you, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, what would help me is if we maybe went to another therapist, maybe one that you've been seeing, who can help reassure me that what you're saying is true. and he said, I promise you I will do that. I'm going back home for a month. And I promise you when I get back, I'll reach out. But please, you cannot come back and ask me more stuff because it's overwhelming me. It's taking me back to where we were.

I can't sleep. I can't eat. I'm having panic attacks. I'm feeling really broken from this relationship ending. I'm not coping. I will reach out to you. But if you contact me again, I'm going to block you because I just can't cope. Because you were reaching out to him a lot.

So after the therapist told me he was a psychopath, I wrote him an email and he wrote back saying, I promise everything was real. I thought the way we left things in the therapy was somewhat amicable. I love you, et cetera, et cetera. You know, I don't know why I did everything. I'm trying to work it out. It's a better story to live with. Yes.

Because this one about he is this and you are that, has left you with a very fractured sense of reality. Can I trust my feelings? Can I trust my perception of reality? Can I trust otherwise what I think is really is? Yeah. And it wasn't very useful in terms of not personalizing everything. Yes, because originally I didn't see his cheating and stuff really much to do with me.

Yep, yeah. Or our relationship. Right. And he agrees with that too. Yes, he says I felt like I was self-sabotaging. So I have a question for you. You are four or five years with this man. Yes.

You have a fairly good sense of what may or may not have transpired. You go to a therapist for one session. And that therapist who you know or don't know before. I'd seen her twice before. Okay. So the completely new therapist gets to reinterpret your entire life and leaves you on the mat for a whole year now? Yeah.

I mean, how much power do you want to give my profession? Yeah, I know. Well, I think this is why I wrote to his family. This is why I wrote to him. And then eventually... Yeah, but that was the same. That was already the power of the therapist. Now are you going to pull the people around you

to see if this whole new interpretation has validity? Is he really what this therapist told me he is? And am I really what she does? It's like, you know, this is going to sound like a strange way of saying it. But sometimes a little amount of self-deception in yours type of situation. I'm not saying this as a categorical. may not be a bad idea

and I don't even know if it's self-deception but basically here is this five years I felt something snapped about three years into it maybe that's when I was more patient and kind

and considerate of his feelings and everything than it took a long time for me to finally put my foot down not at the end at that moment. But part of it is because there was a lot of beautiful good stuff between us too.

And honestly, no, I don't think his lack of desire had something to do with me. And I don't mean to say that there were not things that I can take responsibility for. But fundamentally, there's someone who is child. challenging, challenged. There's a lot of turmoil inside of him. Somehow I see a kind of a similarity between your mom coming to tell you I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and him talking to you about his mother's suicide. And yes, there is something about that that is very alluring to you.

Yes. You don't like the burden of being the confidant and the one who wants to. tells the ultimate truth too, but on the other end, it makes you feel like there is an absolute intimacy that instantly gets established between you and the raconteur. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there was something about the way that he told me or the way that he, that whole thing that he wasn't, I didn't feel a sense of responsibility for him, but I wanted to.

But I felt special. Yeah, I felt special and I want, it's like I felt like, I felt like, like I could do this. Do what you needed. Yes, I've done this. I'm a pro. I've done this for 20-something years before. I get it.

And maybe more than, you know, what is your deep quest for love that allows you not to see when people are truthful or not? It's more how do you establish trust? How do you respond when people, open up to you. And the thing I'm slightly apprehensive about is that it becomes a story of you did nothing wrong or what's wrong with you. Or he did nothing wrong or what's wrong with him.

It's all or nothing. And people are sometimes more complex than that. They're not just good or bad. I mean, sometimes, yes, but many times they are doing bad things to themselves, hurtful things to themselves, hurtful things to the people they love the most, and they have no idea why. But at this very moment, it is essential for you to get out of the clutches. How do I do that?

You pick a story that for the moment is good enough, that allows you to sleep. that allows you to meet new people, that allows you to not second-guess yourself all the time. So I feel like I did that, and I tried to reject the therapist. And then, but again, I take accountability for this, I did write him maybe four or five months after he said, I'd reach out because he hadn't,

and he blocked me. And then a friend called me and said, he's engaged to someone new. And this was like nine months after we had split up. And so I think there's a part of me because more and more information kept coming out. There's a part of me that wants to believe the worst case so that if more information comes, I can't be shocked or... Okay, okay. You don't need anybody's help for that.

You know, you don't need to vilify him. you can't say, wow, that was quick. But honestly, if you had met somebody, you may have been in the same situation. I haven't even been able to date. I've been so grief-stricken. I know, because he inhabits your, right? It's as if you need to answer that impossible question. Has he ever been alone much in his life?

Yeah, I was thinking that because I was his. first long-term relationship, but if I think back to like all the stories he's told, he's always been entangled with someone. Right. He's never been alone. He's never been alone. I mean, the fact that he didn't have a long-term relationship, he's always been, there's always been somebody. So the fact that he's nine months into it with someone else, nothing new. I guess for me, like the strength of the connection, it's like baffling to me that he could then, I could just be, he could just replace that. Yes, yes.

That's the thing that pierces us. Yeah. What do I mean if you can so quickly replace me? Am I that replaceable, dispensable, not unique, all of that? And that is the shattering of the grand ambition of romantic love. I've never loved like you. Well, really? look how quickly you love someone else.

Yeah, because it is that fantasy that, of course, was shattered with the cheating, but then because I had rationalized, oh, that's separate from us almost, but the love, the commitment, this desire to want to be like in a life partnership with you, yeah, that idea that he could just do that all again so quickly is almost in a way more shocking to me than the cheating. I agree. Because you can somehow understand he loved that. me deeply, but he's troubled and therefore he cheated. That's how how we can put together.

But you love me deeply and now no time has passed and you're already committed to someone else. Well, then what was true about a love? Yeah. And that's the piece with these stories is what was true about the love because I want to take that love with me because I felt to be so profound and it changed me. So erasing that feels like really challenging. And also, that is the type of love I want to feel in a relationship. And now I'm petrified that if I feel that again, I am now pairing love and kindness and a sense of security with potentially like manipulation lies. What I'm feeling I can't trust and that I find to be quite hopeless. I wish there was a quick portion that could help us with that.

I find that is one of the most challenging maturing of a person. How do we learn to love with what has been called secondary naivete? The first time you love with first the great, naivete. But then the second time when there's been a breach, a violation, a betrayal, a deception, a duplicity, then you begin to think, what's it like to love with my eyes open? So there's an alertness, there's a secondary naivete, it is grounded in alertness and reality, it is more cautious, but it allows itself to step a little bit more slowly, but it doesn't get completely blocked

because one person cannot be given the power to rewrite an entire story. Yeah, I feel like he's rewritten my whole life. Right, and you've given him a tremendous amount of power with the fear that anything that will follow could be a replica of him. That is a real fear, but it is not necessarily reality. Will I ever be able to have that feeling where I just feel like I know

and that feeling of deep joy and I don't know what the word is, but like a sense of deep relaxation that I am connecting with someone? I'm home. I'm home. Yeah. Yeah. I'm home. I can breathe out.

I can let go. It is safe. It is real. It is true. I can trust. Yeah. And that's what I felt. And that was the, I met him when I was 33 and I had not felt that until then.

I had lots of other long-term relationships, some kind and beautiful, some a bit less so. But now you know the feeling. Yeah. So now you know the feeling that you want to experience again. Yeah. I'm scared of the feeling now. And I think that's what's playing in my mind. I would be misleading you if I just try to say, oh, no, there's no reason to.

There's a very good reason to. But the only way you will get to that experience is by allowing yourself, by giving yourself the permission, while being with your eyes open and loving people around you. And you're asking them, what do you see? Am I missing something? this is I'm trepidating but it feels right

and the majority of people won't cheat and lie and one person can't become the representative of an entire species so I don't have a crystal ball if I will if you ever love again

what the hell do I know I don't know at all but I do know what it's like to allow oneself to reopen one's eyes. Right now, your eyes have been looking inward for the whole year. Yes. And something very special happens when you reopen the eyes and they turn outward. Because the tenacity of the internal truth and the internal gaze has become distorting in its own way.

Yeah, I have questioned like everything in my life. How is what we are saying so far? How is this conversation? Reassuring, I think. I think one of the reasons I wanted to speak to was to get some sort of validation to not have this other psychologist's power or her in my ear so much. Or me. Or me.

I don't want you to give that same. Don't take it away from her and put it on me. Take a little bit back for you. Take some of that power back for you. You can't have the full certainty. It will at times feel scary. It will feel ambiguous. It will come with questions.

It's this and that. Yes. It's a bunch of things all together and it's complicated. It's not this or that. is he a narcissistic, I love addict. The world is a little bit more than that. At least how I understand the story. I may say the same thing had I seen you more,

but I can't say it for you today. I can't claim or disclaim. I can just pass over some of the power and the responsibility back on you. You're giving us too much power. We are common mortals too. We sometimes think we need to know. Like you're asking me to know and to give you certainty that I don't have. Yeah.

And if I pretend to have it, then I look more powerful than I really am. Okay. I can sit with you in the uncertainty. And if you find a therapist, you want someone who sits with you in the complexity, in the uncertainty, in the doubt, while at the same time, helping you to put one foot in front of the other. Thank you, Esther. You're welcome. This was an Esther calling.

A one-time intervention phone call reported remotely from two points somewhere in the world. If you have a question you'd like to explore with Astaire 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 esteraparell.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, Destri Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julianette. 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.