Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - You Want Me To Watch The Kids While You Go Out With Another Guy?

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

They met as religious teenagers and married as virgins. It's the age old story — once you're allowed to be intimate, you no longer want to be. Deciding to open the marriage has brought about huge changes in their sex life, and ruptures in their emotional one. Programming note: This conversation was recorded before the COVID-19 lockdown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My sexuality belonged to my parents in India, the Church of America, and then I got married and it belonged to my husband. 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. They met as teenagers at church.

They married as virgins. They've been together for 10 years, two children, two professions. And they also have a decade of a miserable sexual connection. The only area of our marriage we have ever had conflict in was sex. And I hated it. It would make me miserable. I used to cry during sex. And he was miserable because he was like, I want you I hated it. It would make me miserable. I used to cry during sex and he was miserable because he was like,

I want you to enjoy it. Early this year, she said, you know what? Maybe the way to fix my sexuality is to explore my sexuality apart from you. At her initiative, they opened the relationship.

If this is what you need to be a full person, this is what you need to find whatever you're looking for, then go and I'll figure out how to cope with that. And unexpectedly, sexuality between the two of them has been more lustful, fun, connected, and intimate. I mean, our sex life is better now than it has ever been in our marriage. Like, it is a dream come true for both of us. But not without its problems. It does come with a price.

The price is the knowledge that my wife has sex with other people. So you meet at 12, you marry at? 22. 22. And you were first for each other. Yes. Yes.

First everything. First dating, first boyfriend, first girlfriend. First person we held hands with. I mean, first everything. And

with the permission of the church. No. No? No. No, no. Very, very, very oppressive religious environment. And that fed and bled over into our families a little bit. My parents were very, very afraid. Because for starters, I married outside of my ethnicity. And they weren't expecting that. I had some really racist family members, extended family members,

who would make a lot of comments about how African Americans were a bad idea, more prone to divorce, more prone to leave me with a bunch of kids I didn't want. Your family background was what? Indian, yeah. You know, the religious beliefs that we grew up with were, you date one person, that person needs to be the person you marry. There was a whole true love's weight, purity culture phenomenon that we were very much in and I used to stress and stress and stress about the

finality of it all like how do you know that you're it let me ask you something the doubts about this is because you never had another so how could you know or the doubt is also I basically did what I knew I should and therefore I don't feel like I own it as this is what I wanted to. Oh totally. Like none of these choices ever felt like my choices. How does it apply to sexuality? Oh my sexuality has never been mine. It wasn't until this year that I actually and that was part of the stance. It hasn't never felt like it was yours because? It was other people's rules, other people's

definitions that shaped everything. Growing up you, I grew up abroad and I actually think I had pretty awesome rebellious mom who didn't want me to grow up to be what all of other women in my country are expected to be. And the expectation was? To be demure and to conduct yourself with a submissiveness in some ways, I was never that way. I was loud and a tomboy and very opinionated and very, very curious. And then the church has their own much more rigid, it wasn't family that was as oppressive for me as the religion was. If I wore a tank top, which I did,

to youth group one time in rebellion, because I was like, why? My shoulders are going to make somebody else go to hell or somebody else sin and I'm, are you kidding me? And I did and the immediate consequences and me? And I did. And the immediate consequences, and immediate shame, and immediate pushing to the margins, where I realized, as long as I believed in that construct, my sexuality was never mine.

I remember hitting puberty, and a sex drive, a libido showed up that I, it was blindsiding. And nobody else around me seemed to have that problem. And so I would sneak watching, you know, erotic on late night TV. I would spend a lot of time in the shower with a, you know, a handheld shower head. And just so much shame. You too? Yes, but not to the same level.

Why? Why do you think that she can say, you know, my sexuality belonged to my Indian culture, then it belonged to the church, then it belonged to you. It belongs to all these other institutions, marriage, religion, family. You get the same messages, but you don't have the same inner turmoil. I didn't get the same level of shame that she did.

No one told me what to wear. No one tells boys don't wear that because you're going to tempt the girls. So no one told me you're going to corrupt her by dating her. We did have the same rules of no sex before marriage. You do need to date the person you intend to marry. You need to marry the person you intend to date. Yes. Took me a moment.

This conversation really highlights the complexity of the power dynamic around sexuality. On the one hand, women are the mere deferential submissive. They have no say. They have to cater to the man. On the other hand, they have the power to corrupt, the power to seduce, to tempt. By their sheer appearance, they will deflect him from his more honorable pursuits. And this two-sidedness of femininity, the virtuous and the vixen, is really what is being told here by these two people. They spend the same 10 years in the same religious school, and each one had their shaming, but it's a different imprint. I used to beg him, I'm like, let's just have sex. Like, what the heck is going to happen?

But that ardor, that intensity of desire that you had when it wasn't allowed, did it come with you when you got married? Well, so I spent four or five years that we were dating trying to shut it off and doing everything I could to shut it off. And it worked. And I never recovered that. I became really angry, I think, deep, deep, deep down.

And it kind of got layered over. The anger said what? Sorry. It's okay. I don't know why this is bothering me now. How could it not? Oh, God. Okay. How could it not? I just hated being alive. It felt like Like life was just this

uphill never-ending struggle and never-ending struggle. And the only way to survive it and to not have it get worse was to be anything but myself. I think my whole personality was just antithetical in some ways to the way I should be if I wanted to be happy. And the sexuality, I think, was a bigger part of it than I realized.

And then we did get married. And to flip that switch, oh my God, it was impossible. It was impossible to go from, you know, almost 10 years, if we look at when puberty first hit, to 10 years later going, oh yeah, now I want it all the time. I didn't. And everything about sex was scary and overwhelming. It was, we actually saw a therapist because I was like, is there something physically wrong with me? Because I can't tell the difference between pleasure and pain. In what sense? There were times where if he was touching me or kissing me,

the sensation on my skin felt too much. It felt overwhelming and felt jarring. And I couldn't figure out why. It fed this frustration that I felt like just kept building up and would show up in other ways. Can I ask you something? How did the anger...

show up? And the nice man here became the recipient of something. Totally. You know that, right? No. I knew, I know she was angry. Was, is angry.

You were not puzzled by her lack of interest, lack of response? angry, was, is angry. You were not puzzled by her lack of interest, lack of response? No, I was affected by her lack of interest, lack of response. I mean, I'm happy you have good denial, but there's a limit. I don't think she was angry at me. No, she wasn't angry at you.

She was angry, period, at all the repressive systems that she had to face. But you were the recipient of it. Yes. Okay, yes. Yeah, and I mean, and the anger was, it was so hard to nail down. I was angry at the sexuality and my own identity within that. I was angry at the financial consequences of just the life we had. I mean we were... Not only are we kind of first-generation successful marriage and family but we're

first-generation college graduates. We have a lot So much. of school debt. But right now, you have the debts. Yes. You have the degrees. We do, we have my parents. You have your parents, you have your children. Yes. And you have tremendous strengths.

You have tremendous resources and strengths. And you have each other. I know. I know. This life would not be possible without him. By my side. There's no way. Are you taking this in?

I love you. You okay? I love you. You okay? I love you. Well, you don't get emotional very often. Just take it in. Because in the last month, she's been talking so much about other men that you don't even know enough about how important, special, and an anchor you are in her life. It's gotten a little lost. She couldn't even begin the explorations that she's on

if this wasn't an established, stable, safe harbor. She said that. She said that a lot. Part of me, when I hear that, feels like, thanks for the last decade, thanks for the past, that's a past, new men are my future. I'm going off on my own now. So I know it is valuable.

A part of me feels like it's a past and it's done. Even though she comes back to the relationship and to you and brings and shares with you what she's learning and discovering. Yeah, I mean, that's good also. That doesn't eliminate the other feeling. I get it. I guess there's a lot of questions that come with it. Is it, do you need me to watch the kids while you go with the other guys? Are you appreciative that we have this 10 years foundation,

and now we have a house and kids, and now you can go play with the other guys? So you wonder if you're a convenience? Yes. Am I here to be stability for you while you go have fun elsewhere So one of the things we talked about before any of this started was The boundaries and the The kind of the regular how do we regulate what role these other relationships. Wait a second.

Stay with him for a moment. Instead of wanting to fix it? That's hard. Well, interestingly, because you come with such an institutional background, you answer in institutional terms. Even the way you just walked in. You know, you came and you say there is India, then there is the church, then there is marriage, and now there is polyamory.

It's just the next institution. And I am not sure that is very helpful. Yeah. Sometimes it's better not to name the framework so that people can actually explore without the repercussions of heavily loaded terms. Monogamous, polyamorous. In this instance for this couple, these two words have become so antagonistic that they feel that their relationship may vanish because of it. These two people have no desire to split up, but they need to find a way to experience freedom that isn't hurtful to the other and acceptance that isn't a betrayal of oneself.

And you can tell that this in itself is new for them. And so he's writing away furiously, trying to capture the words that I myself am only sketching as I try to make sense of their dilemma. Instead of talking about sexuality and what has happened to sexuality for you and in your marriage and with each other, etc., we're busy talking about

a transition from monogamy to polyamory, from one institution to another. And for somebody who has been fighting institutions, you are damn loyal to them. The fact that there may be elements of that doesn't mean that you have to start to think in this either-or fashion that creates a kind of a binary between the two of you. You know, one person's happiness is the other person's misery.

One person's exploration is the other person's commodification. He becomes the caretaker, the parent, the useful guy. The other ones are the funny guys, the ones with whom you have meaningful, transformative experiences. You're going like this with your head the whole time. Which one of those words is the ones that... The meaningful transformative experiences? Right. Every relationship has to straddle security and adventure, right? Fun and stability. Familiarity and exploration. And what I'm hearing you say is, it sucks to know that I become stability and reliability and the anchor, but the waves are somewhere else.

And I want to ride the waves with her too. So we're going to have to enter the labyrinth together without naming, without labeling anything. Just simply make sense of what's happened and then we'll see if there are tags that we need to put on this or not. I love that. What has been the sexual relationship between the two of you?

As soon as we got married, we'd been following all the rules and not having sex. Right. But you were drawn to each other, petting all the time, kissing all the time, you know, playing at the borders, loving the ambiguity of it all, excited and frustrated.

What else? The notion that one hasn't had sex because one hasn't had intercourse is an outdated notion that no longer reflects, and maybe never reflected, how we behave, how we feel toward each other, the erotic energy that two people can share in the midst of the denial of the act. What switches afterwards is that they have the permission for the act of intercourse, and the sexuality becomes narrowed down to the act and the energy vanishes. Being sexual is more than just having the act of intercourse in sex. We have got

to broaden the definition. When we would talk about, like, what the heck should sex be, can you just tell me what it should be? Because if you ask me, I don't need it. I could go the rest of my life without it and it'd be fine. So since we're here, we're married, we must have sex. What is sex to you? What is good sex to you? And he would always say the thing that you want guys to say, which is, I want you to feel pleasure.

I want to know that I can pleasure you. And it would stress me out so bad. Because I don't even know what that means. I have no idea what that means. I remember something he always wanted was to go down on me. And it was traumatizing. And now? Now I love it. He's a fantastic lover. I really am. Would you like me to shake your hand? Congratulations. He really is amazing. And the same behaviors, the same touch that felt so violating feels intensely pleasurable. Yes. That should tell you something.

You know, to me that is so powerful because in some interesting way, what it speaks to is that it is not about the sexual touches of him, that felt so violating, is now such an intense source of pleasure. The sex is not the issue. Yeah. The context of the sex is the issue. The meaning you gave it has fundamentally changed. What I'm imagining, when I felt that this is something I have to do

because I'm your freaking wife, because now it's part of the should, because it's still part of that institution that imposes it on me, I experienced the whole thing as a violation, as an oppression, but now that I consider myself an emancipated, free, autonomous, sexually liberated woman who went and explored her own sexuality elsewhere and I feel like I own it, you can do all of this to me and I love it.

Oh my god. I don't think I've processed this. I knew the second part. At all. I didn't get the first part. What made you come up with the idea of exploring elsewhere? It had always been in the back of my mind. What happened was I got off birth control. And I got off birth control because I was trying to find any solution to help alleviate depression and anxiety. And oh my goodness, the physical libido came back. And I couldn't control it and it felt like going back to being 14 years old. It started with just going, letting myself go back to,

I wonder what it would be like to kiss other people. What's interesting about the thoughts may not just be the particular nature of those thoughts but it's the fact that you allowed yourself to have thoughts okay that themselves the expression of finally owning your sexuality okay peace by peace if you own it then you're not just experiencing it as a subjugation and a submission, which I think was your first sentence when you walked in.

Yes. This is as much a conversation about sex and sexuality as it is a conversation about power. Say more over there. Ownership is a power. It's a redistribution of the power. Say more over there. Ownership is a power. It's a redistribution of the power.

By the way, he never had a sense that he owned it and it was his power. This is your shtick. Right. Let's be really clear. Completely true.

You did nothing. This had nothing to do with you. And in her case, freedom is generally in the territory of the forbidden. Mm-hmm. Yes.

What's free about doing what you're allowed? Correct. When I wrote Mating in Captivity, there were a number of questions that guided my entire exploration on the nature of erotic desire in long-term relationships. And one was, why is the forbidden so erotic? It's not just because it's forbidden and transgressive and therefore it becomes alluring. It's that in the forbidden lies the freedom and the autonomy. Here's the thing. If she comes home, this new found woman,

and brings all this energy to you, that tells me that the problem wasn't you or her connection or disconnection or lack of attraction for you, but the way she was trapped inside. Otherwise, people don't come back to their partner with it. They are confirmed that indeed there's something that they lack vis-a-vis their partner that they can experience elsewhere. How do you know she won't with her next partner? Oh, that's better than you. There are some ways in that I already feel replaced. Texting.

Oh my God. I swear to God. So you can say, I don't want to replace you. You're still my best friend. However, when we are together, the first thing you do when you wake up, the last thing you do when you go to bed, is check your text messages. A lot of time when we have family time, one time during sex. What? One time while I was putting on the condom, check the text message. And so it is not only in my head that attention is being taken away from me and applied to other people.

But what I've told him is... Don't butt him. What was that? Don't butt him. Oh. Because you're new at this, and he may be on to something. True. There's real learning here.

There's jealousy. Oh, interesting. There's competition. There is needing learning here. There's jealousy. Oh, interesting. There's competition. There is needing reassurance. There is your needing to make more effort towards showing how much he's important rather than spend your time in asking him to adapt to the importance of others. Okay. He's stretching far and beyond.

Yes. If he says, you know, were you texting others? This comes from that place that now says, you know, I used to know that I'm the only one and number one. Now you tell me I am still number one. I'm certainly I'm not the only one, but I don't always feel enough, number one. I feel at a bit of a loss on how to help. The first thing would be to switch the narrative from the discovery of my polyamorous side to, I'm just so happy I found a way back to us. Instead of putting the emphasis on what you found elsewhere, it's what elsewhere has allowed you to actually experience with him.

Who doesn't want to come back to the place that gives you security and freedom at the same time. If I went, okay, listen, sex isn't working between us. I'm going to go look for someone that makes me happy, that makes me feel more like a man. Wouldn't that choice increase the chances of breaking up the marriage? That's kind of what this feels like. I'm going to go look for someone, an experience that makes me feel more like a woman. But I'm not looking for something because you didn't feel it.

It's not like I'm going, oh yeah, I want does XYZ because you don't so you're not looking for someone that does XYZ what if you find someone my heart is completely in I don't want anything compromising us but what I need you to do is to trust

that it's not freedom without you. The freedom isn't to leave you and pursue others. It's to hold your hand while I get to experience more. Say that again. The freedom isn't about leaving you behind and running away. The freedom is about doing this with you. I still want to be tethered to you. And sometimes that means running around and enjoying new experiences.

And sometimes you can come with me, sometimes you may not want to. But at the end of the day, I'm still connected to you. But I do get to this room to be able to explore. I don't know if that helps at all. That helps. What helped? What you made you repeat. The freedom.

You're not running away. You're trying to hold my hand and explore. The exploring still hurts. It feels like I'm a horse in a stable. And she comes along and says, Hey, I want to come ride you now. Great. I love being ridden, let's go. Okay, thanks for the ride.

Go have fun riding the next horse. And the next day is another horse, and the next day another horse. How often does it happen? There's so much the next day. Up to twice a week was our agreement. And how often does it happen? I don't know.

I don't count. Twice a month. Twice a month. So it's, okay, not tomorrow. But it used to be I was the horse. You were my horse. I'm your horse. Yay, we love each other.

We're horses. Yes, but when you were the horse, she didn't ride you often. Not that she said. She asked me one time, is it worth it? We have better sex. We have more sex, we have better sex, unquestionably. Are you more connected? Not just, what do we mean here when we say better sex? What's better in your mind? It's more passionate. It's more intimate.

There's more freedom. Okay. She's into it. It's not a duty. Everything I imagined sex to be, the church says no sex till marriage, and in my head it was, okay, as soon as we get married, we're going to have awesome sex. And everything that I imagined

the awesome sex to be is here in our sex life. And so she asked me all the time, is it worth it? Is me going out with others? That's a terrible question. I told her. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. So what would I replace it with? You are constantly trying to justify what you're doing.

Yes. If you do that, then you're not free. The best you tell him I'm so pleased by what's happening between us. You the difference

in the models is that when you were the only one the model was based on exclusiveness. Yes. And exclusiveness is everything that cannot happen elsewhere that is unique to us.

What you're switching to now is a model that is based on specialness. You know, the exclusiveness doesn't tell you anything about the quality of the interaction. Oh, that's a good idea. It just emphasizes the boundary. That's what I think I've said is that there's kind of, there's two different types of specialness. There's special because it's exclusive. Now she is trying to convince me we're special by degrees. It's I'm not the only one.

I'm the most intimate or I'm the most, so it's special by degrees. I'm not the only one. I'm the most intimate, or I'm the most, so it's special by degrees. By the quality of the experience. The quality, yes. And I understand that, but there is a sadness at the loss of the exclusive specialist, too. I'm one of the horses in the stable now, and maybe I'm your favorite horse, right?

But I'm one of the horses. I hate this horse in hell. Like you're one of the, you're not one of the horses I hate this horse in hell like you're one of the you're not one of the guys like it would be maybe one of if I had multiple lives built with multiple men and we had children together and and plans together and dreams together then maybe and how the hell somebody would manage that is beyond me you are not one of anything you are the only there is no one else who has your role in my life. There is no one else who I feel about the way I feel about you.

There's no one else I've committed to. No one else I've built with, fought for, fought beside. Like, there is no one else. I hate hearing the horses in a stable thing. I want you to hear that, though. She's been trying to say this for a while. That doesn't mean to take away the jealousy or the fears or anything.

Those feelings are normal. But you also want to hear what she just told you. Because you are trapped in a I've lost my place and I've lost my exclusive role and now I'm one of many and I'm interchangeable. And she's trying very hard to tell you, you are not. Here is this woman who is coming and finally freely giving herself to him. But because she got to juice somewhere else, he would rather live as a king of a desert

than a prince of a fertile land. This is the trap that men are it. It feels like there's this cap on my happiness. I'm six months into a new job and my boss can give me a great review and say, I'm randomly going to give you a raise because you're doing really good work. And I get really proud of myself. I think, oh, but my wife sleeps with other men. And so there's this cap on my happiness. I don't feel wrong.

Just demoted. Demoted and... And less of a man? Does it play itself there too? That is something I've imagined. Maybe other people might think in my situation. But you don't. But I don't.

There's a little thought of what kind of man lets his wife do this. That's what I was thinking. And the response to that is, she's not yours to own. So that thought doesn't stay, stay around. But you've also said, on the same vein, man, we bumped heads over one statement he would say, which is, I don't like sharing you. I'm like, I'm not yours to share.

And the owner, and I've told him that I'm like, I feel like this is more the controlling. And instead of responding, I'm going to give you different responses a little bit because it doesn't mean there's no validity to what you say right just so me if you said you know he already said it she doesn't belong to me you know you're having conversations with patriarchy you know yes but you can also say you're so generous I thank you I love you ever more for it rather than, you know, have another discussion with the institution. Talk to your husband. To me, this is less a story of monogamy and certainly not of polyamory as it is the story of how did this woman go about finding a way to finally, for the first time in her life, connect in a full way with her own sexuality

and come to her husband as a desiring woman. But at the same time, it does create in him, you know, old feelings. Am I a pushover? That's not a new thought. Am I kind or am I stupid? Mm-hmm. You know, that's an old question for you. And it gets evoked here, I think. Mm-hmm.

Yeah? I did not know this. Me neither. Huh? What? Me either. Seriously? No, he's...

Am I kind or am I stupid? That's a good way of putting it. What words do you use? Am I a pushover? And it probably would have stopped there. Am I kind or am I a pushover? Or am I kind or am I a weakling? Yes, I think that that's an old question.

And it is evoked in this situation. Understandably so. And don't squelch it. I would hate it if we tried to have this conversation end just with a nice bow tie. It's not. You're in the middle of something. You need to be very active, proactive and careful so that you don't take your enthusiasm and it overrides everything.

You try to listen to him and not to constantly bring it back to you because you have a hard time knowing that you are the cause of some of the feelings so you want these feelings to not be there they are they're normal they're they're part of the story and make room for it just don't compare yourself to a horse and understand something this is a work in progress. Like your marriage is, it may not be your destination. It may be a stop on the road. The truth is that she doesn't know. She can say it's done wonders. I don't want to leave you. It's because you hold my hand that I feel the strength to explore elsewhere.

It will only bring good to us. But the truth is that she cannot promise this. So his fear is legitimate and he cannot be the only carrier of that fear. He cannot be the only person who holds the vulnerability that comes with that change. What happens when we want to convince somebody to move over to our side is that we only want to give them the mirror of all the great things that come with our choice, our decision, what we stand for. If we are able to speak about the positive and negative aspects of our choice, then it lets the other person off the hook of having to only speak about the dangers and the risks. They both need to be able to carry both sides.

Esther Perel is the author of Mating in Captivity and the State of Affairs, and also the host of the podcast, How's Work? To reply with your partner for a session for the podcast, or for show notes on each episode, go to whereshouldwebegin.esterperel.com. Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise for Gimlet and Esther Perel

Productions. Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Eva Walchover, Destry Sibley, Hywote Gatana, and Olivia Natt. Recorded by Noriko Akabe, Kristen Mueller is our engineer. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We would also like to thank Nazanin Rafsanjani, Courtney Hamilton, Lisa Schnall, Nick Oxenhorn, Dr. Guy Winch, and Jack Saul.