Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - You Slept With My Best Friend

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

The two couples had been inseparable—neighbors, chosen family, godparents to each other's children. She reaches out to Esther in despair after discovering that her husband had a ten-year-old affair with her best friend. For a decade, he kept the betrayal hidden while she believed they had built a loving marriage and family. Now she's left questioning whether any of it was real. They both want to stay together, but she's trapped in doubt and grief, while he's desperate to repair what he's broken. What does it take to rebuild a relationship after a betrayal of this magnitude? 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

None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel. Each episode of Where Should We Begin is a one-time counseling session. For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices and their stories are real. Support for the show comes from Peacock and a new original series The Five Star Weekend. Jennifer Garner stars as Hollis Shaw,

a famed cook, who invites her best friends to Nantucket after a devastating loss. Based on the best-selling novel by Ellen Hildebrand, this A-List Ensemble also stars Darcy Cardin, Gemma Chan, Regina Hall and Chloe Sevigny. The five-star weekend is now streaming only on Peacock. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Hintwater. Let me ask you, how is your relationship with water? No, I'm not asking whether you enjoy the rain.

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It just goes to show, sometimes the right hydration partner changes everything. Try hint. available at drinkhint.com and in stores nationwide. A husband of over 15 years, about a year ago, I found out that nine, ten years ago, he had a two-year-long affair with my best friend. I mean, she's the godmother to my daughter.

They lived one street over. They were both in our wedding. It was just a nice to the gut, because everything I thought I knew is just not what I thought it was. Most couples who come in the aftermath of an affair come in the immediate aftermath. In this case, the affair took place 10 years ago, but she has just found out. So what is the past for him is the imminent present for her. She's been living with this now in this turmoil for about a year,

trying to figure out what was the marriage, living with a secret in their midst. And she wants to know, is this the man I thought he was? Is this the marriage that I thought we had? Did I make a fundamental mistake? Why did this happen? I think about it every day. It sucks. You know, I struggle with it every day.

I don't really talk to her about it because I know she needs more taking care of than I do, and I don't want to burden her. With everything that's gone on, our marriage has definitely gotten stronger, but I really want to help her. I really want to figure out how to help her move. forward. There's been 10 years in between where he's been an amazing husband, an amazing father.

We've had another child since then. He's a wonderful provider, but I'm pretty lost. I feel like I'm stuck in this purgatory. I'm hurting constantly. I don't have like joy with my kids anymore. I've lost the person that I am, and I want so badly to get back to that person, and I just don't know how. And both of them are here to try to make sense. sense of things and to find the permission to invest in their relationship and not just to be rooted in remorse. Let's listen. I found your book's state of affairs. It just gave me like a different perspective. I was on your website one night and it was like submit your story and never thought anything would come out of it. And do you know where she brought you or do you just kind of

follow along? No, I know where she brought me. You know where you are? I don't know where you are. I know exactly where I am. I created this and I have to deal with it. And I support her and these things that she wants to do all day long. I heard your line. Your line is whatever she needs. But whatever she needs is one line. What do you need?

Where are you coming from? And how do you enter this is another that needs to exist too. Yeah. I mean, I'm here for her. I'm here for us to figure out. what we can do to make things better, things that, you know, that she might want or that I might want what we both want from each other. The day, like, she came up behind me and gave me a hug. It felt so good and amazing. And it was something that I was like, wow, I've never done that.

And I love that. I felt so good. So I think there's things like that that I want to figure out. Like what makes you happy. Yeah, what makes you happy and things that I can do better that would make you happier. Just when you were talking now, and because of what you said, I created the mess. I don't even know what we're talking about yet, but I created the mess. I'm responsible, anything she needs. Sometimes when people are in that position, they have a sense that they have used up their quota for the rest of their relationship. I feel so guilty, I'm so responsible for the mess we're in, that I have no right to ask for anything anymore.

So if she hugs me, and it feels so nice, I can't just say I loved it. I would like more of it. I have to go and say, I'm here to make her happy so that if she's happy, she can make some things that make me feel good. It all kind of becomes a big detour, laid out for me. I definitely don't do a lot for myself. It's always like, what can I do to make her happy? I don't think I've said no to anything that she's requested since.

And all of this is recent, or that has been the structure of your relationship always? I think generally it's been the structure. You're always very, like, easygoing and just, yep, I think. But that's not easygoing. That is being powered by guilt and remorse. And I think that's part of my past, too, and that's why I think I've just always done stuff myself and not ask for help. I'm not one to ask.

I always try to just do things myself. You keep a lot inside. Yeah, that too. So if you wanted something, you're not good at asking. No, not at all. Because? When I was younger, I never had the parent

to be able to tell and feel comfortable about it. So, I mean, I was on my own. I was 18. And I was on my own because? My father moved. My mother passed away at a very young age. I'm not very young. She was young.

She was... She was 50. She was 50. So my mother died. But before that, my father decided to go to Virginia. So I had to figure out what to do and just kind of... Basically, he gave him an ultimatum and said, you can come with me. Yeah.

Don't help me. Not have a son. if he keeps everything in and he's in the middle of telling, we're going to take that opportunity. Okay. Sorry. I do that. No, absolutely nothing to apologize for, I'm just meeting you. Yeah, so it got to a point where just was on my own, doing my own stuff, and that's something that I think I've tried to do with our kids way better than what I had is to pass on something better in structure and, you know, pay it forward in a business.

better way than what we had or I had. So your dad decides to move and he says, come with me or do whatever you want? Yeah, pretty much. That's what it was, is you can come down here or you can stay here and figure out, you know, what you want to do. So I stayed and worked, I worked a ton. And then what happened? Why are we here? Why are we here? So we're here because I made a mistake 11 years ago. And you are together, how many? We are together, 23 years.

Yeah, about that. Been married, 16 years. And I had an affair with her friend. Well, it was our friend, mutual friends. Her husband was my friend. They lived on like the next street over. And I had an affair with her for, over a year.

And that came out now? Yeah, that came out a year and a half ago. Almost. A little over a year. Yeah. Basically, one of his friends knew about this all along, never said anything to anybody, and then decided to tell his best friend who was the husband of her last year,

and that's how it all came out. I just thought it was absurd. like there's no way that that's true. And I kind of sat with it for about five months. And then I finally asked him and he told me a little. And then I found out more. And then he told me a little bit more. But it was so long ago that he is a little fuzzy in his memory about specifics.

Like, when did it start? When did it end? He's had a hard time answering my questions. So I'm in my mind rewriting all the memories that I have. of those, I think it was probably closer to two years because she was my best friend and her husband was his best friend. And like he said, they lived one street over. We were together as like a group almost every single day. They had a daughter. We just had a daughter. And we just were like one big happy family. That's all I knew us to be. And then, you know, fast forward nine years.

she divorced her husband, but we were still friends with the husband. He was still best friends with him up until this all came out last year. And you did not stay friends with her? No, I ended the friendship around that same time that he ended his relationship with her. She was changing and becoming a person that I didn't agree with. She was doing things with other men at that time, and I didn't agree with it, and I didn't want that kind of energy around our daughter. basically just stopped talking and that was about eight years ago.

I'm listening to this sentence again now and I remember listening to it in the session two. I didn't like this energy and I didn't like it for my daughter who is a newborn at a time or a one-year-old and it's an interesting comment where the reaction is from one woman to another but the justification

invokes the mother there's something about saying it's the energy that my child would absorb feels more acceptable than to speak about what this is triggering in me to be next to this woman who is talking to me about her attractions or dalliances with other men and I know a sense somewhere that this could potentially be a threat to me that this is not what I bring that this is not how I enter my relationship to the point that my husband has just in the first two minutes of the session talked about how amazing it was that I came to hug him from behind because it was so unusual. And so she describes a tension between two behaviors of women, but she justifies it by putting it

in the context of her responsibility as a mother. Who knows about it? For a good few months, nobody knew. And then I've told my best friend, and then I told another friend. And what do they know? They know everything that I know. So they know facts. Yeah.

But they don't know meaning. Right. I don't really know the meaning. Right. And that's part of what you've been wanting to know? Yeah. I've had a hard time getting past this because I just don't understand. understand because I can see her doing this. It doesn't surprise me. But with him, I mean,

you can ask anybody who knows him and they would never think in a million years it's something he would do that's just so out of character for him. So the not understanding the why has just made it impossible for me to fully move on and stop thinking about it every day and stop looking back at pictures of us and rewriting the memories and questioning, like, when were you with her? Did it happen in our house? It's hard to get past all of those thoughts because I just am still having a hard time understanding why and how. Sometimes when you ask facts questions, where and when, how, how many, it makes it worse to go to sleep.

Yeah. But it doesn't really help you make sense of it. Yeah. At this moment, I know what we are here to do, which is important for her in order to be able to have the images subside, is for her to have clarification and understanding about how could this man do such a thing. And that means that we need to shift to a different set of questions. I've always thought that it was useful to distinguish between,

investigative questions and detective questions. Detective questions are questions that mind the facts. Where were you? Did you do it at home? Did you bring her here? Did you take her to that restaurant? Did our friends meet her? Did she do it better? All of these things that really just keep us awake at night.

Meaning questions. Bypass the facts and go for what happened to you there. Who were you in that relationship? What did that relationship invite in you that does not get expressed with me? Did you think about us? Did you think about the children? How was it when you would come home? How did you experience the duplicity?

Did you want me to find out? I have about 150 of those questions that are about the meaning. What would make someone risk losing everything that they have built? There must be something that is powerful enough, especially for those for whom this is really not in character. And he doesn't understand that either about himself. So in effect, I meet them and they share the same question. You were saying something before when you said,

I've always decided things on my own. So this is even before your mom. this is before your dad leaves, you have an experience of yourself as, in my family, A, I don't get to have needs. And if I do, I'm only myself to respond to them. Did I get that right? Tell me more. Growing up, it was out, like, not being able to talk to your parents and bring up stuff and talk to them and feel comfortable with them. I think really just kind of made me feel more closed in and just keep everything to myself and just manage it myself and try to figure out how to deal with it and do it.

And even to this day, it's hard for me to ask for help. So you just said something before about how much you were moved when she came and hugged you from behind and spontaneously showed affection. Would you ever ask for that? Before, no, no. Would you ask for it now or just say I really appreciate it when you... I don't think I've asked for it since. I think when she did it, I just told her, I was like, that's the first time you've ever done that and it felt so good.

That's a lot. It's beautiful. Thank you. Do you think that your affair was a way to ask for things that you don't usually ask? Possibly, yeah. I think so, but I don't think it's her fault at all. I think it's my fault because I don't. and ask for it.

We're going to set a few ground rules. We're not going to go into whose fault it is because it's not going to help us to put blame. And we're not going to justify it, but we are going to try to make sense of it. Because she needs it and you need it too. And it has probably not much to do with her. And hence, it actually is really interesting to find out what happened there. because affairs are often out of character.

Yes. They are parallel stories that suddenly enable people to do stuff they don't know how to do in their life. And so they do it in the shadow of their life. Yeah. I know it has nothing to do with her, except that it has to do with the fact that maybe she's not the person who spontaneously comes and hugs you

and you crave it. So that's one thing you know you want more of And I should be asking for it Yes, not shoot Feel free You don't have to But you can So what I asked you was

Did you have a sense That there was something that freed up When you were in the affair Where you could ask for things that you don't usually ask I think it was more of I didn't have to ask because she would just do that. You know, for people who don't ask to be given to and bypass the asking, it's huge. Yeah, I guess so you could say it felt easy, like there wasn't work involved.

It was just simple. When he says it was easy, I translate it as I could have my needs met and never have to feel needy. since I had learned to be self-sufficient, since I lost mom and I lost dad, and I knew I only had myself. I called my needs. In this relationship, in the shadow of my life, I rediscovered them

without having to face the consequences of the neediness and the longing that goes with it. Did you ever think that part of why you did it was because the siren call was irresistible? Yeah. I guess you could say that. He woke up the most forbidden, needs, wishes, longings

that this boy who then became man had yearned for and never felt. And it was so powerful that it made him do stuff that in his life, in his rational mind, he would never do. And so he lives with this contradiction between this deep need for connection and closeness and touch and the fact that it came with a betrayal. And so you're stuck with this isn't me.

That's not what I would ever do. and this is the most me I've ever been. Sometimes when we layer the psychology of the person who has the affair, it may seem like they're getting a free pass. They're not being held accountable. It's as if to humanize them, to make them more complex, is to be protective of the wrong person. I would like to suggest differently.

When she listens to him from that place, it helps her, one, to really not personalize it as much. Two, it gives her something to connect with the person, to actually activate empathy for this person, which is not just as a way of letting them get away with something, but it is actually as a way of allowing them to connect with them again. It is at the core of what will provide a new type of intimacy between them. And it is often a misunderstood step.

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Did any of your parents have affairs? My mother and father divorced. Yes. Which one had the affair? I don't know. I don't know anything about it. Your mom? I actually really don't. All I know is they used to fight a lot.

I don't know the exact reason of why they split. I thought that they just got divorced because they didn't like each other. You do know because we've talked about it. And it was your mom. She had an affair. I didn't know she had an affair. We never talked about that. Sorry.

I didn't know that. We never spoke about that. I do remember having a conversation with you. I remember you saying, I'm just like my mom. No. I'm sorry, but I don't remember that. I'm sorry that I don't. No, I'm sorry that you don't, and, like, just...

Said that to you. I swear you knew. I feel awful. You didn't feel awful. It's not your fault. A lot of I don't know often makes me wonder the degree to which the exposure was traumatic. Some things were too much to take in for how young the person was, or for the place that they were in within the family. So I don't know is a way that people sometimes use to protect, not because they don't want to be honest,

but because when people don't remember their childhoods, it often speaks trauma. Your mom was a good person, and that doesn't define who she was, just like it doesn't define who you are. Then I need you to understand that you're a good person. I think I'm probably the best person. I've ever been in a long time.

Well, that's what has been the hardest part for me is because the marriage I knew that I thought that I had was perfect. You're a great husband. You've been an amazing father, an amazing provider. You have drive. You're everything that I want in a partner. And that's why when I found out it wasn't a question of, do I stay or do I go? you know, if it came to light then, I would have questioned whether or not I would have stayed with you and probably wouldn't have.

But we've had so much good since that ended. This last year has been very challenging, but you've still been the same husband that you've always been, the person that I want to be with. Yeah, I'm sorry for all of this. I wish I could turn it all around. And what's hard for me also is that you wanted more affectionate and I'm not the most affectionate person. But if you just came to me before, you allowed something like that to happen. You could have worked on it. We could have worked on it.

Like it's not something that needed to happen. No, I totally agree. And you still have a hard time asking for things. And I still have a hard time being as affectionate as I would like to be. Our lives are very busy and just always going through the motions with family and put you last, which I shouldn't. Put that sentence first. I shouldn't put him last.

Because your life has no less busy and you have plenty of affection for your kids. Yes. There is no problem of time. Right. I give them my time. There is a problem of allocation. I think we give our kids too much time and not you and I enough time. Yeah.

I think we do everything for everybody. and you and I always come last. Literally we come last. Yep. We do a lot for a lot of people with helping them, giving our kids everything that they want, they need, and then the day comes to an end, and you and I don't even have enough time to enjoy ourselves.

I mean, we meal prep for our dog. Me too. But we don't take care of us. If you could talk to how you want it to be different, what would it look like? Where will it be? It would be giving ourselves time when we want it. Whatever it is, just you and I go for a walk with a dog. We say we're going to do it, but then we're like, oh, well, you know, kids or this or that.

We have a hard time, I think, just putting our foot down for ourselves. Both of you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so what stands in the way? What makes it so hard? Um, because we love our damn kids so much. I think it's also because we're tired.

We're exhausted from long days of work, and I think you just take the defeat and you're toast. What were you going to say? Um, as far as when it comes to, like, the kids and putting them first, I feel guilty if I don't, because I never had that as a kid growing up. My parents didn't put me first in the way we do with our kids, but I don't want to take that away from them. So I just always put them first, but I always put everybody else first. That's just my personality.

You know, on the long list of what children need, parents who pay attention to each other should feature high up. Yeah. because these days the survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple. Yes, I believe that. So if you want your kids to have all what you want them to have, you actually need to give more to you. But if you feel that for every time you turn to him, you're abandoning them, then it will be problematic. It won't matter if it's...

a hug to him, eyes to him. We're not even talking about a vacation or a night away. We're talking about attention from the woman to the man that is different than from the mother to the family. Right. So he said, I didn't get any of this and I made a mission for myself. And that mission is going to make me super mom and shocked when he says, I love this. And I don't even think it's really the time away. I think it's even just the small little things for you and I to do together would be great. We don't prioritize our relationship. I don't prioritize.

But he doesn't either. I know that, but he just asked. This was actually a big one. this is an ask. This is how we look at each other while we are in the kitchen together. Yeah. And if you say, help me understand what happened there, this is a piece of it. It just is.

Yeah, no, I agree. That doesn't make it right by no means, but it is at the core of what this I think was. Yeah. And sometimes affairs happen just because people are not paying attention to each other. Yes. For everything that doesn't involve your children, you basically say, I don't want them to miss anything. As if they're missing something. Yeah, we say that a lot.

You know, as if they're missing something. But the two of you are kind of underfed. Yeah. overstructured and underfed. And part of what will help you deal with the past is to change what's happening now. Yeah, and I've never actually thought of it that way. It's true, like our marriage is stronger because we're stronger, but we are still repeating the same things that basically got us there in the first place.

What is amazing about affairs is the energy. Nothing stops anybody. People are never too busy, nor too tired, nor too stressed. Right. Suddenly they have energy galore. Before they get to work,

they'll stop somewhere. If people could put some of that very energy that is living totally in parallel with the rest of their life and bring some of that into their marriages, marriages would be doing really well. Yeah.

the zest, the fervor, the imagination, the playfulness, the curiosity, the intensity, you name it. So when I hear people tell me that they're too busy after hundreds of these, it's like... Bullshit. Thank you. It is. Yeah. I'm just like, seriously.

So the stakes are high. for every time you think I need to figure out what happened back then it's I need to figure out what's not happening now yeah and I don't do that no so I think we do something tonight where we put in our calendar when we get back home and we make that happen

and you can do a thing that's one minute a day and five minutes and this and but it's about a deliberate attention if you enjoy touch you go hug her from the back. I do. And if she pushes a little bit, because she's in the middle of something.

Push back. Yes. Yeah. I do do that. Just you say, of course you do that. Yeah. Of course you do that. Because the mother that you want to be

will not let the woman breathe. Yeah. That was very accurate. There is that thing, that slight lifting of the shoulders. stiffening of the neck that just says, not a good time. Not a good time. I'm busy. I'm somewhere else. And this is where you say, come in me, come here. We have something important to do. I have yet to meet a couple that will regret having hugged.

I only meet couples who regret never hugging. Yeah. Or holding, or looking at each other for a second, or smiling to each other. And we're not talking sex yet. We're just talking physicality. Playfulness. Surprise. Stuff that makes people alive. You can be not dead, but that's not the same as alive. So we need to demand more out of each other.

Beautiful. Yeah. Yes. Even if it's two seconds, even if it's just a hug. Oh. Just to say how our day was, not our kids. like let's just leave them to the side and just give each other a conversation, I guess. You actually wouldn't be leaving them to the side.

You would be teaching them something so important. Yeah. Because as you just described, we learn love in part from what we see at home. Yeah. You would not be any less busy with them. You just won't be catering to them. You actually will be showing them a cycle of reciprocity. between two people.

Yeah. But it's going to come from you. Meaning it's the opposite of what you've done for the last 10 years. How much can I occupy the least space possible? This is going to be the opposite. But it's going to be in the service of the relationship and in the service of you're feeling valued, which is for sure one of the things that gets broken

when you find out that your partner had a number. affair 10 years ago. Yeah. Do I matter? Show her as she matters. Part of my problem, though, is that I still have a lot of anger for what he did, so that's sometimes why I just kind of retract, because it's just changed things for me so much. But you always did.

Did I? A little bit, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not always, but a lot of the times I think about it just, I don't want to because... Yeah, and then you can tell him. Yeah.

Right now, you're on the shit list. Yeah, sometimes. I want nothing to do. But it's okay. But make it obvious. Yeah. You're angry. Has its place.

Tell him. Yeah. And I usually don't. And if she gets pissed, you can also say, I'm doing everything I can to repair this. And I have. And I have.

need you to do it with me because fundamentally we've decided to be together and stay together. Let's bring this back to life. And we love each other. Okay. Yeah, I keep a lot of that in. I feel like we don't really talk about what happened. Certainly, he doesn't bring it up, especially now that some time has gone by. And I hold a lot of resentment because I feel like I'm just on a boat in the middle of the ocean by myself,

holding all these feelings of betrayal and anger. confusion and I struggle every day with what you did and how you did it and how you live with yourself because there was a good period of time, a good chunk of time when it was exposed that I still didn't know. And it's so hard for me to understand like how you lived with yourself for those five, six months knowing that it was out there and that I probably would at that point find out and you were just waiting for me to be the one to ask. Yeah, it felt horrible. I mean, it was miserable to hold in. It's terrible to hold in. It's not knowing what that is going to be when it comes out and how you're going to feel

and what you're going to do and your reaction and what other people are going to think and everything and how I'm going to get judged and all of it. You feel bad for her or bad for you? I feel terrible for her that she's had to make this part of her life. I think it's not what anybody should have to go through. But what she wants to know is how come you never thought of being the one to break the silence with her? I don't know. I think it was just more of not wanting to hurt her.

And obviously, I had already done that. I think you didn't want to deal with the repercussions. Oh, that too. Obviously, yeah. Which makes me circle my mind back of how could you do what you did, knowing what the repercussions could be? No idea. You still would say I don't know? To why I did it?

Well, part of that affection thing that she was just there all the time and I didn't have to ask for it and she would give it. And it's like drinking from a fire hose. your mom dies, your dad quits, and you find someone who's always there, that means a lot. If you can let it sink in, so you have to stop saying, I don't know why. That's one of these lines

that is becoming very encrusted. How did it end? Do you know? I don't 100% recall. how it ended. I don't know. She was going through stuff. She was also, I believe,

seeing, like, other people on top of all this. And then I think at that point was planning on leaving him and moving on. And how was that for you? Okay. Done.

I had no emotional connection with her. We ended it and that was it. And while it was happening, did you sometimes think this should stop or this is... Yeah, but she was very persistent person. Very, very persistent.

The word she's persistent, what does it mean? The persistence? Yeah. That she was just always there in pushing, in pushing and pushing for it. In what sense? That she had her hands on you and you didn't have to come over to, like, you know, it's a useful word, but it doesn't really say anything. Did she threaten you?

Did she insist? Did she make it so that you didn't feel that you had options? Did she smother you? Did she fuck you ten different ways that made it so irresistible? What is persistence? She just was persistent? I don't know. Like, I'm trying to answer your...

Huh? I wasn't there. I didn't say you were there. I know. I'm saying... That's what I know. And if I knew how I felt, I'd have that answer. But you know what happened?

But I don't know. I do, but I don't know why, in my mind, I kept letting her do that. Like, I wasn't going to her. She was coming to me. So I don't know why I kept letting that happen. I'm not sure I have 100% reason. So I don't want to say something that maybe isn't correct. It's not like you're putting your feet on the fire here.

I'm exploring it with you. I'm sure there was a lot of things going through. my head and I don't recollect all of that. I don't. What does it mean that he doesn't know? Is it that he forgot? Is it that it remained vague? Is it that he was so in the swing of things that he didn't have to really ask himself much? Or is it also that people who grow up very alone and who learn not to have needs, also learn not to have a vocabulary that allows them to know what they feel? What they know is that there was something very powerful happening to them.

What it represented? Why it was so irresistible? Where it layered itself onto early childhood needs, they don't make all of these connections. And when he talks about what he needs and what he feels, it is in the physical language. It is in a very early language, a language that is before we speak with words.

That is where his emotional truth takes place. So I can push, I can challenge, I can question, but it doesn't get translated into a vocabulary of emotions. 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 Aloha. So many of us are looking to boost our protein.

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and grocery lists while assigning colors for each of your family members. Jesse, my producer, has used a skylight frame. With the circus that I run at home, I absolutely need some way of trying to organize the madness. I like the kids to have, you know, colors so that they know what their thing is that day, when their soccer is, or what have you. And then my husband can quickly pull it up and say, you know, I have to be here at this time to pick up at this place because when you have three kids, you are basically just an Uber service. Families are better when they're working together.

Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15-inch calendars by going to myskylight.com slash ester. Go to my skylight.com slash esther for $30. of your 15-inch calendar. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T.com slash Esther. And I've mostly accepted that I'm just never going to get those answers, but it definitely makes it harder to try to close that chapter and focus on now because I just keep going back to them.

That is possibly true, but maybe not. The idea that if I have the answers to these questions, it will help me put it to sleep, it could be the opposite. Yeah. What you know is that you've lived 10 more years that we're very real as well. The question we often have is, is the 10 years defined by the secret or by what happened?

That's what I question. There is nobody who can give you a definitive on this one. Yeah. The little bit I guess. gather, I think that what you lived together is real. And he had a secret. Sometimes I think the conversation is less about the affair than about the secret around the affair. Yeah. Secret is a lot longer. And how much did that secret have an effect on you? What it's like for him to spend 10 years organized around the secret that kind of lives in the middle. That kind of lives in the

of this relationship. Maybe not all the time. Maybe not at all, but it's an useful question. It's like you, me, and your secret. They've had a relationship here as well. Yes, and I've asked him that because that makes me question like he's always been wonderful for these 10 years. Was that because he just grew into that person or was some of that driven by guilt and he was trying to make up for it. It makes me question those 10 years. Were they true? And I haven't gotten an answer about it that. What's the question? Did you think about it for the last 10 years? Did it affect me? Yes. A hundred percent every day keeping something like that is miserable. It's,

It's horrible. It's not what I would want anybody to go through on top of you going through what you're going through. But to hold something like that is shit. It sucks. It's taxing on your life because you don't know how you can deal with yourself. And then you just think all your life like who else will find out, who else will judge you, how they're going to perceive you for what you did. And it's all the time. I still have that.

I still have that every single day. That never leaves. Honestly, I didn't think you thought about it unless I brought it up. No, it's never going to go away. It'll never go away. You wish you could rewrite the storybook. You can't. You know, the only thing you can do is just move forward and be who you really want to be with you.

with the person you want to be with. Which you have. I just wish we had a better book to write. You really do. I know you are. I mean, what you did doesn't define your whole life. It's just a part of our story that I never wanted either. I know.

But it's not the whole story. And I've accepted that very early on, but I just didn't know where you were, or even if you thought about it. I'm here. I know you're here. But that's because, like you said in the beginning, you're here because me. I wouldn't be here if you weren't the person now that I love so much.

I hate that version of you. Me too. But you've been a wonderful person a lot longer than when you were a bad person. Did you get some answers? Answers? I did. Yeah. I actually feel a lot better.

Something as simple is just knowing that he thinks about it and I'm not alone with the awful emotions and thoughts every day. That means a lot, so that's not something he's ever said to me. I don't tell her that I think about this because I don't think that my thinking, my thinking, matters because only hers is important. But then she's left thinking that she's the only one who cares. Every time you think that by doing less, asking less, saying less is worse. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I judge myself all the time about this.

Right. Every day. It would help her a lot. And you, by the way. But if you really think what can I do to help her, this will. Can I ask you something? Do you feel like you deserve the life, the marriage, the family, the wife? I think some days they deserve better.

My kids deserve better. So when she says you're not defined by this one action, you say, no, I am? I think I have a long way to go still. But it's also the future as your kids get older. I think about what if they do find out. What's going to happen is you're going to tell them your dad fucked up. And he was blessed to have the opportunity to repair. He had an amazing partner, wife, who said, there is more to you than this.

It was a big mistake. But it probably motivated you to be. become a lot more conscientious and that life is filled of broken pieces that we put back together and that it made you value what you have even more to talk about what is rupture and what is repair and what is remorse and what is guilt and what is acknowledgement and what is betrayal and what is love and how the two of you were able to take this wound and it became a scar That'll be an amazing lesson. 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 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 Jacksall.

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