Esther Calling - I Can Break up with Him But I'm Still Stuck With Myself
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I'm 37, about to be 38 actually in a few days. And we have been in a long distance relationship for the last five years of my life. And I think it's time to end it. And my partner is very loving. He's very caring. I feel like a vacation AI girlfriend. And his perception of time is different to mine. He has ADHD and he has the privilege of not having to worry about biological clock or anything.

And his proposal for me to move to America is not supported by a plan or by... He lives in a cabin. He works a part-time university job. So not by a structure that would support me for the time that I would need to settle. I am Ukrainian. I live in Bangladesh. I've lived here for most of my life. My parents moved here when I was in elementary school and I made it my home. It's very...

jarring for me to imagine moving again and besides that I have a thriving life here. I have a community, I'm an artist, I'm an activist. I love it. For me to leave wouldn't mean to leave everything I've built and I don't know if I would be able to come back because of visas and things like that and my home country is at war. So the proposal is very vague and my trust is gone and

And so is time. Time is gone and I regret that I didn't clock it earlier. And my question is how do I stop doing this? Because I fear that I consented to being loved at a distance because of something deeper inside me. And this fear of being truly seen, I don't want that fear to dominate my life. And I don't want to live like that anymore.

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So...

The question is, how do I allow someone to love me close up? Or how do I end this relationship, which you seem to be quite clear and determined about? That's the first question. Good. So you didn't take the out. That's very good. Tell me more, because this is something you've thought about and you have insight on, and I'm going to meet you where you are.

I think this was convenient because it allowed me to be really unchallenged and also because we would only spend time together once or twice a year and everything else was online. There were no big fights. There were no big confrontations. And everything could just slide. It's not the first relationship that I've done this in or have chosen for myself.

this kind of ease of being. Tell me what you mean by ease of being. I think I'm really scared of entwining or like being in a relationship with a man who I know can reject me. So I involve myself in relationships where I know I am an adventure or like I am like the thing that renovates their lives. Yeah.

And they feel seen for the first time in a long time. And that gives me the upper hand. And then I can just sit back and not be seen. I fear if I entered into a match of a different kind, I wouldn't win. And then I think deeply I'm scared of that. And I don't want to be scared of that anymore. And I don't know how to undo that rejection. Yeah.

My parents got divorced. My dad left. It was like a very complex divorce between them. But I don't want to also attach myself to that. To that meaning my fear or the story of my parents? The story of my parents. That fear. Can we meet it for a moment and just have a brief chat with it? Because it speaks to you. And it's a conversation that you've had many times.

It's a conversation I feel like I'm hearing for the first time, clearly. And maybe it's good that it's a long-distance relationship because the space is already there. Whereas in the previous relationships, there would still be the presence of a person, so I'd be distracted. I'd be like, I'd allow it to go on. And then I'd need another person to come in and break me out of that relationship. But here, I can't say that there's another person. It's just...

It's just I can't do this anymore. I've just run out of the ability to pretend that this is enough. Or I wasn't always pretending, but this is not enough. I want to be seen. Very much so. Say that again. I want to be seen. Take it in. You can open your chest and make space for it inside.

Because it turns out that all this time I was actually alone and not just in time and space, like deeply alone. And that too, you're saying for the first time, loud and clear? It's the first time I'm not allowing myself to be distracted from it. So you know the mechanics, you know the text. I meet a guy...

I make sure that he can't have too much of an effect on me. I set up a whole protection strategy, either reduce their importance by bringing in someone else or reduce their importance by them being far away so there is no daily life together. And then there is the subtext. The subtext is what you're giving voice to now. There's a fear that's been trying to

somehow protect you. If they're already far, they can't leave. If they let your biological clock unfold, which means if you let your biological clock unfold, you come to a point where you can say, I'm not meeting here. A set of different needs for life that I would like for us to share together. What else does it say to you? I think I'm actually scared of Ben. Yeah.

I'm scared of men what? I'm scared of involving myself with or like being in the control or like the power of a relationship where the man is somehow dominating me in any way. And that's why I always choose men who are much softer and less ambitious. And then in the end, that's what also...

breaks the relationship because I can't, I stop seeing them as capable. And my fathers are both like super masculine, like alpha. If we had to use that term, I don't know what else to use, but they're like, one is a Ukrainian and one is an Italian, but they're both like prototypes. And I think I've avoided that

kind of energy for most of my relationship history. But in the end... Because? Because I've seen them hurt my mom and my relationship with both of them is good now. It's better than when I was a child, definitely.

My father still hates my mother very deeply and makes the mistake of vocalizing it, which damages our relationship. My stepfather is a philandering Italian. I have a misanthrope, and then my stepfather is very much a people-loving person. So I have these prototypes, and I've just completely avoided anything that looked, felt, or acted like them. And...

May I ask you? Yeah. I have a sense that you have focused on the men and have said, I won't be with any guy who's like that. That's the text. But I wonder if the subtext is, I won't be like my mom. And I won't allow anyone to have that kind of power over me that they have over her because of how much she does not protect herself.

Are you trying to avoid them? Or are you trying to avoid being like her and therefore you focused on changing their profile? I think all of it. And like when I enter a happy family,

It's so alien and it's so nice. Not that mine isn't. Again, like my mom and my stepdad, they have a living apart together meeting once a year, also long distance. So in a sense, yeah, there's also like I have a rejected femininity in me as well. And I live in a very conservative society where the gender dynamics are quite complex. So a bit of both to answer your question.

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That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash Esther. Code Esther at checkup. When the fear talks with you, are you more in touch with the dominance of the man or with the fragility and the need or the dependency of your mom? Because if you're invisible, what is invisible? Your need for them? My need.

I've never been able to vocalize the need. Right. Because if you express your need, you give them power. Because it says, I need you, and if I need you, you have power over me. In this logic, this is not a truth in and of itself, but it is a deep emotional truth for you. And when you finally say out loud, I want to be seen, and I want this to remain the script of my life,

the relational script of my life, I want to be able to need what? What are all the needs that you have had to hide and to suppress? I have a fear that I won't be loved for who I am if I speak my mind or if I act how I am.

So my need is for somebody to encourage that and to understand that that is like, even though I come off, you know, I lead a team, I function fine, but there's a lot of things that I need just encouragement with. And I don't ask. I can never ask for things because I feel like my needs are so specific or so maybe not...

not easily understood, I just keep them to myself. And then it's so rare that somebody sees it. Like I've had that happen to me maybe twice, that somebody preempts my needs. So I need that encouragement and that being held. And when I don't, when I don't express it, do I remember I have it? Oh, I'm very good at not remembering. So I forget myself. Oh, yeah.

And then I make myself completely attentive to the other people's needs. All the time. And then that comes with resentment or deprivation or relief or other things. There's sometimes a bit of resentment. I can't say that that's the reaction. There's usually either a depression or, yeah, the relief. I mean, now I try to not...

keep myself so busy so that I can just sit with all this. You know, not trying to distract myself with like a million other people's needs, which I love doing, like I'm a community person, but at some point that community activism becomes like neurotic. If the part of you that says, "I want to be seen," speaks with the part of you that says, "But I'm afraid," "makes me too vulnerable,"

makes me too much subject to rejection. What would that conversation be like?

I guess growing up for a very long time, feedback from parents and from everybody around, and mostly in the family, was very harsh and it was very critical. And that was their language. So my first response to any kind of criticism or any kind of just correction, even though it comes from a good place, is very much painful.

I don't take it constructively. I need time. And I react defensively or I react magnifying one criticism as if the whole person is made to feel like there's something wrong with me. Or I react by retaliation. What about you? Yeah.

How does this... When I got the email that this was 10 minutes late, I figured it was going to be canceled because I was like, okay, Esther's heard my question now and she's like, this is crazy. I don't want to do this. So it's magnified and then, of course, there's some defensiveness. I have gotten significantly better with this at work. So you get a message that says I'll be...

a few minutes late and you instantly turn it into now she's going to be utterly uninterested and this is never going to happen. In effect, by sending this request, you put out a need. You've just put into practice the very thing we're talking about. So you said, here is my need. I would like to speak with you. Here's the dilemma that I face.

I'm at a transition point and I have a level of clarity I haven't had or haven't allowed myself and I need to bolster it. And then what happens? I feel great gratitude and relief.

There's a sense of greater faith in the moment. Because when you asked me at the beginning if the question is whether I'm sure that the relationship is over or I want to focus on my deeper question, and this is giving me that sense of confidence. I went somewhere else. I'm curious if you would go back there with me. Okay. Okay.

You put out your need and then you imagined, that was a big mistake. She'll never want to talk to me now that she heard the question. I hadn't heard anything, by the way. But even if I had, that doesn't change anything. Once you get a response, you have the response. We will meet with you. I will meet with you. But it's a beautiful opportunity for you because you made yourself visible and then you imagined nothing good can come out of it.

That's the fear. Which is why I bring us back here, because we can talk about the fear in the abstract, or we can look at it as it just happened between you and I. I'm a stranger. You meet me one hour, we'll never meet again. It's like being at the hairdresser. There's something about talking to the total stranger. But let me ask you, how hard was it to send in the question? Not hard. Because you thought nobody would see it?

Or because you hoped somebody would see it? A second. Okay. I'm very glad you did. All right. Tell me more. The fear is sitting right here next to you.

or one embodiment of this fear. It's absolutely with everything. And of course, like now, in the digital, it's much easier because it's like there's ways that somebody doesn't reply or there's ways that somebody's auto-replies or like when you're applying for things, it's okay to just... But then when you get one step closer and then there's a possibility of rejection, it's just, it's so crippling. The other guys...

Twice they were able to preempt or to see without your having to say. But the question is, how do you let it be known? And since you say it's with everybody, it's probably not just men. I find my female friendships very sensitive and most...

Very gratifying. Beautiful. And I allow myself to, like, there's no danger so much for me. Do you have male friends? A few. Most of them I've had relationships with. My sense is that some of our core emotional challenges around trust, around closeness, around intimacy,

around dependability, there is a particular resonance that only defines itself in the similarity between the original relationship we had with our caregivers or parents and our romantic relationships. Friendships somehow manage to elude these emotional challenges. And I've never fully, fully been able to answer questions

Why? In a satisfying way. Makes sense, but there's some particular echo chamber between those men who had such powerful influence over my mother and how I watched this and I said, not me. And so I have a choice between changing the type of men in order not to feel what my mother felt

or changing me inside in order not to feel what my mother felt. Because the men come and go, and she was the one that stayed. Maybe sometimes fraught, maybe sometimes quite imperfect, but she was the one that stayed.

When I mean stayed, it doesn't mean that she was, I don't know anything about her. So I don't know for sure if she was present, active, but she was the one that you could allow yourself to have any of these needs with. Whereas with the fathers, you made sure that those needs were tucked aside. Yeah. Is this somewhat it? I mean, just so I know if I'm in...

It's very much it. But with her, like, because she stayed, but I became so difficult that at one point she had to let me go. And until recently, I couldn't, like, my brother is in his 20s. He'll still sleep with mom when he comes to visit. I can't. I can't even, like, hugging is difficult for me with her. And I know, like, my mom loves me. Like, she...

She had to do what she had to do when I was 17 because I was just raging. And she didn't know how to control me. You know, I had little brothers, so the whole house was kind of tense because I was this out-of-control teenager. So I understand her decision. What were you raging at, by the way? Being misunderstood, not being listened to, not being seen.

I went to a school that had different values from the values at home. When I would come home, it would clash. I'd get into fights with my stepdad. I got into a very difficult relationship. I was a much older man. I was out of control. And when you say, I can't even hug her, the felt sense is, I get in touch with... The little me. And...

And all of that hurt, not being able to protect her or hurting her so much. Also, all that guilt. There was a lot going on. Sometimes when you've lived like this, you take it at face value as if this is how it should be. I know it shouldn't anymore. I don't want to live in a world where just because my coffee is five minutes late, I think the barista probably thinks that

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I've actually listened to some recent episodes of Up First on my commute to work in the morning. If you're looking for more news and less noise, you can listen to the Up First podcast from NPR today. The irony is that in all these scenarios, you are the protagonist. You are at the center of the action. And you are at the center of a negative action. Imagine that...

The barrista may have received a difficult phone call or somebody just told the barrista that their car was parked in the wrong place or the water just spilled or Esther had a delay on the subway or maybe she had a technical issue. Meaning that all these things have nothing to do with you. But in your construction of reality...

It can only have something to do with you. It must be about you and it must be about something negative about you. And it makes me want to say something, you know, you are very important, but you're not that important sometimes. So imagine that the part of you that wants to be seen says to the fear, it's not about you.

And sometimes we are strange creatures. We would rather be at the center of a bad plot than not be included in the plot at all. Yes, you say. You're shaking your head. Yes, it's absurd. Yes, what? It's absurd to live in this construction of reality. How do you imagine taking any of what we're saying with you after this conversation?

What would stay and what would you want to hold on to? I live in a city with so much pain and grief everywhere all the time. I know I didn't cause it, but even that, I managed to construct all these things. But I think what I'm taking away is to recognize it and to really hold it as separate from myself, this tendency to...

so that I can make a distance from it and start seeing things from a different point of view, but also to just let go of that negativity. And even if there is negativity, why do I have to make it a part of myself? It's like I need it to define myself or I need it to distract myself. And it seeps into your activism? I mean, for sure, I'm not as courageous as I used to be.

I would be, or I'm not as vocal, not as creative. I just don't, I'm never on the front. I'm always in the back. I'm afraid of being criticized for white privilege. I'm afraid of being criticized for being foreign, even though like all these things I can defend. I avoid the spotlight. And actually tomorrow I have to be in the spotlight for the first time in a long time. And this is going to help because I don't have to fear about like what people are thinking so much. Worry more about what I'm saying.

There's something very alleviating in this sentence. I'm important, but I'm not that important. Everything that happens is explained around me and around things that are missing or, in quote, wrong with me. That's very alleviating. I'm related to it, but it's not about me.

And I can't explain to you why, but I have a feeling that there's a connection between this and the courage that it will require from you to be able to say, "I would like this, I need this, I would enjoy that." Because if certain things don't come your way, it won't just be because you asked for too much or because your needs are overwhelming.

or because you don't deserve it. Maybe sometimes it will be because the person can't do it, or doesn't know how to do it, or can only do partially. But it's not about a flat-out rejection and a flat-out condemnation of you. It may not be about you. You're smiling. Because it sounds so simple and silly. I don't think it's actually simple. But I think that...

I'm putting into words things that you have already circled around. That you think the coffee is five minutes late because you don't deserve the coffee. And that it doesn't help you to really think about the others. You think you're thinking all the time about the others, but in fact... When you live with that feeling of I am so alone, and not because the other person is geographically removed,

But because I don't allow myself to be seen, I want you to first hold yourself so that you have a good grasp and with your two hands hold really around you. Because then you are with you, even if it comes through the tactile first. And from this place, you can ask for certain things. Thank you.

This was an Esther calling, a one-time intervention phone call recorded remotely from two points somewhere in the world. If you have a question you'd like to explore with Esther and could be answered in a 40 or 50 minute phone call, send her a voice message and Esther might just call you. Send your question to producer at estherperel.com.

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, Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Juliann Hatt. 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.