Trapped In Their Own Story

None of the voices in the series are on-going patients of Esther Perrells.

In each episode 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.

“I just remember saying, "Well, if you knew the truth, you wouldn't be able to handle it."”

They've been together for almost two decades. We met each other when we were in eighth grade, and we got together our senior year. We were much familiar ever since. They've been disconnected from each other for a long time.

It's always kind of been rocky, it's always kind of had it's ups and downs.

And it's like I was one of his priorities. They each have a cutely aware of how they wanted something more from the other. More attention, more desire, more affirmation. And after years of complaining about the lack of affirmation, they each found other people to give them the attention they so much craved.

“So it was like our total of maybe six facilities I guess you could say.”

Mine happened a year after discovery of hers. That one I was in such a dark place that here someone actually tell you that you're good enough. Here we are right now, almost four years later. They're not in the grip of it, but they are still dealing with everything that led to it. I feel like he's disconnected and he doesn't want to talk to me or he's afraid to talk to me.

I keep trying to improve myself to be able to be the person that I feel like she needs.

And maybe that's the part that hers and all of a sudden I just feel like I'm always trying to improve myself for her.

And I just feel like it just never measures up. I feel like he doesn't like to share with me. It doesn't like to communicate more so now as the years have gone by. I feel like I withdraw a lot more when I feel him being distant. So if he withdraws you withdraw and when you withdraw then.

I just like basically like roommates. I'd say like we just are parents and there's like no real romantic connection. I realize that I really do need that like I you know. But I just don't want to be fake or forced. On your part or on his part is part. I don't want to tell him I don't want to say you know I don't want to be the one to say hey like you didn't come and kiss me.

But yeah, I still do.

“Is that part of a broader expectation that you are to be the person and she can respond?”

I think it one of my challenges is like I shouldn't have to tell you you shouldn't know. So yeah, I think a lot of times it is like she expects me to fully pursue her. I feel like I'm used to what kind of like shut down. It's probably back here at. I feel like everything that happened was like well why.

Why would you like open yourself up to that possibility again? Can I just ask you for a moment give me a bit of background so I know what we're talking about. Well, the infidelity on both of us like both of us had affairs. But I guess like I've been thinking about it a lot lately and to me I feel like. There has been infidelity from the beginning with his porn addiction.

And I don't even know if he considers it an addiction. It was just something you know guys do like it's just a guy think guys do this. To me that was that was betrayal. And I let him know that. And he would just, you know, reassure me that it's just a guy think.

Tell me about the betrayal.

Him watching porn and you know. Being okay with it and trying to convince me that it was okay. So I, you know, voice to him that I wasn't okay with that. The betrayal was that he was watching. Watching more than you cared for.

Watching other women and rejecting you. Making you feel that there was something wrong with you for judging it or being uncomfortable with it. Where was the betrayal for this? There's lots of pieces today. So I want to make sure that I really know what your experience.

Yeah.

I would say him watching it and me feeling like that was what he wanted.

And I wasn't able to fulfill his fantasies. And part of it was you didn't care for it. We're not at all attracted to the same kind of play. You thought he's trying to put a different thing on me that has nothing to do with me. Yeah, I wasn't.

I wasn't ever really into it.

“I just went along with it because I thought that's what he wanted.”

So, you know, when he would ask, we did watch, you know, I would agree to it. And I would feel gross out there and because in any time anything that I would see. And then if he would try that in the bedroom, like, it just kind of shut me down. You're shaking your head. Tell me what you're saying yes.

Just that, like, if you ever brought anything into the bedroom, what did you learn that? Where did you see that? What have you been watching? What have you been doing? Yeah, that could be very vanilla. Because anything outside the ordinary was, it would, like, I think instantly kind of be a trigger for her.

And she'd start putting up the laws and you could fill that separation of kind of like, Well, now you're kind of like, okay, I'm going through with this, but I really don't want to be here anymore because now I'm thinking about what you've been doing. And what were you into that we're talking about? So I have a sense.

“I think for her, like, she came from like a very conservative family.”

Mine was a little bit more open. So I experienced, like, sexual images and stuff, like, for the young, like, around, like, eight years old. And I think, actually, much like, introduced her to all of that stuff. I didn't ever really have anything like, oh, that's my thing. Like, I love that.

Um, so anytime you were trying to, like, bring anything to the bedroom and kind of like, excited or change it up a little bit. Like I said, it was usually met with, well, what did you see that, or where'd you get it from? And so we just kind of like, learned over the years. Like, I can play with it up here in my mind, but, like, generally, act on.

But you were eager to bring all kinds of things to the bedroom, and less curious about her. Um.

No, I think at first, I was more interested in seeing what we could do together.

If there was, like, a lot of, like, a lot of, like, a lot of, like, a lot of, like, a lot of, like, excitement of, like, all, like, you know, this were both pretty much new. It was, except for what I had seen. And then, like, instantly, those kind of, like, sort of, like, kind of shut down. Yeah, that's gross. And, like, again, there was something I could play with in my own mind,

but it wasn't something. Um, I was ever then comfortable with, like, bringing back. And that's when you feel that he began to lie.

“Um, no, I think he, I don't get to remember, like, when I found out about his problem.”

It's one problem. But is there an agreement that this was a problem? Or was the problem that you wanted to share certain fantasies with her? And that that was not at all what she wanted to explore with you. And therefore, you took it underground.

Where was the problem? He would do it by himself, like, and he would even say, like, I just do it to, for the end result. The conversation about sex and sexuality, instantly, develops in a conversation about porn.

They grew up with attitudes towards sexuality,

filled with an idea that sex should be preserved for marriage,

“that it should be missionary, clean, and fertile.”

It is not unusual for people to grow up with negative messaging around sexuality. For them, it was rooted in their Christian Mormon background. And so much of what they've experienced for years is the consequence of ignorance, negative attitudes towards sex, and the inability to communicate about it, and so it became a silent sexual rat.

And as far as, you know, not wanting to do things with him, I feel like he was already experienced, and I wasn't. I'm wondering if he really had much experience. He had very many experience. He had experienced with himself and his own fantasies jerking of by himself,

that is not communication, that is not being with a partner.

No, that's not, but he has always said that that was his escape,

and that was his way of love to feel love or to feel wanted. He always felt like, if somebody loved you, they would want to do that with you. My thought was more like, if you really love me, you'd want to be sexual with me. Yeah, but she didn't feel that you wanted to be sexual with her.

No, she didn't. You think you were trying to be sexual with her, and intimate with her. I understand that, and on some level, it makes a lot of sense. From where she was, you're coming there with your bucket of play, that you had done by yourself all those years, that had very little to do with her,

and didn't ask her anything about herself, didn't feel like any, particularly curious move on your parts. Every experience with her was to be with her, and I think that's something I tried to explain to you a lot of times.

You always thought, like, oh, you want me to be like her,

or those like her, I was just like, no, like, I didn't, I didn't need you to be anyone other than yourself, and the only things I ever did bring in was because like anything I watched

“is like the only thing that actually turned me on about watching it,”

was like, oh, I would love to do that with you. I didn't ever watch it, but like, oh, I want to do that with her. It was no like, oh, like, how great would it be to do that or experience that with you? I think that got lost probably somewhere in translation, a couple of times, or maybe you wouldn't want to believe that,

but those conversations we'd have before. So you just watched this sort of like a research project? Yeah, I guess that's the way of looking at it. Is it like, that's the one, that's interesting. I wonder what that would be like.

But knowing that I was not okay. Which is why I didn't ever bring it in. No, but I was not okay with watching it.

“With me watching it, yes, but I think the reason I kept watching”

was because I was the only place I could look at out there. I voiced how it made me feel. And he wasn't willing to stop for me. Or to even be honest about it with me. Like I think, you know, he where it comes to me and say,

"Hey, I'm struggling, you know, that would've made a world of difference." It's a sad bind that you bought got yourself in, because he wanted to share it with you. And then once he knew that you were not open to it and turned off by it big time, he took it privately.

In order not to impose it on you. And felt okay, there'll be my personal sexual world. I'll have one world with you and one world with myself. And he didn't mean to not tell you. But when he told you, there was not a good consequence.

So in a way, he may have lied that there also was a lying inviteee. There was a person who said, "Don't tell me." I want you to tell me, but don't tell me. And then, I don't know if he thinks it's a problem. He thinks he found a solution.

I kept it to myself. I didn't impose it on you. I didn't ask you any more, any of this stuff. What more do you want? He says, "If you had loved me, you would have done this with me."

It went to the other. If you really cared about me, you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. And how many years of this? Go ahead. What are we going to do on?

Together? Eighteen? Eighteen, no. Yes.

“And I think, I don't think he really ever explained to me why he did it.”

I think that's where it. To me, became the problem. I probably didn't even fully understand that. Eighteen, I think I had any understanding of myself that way. And what did you come to understand over time?

Growing up, I never saw a lot of examples of relationships really.

I very early in my life connected sex with love. I always felt like nobody was ever going to want to be with me anyway. I literally, I can remember multiple times it's a child thinking I was going to grow up alone. I never thought I was going to have a girlfriend, let alone a wife. If that seemed absolutely impossible to me.

Why so? As I can't always felt, I don't know different. I don't know if you know where it is. Different outside. I grew up in a very interesting family dynamic.

I'm literally, I described it as like being literally the black sheep of the family. My parents are white, on the siblings are white, because it's a white like everyone in my family's white. And then there was just me. And so like it's a kid. I just, I didn't understand why I looked different.

Just knew that I was. And not that my family ever made me feel like I didn't belong or that I wasn't outcast.

“But I think I just kind of put that on myself just because I looked so differently.”

Let me start to get friends and they come over and they see you and the major parents and their siblings is up. They kind of like, what? But how does this all work? And so I think at that point then I started to recognize that I'm different. I got a friend's house and everyone looks the same and kind of my house and this like blob.

I'm not blob, I'm black, they're white. Yeah, like I'm literally the spec and like the snow. He describes being one of very few black people in his entire community, church and school. And he also describes an entirely white family in which he is the only black person. The family has organized around a secret so much so that he knows not to ask.

He knows he's black, he doesn't know why. We are in the midst of our session. There is still so much to talk about.

“We need to take a brief break so stay with us.”

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There's a scene like, I can remember being like eight years old and watching like Beauty and the Beast.

And here in like the very first opening line of Beauty and the Beast was like for who could ever love a Beast.

And I remember like crying in the middle of the movie, eight years old. Thinking that that was like me, like no one's ever going to like love me because I'm like this Beast.

“And so when I found porn and anything else, I was like, oh my gosh, here's the thing where, you know,”

there's black guys at white girls and everything out like there's all these different mixes and anything you can think of. It's there for you and people are just willing and totally into it. And so it allowed me to go somewhere where I could fantasize about being accepted to that level. And so for me, it instantly became kind of a place where I could go when I didn't feel accepted when I didn't feel loved. Don't think I ever had it to a point where it overtook me though to where I was like, oh, I've got to do it, I'm doing it multiple times in a day.

Hold on one moment and ask her since she wanted to understand what was this for you. Ask her how she just heard what you said. I don't all of that. What is what did you hear? You saw porn as love.

So to you attraction, you know, someone attracted to you. They, you know, they love you. Like it's like to me that was mean, that's mean like on a physical level. So, but to me like, and I don't know if I'm, you know, the only one to feel this way, but porn is is not love. It's literally just people feeding other's fantasies.

So like you said, you can find anything you want, but that's not connection. Yeah. She began by listening to him. And then she broke the focus back onto her experience very quickly. And so as a result, she heard him talk about love, but she didn't hear him talk about the underlying much more fundamental need, which was to be accepted.

When you think of yourself as the beast, you think of places where perhaps there are others like you. I felt like to this day tell you that if I don't feel, you know, connected to you on a higher level, like, you know, on more emotional level, I'm more withdrawn with the sexual part of it.

“But when you tell me just like after like after the affairs, I think we had sex once a few weeks later when, and this, and you tell me then, like, this is the first time I've ever talked, like, connected with you.”

And I was like, oh my gosh, like, how is that possible? Because for me, like, sex for me, then, like, that was how I was able to connect with you.

But that was after the affairs and we're responding 24/7 with each other.

“We were having deep, meaningful conversations. We were connecting on the level that I needed from the beginning.”

And I'm like, realizing right now that we kind of went backwards, like we went, we started with sex and being, you know, that being number one thing over versus conversation and deep, meaningful connection.

Yeah, that I needed. I feel like I was crying out the whole first what 15 years of our relationship.

Just be wanted by you, other than sexually, and also sexually, because, you know, to me, like, you were watching porn, you were looking at the pictures. To me, that just told me that I, I wasn't what you wanted. I was shut off, not that I wanted to be. I just, I guess, in the way I did it to protect myself, I don't know.

“I think that's part of why, like, the affairs hurt me so much, but stuff like that, because I connected.”

Can I ask you to try something? Because you've just listened to her, and she explained to you something very, very important. And if you hear it and you respond the way you're about to do, it still is you with yourself. I did what I did because I felt what I felt because I. And I want you to do the same exercise I asked you to just before. What did you just hear?

Because your wife just said something that if you listen to it carefully, you'll actually understand her behavior over almost two decades.

“Yeah, I did, I did hear one of the things you said I was talking about when you're just now.”

It's like when you said, like, I wanted the communication, like, I wanted you to want me, but I wanted you to want me for, like, the communication. I wanted you to want me for a connection, but not his sexual sense for the communication. And her, it, put that way before.

Like, I heard you say, like, I'm good for it, it's my body and like, all you want me for is this, but I had never heard it or thought of it.

Like, I want you to want me for my communication, right? I want you to want me for, like, my conversation. I've never done a wide and like. Did he get it? Yeah. For me, connection, like, I wanted, you know, like a friendship and then, you know, like we talk and connect on the emotional level.

First, that was your way of showing me that you loved me, but I didn't receive it that way. But you also added, it's not just that I wanted you to just talk with me. I wanted you to be interested in me, but you were so busy making sure that I would be interested in you. You were so busy making sure to confirm that you will be wonderful, that you didn't realize that you were rejecting her. Yeah, I wasn't ever doing that saying, in my own, and I wasn't ever doing anything that I was doing and it's like, I'm choosing this over her.

But I'm not comfortable bringing that to you for, like, what it will bring up into you that. You know, like, I'll just do it quietly over here.

You see, you both have been operating from your own internal logic, and it's been so powerful.

It's been been so many years, each of you, consistent with your own logic, interpreting everything the other person does from that logic, and it makes sense. From where you come from, it makes sense. And part of what I hear him say is, I'll satisfy myself, that way that's taken care of.

She said a much better than anything.

Answer that. That was what I was trying to say, not as much. The sad part is that each of you lives for 20 years feeling rejected by the other. So after years of his finding acceptance in his own private erotics, she began to travel with his sister. They'd go to clubs, she'd hook up with strangers.

They were a string of one night stands.

“She makes a strong point of saying there was no penetrative sex, but hey, where does sex actually start?”

What was clear is that everybody had found their own source of acceptance, and it wasn't with each other. And at that moment, the conversation moved from talking about porn, to talking about cheating, infidelity, and betrayal. What did you learn through those experiences? What did you learn as a woman? I mean, I knew that I was craving his attention, and I, you know, I knew that that's something that I needed.

And so, you know, growing on these trips and getting out of attention, I felt like, like, it just gave me a sense of, like, I still do have it. Like, I still do have that attraction.

“I am attractive to certain men, like, I just, because I did not feel it from him.”

I am more often times think back of, like, you know, I was ashamed of myself for letting, letting myself do that, because to me, like, it didn't mean anything.

It was always a one-time thing.

There was drinking involved, you know, like intoxication. I went into it fully expecting, you know, to just get a break and to get some time, you know, away from the kids and just to myself. And I remember leaving the trips just so upset that I, you know, that I didn't get that. That's not what it was.

“And I think I even came home and would tell you, like, please don't let me go on another trip with her, like, just say no next time.”

So I don't have to, because anytime I would say no, it was, you know, a push and manipulation, like, oh, I'll pay for it. I'll pay for everything. And I'm not, like, you know, giving excuses or anything of, you know, why I did what I did because, you know, I know I have my agency, but I was just in a vulnerable state and, um, I believe she knew that. And she, in a way, prayed upon that, I guess. You experienced the same with your husband and with your sister in law. That on some level, your sexuality ends up in the hands of the other person.

Oh, yeah, yes, yeah. And I also feel bad because, you know, like, in a way, like, we both be trained and, like, that's a sister, how could, how could she do that to him also. What she tells is the plight of many women who don't own their sexuality and who find themselves in an experience with where they feel preyed upon, where the other is the predator.

Even her sister, you know, she never really could own and say what she wanted.

As best she tried to say what she didn't want. And part of her process now is to reclaim her sexuality and become the owner of her own eroticism. Do you see your whole experience as a negative experience?

Not saying that it was the best choice to make to get unstuck, but it's effective. Yeah. And then also, like, I mean, some other good thing is that he learned a story from it, because we went to his parents and told them. And so I don't know if that would have ever happened. Tell me.

Um, that I was a product of an affair.

And that's why I was always different.

They kept that. They didn't ever want me to feel like I wasn't there, so they never told me growing up. They always had some of the story of, like, what we just have more Indian and our family. And I just got like the more Indian blood or whatever else. And so, um, took him 32 years before they finally told me because I went to my dad after finding about her.

And I was like, Dad, I got this stuff. I don't know what to do or how I handle it.

And he was just, we kept telling me you stay, you stay with her.

You continue to deliver as I die. He's like, I don't know how I can be that.

“I feel so I would like, like, how would you handle it? And it's just basically more like, well, how do you think you got here?”

I don't think my parents would have told me otherwise I'm pretty sure they would have both taken it to their creation. I'd just been left to figure out whether or not I was true. What did it do to you to have them actually sped it out? I guess there's like a childish part of me that was like still wanted to hold on to like, maybe I'm just this miracle baby. Because my dad was an incredible man.

He never once spamed me feel like I wasn't his own son.

Beautiful. Beautiful and mom. Mom was the same way, like they're, they both love me, like unconditionally. But you're the one traveling around the life wondering why people will never love you. Yeah, yeah.

And how do you square one and one? I didn't really have any evidence to back up while I, that I didn't belong because my family never made me feel, I didn't.

“But I think I got the, I'm different and no one's going to want to be around me more from my sons.”

And from the secret. And probably from the secret that nobody wanted to talk about. The tragic part here is that in order for him not to feel different, which his parents saw as the ultimate expression of love, did the night, his fundamental difference. They tried to make love color blind, rather than accept him.

With his difference. We need to take a break, but please stay with us. A stare is coming back to South by Southwest this year for a special live episode of where should we begin. This year, a stare will be joined by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Spike Jones. To explore what happens when the being that we feel knows us the best isn't a human being.

The session will be open to all South by Southwest Batchholders. Visit voxmedia.com/ssw to get a discount on an innovation badge and pre-register for our live taping. You can also learn about all the other sessions on the voxmedia podcast stage, which will feature Care, Swisher and Scott Galaway, Bernay Brown and Adam Grant, Mark Hezbrown Lee, Vivian 2 and Waymore.

Visit voxmedia.com/ssw to learn more. And I'll see you there.

“Do you feel that you are more prepared in this moment to take ownership over your sexuality?”

So that you don't find yourself each time in compromised situations of things that you kind of won't really want,

but it's not clear that you know what you want.

Do you feel that makes sense? And I would like to know what I want to take ownership. And how would that look?

“What would be some steps that you would take for that?”

That's the thing, I feel like I don't know. I use my conversations about like I've let him know that I don't feel hurt or respected. Because everything you say is what you don't. It's what you don't. Yeah.

So what you want is not expressed by what you don't want. So this is an affirmative statement. I want. So I want to be heard. I want to be.

I want to fail respected.

By you and the kids. I feel like there's a lot. Which turns into me. Losing my cool and yelling. To be heard.

“I feel like that's the only way that I am hurt as if I'm.”

Losing my shit. And I don't. I hate that. I do not want to be like that. Because that's how I grew up with my dad.

What is your background? I was raised in a pretty strict obvious family. And I'm the baby of nine kids so big family. My dad had a pretty bad temper. And I was you know, I was scared.

And I don't want my kids to be scared of me.

And he always tells me that they.

They sent me out of fear and they listened to him out of respect. And I just I just. I want to know how to get them to listen to me out of respect. Can I ask you something? As the youngest of nine.

“Did you learn just to to make claims or everybody spoke for you?”

Um, I believe that everybody spoke for me. Like I just I. I've lost my voice. And. I'm always like when I meet people, I'm always super quiet and reserved.

When. In reality, I'm super bubbly and funny and. You know. I don't know. I don't feel like people care to. You know, know me or hear me.

My husband doesn't care. My children don't care. No people don't care. He sister doesn't care. You too have. A way of seeing.

The relationship world around you. From a very particular lens. None of these people respect me. None of these people listen to me. None of these people pay attention to me.

None of these people. Know what I want. And I would love for them to be different with me. And I'm going to invite you to change that. I actually want to ask you something that's a little bit more difficult.

Is what do you want not what you want from others. Because even when you yell in order to be heard, you feel like they pushed you to yell. It's everybody is responsible for your actions. But you. Yeah.

So, yes. Go ahead. Well, I would rather be more outgoing. I would rather just say what I want to say rather than fear.

No, no. Oh, sorry. That's the other one.

I guess I want to be free of that.

“I want to feel free to be able to say what comes to my end when it does.”

I want you to take a pad. I want you to ask her 10 once. So that you develop your curiosity about her. I want to see that too. Good.

You just take notes.

You don't breathe down her neck.

You just record.

“If you want it too much, then she won't be able to want it,”

because she doesn't know how to want what you want, and still feel that she owns it. I guess I do here. I would love to know, like, can think you want. It's what you will do with each other.

It's not just what you're going to promise you won't do with others. Ironically, the only other time they had had a deep,

“meaningful, honest conversation about their relationship”

was in the immediate aftermath of their affairs, which is actually not uncommon.

This was probably the second conversation.

And that in itself, beckons for a third. You just heard a classic session of where should we begin with Esther Perrell. We are part of the box media podcast network and partnership with New York Magazine and the cut.

To apply with your partner for a session on the podcast for the transcripts or show notes on each episode, or to sign up for Esther's monthly newsletter, go to esterprelle.com. Esther Perrell is the author of mating and captivity

in the state of affairs. She also created a game of stories called where should we begin. For details, go to her website esterprelle.com. [BLANK_AUDIO]