Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel - How Many Times Can You Betray Me?

0:01None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perrell. 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.

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1:29Harvey, AI, tailored for law. Learn more at harvey.ai. We have a really brutal beginning because of me. There has been this big offense to my relationship with my son, postpartum, and it involves his mother. My mother's a difficult figure. When she came with the intention of helping us, I sat kind of by the wayside. Well, my mother was Every couple goes through an interview.

2:36before they come on the podcast, where we get to hear what is the issue, why now, and what they hope to achieve. And sometimes there is a direct line between what happens in the session and what they spoke about during the intake interview. But sometimes an intake interview highlights a central issue. And then when I meet the couple, this is just one branch on a tree. They're all the other branches.

3:06each one in this case, one rupture after another. So his opening line is the beginning of our relationship was brutal. And it was brutal because of me. That in itself sets me up for understanding that there is a suitcase that this man brings with him around attachment, around safety, around loyalty, around honesty.

3:37He has been dissociated for many, many years. And he found a partner that was going to feel, experience, and express all the emotions he could not access. When I meet them, they have been together 14 years, and they have a child who's four. When we met, she was much younger. And I was older.

4:13I had already a strong practice of keeping in sexual texting touch with a lot of exes that because it was not physical I did not give any weight to it being actual infidelity and thought that there was essentially a separate compartment that was my own that I could do what I wanted and she understood that something wasn't right and was asking me constantly but I did not come forward with any of that so The Trader Trust told her that she didn't know what she was talking about, hadn't had enough experience, didn't understand that this is how you do things. You believed in her? Yes, yes. And it took me a long time to acknowledge that there was a hunting for affection that was almost insatiable for me, and that I was getting a sense of worth from outside, essentially. It took a lot of fighting and a lot of...

5:11pain that I inflicted for me to finally see that and stop. So that was year probably one through two or three. So all of our relational foundation, through our marriage, through having our child, it's only been in the last few years that I feel actually able to see things better from her perspective and see truly what I was doing during those times. What's the ultimate rupture? What's the thing that you did that called the ultimate rupture, the most important one. So it was after our child was born. And my mother's very difficult. And we brought her in because we had a puppy. The idea would be she would take care of the puppy and we would be able to be with our child. And she took the baby and there was no need for the baby to get care.

6:14But my mother kept imposing her want. And I allowed that. When my wife was saying, I'm having a really tough time, I didn't stop it. I just kept asking, tell me what you want me to do and I'll do what you want. But she was looking for help. She was looking to be a unit altogether. And when she finally said no, then my mother left. And I think at that point she realized she was on her own there. And that despite asking for help, I was not able to see that or step.

6:44up to that. I prioritize my mother over my wife. Is it okay I take you on a little bit more on the precision lane? Yes. Yeah, we're here to work. There's so many ways to defend my mom and not protect my wife. But what exactly did I do? And by now, I think you probably have a sense of certain moments that stand out as here it is.

7:17I think part of the reason that the baby's birth was such a break was to show that the patterns are still there. And the pattern was? That is something that I'm having a real tough time understanding. So it gives me a list of these betrayals and it leads me to instantly ask him, can we go on the road of precision?

7:55What's the big one? What's the one that stands out above all others? And interestingly, I start to feel instantly there's a certain kind of opaqueness around the different things that are described. And the more vague he goes, the more I start to see the agitation rise inside of her. It's as if he vacates the emotional space and she fills it up. His eyes start to wander.

8:24His body starts to pull back. He starts to look up. He starts to not finish a sentence. He doesn't really know where he goes. And she starts to remember everything with all the precision that matches his vagueness. What's it like to listen to him right now? Incredibly familiar. There is this like ungraspable ambiguity and such a frustration, frankly, in anger.

8:55really deep sadness for me because the experiences that I've had are so visceral and so to have it be missed and to be indescribable speaks to my experience of constantly missing. So we've been together for 14 years. I was 21 when we met and there was a lot of this you don't know or you just don't have enough experience or you have it like and there's a wide class difference obviously gender difference. There's a massive education difference and being immersed in his world there was very little room for my perspective and so when I shared it it was pushed out of the way or demeaned in some way like it was really devalued and then there were times where we would be in these moments that I was so clear like

9:47This isn't love and this doesn't feel in any way good to me. When you say this, you think of particular instances immediately, right? Yeah. Tell me. Tell him too for that matter. Yeah. So when we started dating, I learned a couple months in that he had shared explicit photos of me with a friend, a woman. And when I saw it, I was really upset and I said, you may not do that. These are my...

10:18pictures too. And I cried. He cried. And I thought we had an idea of what we were doing going forward now from this experience. And as it turned out, I found out a year later, when things weren't quite right, and I kept bringing it up, I looked in his phone and I saw that not only had he been sexting for that whole year with other people, but he had been harvesting pictures from me and sending them out and then having these explicit conversations with other women. And the day that I learned this, it very much became about me looking in the phone and not about what I found. And this is really where my ability to make sense got wobbly. And I started to become like actually turned upside down because everybody reflected like,

11:14He's so charismatic and is so available and has so much to say to everybody and livens people. So what I was seeing out did not make sense with what I was experiencing. The people that we were living with, one of them was someone that he'd had a sexual relationship with before and she was calling us sister wives and I was very clear with her that I do not like that and not to do it.

11:44kept being weird there. And every time I raised like, hey, this is a problem, this is a problem, it was dissolved because it didn't fit with his position or I think maybe how he thought of himself. This losing of your perspective was the first time in my life, this kind of being enraptured. Yes. Made to question your every thought. Yes, so holy and thoroughly, yes.

12:14That's what made you stay? Yes, and I was quite isolated because on the one hand I love him and on the other hand I didn't believe that anybody, any of my people would understand the complexity with people not just either reinforcing he's wonderful or siding with me. As a victim? Yeah. He's also very fun and I was able to do things like travel internationally and be exposed to all kinds of things that I had never done before so I was very open.

12:44There was a lot that was happening, and not all of it was bad. And so I was wanting to kind of hold all of these pieces, but didn't trust that friends or family would actually be able to do that with me also. So, yes, it was the first time that I had become so upside down, but it was also the first time I was... Well, I was 21 when we met, and I was quite sheltered and from a very working-class family, and I hadn't had these experiences. And it sort of feels like this is...

13:14the cost of admission in some ways, but it has crossed a line. And so to your question, yes, postpartum was part of it. But we also moved our lives to be closer to his sister. We accepted a huge, huge, huge amount of money from his mother just before our child was born. And we moved our entire lives to live on the same street. Now? No, now we're back. But that was the rupture. When it got so incredibly bad there that, um, that, oh, this is so hard to say out loud. I sincerely thought, because he couldn't hear me, and because there was so much that would have been extremely difficult to do on my own, and we were so deep in it. It occurred to me that I couldn't do it.

14:35that I couldn't do it. That I couldn't do it. That I couldn't go on. With him? No, with life. With life. With life. With my own life. Not to a place of having a plan or any of that. But just, I was so fully worn down. I would say to him, we need to figure something else out. I need to feel safe. And he went back to sleep.

15:06To me, that is the rupture of, I am holding far too much on my own, and you are oblivious to it, and you are, I think, like, maybe wanting to see it, but it doesn't seem to impact you. And I have done everything that I can to communicate that to you, and I am ineffective, that you're willing to go to sleep. Fuck you. That is the rupture. That is the rupture.

15:39Your indifference to whether I can go on is the rupture When I asked him what is the main rupture he came up with a particular story of What happened between his wife and his mother but there was no Description of the emotionality of that moment and as she starts talking her memory of the rupture comes back. Which is less about what was she specifically trying to convey to him or which of the things that they were arguing about, was she talking about than the incredible experience of feeling that your partner on some fundamental level does not really care, is indifferent. Doesn't matter about what, it's the feeling itself, the relational position of someone who is supposedly

16:50loving you, committed to you, and who just goes to sleep when I am screaming to the heavens. And that's what she is relieving with the level of poignancy and acute pain bordering on the rage that lives right next to it about what it feels like to not exist in the eyes of the person who is lying right next to you. So then I turn to him and I just look at him and try to see how does he respond to her. The same way that I think you're holding all of this just now, I think that you are incapable of putting a sentence together because your shame is standing there like a wall. If you are wrapped in shame, you can feel bad about yourself, but you won't be able to feel bad for what you did to her. And the shame is useful to you because it organizes you to at least accept and to acknowledge more that you did

17:58things that were deeply hurtful and sometimes wrong. But it also prevents us from actually really relating to the pain that we inflict on others. Because you go from an inflated sense of I'm right, I know you're stupid, you're young, you're dumb, you have no experience to I'm so bad, I'm so bad, I'm so bad. But it's all about you. I don't know if the way you talk to him here is the way you've talked.

18:30You go back and forth between I have choice. How did I land here? What happened to me? This isn't what I imagined. This isn't who I am. But maybe it is. What does it say about me? And it is the ticket of admission. Because I think there's a class issue here involved, too. Because I think that there is the life I wanted and the relationship I wanted, and they're not always the same.

19:00He gives you maybe the life you wanted, but he's not giving you the relationship. No, we're not even doing that. So no, there is a class issue. Sure. I have not made good on very much despite being very well educated, having these sort of flares of success I've sort of middled out. And so I was not able to provide enough during the move and I was working a lot and I was the only one working at that time.

19:29and so we moved for support and we really didn't have it. The support that was being offered was conditional and so when I went to sleep that night and there were nights where we would fight and it would go and she can go and go and it's all real and it's meaningful. I still have to get up and work and so I would want to pause and go to sleep so that I was able to function on the only income and that wasn't really getting us through.

20:00And so it wasn't meant as I don't value what you're saying. It's that I, at some point in this, I have to be able to do this thing for us too. And there was a frustration at myself for an inability to make the decisions or get the position that would give the freedom and the safety she wanted. And I was doing everything I knew how to do. So when I listened to her describe, she's going to sleep. It was...

20:35unequivocally a description of I can't be bothered, I need to go to sleep. When I listened to him, what he's describing is a set of circumstances that were probably part of the same night we were broke, I needed to get up because I was the one working for us and she could keep going the whole night and at some point I just knew I need to stop because I need to get up.

21:03And it wasn't because I'm indifferent. It was because I was dealing with other worries and concerns that I was responsible to. And this is a classic moment of couples' work. The same situation described by two people with very different experiences. And it's both ends, not one or the other. We'll be back with a session right after this. And while we love our sponsors, if you want to listen to this session ad-free, Click the Try Free button to subscribe to Astera's Office Hours on Apple Podcasts. Support for the show comes from Quo. Think about the last time you called the business and nobody picked up. What did you do? You called the next one. Your customers do the exact same thing. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the business phone system built so you never miss a call.

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23:03Or you could use one of those simple apps which are great if you like repetitive word games. But here's another suggestion. Try Babel. Babel was designed by language learning experts to teach you things that actually stick. Lately I've gone back to trying Portuguese again and again. I just went to work in Brazil and I understand a lot but I wanted to speak better. And so Babel helps me maintain a certain Base level. If you've got summer travel coming up, now's the time to start so you can actually use what you learn on the trip. Right now, Babel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to Babel.com slash Esther. That's Babel, B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Esther for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions may apply. Support for Where Should We Begin comes from Quints.

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24:59That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash begin. My seeing our child reopened issues for me of how I was raised and with a mother who I do believe loved us the best she could. She still had some issues and she was very physical with us. Physical meaning? It would hit us. When she drank. You know it's fascinating the way you relay a story. At every word...

25:36It's like another pan just opened. It reopened a lot for me that I had always categorized under what I've always been told to do, which is she's your mother, she loves you, she's the best she could, just love her. And while all of that is true, seeing for the first time, with to have my own baby in there, became very hurtful for me. There became power leverages everywhere and we distanced ourselves from that.

26:13Here are pieces you've told me. The more mom behaved in ways that were hurtful, be it corporal punishment, or her drinking, or her control, or her intensely conditional love, the more I was told, all of this is because she loves you. Yes. That's twisted. Then you tell me, I've allowed important people in my life to deeply hurt my wife. And I've never stood up for her. Yes, correct. And I've let her fend for herself and be increasingly isolated because she wouldn't go tell her family what she's living with you. And what would be really powerful is if you can actually experience guilt instead of shame.

27:16Gild says, I have a conscience and I've done something to someone. Shame just wallows into I'm so bad. I once was so great, now I'm so bad. But it's all me. And then she will continue and say, I've never been met. And then you will explain why going to sleep was not indifference, but it was because you needed to get up in the morning. But the three hours that you talked, you could have said three things that would have allowed you to go to sleep much sooner.

27:48The reason she keeps going is because she doesn't get what she's looking for. Otherwise, I promise you she would go to sleep too. I don't think you're doing this maliciously. I think you don't know. So, you're here because a part of you says, how does one hold a sense of responsibility and guilt that doesn't instantly make me feel so unworthy that I cannot be there for her? Yes.

28:23I said this to him but in listening to it now it's clear to me that I'm ten steps away from where he is. Yes we can talk about the grandiosity and the shame but what is much more palpable is the trauma that he experienced as a child with his mom and the dissociation that took place inside of him that he carried for decades and that somehow got pierced when his son was born. By watching his son in the arms of his mother and seeing how she was treating him, he began to remember not necessarily explicit memory, but implicit memory, the memory that is lodged in the body, the memory that sends us. And unfortunately, everything he didn't allow himself to feel with his mother, his wife is feeling with him.

29:23It's as if he has outsourced the entire intensity that is blocked behind his frozenness and it is all redirected through his wife, the mother of his child. And in a way he has for the first time someone next to him who is feeling that which he did not have the permission to feel. So what would be the place you would want to start? So...

29:58I don't know. Okay. The sentence would be, I want to go back to, or I want us to talk about this moment, this rupture between us. Then I would talk about the major rupture that she spoke of, the postpartum. Yeah. It was a moment where my mother-in-law was feeding the baby and...

30:24He was laying on his back, and she had the bottle at a 90-degree angle, and he, like, gapped and coughed, and we looked at each other. And neither one of us said anything. And she stopped. But I was also like, he's at a 90-degree angle. Like, that's how you waterboard somebody. He's brand new. And a little while later, I hear the baby burst into tears. Then I go in.

30:52And she's covered in curdled milk. And I go to take the baby and she says, I'm good. I've got him. And I said, I'll take him. And he's screaming. And I hadn't ever heard this kind of scream. And I go to take him and she keeps saying, I'm good. I've got him. And frankly, I don't give a fuck how you are. I'm not good and he's not good. So give him to me. But I couldn't say that. And we went through the cycle one more time.

31:21And it was that moment for me that was very clear, like, oh, this can't continue. I know exactly how I feel. But I needed help. And I said, hey, your mom won't give me the baby. And I need him. And he said, just go get your baby. And it, like, couldn't land anywhere in you. That's how I would define that rupture, that you are gone. And not only is she a barrier, but now you are too.

31:53I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry that I was there and not with you and helping you. Because if it would have been then what? I believe then at least you and the baby would have been able to be together. But why does that matter to you? I mean I also wish I was there with you guys. I would love to be present and able to be a great partner for you from day one of meeting you. Why does that matter to you?

32:30Like, not just because all of these hurts have happened. No, because I love you and I would like to be in a relationship that is rich with great memories. That if there are bad things, things that come from outside, not all cause from inside the house. This is a very important moment because he says, I'm sorry I wasn't there. And her first question is, there in what sense?

32:57What is it that you are sorry for? What do you wish you had done differently? And he keeps repeating, I had been there for you. But she wants to know, why does that matter to you? You're responding to my hurt, but you're not responding to any of your own needs. And gradually, it becomes very clear that he doesn't have them. It's not that he didn't want to, but he may not know how to because As she describes so beautifully, he is the life of the party in the outside world. He vanishes when he comes home because that's what he had to do to survive. And it is really challenging when we want something from our partner and we believe that they have it and they just don't want to.

33:42do it to actually understand that they don't know what to do, that they fundamentally don't really know what we're talking about. Which is actually often why someone chose the very person that they chose to be with because this is what she can teach him, a life of interiority. Imagine you have someone who really understands layers and contradictory feelings and the complexity of all of that.

34:18I love you and yet I have done one thing after another to basically let you down. To lie, to cheat, to deceive, to side, to collude. Let me talk about that. How does that work inside of me? And what do I think that did to you? It's switching from shame to accountability. People say I love you in all kinds of versions. Sure. And then they do all kinds of...

34:50She did things. Sure. Sure. I've been saying I love you for 14 years. Right. Right. So she needs to understand how these two are sewn together. When you work it out there in your head, I do what I want. I decide what is hurtful. I decide what she should be upset about and what she shouldn't. I decide what is considered mature. Yes. And I love you. Right. How does that work?

35:23Not well We know that yes and next How do you do it in your head in your body in your heart? I know you don't I'd have it right you don't yes I'm inflated you deflated and we will dance a little bit in a type of Abusive dynamic here mm-hmm, and I love you. It's kind of the chorus in the song mm-hmm Well and all those things are true And we can try it, but go where? When you say, I cheated because I needed affirmation. Yes. It's very interesting, but it does nothing for her. Right. It's me and me in a reflexive loop. When you say, I needed affirmation, and therefore I made yours feel like mashed potatoes. And...

36:34sending her pictures for It's not even just I went to flirt and play with other people elsewhere is I involved you in this whole sexual machination Yes, all right that all needs to be addressed Okay Because if you don't she will repeat it till the day she drops Yeah, so the story has to go back to where it belongs and Just try a process. It's one of those things where it sounds so easy when you say it. When you literally say it. And of course you're right on. But when I think about it and try to organize it in my head or like what I'm trying to acknowledge just feels like I'm moving through mud. Try it. I want to be here and if it needs redirection. Yeah. Like so I know saying

37:44that I wanted you to love me and to tour me and be with me. But then I did nothing to honor that love. But it still seems like I'm flipping it to me. Keep going. Okay. When I did this, I can imagine that you... When I did this, I did this to you. I'm talking to him. I'm not sure much will come.

38:22but I'm looking at her and I'm watching. I'll respond to my initiative to help him in effect articulate that which she has longed to hear but which she knows without wanting to admit it has not come because there isn't much to come yet anyway and I see the brewing. We have to take a brief break.

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41:07Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats, according to consumeradvocate.org. You get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the US and Canada, with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. When I tried to make You looking through my phone somehow a breach of trust. I see how hypocritical that was. I see how disorienting it must have felt when you found all those messages. It must have felt awful. Like such a betrayal. That would have been way more simple. Because, okay, thank you, Mach, goodbye. Mm-hmm. And it was the time then. And then...

42:25There was a time that I said, go get your baby. And I can imagine that I felt so lonely and not understood. May I say something? I feel so angry right now. To say, just go do this when you couldn't even do it. You go get attacked by wolves. You go do this thing. No, you go do this thing. If it's so easy, you go do that thing.

42:59I feel angry that this isn't in you. I feel angry that you're not angry about it. This is what I mean about why it means something to you like it doesn't it didn't mean anything to you that that happened. Like to you. I don't mean to make this impossible and I but it... You're not making it impossible at all. You have been the emotional barometer here from the first day you met him. If he could he would. Right.

43:35Which is why from entitlement to shame, there was already a big step. Because shame at least creates a structure. But the feeling, this is right, this is wrong, this is true, this is false. This feels close, this feels distant. He doesn't have it. But you need to know whenever you're angry that he's not feeling something, part of it is you've been enlisted to feel for him.

44:11And since you do it so strongly, intensely, well, precisely, and with a whole range, he differs. And when he says to you, I didn't see anything, it's hard to understand, but he may not. And what she wants to know is not just that you can be empathic toward her, but that you have your own feelings toward what happened so that she doesn't have to be the one holding it all.

44:46I really would like to illustrate with a couple of moments that I'm like, truly, how are you not enraged by these moments? Like, we moved to live close to his sister. There was the promise of our child going to an excellent school because his sister runs the school. So we were there for several months and at the turn of the year, when We're expecting, okay, the baby's this old. It'll be time to enroll in preschool. We ask, hey, when do we register? When do we sign up? And even though we'd seen her a few days before that, she says, oh, you missed the deadline. And immediately, I was like, I have no real support right now. We've moved away from my family. We've moved away from my friends. I am doing everything I can right now. What do you mean we missed the deadline? She was like, well, you can register next semester.

45:49Okay. Because of the financial impact of considering sending him elsewhere, it would mean that we would now have to reconsider having more kids. Like it was a big deal. And a few days later, she texted him and she said, I would love a bottle of wine from your basement. All the stores are closed. And of course it took me like a year to develop.

46:15the comeback of like, oh, I guess you missed the deadline. But at the same time, he went right down with a bottle of wine and dropped it at the door. And when I asked him, like, how are you not furious? Like, how are you not pissed? Like, yep, I'm your bitch. No problem. You can stab me and I'm going to turn around and give you the knife again. How? And his response was, I would do that for any neighbor. And still to this day, it's not like my sister was willing to harm me. Wow. I acknowledge that part.

46:45I think you repeat it back to me, but... No, I acknowledge that part. But she doesn't want you only to acknowledge what she says. She actually is puzzled by the fact... So I have said that how we were raised, I was angry for a long, long time. At and about? About my mother. For how we were raised. For how we were treated. Do you have a dad? I do. And for his lack of willingness to stop it.

47:17What about mom? I hated the back and forth. I hated the, I love you, the erratic nature of the drinking that would start so bubbly and goofy and then end with hitting us in huge rage and then cuddle us and apologize but there being no actual change. And so for a long time I hated being healthy because I felt like a little bitch for just...

47:46Wanting I wanted that moment once the cycle started because then at least it was calm and it's okay So I was angry for a long fucking time and it didn't do anything didn't change anything for me They didn't change her it didn't do it ever like what I know was very rarely in touch with was any kind of sadness and that Hit very hard when we moved down there and this was how it went The distance from my family makes me very sad Rage is not the emotion that comes up for me over her doing that. I'm heartbroken that that's even possible. From her is not how it would go if it went the other way. And this is the sibling that used to make me laugh the hardest. Someone I'm really close to makes me very sad. I don't have rage about it. That's okay. It just feels like the feelings aren't enough. It doesn't seem that it satisfies something else you're looking...

48:49for from me in this example. So yeah, that is true. There is part of it that is dissatisfying for me but not because like sadness or heartbreak isn't like enough. You continually said, where's my rage about it? It seems like you want me to be angry. No, what I really want is for that to matter enough for you to like do something or like for that to touch you or move you because it's like this thing happens and it either doesn't register at all it doesn't actually result in something different it's like a rolling over about it and not saying more about it like not having a direct expression of that to her like I miss you and I want to have a relationship with you and I'd like for there to be room in it for me meaning I don't mean to give you a script I just I mean like

49:41it wasn't like that thing happened and it touched you and then you moved apart. And I realized like I sound like a hypocrite because I don't, I'm not even telling my people what my experience is of you. I don't mean to be like, superior. I just, it leaves it then to me to have the experience that moves us to do something. And it is in that way dissatisfying. Yes, but I, It's not like being heartbroken or sad isn't enough. It's like, then you roll over. Is this different or more of the same? This is more of the same. Okay. The only difference in it is I would not usually explain where I was. In that aspect, it's slightly different. No, but you did something else. You said the feelings that you have are not mine.

50:43I experienced this situation, my emotional experience differently from you. And she's told you three times, that is not the issue for me. I completely understand that while I may feel anger, you feel sadness. What she then said is, but once you have that sadness, what do you do with it? If you miss your sister, do you do something? Meaning, this is my additions.

51:19You're very active in the destructive path. You're quite passive in the reconstructive path. Sure. That's what I'm hearing is what's bugging you. I can imagine usually you just go silent and then she goes into monologue and then it goes from very low tone to higher voice because in effect you're talking alone. That has to stop. It will just erode at you. So in distinguishing I know your experience is X. My experience was actually something else. I don't have those feelings. That was really important. You are entitled to have very different experiences that live side by side of the same situation. It will do you a lot of good to actually make these statements. Because the less involved you are, the more her view of the relationship is that everything only moves when she's at wit's end.

52:27You know, she's also able to insert in a little aside, who am I talking to? I myself have not spoken a single word to my own family. I mean, there's a double standard here. I think I do ask, like, where is your anger about this? Like, where is your rage about this? And I do wish, sometimes, that there was anger, because then it would make something happen. But I know that's not necessarily true. That's a false assumption. Right.

52:59But even where there's sadness or even where there's heartbreak, we don't sit in that together. We don't share, like, wow, you feel so sad about it. But when he tells you that he feels really sad about it, you don't join him either. You tell him, what do you do with it? Yes. But you don't join him. And even when he says she's the one who makes me laugh, tell me more.

53:29Do you think of particularly these instances when she would make you laugh or what's it been like to not have that laughter in your life anymore or something that makes you actually cross over to the other side? Yes. And I do actually want to know more and I realize I don't yield to it enough to make more space in there. I'm gonna get selfish for a minute. I don't have enough room for me to be sad about all of these things.

54:01just all of these moments of loss. And instead, I have to be angry. And so it's like, what a luxury. Frankly, for you to have grief, for you to feel sad, I feel sad. And so now it also gets to be about your sadness. There is no room for sadness because I'm too angry at myself or at them. Both. Both.

54:37Usually when we don't have room for sentences because we're angry at ourselves. Doesn't mean the others aren't a part of it, but there is a particular anger that is the anger at ourselves. My immediate pull when you said that was, I'm angry at allowing myself to be humiliated time and time again. I know that these moments are humiliating and I'll fight for the dignity, but also, okay, why not just walk away?

55:10actually preserve and tend to my dignity myself. So yes, I feel angry for that. The bind that I see you in is the fact that you live in secret. The fundamental thing is that the people close to you do not know what you experience. They may know some pieces, but they don't know the places where it feels compromising. And a little bit like various situations of abuse.

55:41So then it becomes your shame. Small amount, big amount, but it becomes your shame. And I can only fully accept my staying if he joins me in the anger. Because then we have warriors together. So you want him to claim something, but you need to claim something too. That doesn't justify anything that you've done. Because there's a stack of pink slips. Yes. But you don't address the stack of pink slips.

56:18thing here and a little thing there. So, if you don't talk, it's complicated, but if you do talk, it's even more complicated. That's a bind. If you say nothing, she says, how can you say nothing? If you say what the little bit you say is, how can you reduce it to this? And you meet in that very place. That's the bizarre thing of it. It's like, in the end, you each have your secrets. And then when the opportunities occur to actually cross, look, if we meet again, we will get there.

56:54And I hope you have somebody that you work with that you can do this, literally crossing the bridge and entering the neighborhood of each other, rather than just identifying the mess. And your effort is to actually take from there whatever you can salvage.

57:36Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julian Matt. Original Music and Additional Production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin, are Esther Perrell and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project, one after accounting, another for inventory, another for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in.

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