Is It Our ADHD, OCD, and PTSD? Or Is It Us?

A couple sits down with Esther Perel to untangle trust, control, and intimacy after becoming parents. He feels weighed down by anxiety and responsibility; she struggles with ADHD, resistance to structure, and fears of falling short in her art career. Their love is strong, but everyday tensions spiral into power struggles. Esther challenges them to move beyond their labels and find a new connection. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:25Speaker 01

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• 1:45Speaker 02

  So, the big one, of course, is the child. She's 18 months old, and she's our first child. We're never prepared for what kids are gonna bring up in us.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  Since having a kid, he was in basically the worst depression of his life. Tons and tons of crippling anxiety.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  You know, she got pregnant quickly, and here we go. And in response to that, my anxiety and depression just shot through the roof last year.

• 2:16Speaker 03

  Everything became just so anxiety provoking around our child's sleep, around her eating enough, like everything. And I was kind of in the opposite world where I wasn't anxious and I wasn't super overwhelmed with it. And even to the point where I actually really want to have another child. And he's like, "Do you remember what it was like for me?"

• 2:41Speaker 02

  A lot of that comes down to money as well and where we are with money. She decided early on that she didn't really want to continue work as it was and she wanted to be a full-time mom and wanted to move into illustration and being an artist. That's been a slow process.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  I have wanted to be an artist and an illustrator for my whole life. And now I had a kid and I really liked staying at home with her, but we're running out of money and he can't support us on his income only. So he's really pushed me and asked me, "Hey, it's time. If you want this dream, you have to choose it now." And then I will get mired in self-doubt and say that I will do things and then I have a lot of trouble actually doing them.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  There's issues of neurodivergence. My partner's ADHD and my, what might be neurodivergence or CPTSD or both.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  The last piece that's very big for us is our non-neurotypicalness. I have ADHD. He believes he has autism. And so both of us have very different ways of relating to the world. And that also plays into our struggles with communicating, with being kind to each other and supporting each other.

• 4:00Esther Perel?

  When I read the intake interviews about the changes that had happened in this couple's life, they have an 18-month-old, they experienced the transition to parenthood, they experienced changes in their professional lives, but they also had a lot, a lot of jargon, a lot of therapy speak, a lot of words that are meant to help understand the other person. But in fact, they muddle it. It becomes a conversation of acronyms. ADHD, CPTSD, autism, neurodivergence.

• 4:42Esther Perel?

  And there is definitely a need to attend to any of these acronyms. But also, there's a need to understand the role they play in a relationship and the way that sometimes they are used between partners.

• 5:02Esther Perel?

  All right. Let me do a quick pulse check with each of you. Where are you? Where do I find you? Not just geographically, but also mood, relationship, internal weather.

• 5:17Speaker 05

  We're in our house. I'm in my daughter's bedroom. And I'm feeling a little bit nervous, excited.

• 5:26Esther Perel?

  How old is your daughter?

• 5:29Speaker 05

  She is 18 months.

• 5:31Esther Perel?

  And is she there?

• 5:33Speaker 05

  She is gone with a friend.

• 5:36Esther Perel?

  Wonderful.

• 5:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. This is the first time that we've actually put her in someone else's charge for this long of a period.

• 5:44Esther Perel?

  And you experience relief, freedom, space? Or you experience primarily anxiety, worry, concern at your daughter being with a friend? Or even joy, for that matter?

• 6:04Speaker 06

  Joy.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. Joy, yeah. Satiety.

• 6:07Esther Perel?

  Great.

• 6:09Speaker 06

  It's been a thing for a long time where I really felt like we need to create that space with her. I was ready for not the right reasons, maybe.

• 6:20Esther Perel?

  What does that mean? What are not good reasons?

• 6:24Speaker 06

  To make my anxiety go away.

• 6:29Esther Perel?

  My anxiety about?

• 6:34Speaker 06

  Literally everything.

• 6:36Esther Perel?

  Yes, but what is the problem with doing things that diminish your anxiety? Why is that framed as something negative?

• 6:48Speaker 06

  Because...

• 6:52Speaker 06

  What I've learned this year is that anxiety is a block to being able to live life in some capacity. And this year has been showing up to those scary things in service of the life that I want. Um, in the past few days, I just had a meeting with my business coach and he brought me to saying something that not only dissolved all my imposter syndrome, it also dissolved this very powerful story that I'm pointless, that my life is pointless, that I'm never gonna be the person that I'm supposed to be. And it all came out in this one very simple phrase.

• 7:33Esther Perel?

  And the phrase was?

• 7:35Speaker 06

  The phrase was, I help people solve their problems.

• 7:38Esther Perel?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:39Speaker 06

  And it didn't require me to be anything but what I was. I identify as an Enneagram four, so there's a lot of staying in my own world and feeling lack and loss and grief and non-inclusion. And that's what's really changing this year after a really, really horrible year last year.

• 8:01Esther Perel?

  Is it important for me to know about last year? Or is there a different place for us to start?

• 8:08Speaker 06

  I wish we had recorded literally the thirty conversations we've had approaching this time.

• 8:15Esther Perel?

  Maybe I wanna start asking you about that. How did you prepare? And what has come up? Like, what is the session that you have had, or the sessions, in preparation of this session?

• 8:28Speaker 06

  Do we wanna just like rattle them off? There's so many. Um, there was the one, and this is kind of a little self-serving, there was the one where she, for the first time, turned to me and said, I'm pretty sure I have OCD and I've been very controlling about things. And that has been something I've been like waiting to hear and just have a shared understanding around so we can move through it.

• 9:02Esther Perel?

  I often say in the beginning of a session that I'd like to meet the people before I meet their problems. Because I sincerely believe that we are more than just the problems that we face. And the same is true for our diagnosis. It is helpful to know if we struggle with ADHD or if we have neurodivergence or if we are on the spectrum. All these terms that have really proliferated in the last years have helped us articulate ourselves, make sense of who we are, understand our relationship to others and to ourselves. But I sometimes use them more cautiously. Because we sometimes also can run into the danger

• 9:46Esther Perel?

  to collapse a person into a diagnosis, to see them only through one lens. Many people live with health and mental health conditions that doesn't define their entire being. It says a lot about them, but it doesn't say everything about them. And the last thing I would want to do in my work is curb the curiosity for knowing more because we think we know because we have the refuge of the labels.

• 10:17Speaker 06

  There's another conversation where we both acknowledge that for as much as we love and care about each other, we've been so focused on our own survival that we've treated the other person's coping mechanisms as a problem. And I was setting up a dynamic where I responded to her with judgment, annoyance, trying to change her, shaming her, telling her she's doing it wrong, till that became a standard way of our interacting.

• 10:55Esther Perel?

  So we had two accountability sessions. And you connect them to the fact that we were going to have our conversation today? Why?

• 11:06Speaker 06

  I tend to be the space taker and so I would really like to create space for her to share.

• 11:11Esther Perel?

  For her?

• 11:12Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 11:16Esther Perel?

  This was a very nice move on his part. To know that he had had a chance to express himself at quite some length and to just basically say, "I know I can take the space. I want her to join us at this moment." And I didn't say it, and I'm saying it now.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  I feel like the two of us are really committed to each other and really invested in each other. And we've spent a long time in our relationship caring about one another's struggles.

• 11:55Speaker 05

  But we also feel so stubborn and so adamant about ourselves getting heard and feeling like we're really being taken seriously by the other person. I think that's like a huge part of why we just keep running into the same problems in pretty much every area of our lives. Is that we both care about each other deeply, but we don't trust each other to really care about the other person as much as we want them to.

• 12:33Esther Perel?

  Say that again. We care about each other deeply, but the other person doesn't trust it.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:40Esther Perel?

  So I care about you, but you don't trust that that's what I do?

• 12:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:48Esther Perel?

  And how does that distortion get created? What is it that you do, each of you, that lets the other person think you don't have my back?

• 13:01Speaker 05

  I think our actions and our words are different. I certainly know that for myself with my ADHD. I struggle to actually do the things that we've spoken about in our partnership as important. He used to ask me for a Monday meeting every single week, where we would sit down and we would talk together about what's coming up during the week, what we're gonna do.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  And I think I made that Monday meeting a priority maybe twice in the many, many months that we tried to do it. Something would come up. "I need a snack. I need to go to the bathroom." I could barely sit still.

• 13:48Speaker 05

  And I don't know why that was always happening at these Monday meetings that were very important to my partner. And I wanted them to be a priority and I felt so.

• 14:02Esther Perel?

  Rebellious.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, rebellious is a huge part of my life.

• 14:08Esther Perel?

  So would it be accurate to say we care about each other deeply? But we don't necessarily support the requests of our partner because we also experience these requests as controlling.

• 14:25Speaker 06

  Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

• 14:28Esther Perel?

  So we are very kind compassionate people who get into power struggles, but we don't name them as power struggles.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  Well, we do actually.

• 14:38Esther Perel?

  Okay.

• 14:38Speaker 06

  Um, because one of the things that I have said is that I feel like I have no agency. But she wears the pants in the family and I often state it in very either harsh or just like big energy, but like their angry ways because I feel small, because I don't think they're going to be listened to and respected. So then I'll say something like, well, this isn't going to work anyway, or you're not going to do this, or I don't know what the point of this is.

• 15:08Esther Perel?

  And then she complies.

• 15:11Esther Perel?

  Hmm, she complies, she basically acts in a way that completely agrees with what you just said. It's not going to work, nothing's going to happen.

• 15:18Speaker 06

  Yes, she complies with that.

• 15:20Esther Perel?

  She complies, yes, yes.

• 15:21Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 15:26Esther Perel?

  It's interesting to hear him say that he doesn't feel he has agency in the relationship. Especially after both of them have just acknowledged that he can shrink her into a tiny shrimp.

• 15:40Esther Perel?

  He can make her doubt herself. He can tell her that she's not proactive enough, that she's not confident enough about her job. He can rattle down a list of things that she does wrong. But in his mind, he's doing that because he feels small himself. And as a result, he tries to bring her down to the same level where he is. And what's very interesting for me in listening to them is that they are full of self-awareness. And they even have a lot of awareness about what they do to each other. But it doesn't serve them.

• 16:23Esther Perel?

  We have to take a brief break. Stay with us.

• 16:34Speaker 07

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• 18:07Speaker 09

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• 18:54Speaker 06

  You know, I had a period, I tried to set up a lot of systems, because I'm a systems thinker. But yeah, it was that sense of like, "Okay, we'll try this, okay, we'll try this, okay, we'll try this." And then, none of the things worked out. And I felt very alone. And the metaphor that I've been using a lot lately, the idea that I'm running around plugging holes on a boat left and right, and that's my entire existence. And I can imagine you saying, "Where's she on this boat?" And I'm like, "Oh, she's up at the top deck, pointing it at all the beautiful islands that she wants to go to, and grabbing the steering wheel and sort of pulling it left and right, while I'm down here by myself, being like, "There's this massive hole, and now there's all these other little holes that keep popping up every day that I have to keep fixing,

• 19:39Speaker 06

  keep fixing, keep fixing." Which, as you can tell, anxiety. And really, the question that I felt like we could bring to you was like, "How do we get it so we're steering the ship together and plugging holes together?"

• 19:52Esther Perel?

  That's your question.

• 19:54Speaker 06

  That's my question.

• 19:55Esther Perel?

  What's your question?

• 19:58Speaker 05

  I want to know...

• 20:02Speaker 05

  What's it gonna take for us to trust each other? I think the way that we communicate feels like we don't

• 20:15Speaker 05

  believe each other's on the same team. And so

• 20:21Speaker 05

  I really wanna find a way that we can

• 20:27Speaker 05

  connect and care about each other in our everyday life.

• 20:31Esther Perel?

  Instead of? What do you do?

• 20:34Speaker 05

  It feels like now everything that I say to him, he's taking it as I'm

• 20:44Speaker 05

  judging him. I'm telling him he's wrong. I'm telling him he did something that isn't working. You know, I will say something to him like, "Oh, I'd really like for the baby's food to be cut a little smaller." And he'll say, "I've got it. I know what I'm doing. Don't tell me what to do." And he's always feeling it seems like he can never do something right for me. And I think if we trusted each other more, he would know I wasn't coming from that space. I was just sharing my preference.

• 21:25Esther Perel?

  In highly reactive couples, this is very common. If somebody says something about the food, the other person hears it as if it's about them. Everything gets personalized and seen as an attack. They talk about trust, they talk about vulnerability, they talk about anxiety, depression. They don't talk about aggression. But in fact, the relationship is permeated by aggression. Covert and overt. And I think they're trying to behave very well in front of me, but when they say these things to each other, as she just said, around the cutting of the food, and he says, you know, once again, "It's not the right..." I'm imagining in myself a reaction in him, where he feels attacked.

• 22:10Esther Perel?

  It's that differentiation that needs to happen, that is first and foremost to distinguish between a criticism and a request. And at this moment, this is blurred.

• 22:26Esther Perel?

  And the other way around, how does it go?

• 22:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. I feel like I'm pretty generous with the requests he makes, but I often question them. And that also creates a lot of distrust. He brought something to me a couple of weeks ago and said, I'd really like to consider this as a new way of thinking about our child's sleep. And I said, well, I don't really believe that. I don't really see it that way. And when I say something like that, he'll often say, I really would have appreciated if you had said, wow, that's a great insight. I'm so glad you're learning that. That is so cool. I really want to support you. And I don't know that I trust that, or that's not my opinion.

• 23:15Speaker 05

  But I often come back immediately with a response with some kind of triggered way of being that is just not appreciating and acknowledging him for the work that he's done.

• 23:31Esther Perel?

  When he says, I've got this, I know how to cut the food. You think, oh, how could I say something and he not take it so personal? Or you get annoyed?

• 23:47Speaker 05

  Um, probably both. I wish that I could say something in a way that didn't make him feel bad about himself or wrong for doing something. But I also recognize that I comment on pretty much everything. And that's not necessarily helpful in a relationship.

• 24:13Esther Perel?

  If, when I sit with a couple and I see one person putting the other one down, there is a sense of, oh, that's the direction of the arrows. But then if you wait long enough, you suddenly realize that actually, the other person is doing something quite similar. So they are symmetric. They are both doing the same thing to each other. That's part of why they're both able to recognize, we don't trust each other enough. We care deeply about each other, but in fact, in our interactions, that's not what we end up experiencing.

• 24:45Esther Perel?

  And yet, they both say, "We have this deep connection, and we could do better." And they find themselves a bit miffed, that they are derailing. And they don't understand why they're at each other's throat much of the time.

• 25:04Esther Perel?

  You know, you talk a lot about issues of trust.

• 25:11Esther Perel?

  But I'm sensing other things as well. And I have a bit of a dilemma. Because you are very articulate people. And you are extremely jargonized. You have internalized the entire vocabulary of modern psychology.

• 25:32Esther Perel?

  You label every behavior, you label yourself. It's like, you're not unhappy, you're depressed. You're not worried, you're anxious. You're not rebellious, you're ADD. You're not pissed that he's telling you what to do, and you absolutely don't like anybody telling you what to do. And so it becomes OCD. And my reluctance is, I don't want to add to that. Because I want to create more air and space between the two of you that isn't psychologizing, jargonizing, and pathologizing. Because that, I don't see where that helps with trust.

• 26:16Esther Perel?

  Sometimes it's good to know and to name things, don't misunderstand me. But this, it's like, everything is labeled. So in effect, you never say what you feel.

• 26:30Esther Perel?

  You know, when you say, "I'm a systems guy." She's rebelling, and you are saying, "I have better systems." And you're not actually reading when she says, "I don't want all these structures, don't tell me what to do." Then you suddenly start to feel depleted and defeated. It becomes depressive energy. It's a dance between the two of you that has a few elements. A, it has pieces of power struggles, but not acknowledged as such. Spoken about in the language of compassion or lack of compassion and trust. But in fact, there's controlling issues. And that doesn't mean one of you is controlling.

• 27:13Esther Perel?

  It means the other person experiences your requests as controlling.

• 27:19Esther Perel?

  Two, everything gets personalized. Cut it differently becomes, I can't do it right.

• 27:27Esther Perel?

  Rather than, are you concerned that she could choke? Or come back with the pieces and say, are they the right measurement, Mrs? Basically, you can regain a lot of power and a lot of control with humor. Because humor brings perspective to this. Instead of, oh, now I've been pierced with a dagger again. I can't even cut the food. And I'm thinking, this guy needs a lot of humor to diffuse this. Because he takes it so personal. And the third element is, there's very few things that one of you can feel or do or say that doesn't elicit a reaction in the other.

• 28:12Esther Perel?

  You're too close.

• 28:15Esther Perel?

  Now, it's a terrible thing to say to people, you're too close. Because we're supposedly all strive for a certain kind of closeness. This is too close. That closeness leads to personalizing rebellion, friction, in order to create more distance. And so you each are constantly pushing your elbows to say to the other, give me space, give me room.

• 28:44Speaker 06

  I have a thing I call toxic coaching that I do only with her. Where it stops being about me helping, it starts being about why isn't she getting this?

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:55Speaker 06

  And when we got together, I felt what we could be together. I felt my potential, I felt her potential. And you're absolutely right that there has been something with her where I've been so impatient and so intolerant.

• 29:16Speaker 06

  But I was so scared last year that we were going to run out of money and that all these other things were going to happen. Part of the thing that kept me down last year was the feeling that not only was I unemployable, which I have a history related to that, but basically she's unemployable because of the ADHD, because of the challenges of being on time. It's, it created enough fear and that I didn't know if she would actually be able to earn money, although she has earned money in the past. And actually, a large portion of our relationship has been the major breadwinner in her own way.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  That's fine.

• 29:51Speaker 06

  But, you know, she's been saying she wanted to be an artist for ten years. And then now it's like in a more impatient way, I'm like, okay, what are you doing? Just choose to do it.

• 30:05Esther Perel?

  The word anxiety, which he uses frequently, is so important to decode. Because he sees himself filling the holes in the ship. And he describes it as he's being anxious, at the same time as he says, I am responsible. I'm looking at all the fractures in our relationship. And she is dreaming about islands. She's clueless, which is part of the putting her down and experiencing himself as the one who does it all. When at the same time, she has been the primary provider and he has struggled with work.

• 30:49Esther Perel?

  And so part of what he wants is he wants her to be productive, accomplishing, confident, to compensate for what he feels he doesn't have inside of him. I mean, it's a very interesting thing that he coaches her when she's the one who's actually been doing quite well. She may be in transition. She has questions about if she wants to be an artist as a career, or if she wants to be artistic. But fundamentally, she's done quite well. And that is covered up all the time.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  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.

• 31:48Speaker 10

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• 33:43Speaker 05

  I feel pretty scared about my own inability to do what I want to do. And my partner is sort of like naggingly in the background going, "Well, you said you wanted to go in this direction, and you're not. What are you doing?" And when I became a mother, I felt that magical flow of, "Oh, this feels really good." Like, I'm challenged in a really good way, all the time, every day. And I'm not feeling that about my illustration or art, and so I think it's feeling stagnant,

• 34:24Speaker 05

  and I don't quite know how to get to the next place with it. And I am really afraid of disappointing my partner and disappointing the narrative that I'm going to become this successful illustrator.

• 34:40Esther Perel?

  There is your pursuit of art as an identity. There is, you're using your talents as an artist to have a career, which may not be the same. And then there is, what do you both need in order to provide for your family and for your life? And do you have an understanding that this is a joint endeavor? That you expected both of you to be financially providing? And if you do that, then your questions about your art, you can do as much thinking about that as you want. It's yours.

• 35:27Esther Perel?

  You can basically say to him, we agree that I need to provide this amount of money, and that's what I do. And how I do it is my business. At this moment, everything is constantly bleeding into each other.

• 35:44Esther Perel?

  Child, family, mother, artist, illustrator, it's all flowing as if it's a delta, you know? And therefore, he needs you to be the successful artist so that he doesn't have to feel that he's the sole provider. I'm trying to do a little storage arrangement. Because you talk about one thing, you talk about six things.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  Yeah. And the challenge is, you know, I talked about I'm a systems person, and I found it very helpful. And that hasn't really worked for her or with her.

• 36:21Esther Perel?

  What happens, though, is that you're so invested.

• 36:26Esther Perel?

  It's like a parent who wants their kid to do their homework more than the kid should want themselves. Or play the piano, or go to the baseball, or whatever. You can't want more for the other person than the other person wants for themselves.

• 36:47Esther Perel?

  If you want it so much more than them, then something happens inside of them where their preoccupation is less about the issue itself and more about how to get you out of the system.

• 37:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 37:03Speaker 06

  And I appreciate that. I think the question is the how. How are we steering the boat together?

• 37:08Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 37:08Speaker 06

  That's what I want to know. I don't know how.

• 37:11Esther Perel?

  Let's go very concrete and basically practice other vocabularies than the primary one that you both are in. And that is fine, by the way. It's just that it's too dominant, this kind of ongoing processing.

• 37:28Speaker 05

  Can I bring up the example?

• 37:30Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 37:32Speaker 05

  The example I really wanted to give, which happened recently, is I wanted to take our child to the pool, and we also had a dinner to go to right afterwards. And it's about an hour before we have to leave, and he says, "That's not enough time. That's too rushed. This is what you always do." What if something goes wrong and we can't quite make everything on time? He's often telling me, I don't really think through, how long does it take to get ready for something? How long does it take to prepare for the next thing? The moment he starts talking about that, my brain is going, I can't concentrate on what you're saying, I need to get ready. I need to get our child ready.

• 38:17Speaker 05

  We need to get out the door, we're gonna make this happen. I wanna make my dreams come true, everything's gonna happen and it's gonna be great. And he says to me, hey, you're not acknowledging that I'm here having a little bit of a freak out. I need you to pause, take some time to acknowledge that I just said, this is really too much for me. I need you to honor that and say, I hear you, I really get it. And basically have some compassion for him in that moment. This has happened millions of times and I sit there and I kind of freeze up and I'm like, how do I get this all done?

• 39:01Speaker 05

  And now he's upset and now it's my fault and I've only got 20 more minutes. And I just wanna make him happy and feel better. So I'll just say, I hear you, okay, okay, it's fine, I won't be late. And that really triggers him because he'll say, I don't trust that you actually care about me right now. It feels like you don't care that I'm overwhelmed and you don't care that this is having an impact on me.

• 39:30Esther Perel?

  So this is a perfect moment where they illustrate how it doesn't matter the situation. The form is gonna be the same. When she says, can you cut small pieces? He personalizes it as if he can't cut food for his child. When she says, let's go to the pool, he says to her, you are a clot with time, you can't schedule, you have no sense of chronology. And instantly, they have both taken an issue and made it something to blame the other person with and to diminish the other person with. And that's, for me, the moment when she said, it doesn't matter, this happens all the time, it's always the same. This is the moment when they are describing to me the always the same.

• 40:22Esther Perel?

  Did you go to the pool?

• 40:24Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 40:25Esther Perel?

  Yeah. And did you go to the dinner?

• 40:27Speaker 06

  Uh huh.

• 40:27Esther Perel?

  Yeah. And did it work out?

• 40:30Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 40:31Esther Perel?

  The thing that jumped at me when you told this beautiful example, because it's very rich. This could be a few hours just on that, you know? First one is, I want to go to the pool. And he says, "But you will never plan, you are obviously late." So you start with an activity and it becomes a rant about your personality.

• 40:59Esther Perel?

  There is no longer a discussion about timeliness or ability to put two activities. It's not about the subject anymore. It instantly goes to the person. And then, once it becomes about the person, the sad piece is that she tunes you out.

• 41:18Esther Perel?

  She recruits you and she tunes you out.

• 41:22Esther Perel?

  And that's confusing because she brings you in, you play your part, you do the reasonable person, and then she basically tells you, "You're a bore."

• 41:32Speaker 06

  She tells me that who I am and what I am doesn't matter, and that's back to my past.

• 41:36Esther Perel?

  Okay, let's go there.

• 41:38Speaker 06

  So there you go.

• 41:39Esther Perel?

  Go ahead.

• 41:40Speaker 06

  I was raised in a house where I was provided for materially, but lived in fear, particularly of my stepfather and of the day that the verbal harassment and yelling would turn violent. It didn't, at least not physically. But the story I always tell is that I had fashioned some weapons that I kept under my bed and I had planned out in my head how I was going to stop him, if I needed to stop him. That never happened.

• 42:15Esther Perel?

  But you kept yourself small.

• 42:18Speaker 06

  I was scared all the time, constantly. And then my mother, who I am not in communication with,

• 42:29Speaker 06

  I was provided for materially, but it was like, there's no emotion to it. So me being an emotional, sensitive, scared child. I was just met with this constant questioning of who I was and what I was about and whether it was okay. And it was actually my mother who chose to break off contact with me after an incident and extremely unreasonably.

• 42:52Speaker 06

  So to me, her not taking literally thirty seconds to tune in, say, I hear that's true for you and I care. What can we do and or

• 43:06Speaker 06

  is it still okay if we move forward?

• 43:09Esther Perel?

  Now I see you shake your head, so that means you know that?

• 43:16Esther Perel?

  That if you actually took a moment, yes, that if you took a moment to acknowledge him, that would dissipate.

• 43:23Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:24Esther Perel?

  Okay.

• 43:24Speaker 05

  I've had a couple of therapists say, you know exactly what he needs.

• 43:30Esther Perel?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:32Speaker 05

  So if I can stop and take a moment and really drop in, like, hey, I noticed you're feeling alone right now. I'm I'm really sensing that you're feeling anxiety or fear. And how can I support you? I've had many people just say, like, it's so clear what he needs.

• 43:50Esther Perel?

  Right, and?

• 43:52Speaker 05

  And I just have this tendency to wanna say, it's not my responsibility. I don't want to have to do that. Like, I told him, there's an hour before we have to go. Let's get ready and do it. Why does he need so much support right now? And that I feel terrible about that. And I also feel somewhat justified because it comes up almost every time we have to go anywhere.

• 44:22Speaker 05

  Actually, it's gotten a lot better, but it used to be that he like viscerally didn't want to go most places, so he would actually get really upset and he would come to me and say, "I actually feel so anxious and I'm so uncomfortable and I don't know if I can go." And I would say, "We have twenty minutes to get ready. I hear your social anxiety or whatever's coming up, but I have to get ready. I can't be there for you in this moment."

• 44:53Esther Perel?

  Have you ever tried the other direction?

• 44:55Speaker 05

  Actually stopping?

• 44:56Esther Perel?

  No. Instead of, "I can't help you. We've got twenty minutes, I've got my own stuff to deal with." The other direction would be,

• 45:08Esther Perel?

  "You'll be fine." You often have a little freak out just before, "But we have a beautiful community, that's where you're going."

• 45:18Esther Perel?

  You say, "I don't wanna be in the deficiency, I don't wanna have to take care of something that's not my responsibility." Nobody says it's your responsibility. It's just a nice thing to do. So you don't wanna parent him in that moment, you have a kid, you don't want another kid, get it? But you can reassure somebody very quickly and just say, "Shall we put a good piece of music? What's a song that can accompany us? Not talk about it necessarily.

• 45:45Esther Perel?

  Put a good piece of music. Say just something about how much fun it was when you went the week before. And then name this anxiety, give that anxiety a name and just say, you know, "Oh, Mary came for a visit again. We should tell Mary that she's not invited tonight," or something. Whatever the name you wanna give to. But this anxiety needs to become named and externalized, rather than constantly seen as invading your entire being.

• 46:12Esther Perel?

  And then you just say, "Oh, Mary, come on. What are you doing?" But now you're talking to Mary, rather than to him. There's a ton of different ways to respond that are A, more fun, B, more productive,

• 46:29Esther Perel?

  and kinder, and probably more effective. You know, a kiss would actually really help me in this moment. A hug, a smile, but it's about diffusing, it's not about not taking these things seriously and, but it's also about not letting them run the show.

• 46:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling some dance-off energy.

• 46:52Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Speaker 06

  Um, I think we're just getting into it's like, no, it's time for a dance-off.

• 46:56Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 46:56Speaker 06

  Let's do it.

• 46:58Esther Perel?

  But the point is to cut it short because you spend too much time in there. And then you become more defiant and more rebellious to him. Because every situation becomes a ten very quickly.

• 47:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 47:15Esther Perel?

  You first need to change the intensity, the predictability, the rigidity and the reactivity. And then we can go to the content.

• 47:29Esther Perel?

  One of the issues of the content is.

• 47:33Esther Perel?

  We have a kid, we think about financial stability differently from before.

• 47:39Esther Perel?

  The goal is not that your identity needs to be connected to your career, needs to be connected to your income. And if he's not a good advisor, you find someone else, that's fine, it's not a personal rejection.

• 47:52Speaker 06

  I would like that air, I would like to not have to take on that since I wanna trust her that she can do this.

• 47:58Esther Perel?

  No, you don't have to trust her.

• 48:00Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 48:01Esther Perel?

  No, you don't, you may. But you don't have to. You may think that you don't really know if she will one day pull through on this and throw herself into it.

• 48:14Speaker 06

  I don't need to trust that she's gonna make an art career. It's actually a little more fundamental, I've seen her work patterns. And they're not all great with late invoices and all of that, and it drives me bonkers.

• 48:29Esther Perel?

  And could you help her in that area? To set up?

• 48:33Speaker 06

  I tried.

• 48:34Esther Perel?

  Okay, that's okay, don't do it, then she'll hire someone. She'll hire a bookkeeper for two hours a week.

• 48:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:42Esther Perel?

  But what I'm hearing that you say as well is you get good advice, you go to therapy, you have other people telling you what would help. And then you say, why should I?

• 48:55Esther Perel?

  You do solicit and dismiss. Like you do with him, you probably do with the therapists too. You may wanna ask yourself, how do I step out of that? I ask for help and then I defy the help.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I've had multiple therapists where I said, I really want help with ADHD. I want help with specific things in my relationship. And I ask them for help and then I decide not to work with them anymore. But I just kept coming up against, I'm the only one who has the answers. They're not giving me enough information. It's not helping me. Yeah.

• 49:39Esther Perel?

  So have you had this running text today as well?

• 49:43Speaker 05

  Uh, no, actually. I really appreciate the humor idea. And this idea of enmeshment is huge. I mean, we joked that we were spending every day with each other. We like never were apart for years. We lived together in a really small space, often in tents, because we were farming together. And so we would live in these tiny places with each other and rarely do anything apart. And that was something we liked.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  But I think at a certain point in our relationship, we realized this is actually really unhealthy.

• 50:31Esther Perel?

  One of the most important tasks in every relationship is how we straddle autonomy and togetherness. This is what you're going to have with your child too.

• 50:47Esther Perel?

  You're good at how to create the togetherness.

• 50:53Esther Perel?

  You are new and gradually learning to create separateness. Independence, individuality, freedom, air, space, differentiation, as we would call it.

• 51:12Esther Perel?

  So I have a question. What's a good piece of music that you like, that when you start to feel like you're getting all entangled, you would say time for?

• 51:24Speaker 06

  I can think of like five or six songs that would make me happy. And I'm just trying to think of ones that would also make her happy too.

• 51:31Speaker 05

  What would make you happy?

• 51:32Esther Perel?

  No, it's not happy. Disentangle us, stop us in our tracks.

• 51:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:37Esther Perel?

  Shift the mood. If you shift the mood, then you can shift the dynamic.

• 51:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:44Esther Perel?

  And whoever initiates the disentanglement needs to be met by the other who says, okay.

• 51:54Esther Perel?

  Because you have to see this as a maneuver to help the relationship. It stops us from going down that rabbit hole.

• 52:05Esther Perel?

  And no talking.

• 52:08Esther Perel?

  Because in those moments, talking is not helpful.

• 52:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:14Speaker 05

  We used to have moments where we would light a candle, turn off all the lights,

• 52:22Speaker 05

  play music. It would often not be when it was super heightened, but more when it felt like he was in need of a break. Like, let's take a pause and we're about to cook dinner, we're about to get into the next thing.

• 52:39Esther Perel?

  Nice, beautiful. And probably more helpful than we should have a Monday meeting to discuss the week.

• 52:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, the meetings was just more about slowing down

• 52:51Esther Perel?

  I know.

• 52:52Speaker 06

  the planning and the this and what are we doing this and oh, this and it's to the point where it's like. I just wanna say good morning to her and have a kiss and like try that instead of literally her coming down and saying like, hey, do you know where so and so is or I have to do this thing.

• 53:08Esther Perel?

  You need.

• 53:08Speaker 06

  The slowing down is important.

• 53:09Esther Perel?

  Okay, but it's slowing down and it's reintroducing some ritual.

• 53:16Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 53:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 53:18Esther Perel?

  You have rituals with your daughter and you have routines for yourself. Rituals are routines that are imbued with creativity and intention.

• 53:32Esther Perel?

  You probably have rituals if you go to dinner with other people and you do your holidays, but you don't have enough rituals that create an enshrinement around the two of you.

• 53:43Speaker 06

  I think that's so helpful because the alternative is this feeling of like things are always falling forward for me and it's like, can we pull back and like in the morning, kiss in the morning before we say anything else, you know, like.

• 53:57Esther Perel?

  But if she's not giving you the kiss, give the lead with a little more spice. So that it doesn't come from that place of I feel neglected, I feel unseen.

• 54:09Speaker 06

  Right.

• 54:09Esther Perel?

  I am upset or and now she has to decide if she wants to get into a caretaking session and all of that. Use your spunk.

• 54:22Esther Perel?

  How would that be?

• 54:24Esther Perel?

  Can you come down a second in the way that he thinks is too fast, too busy, too distracting? Give him the lines.

• 54:33Speaker 05

  Oh, like.

• 54:34Esther Perel?

  This is a scene, so we may just as well rehearse the scene.

• 54:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, we're pre-acting now.

• 54:39Speaker 05

  So I walk downstairs into him and our daughter having breakfast.

• 54:44Esther Perel?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:44Speaker 05

  And I say, oh, you know, I forgot that I told this person we were gonna get there at three P M.

• 54:54Esther Perel?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:55Speaker 05

  And he says. Can we just stop? Can we just connect and say good morning and be present with each other?

• 55:05Esther Perel?

  And then?

• 55:05Speaker 06

  But I'm already stressed out by that time.

• 55:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:07Esther Perel?

  Ah, okay, alright.

• 55:09Speaker 06

  But I totally hear what you're saying. So instead of me saying the thing that she said, what's coming to me now is I would turn to our child and they'd be like, "Hey, baby, I'm gonna kiss you because mama doesn't wanna kiss." And like, and it's a little shaming, but it would be very playful. I'm not trying to shame her. We'll see how it lands, but you know, just bringing a little joy, bringing a little connection. And then she'd get the message, I think.

• 55:30Esther Perel?

  And kind of snapping her out of her thing, but without taking it personal.

• 55:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 55:37Esther Perel?

  The essential word is playful.

• 55:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:42Esther Perel?

  I have a feeling that some of the trust that you're talking about is more likely to come back with playfulness than with rules.

• 55:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 55:52Esther Perel?

  And for that, there needs to be a little bit more space. The space is in order to come closer, but differently.

• 56:03Esther Perel?

  I only have one session with this couple, so I'm not gonna be able to transform the whole culture of the relationship. But I do introduce the notion of playfulness because when you play, you can say a lot of things without taking them too seriously. When you play, you have the license to be slightly aggressive or hostile, but it's for fun. When you play, it's when risk-taking is fun. And I'm trying to first to create a different mood between them because they take it very literal, because the enmeshment is such where everyone is experiencing the reality of the other as if it was their own.

• 56:46Esther Perel?

  It's that kind of loss of boundary. And so, playfulness actually introduces a boundary, but the boundary is in order to create a more healthy space where people can actually connect.

• 57:01Speaker 00

  Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destri Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristin Muller, and Julianne Hatton. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider. And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul.

• 57:39Speaker 11

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• 58:16Speaker 13

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