Pod Insights All In The Mind Family estrangement and infidelity: Esther Perel answers your questions About this episode How do you grieve a dying parent you're estranged from? Do cheaters ever change? People say love should feel 'easy', is that true?
Psychotherapist Esther Perel is back on All in the Mind, answering your questions about heartbreak, loss, and love in this extra special mailbag episode.
We've got questions on how to reconnect with estranged siblings, what to do when global conflicts impact personal relationships, and whether a first love can still feel special, even if it happens later in life.
And if you missed part one of our chat with Esther Perel, you can listen to our episode titled "Couples therapy with an AI partner? Esther Perel's just done it" here https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/allinthemind/esther-perel-love-in-age-of-ai/106341064.
Esther also featured on our first episode of Mind Hacks https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/allinthemind/mind-hacks-esther-perel/106419120!
Guest:
Esther PerelPsychotherapist and couples therapistAuthor, The State of Affairs and Mating in Captivity https://www.estherperel.com/booksHost, Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel https://www.estherperel.com/podcast
Credits:
Presenter/producer: Sana QadarSenior producer: James BullenProducer: Rose KerrSound engineer: Roi HubermanMore information:
If you want to hear more from Esther Perel, she chatted to Lisa Leong on This Working Life. The episode is called Esther Perel on conflict and power struggles at work https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/this-working-life/esther-perel-on-conflict-and-power-struggles-at-work-/106358758.
You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
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0:38 Speaker 02 Hey, it's Sana Qadar. This is All in the Mind from ABC Radio National, Mailbag Edition. And this is also part two of our chat with psychotherapist Esther Perel.
0:52 Speaker 02 Two weeks ago, we had part one of our chat with Esther. And we also asked you, when we confirmed that she was going to come on the show, to send us your questions. So we could do a Mailbag Edition with her. We asked and you delivered. There was a lot of pain that spilled into our inbox. It was quite humbling to read your stories and to know that you trusted us with these questions. So in this episode, we have questions on infidelity, on family estrangement, on global events impacting personal relationships. Esther also talks about how to make amends for past wrongs.
1:28 Speaker 03 We don't make a big mea culpa of what you were going through because the point is not for them to become empathic toward you. The point is for you to basically be accountable, take responsibility.
1:39 Speaker 02 She also addresses this idea that love, when it's good and real, should feel easy.
1:45 Speaker 03 Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm.
1:48 Speaker 02 So we're going to pick up right where we left off. Here is part two of our chat with Esther Perel.
2:00 Speaker 02 And we had an incredible response. A lot of people sent questions through. So I want to put some of their questions to you. And I will start with Leila. Leila writes, "Hi Astaire, they say, once a cheat, always a cheat. I spent my twenties in active alcoholism and cheated on almost every partner I had. I am deeply ashamed of my past and the hurt I caused. I wholeheartedly believe I have changed now and have been faithful in my current relationship of almost two years with no plans of ever cheating again. Is there hope for me to live the rest of my life as an honest person?"
2:38 Speaker 03 So I spent 10 years, Leila, researching infidelity. I think that it's vast. I wrote an entire book about it, State of Affairs, because it is not a yes/no answer.
2:54 Speaker 03 Do I believe that people can change? Yes. I wouldn't be doing this work if I didn't think that there is a possibility for people to change, to grow and to become different. I think what would be interesting for you is maybe slightly less questions about can I become honest, but more turning your shame into responsibility.
3:17 Speaker 03 If you leave it as shame, then you feel like there is a part inside of you that is rotten, that is dirty, that is dishonest, that is deceitful, that is duplicitous, that is all those things that you used to be, that can lie easily, etc., etc. I think maybe somebody or some people you could actually write to. And basically just say, "I owe you an apology."
3:43 Speaker 02 Former partners.
3:44 Speaker 03 Yes, former partners. "I owe you an apology." Without a big mea culpa of what you were going through, because the point is not for them to become empathic toward you. The point is for you to basically make amends, be accountable, take responsibility, which I think is one of the most important cleansing.
4:04 Speaker 03 Projects that we can have when we feel that something inside of us is living that we worry is contaminated. That's the point that I was trying to make. So it's for you. Were there relationships of people that when you think, who did I hurt? Who may be walking around thinking of me as they're trying to create a new relationship with someone else, wondering if they're going to be cheated on time and again? That's the reality of what the legacy that you leave in other people's hearts. Start with that. If you begin to notice, and then ask yourself, is it, how much was it all related to the drinking? How much is this the model that you saw?
4:47 Speaker 03 You know, where did you learn that you needed to, you know, be on top? Be the one who lives first before anybody can ever leave you, et cetera, et cetera? And look at the vulnerabilities that you bring to love. But do I think you are not imprisoned into who you used to be? No, I don't think that that's who we necessarily are. I also think that cheating is a very complex word. What exactly did you do? And what exactly do you think that your dishonesty rests upon? And how are the, what are the other ways that you can at times be dishonest? So, you know, we use words, and in the question, these words make a lot of sense to the person
5:32 Speaker 03 who is asking it, and everybody who hears it gives it their meaning. So it's such a loaded word to begin with, but I think the bigger question is more, can I have been a certain way 10 years ago and be different today? And what lives inside of me? And what do I do with the remnants of parts of me that I carry with shame? And that's when I say, one of the most liberating things one can do is turn shame into responsibility.
6:09 Speaker 02 We had a couple of questions about strained family relationships.
6:12 Speaker 03 Oh, yes.
6:13 Speaker 02 Iona asks, "My father is dying of cancer. We were very close when I was little, but our relationship became strained when I was a teenager. He can be intentionally cutting and hurtful. I love him deeply, but I don't feel emotionally safe being close to him. How do you show up meaningfully for a person at the end of their life when the relationship feels so strained? And how do you grieve someone you love when you don't feel close to them?"
6:38 Speaker 03 It's a beautiful question. Those are the questions when I think I should not do short interviews like this.
6:46 Speaker 02 Sorry to give you...
6:47 Speaker 03 I mean, that's part of why I'm a therapist, so that I can sit with these questions and really go into, plumb the depth of it, you know? But it's nice to do both. If you are not very close to a person, what you grieve sometimes is not their loss, but it's the loss of the closeness you may have wanted, or the loss that you once hoped you could have. Sometimes a death is liberating. I think that that is a taboo that sometimes we don't dare to utter, but that is true too. Sometimes a death comes with the grief of what it never became, the potential that never unfolded, the healing that never took place, the amends that never happened, the
7:28 Speaker 03 apology that was never said, the forgiveness that was never granted. So if you want to go see your father, you're not going to go because of the relationship. You're going to go because, to him. You may go more in terms of the relationship with yourself. I want to have had the opportunity to say goodbye, or I want to have the opportunity of sitting next to this person, my dad, and talk to him in my head. I have no illusion that if I say things to him like that, he will be any different. But I want to have the opportunity of sitting next to him, looking at him, and telling him in my own inner voice, those things that need to be off my chest.
8:12 Speaker 03 So that's a form of goodbye too. Sometimes people go and you are surprised. The person who is dying is having a process too. And they too may suddenly realise, you know, "I have only one opportunity left to tell you, I wish I had done it better. I wish I had been different." And you don't have to say, "I forgive you." You can just simply say, "I'm glad you think this way." You don't have to put a nice bow. But what is interesting is you only have the chance now. If you care to do it with the person present. If you say, I'll do it this by myself later on when it comes up. Then that's a different story. That's what I say to people is for yourself.
8:56 Speaker 03 If you don't want to live later wondering, I should have, I could have, why didn't I? Then just go. But don't go for a resolution. Go so that you don't have to tell yourself later, I wish I had.
9:10 Speaker 02 I may have set you up with asking that question in a short format, but that's a beautiful and very helpful answer, I think. Someone I'll call Danielle asks, how do you maintain a relationship with a sibling who has cut you off? Or should you? My sister and I were best friends growing up. I thought she was the one person in the world that I could always count on. When I was about thirty and she was twenty seven, she started distancing herself from me. One day, when I really pressed her for answers, she said she didn't want to be close to family anymore. And I knew that meant me. It's been nine years now, and even as I write this, I cry. It's like grief, except no one has died. She's living overseas now and we're barely in touch. And while I have moved on and my life is mostly happy now, whenever I remember the loss, I still feel so sad.
9:56 Speaker 03 I feel it on my skin as you write it. You know, as Danielle writes it. Because even though the person is alive, that the relationship is dead or feels dead. And that is grief. You can't force her. Can't, I mean, you can reach out to your sister, you may already have. But she seems to have been determined. Family cut off between siblings, between parents and children. It's major. In the United States, we say that there is one in three Americans today are cut off from a family member or estranged. That's the new term.
10:35 Speaker 02 One in three is massive.
10:36 Speaker 03 Yes, it's massive. It's really, really massive. And that has to do with people's expectations. You see, when relationships, I'm going to go back to the thing I said to you earlier. And also to this woman who's asking this beautiful question. When relationships were rooted in duty and obligation, it wasn't about how you feel. You had all kinds of bad relationships with family members. They just continued. So was marriage. It was a one-time enterprise and you did it once and you were stuck for life. And if you didn't like it, you could hope for an early death of your partner, but you were in it.
11:14 Speaker 02 Right.
11:14 Speaker 03 You know, now that we have a model that is not about tight knots, but about loose threads.
11:21 Speaker 03 It is rooted in feelings. And the primary feeling it is rooted in is authenticity, to be true to myself. And in order to be true to myself, I will forego the relationships with people that historically were non-negotiable. Now, does that mean they were not cut off before? No. Brothers have not spoken to each other for fifty years forever. You know, and in every society, traditional cultures, collectively and family-oriented society, as well as more individualistic society. So it's not, it's more the parent-child. It was okay for parents to cut off a child, to disown a child. It had a term.
11:59 Speaker 03 But there was no child that necessarily made a statement about disowning or estranging themselves from their parent. Even though they may have gone and traveled for ten years. So they did it without necessarily naming it and making a statement about it. You have pretty much, this woman now, I'm saying, what is her name? Uh, we have called her Danielle. I have built a new life. I have people who matter to me a great deal. I know I have a lot to offer. When I think about my sister, it aches. It's a dark place. It's a loss. And it brings up sadness each time, and it will.
12:42 Speaker 03 And sometimes it doesn't for months, and then you see a movie or you read a story, and it suddenly brings this ache, sharp ache, back into your body. And that is going to potentially be your story. Maybe one day you'll write a letter again, maybe one day she will write something to you and there's not much you can do. You need two people.
13:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:06 Speaker 03 And then you can ask, why did it happen? And why me? And why did I become lumped in with the other members of the family? And what did I do? Or why did she feel that she needed to cut off from me in order to be able to be her own person? And hasn't she become her own person? And doesn't that allow us? You lose nothing by reaching out once a year, twice a year, or whenever you want. You get an answer, you will know something. You don't get an answer, you will know something too.
13:34 Speaker 02 But otherwise, it's a sadness you have to learn to live with.
13:37 Speaker 03 It's a hole you live with.
13:45 Speaker 02 All right. This next question touches on sexual assault. So a little content warning there. Michael asks, I've reached a point where I've realized that I am attracted to quote unquote, bad men. I had a difficult childhood, characterized by violent homophobic bullying at school and a psychologically abusive and alcoholic father at home. Last year, I entered a relationship with a man who I thought was like my dad on a good day. But unfortunately, as things progressed, he was worse than my dad on a bad day. He raped me at least three times. I finally gained the courage to leave permanently about six months in. Now I find myself disinterested when I meet good guys. How can I resolve this? I want to find good men attractive, but I worry my scar tissue is in the way.
14:32 Speaker 03 Well, first of all, Michael, you are extremely astute in your description. You are quite self-aware of what happens to you. For me, the place where I stop in your description is I met a guy who was like my dad on a good day. So you can discern. The discerning is not between good guys, bad guys. The discerning is about what draws you in.
14:59 Speaker 03 What is it that you pursue, you know, like a moth to a flame, that you find is irresistible? Why the dullness of kindness? What is it about you that think that you deserve the mistreatment? The kindness is valuing you, is connected to your sense of self-worth. The mistreatment is connected to, if I am treated this way, if my dad trashed me, if I was raped, if I was violated. And the power here is that you're talking man to man too, which is often not spoken about nearly enough. And kindness sometimes is viewed with suspicion. And therefore, it doesn't have traction.
15:44 Speaker 03 And therefore, it doesn't have erotic charge. And this is not something that I can give you an answer for, just like that, on a podcast. The main thing I will say to you, Michael, is this, it's not about the guys and the men and the father even. It's about what you experience inside of you and how you view yourself. When you will view yourself as deserving, in a way that your dad never taught you you could, you will allow a kind hand to touch you and you will not feel dissociated, because that's when you talk about dullness.
16:24 Speaker 03 You won't feel this kind of frozen body dissociated that says whoever you're touching is not me. You will actually welcome it and you may even invite it. And I hope that for you.
16:40 Speaker 02 You are listening to All in the Mind from ABC Radio National. I'm Sana Qadar. This is part two of our chat with psychotherapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin? Esther Perel. If you want to listen to the first part of our discussion, just scroll back in your podcast feed and the episode, part one, was titled, Esther Perel on Love in the Age of AI. Today, though, for part two, we're putting some of your audience questions to Esther and getting advice on some of the problems you're facing. And just a note on this next question, it was written and asked before the war in Iran broke out, so presumably what the substance of this question is asking will apply to
17:24 Speaker 02 a whole lot more people now.
17:30 Speaker 02 Lindsay asks, "What can I do to maintain intimacy and keep the lines of connection open when world events impact a relationship so personally? For context, my husband is Palestinian while I am white Australian. We have been married for 15 years and have two children. His family is all over there and they feel like a noose is tightening. I struggle with this knowledge, so I can't imagine how this feels for him. While I try and support him and talk to him, it feels like he is in an unreachable place. He doesn't acknowledge his trauma, despite traumatic events, and there is a wall that keeps building between us. He won't even admit it's there, and as the noose gets more bleak, I am worried this wall will never go away."
18:11 Speaker 02 His friend is Jewish Israeli, also with an Australian wife, and she says similar things. A white friend married to a Latino man in the US feels the same in her marriage, too. So I imagine my question isn't just mine alone.
18:26 Speaker 03 When you are in a relationship with someone who carries trauma, individual trauma, or in this instance, collective trauma, political trauma, and you make a very good point of saying, giving other examples to say it is not specifically because of his background, it is this divide that is created between people who, at this moment, are living a whole reality that their partner has no sense about. A reality of dread, a reality of fear, a reality of rage, a reality of loss, a reality
19:10 Speaker 03 of a bond between this individual and their community, their people, their group. That divide, when things, bad things happen, becomes more intensified. So you're saying he belongs to this other world, there is a wall that comes up, I can't enter there, and he is not even acknowledging it. Imagine that you really say to him... You are experiencing something that I have no idea about. But I can offer you something, hopefully, that is also important for you, that will actually maybe even help you cope with all the things that are happening to your family,
19:55 Speaker 03 to your people, any of the people. It's an interesting point made about how his friend is Jewish Israeli or about how the American friend is married to Latino. So the idea is here, how do we live with cultural, political, racial differences inside intimate relationships? That is the broader question. And of course, one of the questions that I always ask is, what is the story of origin? What drew you to this person? Each of you chose each other. What was that choice about? And how can that choice be validated today? Or is there a feeling that a certain gap is being created?
20:38 Speaker 03 That, you know, this is about your fear. You have a sense that a gap is being created and that you're kind of maybe even losing him a little bit because you don't belong to the same story. But you don't have to belong to the same story. Refugees marry locals. Immigrants marry people from a place. People who come from horrible backgrounds marry people who had good families. People who are in situations of war marry people who have never known war. That is, what can I offer him? And what do I do with the parts of him that I may not be able to relate to and to understand?
21:21 Speaker 03 And is it okay for him to have more connection and identification with other people who belong to the same part of the world than to me? So talk to him about your fear. Don't talk to him necessarily about his trauma or his people or the war. More, do I have anything to offer you at this moment? Given that you're going through something in which I am not a participant? That would be my opening question.
21:51 Speaker 02 And you know very well about collective trauma from your own family background as the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Have you seen similar sort of dynamics play out in your own circles?
22:01 Speaker 03 Yes, but I also need to add to that that my husband, Jack Sol, is a psychologist who has worked for thirty years in collective trauma. So, and moral injuries of war and collective resilience. So this is very much a subject I have lived personally. I think that that idea, there's something very beautiful in what this woman is describing, but the issue is not his wall. The issue is, sometimes it feels, you know, what do I have to offer, given the magnitude of the crisis that her husband is experiencing? And you have to ask yourself, this person chose me. And when it comes in the context of a relationship, so,
22:46 Speaker 03 did I know Holocaust survivors who married non-survivors? Yes, I think they are all hidden children, who were hidden for years, you know, during the war, who then married somebody who had no idea about the war. Yes, and I believe that people who experience this often find more solidarity with other people who are experiencing similar things.
23:12 Speaker 03 Even if it's not the same war, even if it's not the same massacre, even if it's not the same, but it is people who have experienced similar events in their lives. And they go to those groups, solidarity groups, groups of people who have experienced similar experiences in life, support groups, twelve-step groups, you name it, are set up without a partner. You go to a twelve-step group, the partner isn't there because it's other people who are struggling with the same thing. That identification is extremely important. And the partners have to really be able to say, "I'm so glad you have other people to talk to. What else can I offer you?"
23:56 Speaker 03 So don't try to enter that place specifically. You have other reasons for why you are in their life.
24:08 Speaker 02 A couple of very quick questions to close with. Someone we're calling Julia asks, people say love in a healthy relationship should feel easy. In your opinion, what should it feel like?
24:19 Speaker 03 People are mistaken.
24:20 Speaker 02 Okay, right. So not easy.
24:22 Speaker 03 Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm. It's a verb, and you have to conjugate it in all tenses. And it's active. So this notion that love should be easy, no, it isn't. It just isn't. It's very challenging to deal with an other, to really accept the otherness of a person who may have completely different perceptions, views, ideas, experience, feelings about the same situation as you, and to hold on to your reality without disconnecting from them, and to relate to their reality without disconnecting from you.
25:04 Speaker 03 That is one of the great challenges of modern love, the way we want to experience it. It should feel alive. It should feel dynamic. It should feel that one day, sometimes you think, I cannot spend another minute with this person. What the hell am I doing here? I gotta get out of here.
25:22 Speaker 02 So that's normal.
25:23 Speaker 03 And the next minute, you're thinking, I can't think my life without you. What was I thinking? You know? And that back and forth is actually normal. It's not always that extreme, but it has to feel alive, and it has to be able to encapsulate a contradiction and a cornucopia of emotions. If it's all the time the same thing, it's kind of bland, you know? So that's what I consider. It's, you know, there's something fierce about it.
25:49 Speaker 02 Hmm, okay. I like that. Shades of grey and all sorts of colours, not just black and white.
25:55 Speaker 03 For sure.
25:56 Speaker 02 Okay. This final question comes from Instagram. This person asks, I'm 24. I have never had a relationship. Will my first love still feel as special as if I was 18?
26:07 Speaker 03 Absolutely, if not more so. You will have lived longer, you will have fantasized about it. But the only risk you run is if you want to experience that which you have imagined. Experience that which is in front of you. It may be completely different from what you imagined, or way more intense than what you imagined. But don't try to create a concordance between what you've concocted in your head and then what's in front of you. But no, I think a first love is a first love. That power, that surrender, that obsessiveness, that feeling that you're being understood and met and seen like nobody ever has,
26:51 Speaker 03 that sense that you are aligned with another person like that, eye to eye, all of these things. That sensation when the person touches your hand or puts their hand on your shoulder, or that first kiss, all of it. It is beautiful. And so, it's later. It's later for many, many people today in the West.
27:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. And that question just felt sweet to me as well because she's only 24 and that's still so young. Esther Perel, thank you so much for being on All in the Mind. It's been a pleasure to chat to you.
27:22 Speaker 03 Same for me.
27:30 Speaker 02 That is Esther Perel, psychotherapist and host of the podcast, Where Should We Begin? Thanks to producer Rose Kerr, senior producer James Bullen, and sound engineer Roi Huberman. I am Sana Qadar. I host and present All in the Mind. And I want to say a huge thank you to all of you who sent us your questions. Sorry, we couldn't get to all of them. There's always a time limitation. But I hope you found something in these answers that can help you in your own life.
28:01 Speaker 02 Now, just before I go, I'll let you know that next week, we are doing an episode about the experience of being a carer in Australia. There are about three million carers in Australia, and Casey Barrows became one for her father when he received his terminal cancer diagnosis.
28:17 Speaker 04 I can't tell you how many times we were told, it's weeks now. And then he'd live months beyond that. You know, I think the first time that I heard it's probably weeks now was like December, January, and he didn't die until the following November. So, you know, when, I think when you're in the position of being somebody's primary carer, maybe it's for your partner or for a parent or whatever, when you hear they've got weeks, you go, okay, these are going to be some of the roughest weeks of my life and evidently theirs, but I can do anything for a few weeks. And so you are probably, especially if you are in that sandwich generation, have small children, aging parents, you're probably
28:58 Speaker 04 already white knuckling through. And then when it goes on for months, and then more months, and then more months, you're so exhausted, but so grateful that they're still here, it is the strangest feeling.
29:17 Speaker 02 That is next week's show. Until then, take care and I'll catch you next time.
29:27 Speaker 05 Hello, it's Lisa Leong from ABC Radio National's This Working Life. Are you having relationship trouble at work? A bit of conflict? Maybe you're on the wrong end of a power play. New York Times bestselling author and psychotherapist Astaire Perel has jumped from the all in the mind couch to the This Working Life lounger, and she has some sage advice. So if you'd like to hear her thoughts, check out This Working Life on ABC Listen or anywhere you get your podcasts.
29:57 Speaker 00 You've been listening to an ABC Podcast. Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.
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