Proxy with Yowei Shaw
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Hey, Invisibilia. This is Yo-A. You might remember me from the show. Today, we have an episode from my new indie podcast, Proxy. Proxy is strange. And some people are saying, wonderful. The idea for it comes from experiences I had working as a reporter. Like, for example, when I was at Invisibilia.

there would be times I'd be dealing with some sort of personal problem, something really unique, usually embarrassing, and I couldn't talk to anyone about it because I didn't know anyone who could relate. And so a bit selfishly, I'd report a story about it. I'd find someone dealing with the exact same questions and talk to experts who could explain the confusing feelings I was having. And by the end of reporting, I'd feel better. That's how I came up with Proxy.

The idea of the show is that listeners come to me with emotional conundrums. And then I scour the world for the perfect unicorn, the stranger who has been in nearly exactly the same situation. And then I set up a conversation between them. We have new episodes every other Tuesday, and every episode is an experiment. The one I'm about to play for you is extra special.

Because it involves not just one former host of Invisibilia. No, it is literally twice as good as that because it has two former hosts of Invisibilia. Okay, here it is. Thanks for listening. And subscribe to the show. Hello. Hey, babe, I have a question about the episode. Well, you're in luck. How do you feel about me calling you a bisexual wife guy? I mean, I don't know. It's fine. I don't know. It's cool.

You wouldn't mind if I just like shouted you out at the end of every episode from now on? Our mixing engineer is Kyle Pooley, also bisexual wife guy. No, I think that's bad branding. I think it's too navel-gazy. Bad branding for you or bad branding for me?

I don't think I'm... All right. What are we talking about? Are we going to talk about this episode or not? I have calls with clients. Like, what are we even doing? Okay, okay, okay. I'm just letting you know that there's going to be another cut for you to master because I have a few fact-checking fixes. Okay. That's fine. I can do that. Okay. Have a good day at work. All right. Yes. Thank you. Bye. Love you. Bye. Bye. This is Proxy. I'm Yo-Ai Shaw, your emotional investigative journalist.

Today, the case of the bisexual white guy who got dumped. That's after the break. ♪♪♪

Today's episode makes my husband Kyle shudder every time he hears about it. Because today's episode deals with a story that hits close to home. A few years ago, I told Kyle something about myself. Something I'd been feeling for a long time, but hadn't allowed myself to admit. I told my husband I was bisexual. I was queer. And Kyle was happy for me, as expected, and not totally surprised.

But it did beg some obvious questions. Like, what does coming out as bisexual in a straight relationship mean exactly? What did it mean for us? Every once in a while, Kyle will ask, am I going to leave him for my best friend? He's mostly joking. And since then, we've come to a good place with it.

But then I heard from someone who has lived Kyle's worst nightmare. A listener I'm calling George. Hey, I'm so sorry I'm late. No, no worries. I'm hearing like a little bit of like water in the background. Well, we can get into this, but like I moved in with my sister. So I'm in the uncle basement and there's like exposed pipes and stuff. I think the washing machine is running. I'm going to go stop it. And that might help.

George is in his 30s, works in media. And last year, he sent me one of the saddest, sweetest emails I've ever received as a journalist. It was about his decade-plus relationship ending in divorce.

That's why he's in the uncle basement. The kind of the core reason is my partner kind of decided, like, she, you know, decided nothing. This is like, it gets really complicated and kind of prickly to talk about. But bottom line, two years ago, my partner said, hey, I think I'm bisexual. And like, ultimately, the elephant in the room is like, hey, actually, I'm queer and I'm not interested in being with a cis dude anymore. ♪♪

In his email, George wrote, quote, I've not found any support groups or the like for people in my situation. And I'm not saying that should be the priority either. I just want to better understand in what ways I've been perpetuating a system that oppresses LGBTQ people and how it can grow and be better in the future. And ultimately, be a human who loves everyone, including myself. I always feel like I share this and it makes me feel like

Oh, poor me. Like, this horrible thing happened to me. And, like, that's not really it. It's more just, like, emotionally confusing, if that makes sense. The way George remembers it, he had a loving, supportive relationship with his ex. I'm going to call her Charlotte. George and Charlotte met back in college. And after their first date, they were inseparable. After graduating, they moved in together. They moved to a new city. They got married. They bought a house. They got married.

They liked spending time together, going to comedy shows, movies, remodeling their home on the weekend, or sitting out back. Having a fire in the backyard just became like a weird, happy place for me. You know, maybe her on the left and me on the right. The bigger thing is more like the dog alignment. You know, it's like, **** would always be on my lap, **** would always be on her lap.

And then a few years ago, they were taking the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood. And Charlotte told George, You know, I think I'm bisexual. And I said, like, that's awesome. What does that mean? What does that mean for us? Like, how do you want to explore that? And she wasn't really sure at the time. Were you worried at that point? No, I don't think so. I think I'd compartmentalized in some maybe kind of odd ways.

Like, the physical part of her relationship was kind of up and down. And in retrospect, like, I wish we'd spent more time talking about that. Maybe it would have forced the issue earlier. But at the time, I just didn't know exactly what it would mean. They left it there. And for a while, George says that was pretty much the end of the discussion. Charlotte didn't talk more about it. And he wanted to be supportive and not push.

George wondered if maybe Charlotte needed something and didn't ask for it or didn't feel like she could. At any rate, it wasn't until a few years later that Charlotte broached the subject again and told George she had feelings for someone she met at work. From the moment she said she was interested in a queer relationship, I was super happy for her and wanted her to pursue it. And we did.

started talking about how to make that work logistically. You know, maybe an open relationship is something that we could explore. And it didn't go very well. We tried working it out in couples therapy, and that didn't go very well either. And then, you know, things escalated pretty quickly. I think she was uncomfortable asking for a divorce that came up in therapy. And basically, the way it came up was, you know, her saying a bunch of things about me that were

Pretty awful. She said something like, we don't have a life, we have a collection of responsibilities. And then me saying, like, I don't know that I want to be married to somebody who feels that way about me. George says once the D-word got tossed around, that was it. No more discussion. In fact, that therapy session was the last time they talked about the emotional side of their breakup. From that point on, George says it was logistics. Selling the house, moving out, getting divorced.

Doing it all as quickly as possible. I really admire that my accent has that like stick-to-itiveness, like we're going to get this done. But I was like not in a good state and kind of felt like in the headlights and it was just totally out of my control. Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm really sorry. Thank you. It sounds really, really, really hard. I appreciate that. But like even you saying that is very sweet. I'm having trouble receiving it.

Is it that you feel like you don't deserve to feel feelings around this? When I think about a story like this in abstract, you know, my ex is the main character, if that makes sense. What do you mean by that? I mean, when you... I feel like if you hear, like, hey, someone came out later in life and...

they got divorced and met someone new and lived happily ever after. Like that's the story. You don't, that's why I'm like a little uncomfortable talking about this in a public way because like this story really isn't about me, but it still exists, you know? And it's been a year since we separated. She's moving on. She's bought a new house. She's, she's living with a new partner and it's great. I mean like all I want is to be happy for her, but like,

I feel like I need the closure of like knowing that there is a story that explains any of this. So divorce. It happens. But George is dealing with a particular kind of divorce. Thanks to compulsory heterosexuality, there are lots of people who've gotten married and never gotten to explore their queerness. Things are changing now, thank God. But George is not alone.

I was telling an audio colleague about this story, and he was like, I know two couples in their 40s going through the exact same situation. Anyway, here are a few fun facts I found. There's a Pew study that surveyed bisexual adults. They wanted to know how many of them had come out to the most important people in their lives. The results point to a generational gap. Under the age of 45, 32% said they were out.

But above 45, it drops to only 18% saying they were out. The same study looked at bisexual people who had partners. A whopping 88% are married or in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender. In other words, a hell of a lot of bisexual people in hetero relationships. But while George isn't alone in his experience, he's having trouble finding people who can relate to the specifics.

George has tried therapy. He's been to divorce groups. He's looked for support from friends and family. But he can't ask the questions that will help give him closure. And he doesn't feel like he can ask Charlotte. He says their only contact is about the dogs these days. And when he did email her to open the window to talk about feelings, he says she didn't respond. And I don't feel like it's my place anymore.

And that's why George reached out to us. Now, if this were a different kind of show, I'd probably track down George's ex and compare their version of events. Maybe set up a meeting. But this is not that show.

On Proxy, our job is to help people like George investigate their feelings. And we believe you can get special insight by talking to a stranger who's outside your situation. Because you can ask questions you wouldn't be able to ask, say things you wouldn't be able to say, be less defensive, more open to learning and listening.

So that's what we do on the show. We search the entire world for the perfect proxy to talk to. Someone who has relevant experience. Sometimes it's a researcher who's studied the issue at hand. Other times, it's someone who's lived through the same kind of experience. In George's case, that would mean someone who's also been left by a queer partner. Or someone like his ex. The queer partner who decided to leave their straight relationship. So George,

What are the questions you would ask that would help you? How other people navigate this? I think I just would really want to understand when you are coming out later in life, like who is your ex as a symbol to you? Is it painful to be around me? Like, is it painful to be around me to the point that like a friendship would never work? George wants to know if a future friendship with Charlotte is possible. And he's curious, what was this whole coming out experience like for her?

I'm really glad you emailed. I'm going to really try to find a proxy for you. But I have one last question. If you were to vocalize the sound of your niche emotional conundrum, what would it be? You want me to make the sound? If you're willing.

When we actually decided to split up, move out of this house, the basement was fine, but kind of gross. So I needed to take an angle grinder to all this paint and like stuff on the floors and the walls. And so I spent two days with an angle grinder, just like grinding things away. So it's just like this kind of noise. Yeah.

Ankle grinders are great, but on today's show, I try to give George a slightly less grating kind of catharsis. After the break, George meets his proxy and gets to ask the questions he's been holding on to. ♪♪

Hey, it's Mike G calling in from DC. My too-niche-to-podcast conundrum is, you say niche? Niche? What do you do when you don't know how to pronounce a word? Help. But I'm glad Proxy's investigating other niche emotional conundrums, which is why, four months ago, I became a member of Proxy's Patreon because Yo-Wei makes this show independently, and I don't want it to disappear. Ever. Never.

When you join the Proxy Patreon, you get benefits like hearing episodes without ads and exclusive bonus episodes. What a bargain! Plus, you get to sleep at night knowing that you're helping make the world's first podcast for emotional investigative journalism. To become a member, go to patreon.com slash proxypodcast. That's patreon.com slash proxypodcast.

Can I get a Power Rangers morph? Let's do it, guys. It's morphing time. All right, later. If it's your first time listening to Proxy, the thing that we do on the show is an experiment. We create a conversation between my guest, in this case, George, and a proxy, a stranger we are hoping will be helpful because they have expertise either through research or lived experience. Okay, and it's coming through okay? You sound great.

The day of the conversation, I check in with George 15 minutes before letting the proxy in. It's been a while. Yeah, I was just thinking about this. A lot has changed, even just in that what feels like not a lot of time. Oh, really? George is still living in the uncle basement with exposed pipes. But

But since we last spoke, he's taken a few steps forward. Like, he met his ex's partner for the first time when he came over to deal with dog care. I was also nervous about, like, going to their house because... And even though he was worried about that being a bad idea, it was fine. The house is super cute and, like, it felt so normal.

But I do think that there's a lot that can't be said still. George still has so many questions about the breakup that he can't talk to his ex about. I mean, I think I just would really want to understand. While we're chatting, I see a notification pop up. The proxy has landed in the virtual waiting room. OK, are you ready for us to let her in? OK. Now, as I was looking for a proxy, I thought about George's initial email.

He wrote that talking to someone who's been through exactly what he's going through would be helpful. So that was one option. Find some other straight dude who's been left by his queer partner. Further down in the email were some of those questions that George was holding on to. Questions like, was it something he did? Was he not as supportive or kind or responsive enough? Was it painful to be around him? Because he represented a time in her life she was in the closet.

These weren't questions for another straight guy who got dumped. These were questions for Charlotte, his ex, which is why I decided to find a proxy who could stand in for her. Meet Hannah, my former coworker and a previous co-host of Invisibilia. Hi. Hi. Hello. We're here together in this vulnerable space with strangers. Getting vulnerable in small boxes on the internet. 2024, that's what we do.

I know both of you. Why don't you introduce yourselves to each other? Okay. I'm Hannah. Hi, Hannah Rosen. I worked with Yo-A at Invisibilia, and I live in Washington, D.C., and I still do podcasting. Hi, Hannah. I'm familiar with you. I'm using a pseudonym for the purposes of this show. My name is George, and I live in the Midwest. Amazing. I see Star Wars behind you.

Yes. As we'll get into, my living situation is such that I, after my divorce, moved in with my sister. So my office is a room where I put up some drywall, but it was a largely unfinished corner of the basement. I also think like post-divorce, maybe there's something interesting to being in some unfinished space. There's like a metaphor about that. The metaphor isn't lost on me.

Okay, so Hana, why don't we just start with, can you just explain what qualifies you to be a proxy? Okay, George, I don't have any degrees in proxy. Dumb. I did not study proxy.

in either college, high school, or graduate school. What qualifies me is life experience. I had a similar experience to your partner. I was married to a man and then found myself in a situation of being extremely sort of attracted to a woman, and then it just kind of cracked my brain open. And my train was running 1,000 miles an hour in a way that was a little bit inexplicable to most people around me.

Like my internal reality and sort of all the things that were like breaking, breaking, breaking, breaking inside my head were invisible. And so anybody looking to the outside was like, excuse me? Like it just didn't quite sort of add up. And yet in my head, it was going really fast. So I think that's what qualifies me. My only role here, you know, I will never in this conversation know you well enough. I will never talk to your ex. So we're doing this at the level of like,

So in the way that I can just speak from that experience without either overgeneralizing or getting overspecific. I think that's the place we want to aim for. So, George, I'm going to turn it over to you. Can you explain to Hannah why you are here today and the niche emotional conundrum you're having? Sure. So I separated from my partner last summer. George runs Through the Breakup.

His wife telling him she's bisexual, the attempt at an open relationship, the couple's therapy that didn't go well. And then George starts talking about the speed at which things happened. More specifically, the speed at which Charlotte moved on. I got pushed onto a train and it was just like moving a million miles an hour. I'm going to let the rest of the proxy conversation roll from here.

What surprised me was, yes, George and Hannah get into the nuances of what being queer in a straight relationship can mean for both sides. But I also heard things that apply to any relationship breakup, like how to create your own closure when the other person can't give it to you, and how performative okayness after a breakup can be a disservice to everyone. Okay, here is the proxy conversation.

She kind of didn't break stride. I mean, like she got back out there. She met someone. She actually bought a house recently. They're getting a puppy together. They got a puppy together, which was something we, we don't have kids, but like we had Boston Terriers and like the fact that she was like, went and got a Boston Terrier puppy, like obviously not intentional, but it was another one of these things where it's like, yeah, she's just like continuing the same life. She just like booted me out of it. And yeah,

I've felt for a long time like this is really her story. I'm a minor character that got written out of the show. And I do feel like I want to talk about these things, but I just don't feel like it's fair. I don't feel like it's fair if she doesn't want to talk about it to take her back to that place. If her way of moving forward is, again, at 100 miles an hour, that's her prerogative. So I'm left with a lot of...

unresolvedness mostly related to how things ended and feeling like I couldn't really question or interrogate it as it was happening. And I'm trying to work through that now. Wow. First of all, that is really rough. As you were talking through it, I'm thinking, okay, like he sees and understands all the things except one thing, which we'll get to. Okay.

George, I know that when we talked, you were wary of asking a queer person to explain this stuff to you.

Do you still feel that way? I'm still a little uneasy about it. Maybe this will help you, George, to truly understand that you're helping me. This isn't a conversation I was able to have either. It's a conversation I've had with myself in my head or wish that I could have had with certain people from my old life, but it's just not the way the world works. That's good. It's not just like, listen, straight guy, I'm going to explain some stuff to you.

Maybe there'll be a bit of that. I don't know. No, I bet that it's not a straight guy thing. Yeah. And the thing you said that really, really broke my heart for a lot of different reasons was the minor character written out of the story. It's so painful, but forgive me, George. It's kind of true. Yeah. And it's like a thing to...

You know, marriage, cliche, is a shared story. And your wife kind of sidestepped to another story that is like filled with characters and feelings and a sense of herself and she's in a sense become a different person. And...

You're from the old story. Yeah. And that fucking sucks. I don't know what to say. That is painful as fuck. That is really, really painful. So the fact that you see that and said that and understand that, that's a huge amount of understanding. But I do think a lot of your work is to walk back from that and then start working forward into a different story. I do think your work is...

Main character energy. Not to meme-ify your whole life, but you know what I mean. I think a lot about this Lucy Dacus lyric that was like, if you rewrite the story of your life, can I still be in it? Which is like such a sad, sad lyric. Yeah. Oh my God, I'm going to cry. Yeah. And I understand it from her perspective. First of all, it's only been a year.

And so like, I don't know her at all, but you don't just like flip and become a new person as an adult. You don't. She's like busy figuring things out. And who am I? And what is gay? And what is queer? And what does it mean? And what did it mean about the rest of my life? She's in a completely different energy where you're just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, let me catch up. Let me catch up. And so I think there's nothing you can do, but like, let that be. Like, what are you supposed to do? It's like trying to stop.

Like a wind or something. Like you just can't do it. Okay. I want to shift to questions for Hannah. Yes. Okay. Bring it. What do you want to ask Hannah about her experience that might be helpful?

Were you afraid to talk to your partner? Like, how did you tell them that you were queer? How did he react? It's a little different because we were married for a long time and had children. It was just such a left field shock of a turn. And it was so like, where did that come from? That I think it was a little non really believing at first. Nobody was like, cool. Let me hear more about that. It,

It was very disruptive to a peaceful reality. Very disruptive. I had like an entire giant heterosexual universe that I lived in. But how long did you think about talking to him about it before you finally did?

Uh, three weeks. In my case, it was like I stepped into an alternate reality. And once I saw something, I couldn't unsee it. So it was almost like a physical, visceral sensation. It was like zombie walking towards something that I had no idea what it was. I was not walking away from a bad marriage or a bad situation or anything like that. Was there any part of you that...

It's neither of those things.

There is a huge part of me still always that yearns for that stability role, all of it. But I don't actually think of them as having much of a relationship with each other. One is over here and I will miss it until my dying day. And one is over here and that is my life now. Like often people will say like, even in heterosexual divorces, oh, you met a new person. Great. Now you can forget about the other person. It's like,

No. There will always be like a feeling when I'm in the room with my ex and my children, like when the configuration, you know, you can see the shadow of what my life and my family was or when I drive through my old neighborhood. It will always, always be a huge part of my heart. And there's this other thing like they really don't erase each other. They just exist on different tracks.

It's making me realize binary thinking can really hurt you here. I think I'd been thinking about everything from before that moment that you knew is like a reminder of something you want to forget. I would amend that to it's a reminder of something you cannot process at this moment or integrate, and it will take you a long, long time to process and integrate.

You will not have the capacity to like squash it or forget it. It's a huge part of your evolution, your soul, your heart, your sense of self, like all of these other things. You just maybe can't make sense of it at this exact moment.

Yeah. I notice often like in divorces, like we went through the Gwyneth Paltrow conscious uncoupling and that was like, oh great. Everybody's still friends. Talk to each other. Now it's like you have to be fucking friends. I feel now there's like a performative okayness about breakups, like a performative requirement. Like, oh man, it's cool. Like everyone has open relationships and everyone's chill with everybody's new husband. And it's like, but they might not

And in a lot of cases, they're not. And it just papers over the just tremendous shards of pain underneath the untangling of an intimacy. Right.

I think that you really nailed the, what I've probably been putting myself through is the performative okayness. Like I haven't given myself space to not be okay. Yeah. My therapist called me on this. I kept saying, I just want to be happy for her. And she's like, why? That's not your problem. Yeah, exactly. I think that's why I keep talking about like milestones hitting me like a truck, like this, like, why do I care if they got a puppy? Why do I care if she bought a house? And like, that one made me mad.

Yeah. You know, it's weird and counterintuitive. I'm going to give you an exercise, not a licensed therapist, but I'm going to give you an exercise because you do this so often, George. Every single time you have a feeling like I'm so pissed that she bought a puppy, your immediate next thought is, but she wants a puppy and it's nice for them to have a puppy and it's, you know, they need a puppy. You have to count to like 50 before you can do that. But she needs a puppy. Yeah.

You really have to create enough space to be fuck them and their puppy. Like be pissed off or be really sad or whatever. Not for like 17,000 days, but just for like...

you know, half an hour. It's probably gonna be really hard for you. Yeah. Like, honestly, feel that. Do not go straight to like, oh, but it's so cute, blah, blah, blah. Because actually you're doing a disservice to everybody, to yourself, to them, to your feelings for them. If you do not create enough sense, like just remember this as the fuck the puppy strategy. How about that? It will stick in your head. On that note, the fuck the puppy note, let's take a quick break.

When we return, George turns the tables on Hannah. And here's her side of the breakup. Not to turn the spotlight, but do you have regrets about how you decided to get divorced? Do you have regrets about the conversation or the process? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sure that I was a wrecking ball. Yeah. I mean, I try and be kind to myself about it, but there's just no right way to be. I mean, queer is maybe your only good option here where it's like, okay, I'm queer now. So everyone's like, but actually people's feelings still get hurt. And sure. Like I read books about how to do it and I talked to lots of people. But I myself was like,

Holding both of those things at once, this revelation about yourself, not necessarily just the gay queer, but just the fact that you want to live outside a certain structure, that is very, like, exciting. And the kind of enormous pain that you're causing people.

Whoever those people are, those are really hard to put into one body. That's really hard to manage. I imagine the only person who can manage that well and behave well with those two things floating around is someone who's gotten divorced 30 times. So do we want to hang out with that person anyway? Most of us don't do this that many times. And it's so weird. Could anyone behave well? I mean, I tried my best, but I doubt it.

Were you afraid to have a conversation with him? Like, were you worried about hurting him or how he would react?

Yeah. This is a person you love and a person you're very intimate with. And I think because it's such a bomb to survive it, you really almost have to like shut yourself off to the other person's feelings. It's otherwise just almost impossible to do if you love the person. If you don't love the person or you've had long years in a loveless marriage and you've been planning your exit and whatever, it's different. But if you love the person, you have to write yourself a script. Yeah.

I am queer. I'm this. I'm doing this. You have to write a script and then walk into the script for a while because that's like as much as you can handle. And then later maybe be more human about it. You said he was shocked, but could he have said anything or done anything that would have made you think like actually maybe. No. Yeah. Yeah.

No. I feel like even asking this out loud, I know the answer. I'm glad you asked because it's probably a question and that's probably a thing that anybody thinks about. This is like when my father died, my mother was just like, I should have gone to this doctor and I should have gone here and I should have done. I was like, no, he had like cancer up in an undetectable place. But she would remember

roll around that for years. So I totally understand why you're asking that question. But the answer is no. What was invisible to him and everybody and almost to me inarticulatable was just that like my reality had cracked in some way. And so no, it'd be telling me to eat dirt for dinner. I couldn't do it. How did you tell your kids?

Um, that was a very carefully planned reading a lot of books and there are categories of divorces and there's one which is like parents fight all the time. And so the kids are like, hallelujah, like I don't have to listen to this anymore. And then there's another, which is like the parents don't fight and the family is fairly happy and that's trickier to handle. Yeah.

I did lean on kind of gay a little more. Even at the time, I understood that this isn't just what this is. This is something else about scripts and rules and how I want to live and something about me. Like I had a kind of tiny, tiny like inkling of that, but I didn't understand it. But it's much easier to have like a concrete thing to say. I was going to say like I...

don't think I found myself in the position. Well, you still do with family where you have to turn around and explain the story of like, here's why we're coming apart, but you can avoid family reunions and things like that until you're ready to talk to people about it. But like talking to your kids, um,

That's really hard.

it's actually kind of nice to just have a sentence or two. Literally, like you're on book tour and the book tour is divorce and you're out. That's totally how it feels.

You're out there pitching, and so you do not owe your vulnerability or your soul to anybody except the people you choose to give it to. So you just come up with a socially acceptable line that teases a little bit of vulnerability, but where because it's so rote, you don't have to expose yourself at every fucking event. It's really useful. Yeah. Actually, I think that's where that feeling of being uncomfortable – I have a lot of family that –

she got along with really well. And like, it was weird to have some of them turn and say, we didn't like her, like these things that I wasn't even really ready to process myself. Right. And I'm actually, and I am curious, this is like maybe one of the more specific questions I had for you, but in telling like parents, there was definitely like a hint of homophobia in some of the things that they said. My parents were,

said something like i can't believe she hid this from you which was awful but even things that i think were like grasping at understanding but we're like we're not going to take sides or the words like how's that gay thing going i was just like i feel like this comes from a sweet place but like this needs some editing that's my note but like did you encounter either like

Maybe well-meaning but ill-informed family or just out and out people who were not supportive and were very hurtful. Yes, sure. People who don't take it seriously. People think it's just a joke. And then that sort of like, what, did you know this? Like people are just so confused because they have one thing in their heads, which is...

There's a coming out story. And, you know, people would say, well, when did you know? And it's like, I don't know what you're talking. It's not that's just not how it rolls out. Sometimes, you know, there's a million different ways this can happen. And it's about different things. But of course, you don't want to get into that with people. I have a question for you, Hannah. Yeah. I'm curious about blame in the breakup relationship. It feels like.

when you're broken up with or you break up with someone, it's very easy to have like a black and white kind of like, oh, it's me. I've messed up or it's them. They really messed up, but they're the one to blame. I'm the one to blame. And I'm wondering, did you have...

Did you deal with that from the outside, like people blaming you? Yes. For everybody, I am the one to blame. Like the person who leaves the marriage is the person who is blamed for breaking up the marriage generally, or at least in my case, you know, that's the person who people would call selfish or all the things that people say. Mm-hmm.

I thought I would get a bigger like lift from she's gay now. You thought you'd get more gay points? Maybe I got like one half a point or something. How did you deal with that? Like, did people actually call you that to your face or did you just feel that? The blaming? Yeah. Um,

Because there are people who are still mad at me. There are people who still, whether they'll say it out loud or not, feel me to have broken and betrayed something. Not everybody, but certainly important people in my life. Did you ever struggle with blaming yourself?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I still do. There are still days when I think, oh, I'm not capable of stability or I'm not capable of holding something together or I'm not capable of working on something. Just a lot of thoughts like that, for sure. This is going to feel like a clunky analogy, so I'm really sorry. But like, you know, when you move somewhere and you have maybe like a piece of furniture that you really love...

And you move into that space and you love the new space, but the piece of furniture just doesn't fit. And like, you're just better off selling it, you know, no matter how much it meant. You could pay for a storage unit.

But like, if it doesn't fit, you shouldn't hang on to something that doesn't fit. That is a very apt analogy. I mean, I could say that for a long, long time I was it's like you just trying to fit it and make it all hang together. And you yourself are like slipping out of a skin. So it doesn't feel right or comfortable to you either. I mean, I don't know. Like, I guess in the movies, people are like, I'm gay, I'm liberated or whatever. But it does not feel that way on your skin. It just feels like what the fuck is that?

You know, you just feel very at you. I felt very like uncomfortable all the time. Now I would say I'm getting to the point where I recognize this is my life. This is the track I'm on. I wonder about your wife from the outside, from the movie shot.

It's like house, puppy, partner. Does it feel that settled? I don't know. Probably feels as evolving a story as your story is evolving. Yeah. Yeah. This, this is really what I fixate on now, which is like, she seems like she's doing great, but like, I don't actually know. And I shouldn't presume we're not really in a place where she would share that even if she wasn't. Mm-hmm.

And why does that hurt you? It's not that it hurts me. It's more than I'm just curious about it. I think that was the thing for me where I was like, I would like to get to a point where we can talk about some of these things. I was saying just because we were doing shared dog care stuff for a while, like I have met her new partner and she was like quite lovely. And it seemed like they had like a lovely life and it didn't make me super sad to be there.

It made me just realize how normal it could feel to just be friends. But there's still all this stuff in the way. This is a good space for me. I like this. I appreciate it. I love talking to you. This has been really nice for me. Because the new thing for my post-divorce, the thing that is also my sore point is...

Just really realizing that sometimes you're just not going to get closure with some people like they just don't want it. Yeah. I wake up every morning still and think like, maybe if I have a conversation this way, maybe if I have a conversation this way and it ain't going to happen. So you still feel like that same kind of unresolved feeling?

100%. And it's, I hate it. I hate it. Sometimes I think like, oh, I wish I wrote fan fiction, bad fiction where I play out the scenarios and play out the conversations. Would that make me feel better? We're used to thinking now, especially now, like talk about everything, process everything, go to therapy, everything has to come out. But there are some things that can't, won't, will cause too much pain if they do. It's not the right time.

And I've stopped trying to think about why. I don't know. And it is actually not my place to ask. So you just won't know. Yeah. How would you describe your relationship with your ex now? It's fine. We have kids. It's fine. We see each other sometimes. I would...

want a somewhat closer relationship. But even some other people who were left behind in my old life who couldn't deal with my new life, I don't have closure there. I lost some friends and some people who were dear to me. Hannah, I want to go back to the closure piece for you. You said that you don't have all the closure you would like in a bunch of relationships, including with your ex.

Is there anything you want to ask George that would be helpful to you? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, do you think you could ever see your ex as a person separate from you whose happiness, pain, like really has like a vivid life of its own, like doesn't ping back on you? Doesn't ping back as in like... That it's clean, like you see her the way you would see...

Yeah.

Absolutely. Yeah. But truly that. Like, not a person who you just, like, reflexively think about everything she's thinking. That's different. Yeah. I think I have a tremendous amount of respect. Like, she's tenacious. She knows what she wants. And she doesn't hesitate. That never changed for an instant. I've always admired that about her. And, like...

You know, like sometimes being married to her felt like being strapped to a rocket ship. You know, that wouldn't necessarily always be pleasant. But like the things that are emotionally harder are contextual and I think will fall away over time. I think people physically move to different places and build different things. And like now it's this thing of like she's building a life that looks pretty similar to what we would have built together. But that's not going to be true five years from now, 10 years from now. It's just going to start looking more and more different.

And the more different it looks, I just get to appreciate those things I've always appreciated. But the pieces that do feel tethered to me will have fallen away. I think there's a mourning process of letting go of some of those things. We're probably both working through that in our own ways. But like, that's...

100% where I want to be. And I definitely think I can get there. Just the tone of your voice more than what you said just now, it made me feel more hopeful than other things that you've said. I mean, it felt distant is all I can say, like a little distant from her in a way that I thought was really nice. I mean, I will say closure from my end, I realized it had a selfish aspect, which is like, I kind of just want them to

see me as a person separate from them and their trajectory. It's almost like I'm looking for less closeness. Like look at me across the chasm and say like, oh, I see that you have this life with this person in this place doing these things. And then we can be friends again. Yeah. But like, I need you to see me

as separate from you. The person you are projecting is not me. That person doesn't really exist anymore. So once you see the person that I am now, then we can be friends. Like you're in dialogue with a fated person. Right. I'm obviously like more in the like rumination dwelling kind of world, but like I had not really thought about just like it'd be healing for me to focus on building something new for myself. It would be healing for

for her probably, to see that I'm capable of that. And that's not a reason to do it. But when I think about what it would take to be friends, that clarifies what the actual work of it is. It's not necessarily about hurtful things that were said, but it's trusting. You did what you set out to do, which was you wanted to re-establish yourselves as two independent people. But both of you have to do it. If one of you just continues to dwell on the past, then it's kind of hard to feel like you could ever

just be totally settled with having moved on. Any other questions from either of you for the other person?

George, this is really, really lovely for me. It's so rare that I talk about this, you know, partly because it's long ago and partly because I've given up. You know, I'm not trying to have those conversations anymore, but they're just kind of like knotted up somewhere in there. You know, they just come out in my dreams. So this has been really nice for me to be able to talk about some of this stuff with someone who's invested and cares. Yeah.

Yeah, similarly, I'm really floored by being able to talk about this. The directional empathy, I think, is like very healing. So I really appreciate you being open to that. It's going to be awesome. You're such a good soul. Like, it's going to be great. Oh, you're going to make me cry again. Thank you to Hannah Rosen for being our proxy today. She's the host of the Radio Atlantic podcast, as well as Chutzpod.

We'll have those links in our show notes. And thank you to George for being our special guest. After the proxy conversation, I asked George if he was still hearing that angle grinder when he thought of his conundrum. But he said the sound has changed. I think now it sounds more like the sound of people talking in a distant room. Just kind of like muffled sounds that you can't hear. There's a conversation happening, but you're not a part of it. And...

You're in a different story now. That's the show we have for you this week.

We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday, May 6th, and new episodes every other Tuesday for the rest of the year, which Ashley, a listener from Philly, thinks is just great. Hi, Yo-Ai. Hey, Ashley. What do you got over there? What are you eating? I'm eating some peanut butter-filled pretzels, high in sodium, and some mixed nuts, also salted.

So you like peanut butter pretzels, huh? I love peanut butter pretzels. And what about Proxy? Do you like Proxy? I love Proxy. How many peanut butter pretzels is Proxy worth to you? Well, I get them at Costco and I don't remember how much they cost, but it's a huge bin. It's like a big plastic thing. So I would say one episode is worth at least...

two plastic containers of peanut butter and pretzels. Ashley gets it. She's willing to pay $23 a month for Proxy. I looked it up. But instead, because she's a Patreon member at just $5 a month, she's getting a steal. It

If you like a good deal like Ashley, you can join our Patreon at just $5 a month. Proxy is an independent podcast and we rely on listener support. For just $5 a month, you'll get ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus interviews. What a bargain! Sign up at patreon.com slash proxypodcast. That's patreon.com slash proxypodcast.

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This episode was edited by John Delore and Tim Howard, produced by me and mixed by my bisexual wife guy, Kyle Pulley. Proxy is also produced by Kim Nadervane-Petersow, with help from Anakaran Santana and Nick LeBlanc. Our newsletter editor is Juliana Feliciano-Reyes. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. And we are distributed by Radiotopia.

Special thanks to Abby Wendell, Bryant Pooley, Emmanuel Jochi, James Kim, Callie Anderson, Liana Simstrom, Mathilde Verlino, and Bigger Picture. And if you have a niche emotional conundrum you'd like investigated by Proxy, get in touch at proxythepod at gmail.com. We're taking cases. Do you think you're ever going to listen to Proxy on the actual Apple podcast app?

No. Why not? I'm Proxy's biggest fan. I've heard everything like five times. And I even get the director's cut behind the scenes. You don't want to add like a download metric for me? I mean, I'll hit a button. You do have to like play it till the end. They can track that stuff. Oh, really? Wow. Maybe you could like put it on and then mute it while you're gardening. I think if it hinges upon my download, I think we have bigger problems.