October 28, 2025 • 50 mins
Hello Fellow Travelers, this week a man who ended his marriage to be with the love of his life wonders if that makes him a bad person. We talk to Mike about coming to terms with his decisions by seeing things from the perspective of others.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Hey to your Therapist listeners. It's Lori and Guy and
we have a quick update.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Many of you have told us that you get something
new out of each episode when you listen to it
again the second or third time. In fact, when we
listen to the episodes again, we also get takeaways we
didn't remember.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We're They're therapy is like that too. There are so
many learning moments in a session, and it's difficult to
absorb them all at once. So while we're not taping
new episodes right now, we are offering you our most
popular sessions as encores so that you can continue to
gain value from them.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We love doing the Therapists episodes, but we're each busy
with new and exciting projects that we hope you will love.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Just as much.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I have a new advice podcast called Since You Asked,
which you can get wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And I have a new book coming out. It's called
Mind Overgrind, How to Break Free when work Hijacks your life,
and it will be published by Simon and Schuster. You
can find out more about it on my website.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You can learn more about these on our socials. And meanwhile,
we hope you find these Dear Therapists sessions as valuable
as we have making them for you. Hey, fellow travelers,
I'm Laur Gottlieb. I'm the author of Maybe You Should
Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice
(02:31):
column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And I'm Guy Winch. I wrote Emotional First Aid, and
I write the Dear Guy collumn for Ted. And this
is Dear Therapists this week. A man who left his
wife for the love of his life wonders if that
makes him a bad person. Rabia.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I did leave my wife for another woman, but the
rumors that we're about were as nasty as can be
and set the timeline very differently than what reality was.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Listen in and maybe learn something about yourself and the process.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute
medical advice and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental
health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions
you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter,
you are agreeing to let iHeart Media use it in
(03:21):
Potter and Full, and we may edit it for length
end of clarity. Hey guy, Hi Laurie.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So I want to read you this week's letter. Dear therapists.
I'm a thirty two year old father to two young
daughters who realized too late that I was not fundamentally
in love with my wife. We started dating in college,
and our naivete led us to marry young. We both
got along by not rocking the boat and decided to
have kids. When we had our first daughter, fatherhood engulfed
(03:50):
me and I had never been a part of something
so important. However, I didn't feel it all connected to
my wife. I loved my daughter, but I felt like
I was alone in this endeavor. Two years ago, my
existence was lit a fire by another woman, a coworker,
to make it more complicated, and as we continued to
seek out time to interact, we started sharing ourselves with
(04:10):
each other in a way that we had never done
with our spouses. Our existence was made complete by each
other and we couldn't go back to what it was before.
Fairly recently, we both broke down and ended our marriages
in a storm of shock, tears, anger, hatred, and sadness.
My wife couldn't understand, because she never really understood me.
We acknowledged our marriage felt broken, but she expected us
(04:33):
to try to fix it because of the commitment we
had made. I am now locked in a bitter custody
battle as a fight for my right to continue to
be the father to my daughters. I am sympathetic to
the position I put my ex wife in, but I
can't imagine that the cost of my fatherhood has to
be staying in a marriage that I know was not
going to give me the fulfilling existence that I can
(04:53):
now have with this other woman. My life is over
as I knew it. The world around me doesn't seem
to accept my decision. My friends have abandoned me, my
coworkers think I'm a scumbag, and my wife seems to
be trying to poison everyone against me. I didn't think
I was making a selfish decision by doing this, but
the world around me is doing a good job of
(05:14):
convincing me that I am all of the terrible things
they say I am. I guess I just don't know
how to think any more about myself or the people
around me. Thanks Mike, Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
So this is a please tell me I'm not a
scumbag letter? And what's interesting to me in the letter
is Mike is so articulate about his perspective and his
feelings and his point of view. You really get a
sense of how he feels about things. It's rich. And
then on the other side you get very unrich descriptions
(05:48):
of what his wife experience is and even what his
girlfriend's experience is. And though he pays some lip service
to yes, my wife expected this or felt this, you
don't get a sense that he really understands what his
wife experiences or perhaps what his girlfriends is currently either.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Right, you said, it was like a please tell me
I'm not a scumbag letter to me, it's I need
to get out of jail letter too, where he's portraying
his existence as if he was in jail this whole time,
and I understand the experience of feeling trapped, of feeling
like you're unfulfilled, but he doesn't take any responsibility for
(06:32):
why he might have felt that way because of some
role that he might have had in this. And so
it's kind of like I was in jail when I
was married to my wife, and then this new woman.
We complete each.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Other, and yet he's more miserable than ever.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Exactly they both left their marriages. He doesn't really tell
us was it hard for her? I don't hear both
of us are going through this and we're really struggling
with this. It's I'm going through this and your wife
is now been left for this other woman. It's humiliating.
You didn't have any interest in trying to see what
(07:07):
went wrong in your marriage because she said I want
to try to fix it. Maybe you don't want to,
but could you at least have those conversations so that
there's some kind of different ending to that marriage. He
wants us to assuage his guilt and say, no, you're
not selfish, rather than him wanting to look inside and say,
(07:28):
is there a piece of me that is selfish? And
if we can get him to see that piece of himself,
maybe he'll have more compassion for the people around him.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
There's another aspect to this that I wanted to point out,
in that there's a lot of passivity that comes through
the whole flavor of the letter. Is like, all this
stuff happened to me. We are all human, We can
all make mistakes. He fell in love. That part happens.
But what concerns me in these situations is that by
not taking responsibility, you're feeling like a victim.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Right. He wants to abdicate his responsibility by having us
say no, no, no, no no, what you did that
was perfectly fine. And it's not so much what he did,
it's the way in which he did it.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yes, And I wonder whether he feels guilt or he
just feels the negative perception of the people around him,
because what we know from guilt, the research often shows
that it really prevents people from enjoying life and sometimes
even causes them to self punish. It's called a dobby effect,
based on the elf in the Harry Potter books that
(08:35):
you used to smack his head against the all and
go h badobie. And so there's this real phenomena that
when you actually feel guilty and you're not dealing with it,
you can somehow unconsciously take away the pleasure and enjoyment
that you might have from life. You're listening to Deer
Therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break.
(09:13):
This is THEO therapist. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Well, let's see what he has to say.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Absolutely, let's stop to him. Mike, very good to meet you,
so first of all, tell us a little bit about
where things stand right now in terms of your kids,
how they're doing, whether you're seeing them.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Yeah, so how they're doing.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I was like, I think, if nothing else, I felt
like me and my act had done a pretty good
job of kind of shielding them from some of this drama.
Just like, not let them be a part of any
of the drama that's going down, and try not to
let them see many a lot of my negative emotions
throughout the last couple of months. How old are the
girls young? Just over three and one and a half.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
What has your time been like with the girls since
you guys split up?
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Well, we first split, we went through a mediation process,
and then after we had filed that mediation agreement ready
for our court date, some pretty nasty rumors got to
my ex and it sent her.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Off a deep end.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Were the rumors true?
Speaker 5 (10:19):
No, no, no.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
No no.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
There are aspects to the story where I mean, I
did leave my wife for another woman, But the rumors
that were about were as nasty as can be and
kind of like set the timeline very differently than what
reality was. Me and my girlfriend now we worked together,
so that created some serious drama.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
At work.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Were you able to clear up the rumors with your
ex wife to this day? Does she understand that what
she heard is not accurate?
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Not that I know of.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We really haven't had a good I would call a
productive conversation for a year, Like the last one really
was about a year ago. It was an it was
around this time last year that things kind of blew up.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
What was your communication like with your wife when you
were married?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Very surface level, I would say one of the issues
was that we didn't share a whole lot of emotions
with each other.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Do you know why you didn't share your emotions with
your wife when you were married?
Speaker 5 (11:22):
I guess I would say they didn't really feel safe.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Like the handful of times I went trying to go
a little deeper, it didn't feel like it was a
supportive place to bring them up.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I thought.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
I just was always worried about how it was going
to change how she thought of me. So like a
couple of times I brought up what were some of
my darker things, it was like almost like pushed aside,
like don't burden me.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
With that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Would she use those words or how did you get
the impression it.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Was met with a lot of just kind of like no,
I would say, silence, but not necessarily like intentionally negative silence,
more just like she didn't know what to say to
me silence.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
And what about the actual relationship? Were you able to
talk with her about your dissatisfactions with it or the
fact that it wasn't what you wanted it to be.
Have you made efforts in that regard? I would.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I can think of like two or three times a
few years ago, where like I was telling her what
was bothering me? And she snapped and said, stop telling
me what.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
I'm doing wrong.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I remember like being taken aback, but thinking like that's
not what I was doing necessarily. But it definitely felt
like she didn't want to have that conversation about like
how we could be doing differently.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
So I tried once or twice. I wouldn't say I
tried very hard.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
It felt easier just to like live the circuce level
life that we had been kind of like living and
making dinner, not saying much, put it on a show,
going to bed without much conversation.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
It wasn't particularly negative, It just wasn't super positive.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
What do you think would have happened if you had
said to her, I'm not saying that you're doing something wrong.
I want to talk about something that's going on with us.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
I don't know at this point. It only behindindsight.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
But well, the reason it's not hindsight is that you're
going into a new relationship and there's something to be
learned about what didn't work in another relationship. At least
you're a part of it.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Yeah, okay, I hear that.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And I'm just wondering, you know, why do you think
you did not pursue it, given how desperately alone and
unhappy you felt.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
One of the things I've really been struggling with. I
didn't necessarily know what I didn't have until I had
it with somebody else. So like my existence wasn't super
negative in a certain way. Like it wasn't like I
went home every day miserable trying to avoid my wife.
I didn't have a partnership that I've always felt like
should have been there. So when I found it somewhere else,
(13:54):
it was like, oh man, this is so eye opening.
It felt like I fell in love with someone else,
and that's why I fell out of love with my wife,
and I and I do struggle with wondering what could
have happened if I had tried harder or tried differently.
It's definitely something I like get pretty down on myself
about wondering what I could have done differently to make
this situation better for me and my ex rather than
(14:18):
but just I thing.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Guess somewhere else are the other eras in your life
in which you kind of feel unsatisfied but you really
struggle to know how to make things better or to
take the initiative because you seem to say, Okay, I settled.
Do you do that in other eras of your life?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Yeah, I guess so. So like in my career, I
am a classroom teacher. I don't have aspirations to do
much more with it. I don't want to be administrator,
I don't want to be a principal. So it's not
like I'm not unsatisfied, but I'm also not striving to
do anything more with it. I think that in a
certain way, that's kind of how I thought about the
marriage at first. Something about the two seemed similar to me,
(15:00):
like where I just kind of found myself going with
what I had rather than thinking about how I wanted
to change it, And.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Do you do that in other relationships and friendships? Accept
what there is and go with it rather than change it.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So will you say all your friends have turned against.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Yeah, I might have lost lots of friendships, like my
best man in my wedding. Since September, we spent a
few months not talking. We got back in touch. We
were just talking about random stuff like combinistress, soccer, and
throughout some of my more negative times of feeling very
down and feeling just like really depressed about not having
(15:37):
custody of my kids, he just wasn't a supportive even
though he was willing to talk about soccer with me,
he wasn't a supportive person.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
He didn't he didn't.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Try to care about how I was feeling or why
I was feeling it. I definitely felt like he thought
it was more like a well you made your decisions,
so live with them kind of thing. And even though
he was willing to be my friend, I think I'm
choosing not to be a part of that friendship more
than anything.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
But have you said to him, for example, like, dude,
you are my best man, I really need your support
right now? Did you talk to him about the friendship
and fight for it.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
I tried to start a few conversations, and each one
was met with some derision on his part of like
why can't you just let it go? And I said, like,
you're my best friend. I've never been in a darker
place that I am right now, and it wasn't met
with just compassion that I would have thought the friendship
would have carried with it.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
You know what strikes me about that friendship and also
your first marriage when you were feeling really unhappy and unsatisfied,
is that I think what the other people didn't hear
was I understand where you're coming from too, And so
with your friend, he probably had a lot of feelings,
(16:49):
maybe based on rumor or maybe based on what actually happened.
Earlier in our conversation, you said, I feel a lot
of guilt around how I handled things, And I don't
know if you've ever really said that to your wife
about I understand that I didn't handle certain things really well,
but maybe you didn't like there was space for that,
(17:10):
or that it would be met with more blame. But
I don't know that your ex heard that, and I
don't know that your friends have heard that either, it
sounds like you were saying to your friend, I'm in
a really dark place. I'm really struggling, And I think
what your friend might have been hearing was I left
my wife, I left my kids and with the love
of my life, and I'm a victim, right And maybe
(17:33):
that isn't the place that your friend could meet you.
Maybe your friend could meet you in a place of
I know this is really complicated. I know that you
might not have a lot of sympathy from me right now.
I know that I did a lot of things wrong
and I didn't handle them well, and I can understand
(17:54):
why you might have the feelings that you have about me.
And at the same time, maybe we could have a
more nuanced conversation about how complicated the situation was. And
here's what I'm willing to take responsibility for, and also
here's where I'm struggle. I think that might be part
of the reason that people aren't able to have the
(18:14):
compassion for you that you do deserve.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Interesting, so that definitely sits well. Something I realize is that,
like ulmost like, perspective taking is not my natural instinct.
So I do know that, and I think I don't
think I tried hard enough to figure out where he was.
I have apologized or tried to apologize more than once
(18:38):
to my ex. I'd really tried to be as sincere
as possible at different times, just like, I'm so sorry
for this and for what happened, and for what this
brought to your life as well.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So there's a butt there already. I'm so sorry that
I ruined your life. But right, yeah, so I think
you hit it on the head right there when you
said perspective taking is a little bit of a challenge
for you. I wonder if right now you could tell
us the story of what happened solely from the perspective
of what your ex wife's experience might have been and
(19:13):
what it might still be without making you a terrible person.
Where the actions and then there's who the person is.
And I think that sometimes what gets in the way
perspective taking for people is when they feel like if
they take the other person's perspective, it's going to make
them seem like they are inherently a bad person, as
opposed to I did some things that were bad. So
(19:36):
could you tell us the story from your ex wife's perspective?
Tell us what the marriage was like for her.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Just before you do, Mike, just one thing to keep
in mind. This is a real exercise for you because
perspective taking is something you can improve, and so it's difficult,
but you actually have to put yourself in her shoes
and imagine it, and then from that place, try and
describe what you're seeing and feeling.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Start with the first person, her first person. So I
got married to my.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Okay, so I got married to Mike after a whirlwind
courtship in college. He was my first ever boyfriend, the
first relationship I had really had outside of my family.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
What did you love about him?
Speaker 4 (20:33):
It's okay to cry. Mike's not sure how to answer that,
but Mike's gonna try.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I let's give you your exit name. What's her name?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Elizabeth?
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Okay, so we're talking to Elizabeth. Elizabeth? What did you
love about Mike?
Speaker 5 (20:53):
He was fun.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
He was different than other people who I sort of
been around and surrounded myself with. Had more of a
more whimsy, more of a way to bring humor to
a situation. He me was very committed and into me
and gave me a lot of attention, kind of like
(21:15):
made the relationship seemed to be the most important thing
in either of our lives.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
You said it was a whirlwind courtship. What do you
mean by that?
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Yeah, I mean the first night we hung out together,
I can remember just like feeling so free, just like
walked down the middle of the street on the way
back for the bars with him.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
I had been talking to my friend while I at
the bar, and she knew I liked Mike.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
So when I got in to the apartment after he
kissed me good night, it was like a really special
thing and it was very exciting, just like from kind
of that point. On the next night we hung out
and pretty much.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Most nights after that. How did Mike propose?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
Stupidly he got?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
He proposed in the parking lot of Coals when we
were buying a vacuum for our first apartment. Did you
have a He did have a ring. It was a
family ring. Mike doesn't find a whole lot of value
in expensive jewelry and really appreciated not having to spend
a full paychecks on something. But there was a family
(22:22):
ring that I knew was meaningful to me. It was
meaningful to my mom, so he thought would be meaningful
to me.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Did you find the proposal romantic or did you feel
like it to feel like it wasn't really thought out?
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I was really excited.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
On hind sight, as I thought more about it in
the story, I think I would have rather would have
liked a better story to tell, But in the moment
it was it felt very him.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Did you say that to Mike that there might be
an opportunity for him to improve on that you mean
to propon a day to make a romantic I.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
Never did, though.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
I would have thought that he would have taken away
that from other things I had said and other things
I showed I valued.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
What were some of the things you communicated to him
that would have maybe helped him to see that you
liked a little more thought to go into some of
these romantic gestures.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I'm not sure I could have said much. He's pretty
stubborn and opinions he has.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
How did you try to communicate to him?
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I wouldn't say I tried super hard, but Mike's very perceptive.
He thinks and took away from just other things that
he knew I would have valued just talking foldly about
other people's stories of romanticism, and.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
Mike probably thought I valued that.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
So looking back now, when did you feel first, even
if you didn't realize it at the time, that Mike
was beginning to drift emotionally away from you.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Well, then't very long after our first daughter was born.
I could tell how much he was into being a
father and how connected he was to our daughter.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
And I could.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Tell it didn't translate to me in the same way
that there wasn't a connection between us because of her,
that it almost felt like it was separate. And I
guess I'll pause in a way to say, like, that's
what I feel happened.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So we want to stop you there. I'll tell you why,
because we really want to keep you in her perspective,
and I think that anytime you leave her perspective, you're
going to lose the important part of this exercise. Okay, Elizabeth,
When you were pregnant, how connected did you guys feel?
Were you both really excited about having a child together.
(24:53):
What was the pregnancy like for you?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, we were very excited. He made it Every Sunday,
we took pictures and he made a stop motion video
of my belly getting larger, and then we set up
a crane to come down from the balcony and he
wrote a song and sang a song to video, and
(25:17):
so every Sunday we would take these you know, have
a many pictures to create the time lapse, and so
it was something we were both very excited about.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So it sounded like at that stage you were still
thinking that you were included in that in some way,
and yet then after your daughter was born, you start
to realize that actually it's more directed towards her and
not towards you. What did that feel like? That must
have been painful.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Probably, I think it was easy to.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Not look it directly in the face because of how
my of just my own excitement and taking care of
a young child put a lot of my energy into
that and put a lot of pressure on myself to
do everything right as a mother, and I think that
took away some of my attention to my feeling about
my relationship with Mike.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
And yet there must have been moments where you felt it.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, there were there were. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I specifically asked one of my cousins who I'm close
with were the same age if he also felt lonely,
because I was feeling very lonely and that stage in
my life, I guess I was six months after.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
Or a year after I thought I was born when
I asked my.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Cousin that, How did Mike know that you asked your
cousin about this?
Speaker 4 (26:41):
I told him after he told me he wanted to
leave me. Mike and I had a lot of conversation
between when he dropped that bobshell on me and when
our ability to communicate broke down. I tricked myself into
feeling like it was actually for the better that we
were separating, and that we would be.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
A better apart. So I think he held me back
in a certain way.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
I think he had a pretty overbearing personal and.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
I don't think.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
I wanted to rock the boat enough or cared enough
to kind of like assert my own opinions into the relationship.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
But were you not thinking that you were going to
be together forever?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I was? I was until the end.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I was.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Once we had kids and then had another, I thought
it was going to be foregone conclusion.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
How did you and Mike talk about having a second kid,
given that you were feeling disconnected and you were feeling
like Mike was more invested in your daughter than in you.
Did you want that, Elizabeth?
Speaker 5 (27:50):
I did.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I'm the oldest of two girls, and me and my
sister are really close, so you know, through our whole relationship, two.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Kids was kind of what we thought we were going
to have, So.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
After the first was born, it was almost like an ongoing,
kind of unspoken mostly then spoken thing, Well, when are
we going to have another one?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
The fact that Mike wanted to have another child must
have reassured you that he was invested in the marriage,
that he cared enough about you that he wanted to
expand the family. That must have given you some hope.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Yeah, I bet it was easy to feel that way.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Did you feel romantically connected to Mike? What was your
intimate life like?
Speaker 5 (28:35):
You have different ways of expressing affection for people.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I think how did you express affection for him?
Speaker 5 (28:43):
The affection was very much driven by Mike.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
And when I started to lessen, I didn't even notice
until it was nearly gone.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
And when it was nearly gone, did you say anything
or did you miss it?
Speaker 5 (29:00):
I didn't say anything.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Did you miss it? Did you feel hurt?
Speaker 5 (29:04):
It added to feelings of blondiness I had had.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
You were really expecting that this was a relationship that
would go on have its ups and downs. Tell us
about when that bubble burst tell us about the Bumpshell.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
I knew that Mike had something going on. He was
drinking more. There was something very clearly between us that
we're kind of skirting a certain issue of just like
general unhappiness, and I was sharing in him my general
uh happiness as well.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
And when we expressed loneliness.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
In each other and weeth what happened when you would
express your unhappiness and loneliness to Mike? How did he
respond to you.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
By putting it on the relationship? What did that look
like like?
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Acting like a yeah, see kind of thing? We are
both lonely. Looking back on it feels easy to see
that Mike was kind of like setting.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Up Mike might have been Elizabeth. But when you were
sharing yours, When most people do that, what they hope
is for the other person to reach the gap, is
to reach across the gulf. It's usually a request to
get closer. So what you were doing was asking him
(30:25):
to get closer.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I'm not sure it seemed like to Mike, and that's
what I was doing.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Perhaps not that's what you were doing.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
We call those making bids, right, you were making a
bid for some kind of connection. And when you would
make a bid for connection. He would say, this is
why the relationship is doomed. What did that feel like
to you?
Speaker 5 (30:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Let me ask the question differently. So remember that guy
with the whirlwind courtship, the guy that was so fun
as and he felt so attentive and he really loved
you and you were so excited to marry him. What
did that feel like when the person you love that
(31:21):
much and that you're trying to reconnect with won't engage
with you lonely?
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Probably felt a little, I don't know, untethered to anything.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Elizabeth. You just had two kids, and you talk to
your friends and they tell you, yeah, it's a rough
patch that happens. But the way you think, Elizabeth, it's
like the foundation of it is that we're going to
be together forever. That's how I see my life. That's
how I see my world. And then you expressed the
(32:04):
mic that you need to reconnect again, that you're feeling alone,
and you're sure that he'll say yo, yah, me too,
and let's really try and spend more time on us
or do something. And he's not making you feel more loved.
He's suddenly making you feel that foundation that you had
(32:25):
crafted your whole life and future around wasn't stable and
that's your life. So what was that like?
Speaker 5 (32:37):
World changing?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
It was not changing. It's collapsing, Elizabeth. That feels very
different than the world changing.
Speaker 7 (32:47):
It's collapsing or collapsing, falling apart. What is that like
when everything that you care about is falling apart.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
The worst?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Did Mike see how painful that was for you?
Speaker 5 (33:11):
I'm not sure. He showed that he cared a whole lot.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Wow, that must have been rough.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
He seems so focused on this next part of his
life that he wanted.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
So what was that like? Your foundation that you've built,
your hopes and dreams, one is collapsing and Mike has
just focused on his next move and leaving you with
the wreckage.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
However, many synonyms that mean really, really, really.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
Hard, and try a few. You're a teacher, you have
at Cabulary Science Teachers.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Your letter to us was so articulate about your own feelings.
Our listeners can't see this, but I see the tears
in your eyes, and I know that you're feeling something
as you go into Elizabeth's experience, and so I know
you have words.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
It's guilt. It's guilt. I've held on.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I think you might have some guilt, and we hear
that in your letter, but I also think that you
have something more than that, which is empathy. And I
think that the reason that you're feeling the guilt is
because you can empathize with Elizabeth's experience. So this isn't
intended to make you feel more guilty. It's actually intended
(34:39):
to make both of you more at peace and to
move forward in a different way. So if you can
get out of the I'm a bad person because Elizabeth
feels bad and I can't tolerate contemplating how bad I
made Elizabeth feel, then nothing will change in terms of
what happens in the future. And I feel most sad
(35:01):
in that instance for your daughters.
Speaker 5 (35:03):
Yeah too, So let's.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Look at how you can understand a little bit more
about that moment for Elizabeth. So, Elizabeth, first, you try
to talk to Mike about this gulf that you're feeling
in the marriage and the relationship. And you love this
guy so much you want that connection back, and he's
being very cold and distant and not engaging and not
(35:30):
working as a partner with you. On Yes, I feel
lonely too, and let's talk about this. That was not
what you got, even though you suspected that you were
both having very similar feelings. And then at some point
you hear this news. Can you tell us how you
got that news?
Speaker 4 (35:48):
It was just a Thursday night after Yeah, he actually
went to his first therapy appointment that week.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
He must have been hopeful.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Then.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
People at are often hopeful in the husband whose distant
goes to therapy. They think, oh, he'll come back now.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
It felt like he can't talk to me about whatever
he's going through. But I'm happy is someone to talk to.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
You about it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
How did the therapy happen for Mike?
Speaker 4 (36:11):
He just told me one day I made a therapy
appointment and it was he told me he made it
before the birth of our second child. But then he
the first appointment wasn't until a month later.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So you were hopeful that he would start to understand
more about maybe what was going on.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
With him m hm, and therefore be closer come back
to you more. Yeah, Tursday night he comes back and
tell us we put our older.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Daughter to bed, and where's your newborn.
Speaker 5 (36:44):
Asleep? Okay on a pillow.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
So in the room where you guys are having the conversation.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
He sat down on the couch and throughout looking at me,
he just said, I'm in love with somebody else. I
don't think we can be together anymore.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Wow, Well, how did you feel first? But it was
going through your body.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
A lot of physical reaction to shock. Just wanted to cry,
but I couldn't really cry. I wanted to ask a
million questions, but didn't have the didn't know what questions
to ask. Asked him who it was, wasn't super surprised
about who it was.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
And you realized that this was going on while you
were pregnant.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Remember in the first pregnancy, howke did that time lapse
and was so invested in the baby? Was he involved
in that way with the second pregnancy while he was
having this other relationship.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
He's always so invested in our other daughter. That seems
we were his focus was throughout the second pregnancy. But
it didn't feel the same as the first pregnancy. Didn't
feel the same connection between us.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
So here we are. It's a month, you've just given birth.
You have a newborn right there. Your husband just came
back from therapy, and you're thinking, Okay, maybe this is
the start of us reconnecting and becoming a real family again.
And he tells you that he's in love with someone else,
(38:31):
and you know who it is, and it makes sense
to you. And in that moment, what is it you're realizing.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Hopeless? How can I do this with that myself?
Speaker 3 (38:44):
What is it you feel when your whole world is
just being taken away from you? It's more than hopeless. Yeah,
I'm gonna say this to Mike. Now, you're stuck in
your head that if you really describe how she feels,
it makes you the bad person who made her feel
(39:06):
that way, and that's stopping you from kind of to
what her experience was. So you have to be able
to allow yourself to go there without feeling that it
demonizes you because this is her perspective now, it's not yours.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
I'm just having trouble describing what I know would be
probably one of the worst feelings to have. I can't
possibly know what it felt like to be her last spring,
but I do know that.
Speaker 5 (39:37):
She had an incredibly hard time.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
See, I think you can imagine what it was like
to be her last spring.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
Having trouble right now that anyway, So let's just.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Notice that for now, just notice that that's a challenge
right now, and that's going to be part of the
challenge going forward, where like with your friend, like with Elizabeth,
where if they don't see the entirety of who you are,
they are only going to see this demonized version of you,
(40:12):
because we see in this conversation how much empathy you
do have for her, how much you were actually able
to what we call mentalize, which is to get into
the emotional space of the other person. So we know
you have that capacity. But I think because it makes
you really uncomfortable to acknowledge to yourself how much discomfort
(40:37):
and hurt and pain you may have caused other people
that you're not able to own up to that. Saying
I'm sorry, but is not what will help you move forward,
or Elizabeth move forward, or your kids eventually make sense
of this in a way that works well for you, guys,
as a family.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
It felt incredibly unfair to be me as Elizabeth. It's unfair.
I had done everything right up to that point. I
got married, I had a house, I had kids, I
had a husband who I thought loved me, and here
I am, I'm thirty years old, and I can't even
imagine what my life was going to look like a
month from now, a year from now, five years from now.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, And there's the other piece of she loves you,
and there's the heartbreak part of it too. And we're
not saying that Elizabeth didn't have a role in as
clearly as we saw she did. You know, she may
have tried in her way to bring things up, but
neither of you knew how to communicate. I think if
Elizabeth was on this call, she would feel this relief of,
(41:39):
oh wow, he can see me. He understands something about
why this was so devastating for me in a way
that you've never expressed to her before. And there's something
as humans where what we really need is I see you,
I hear you, I understand you. Doesn't make it all better,
(41:59):
doesn't change whatever feeling she's going to have, but there's
something that shifts in the dynamic between the two of
you when someone says, oh, wow, you get it. This
was how I felt, and you can see that. There's
something so healing about that.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
And the healing, Mike depends on you getting it right
so that she really feels that you get it, and
that could be really useful to you both to school
payments going forward, and to.
Speaker 5 (42:30):
You, Yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
I just having lived the relationship now from what it
is for the last however many months, so it's been
so negative that we can barely communicate. I don't know
if she's even in a place to hear from me
in that way.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
So we have some thoughts. We know this was probably
a hard conversation.
Speaker 5 (43:00):
It really really was.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, And the reason is we only had this short
time with you, and we really want to help you
feel better going forward. And that doesn't mean that feeling
better is going to be us saying you're not a scumback.
But I will say you're not a scumback, which is
what you asked in your letter, But we don't think
that's actually going to be that helpful to you to
(43:23):
hear it from us. What we think is going to
be more helpful is if you can work more on
that perspective taking so that people can see that you
understand their experience as well, and also that you own,
without butts, without exceptions, that you owned your part in it.
(43:43):
You had reasons for doing what you did, but in hindsight,
I think you can see that there were also ways
that you handled it that maybe going forward you wouldn't
handle a similar situation. What it does is it says
I'm more aware and I really feel for you, and
whether it matters to them or not, that you've expressed
that to them, and it's not just a general I'm sorry,
(44:06):
but it's what we were doing earlier. Wow, Now I
really see how this must have felt and how you
feel now.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Would like you to write a letter that explains from
Elizabeth's point of view, what her experience was and what
the consequences of your action were from her perspective. But
here's how I want you to do it. I know
perspective taking is difficult for you. I want you to
start by explaining your perspective by saying that you realize
(44:40):
you shouldn't have probably married, that it wasn't as big
a love as it might have been. That you realized
that when you found real love that that wasn't enough.
You kind of knew it and suspected it, but you
realized it later on. So I want you to kind
of set up your side of things in the first part,
(45:02):
and then I want you to write only her part
of things, and then you describe what happened and you
describe the impact on her, what she must have felt,
what it must have been like, all the stuff we
did in that exercise, and then I want you, when
you're done, to take out that first part so that
(45:23):
it's not part of the letter. It's important for you
to write it because you tend to get blocked with
a perspective taking because you keep wanting to explain your part.
So I want you to start that way so you
have it all there, but then take it out because
that's not the point of the letter. The point of
the letter is to be able to show her and
perhaps your best man, that you really get it.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
And again you worry that they're going to say, see,
you are a scumback. I think it's going to be
the opposite. When you're writing it, you're not making the
case that you're not a scumback, but that you did
mishandle things. Here's your opportunity to show them that you
can take their perspective and that you do own the
parts of it that were yours.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, Mikeie was good to talk to you, and we
really do Isshue the best.
Speaker 5 (46:09):
You guys to take care of Mike.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
We look forward to hearing back from you, Okay.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
Take care.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
So Lurie, what do you think is going to happen.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
I think he's in a really tricky place right now,
and I think that the advice that we gave him
will serve him more in the long term than in
the short term. I don't think he's going to actually
give these letters to his ex or to his friend,
but he do think having that perspective taking exercise will
help him with how he negotiates things with his ex wife,
(46:42):
how he negotiates his friendships going forward, how he negotiates
his new relationship, and also how he is as a
parent as he spends more time with his children.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
I agree. I think maybe he'll give it to the friend.
But we know his therapists that when we suggest people
write letters, really we're in it for the writing. In
other words, what you gain you gain in the writing.
So I hope that he gives us a try, and
I do think it'll be at him in the long
tim if he can do it.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
This is dear therapist, and we'll be back after a
short break.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
I'm Guy Wench.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
And I'm Lori Gottlieb, and this is dear therapist. Well,
let's listen to the voicemail.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
So I wrote two letters this morning, one to who
my best man was and one to my ex. It's
hard to describe the experience. I chose not to take
one part of your advice. I did not write my
own perspective down before writing what I thought was theirs.
I felt this morning that I focused too much on
(47:54):
my own perspective and I was trying to move beyond
it and trying to find THEIRS without needing to name
mine first. Ultimately, I cried a lot while writing the
letter to my ex in the same way I felt
the experience while I was describing it. I don't want
to lose sight of the negative feelings that I cost her.
(48:15):
I just hope that at some point you can forgive
me for those negative feelings. And yeah, just for the
sake of our daughters, if nothing else. I sent the
email to my best friend a lot shorter, ad as
many details, but I did want him to see that
I had not been thinking of his perspective much at all,
(48:36):
and I hope you can hear that, and especially when
it comes to the pressure I was putting on him
to feel and think a certain way about my life,
as I was just desperately seeking his understanding.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
I am super impressed with Mike because what comes across
from his voicemail is this whole idea of perspective taking.
He really took them on board, and I'm hopeful that
he's looking at relationships slightly differently and is going to
conduct himself to be going forward.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah, I was incredibly impressed with what he did. I
think it was really hard for him, for anybody it
would be to come into this situation at the place
that he was. We were very hard on him in
that session because we only had a certain amount of
time with him, and sometimes people aren't able to take
in what you're giving them when you move that quickly,
(49:33):
and so in a therapy session, we would not move
that quickly.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
It would be weeks of.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
That months right exactly. So it was really interesting to
see that, even though at the end of that call
he seemed at bit deflated, he really took in what
we said, and so much to the point that he
decided not even to include his own perspective because he realized,
I have trouble taking other people's perspective. Now. Of course,
(49:58):
we want him to keep his perspective. We don't ever
want someone to lose their own perspective. But I think
that he was realizing that the exercise would be easier
for him in this instance if he did it that way.
And the one thing that I want to say, if
he's listening to this, is that he said, I hope
that they'll forgive me. And what I want to say is, Mike,
(50:18):
I hope that you will forgive yourself. That that's the
place we want to get him too, that once he
can take this other perspective, that eventually he will come
to a place of forgiving himself as well, and I
think then he will be able to really move forward.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
I agree, and I think that what's lovely to hear
is when we're telling someone that there's an important part
of life that is not appearing on their radar, and
then they respond in a way that indicates that it's
now appearing on their radar. It gives us as therapists,
and for Mike, a lot of hope. That brings us
(50:58):
to the end of our show for this week. Thank
you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
You can follow us both online. I'm at lorigottlieb dot
com and you can follow me on Twitter at Lorigottlieb One.
We're on Instagram at Lorigottlieb Underscore Author.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
And I'm at Guywinch dot com. I'm on Twitter and
on Instagram at guy Wench. If you have a dilemma
you'd like to discuss with us, big or small, email
us at Lorianguy at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Our executive producers Christopher Hasiotis, were produced and edited by
Mike Johns. Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our
podcast Fairy Godmother Katie Couric.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Next week. There's no real estate adage that goes location, location, location,
We'll talk about how that applies in a marriage.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
I think I said many times I never want to
live in Omaha cover and I said I'd never want
to live in New York, and we did both. Dear
Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio
Hey to your Therapist listeners. It's Lori and Guy and
we have a quick update.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Many of you have told us that you get something
new out of each episode when you listen to it
again the second or third time. In fact, when we
listen to the episodes again, we also get takeaways we
didn't remember.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
We're They're therapy is like that too. There are so
many learning moments in a session, and it's difficult to
absorb them all at once. So while we're not taping
new episodes right now, we are offering you our most
popular sessions as encores so that you can continue to
gain value from them.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We love doing the Therapists episodes, but we're each busy
with new and exciting projects that we hope you will love.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Just as much.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I have a new advice podcast called Since You Asked,
which you can get wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
And I have a new book coming out. It's called
Mind Overgrind, How to Break Free when work Hijacks your life,
and it will be published by Simon and Schuster. You
can find out more about it on my website.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
You can learn more about these on our socials. And meanwhile,
we hope you find these Dear Therapists sessions as valuable
as we have making them for you. Hey, fellow travelers,
I'm Laur Gottlieb. I'm the author of Maybe You Should
Talk to Someone, and I write the Dear Therapist advice
(02:31):
column for The Atlantic.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
And I'm Guy Winch. I wrote Emotional First Aid, and
I write the Dear Guy collumn for Ted. And this
is Dear Therapists this week. A man who left his
wife for the love of his life wonders if that
makes him a bad person. Rabia.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I did leave my wife for another woman, but the
rumors that we're about were as nasty as can be
and set the timeline very differently than what reality was.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Listen in and maybe learn something about yourself and the process.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute
medical advice and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis,
or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental
health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions
you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter,
you are agreeing to let iHeart Media use it in
(03:21):
Potter and Full, and we may edit it for length
end of clarity. Hey guy, Hi Laurie.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
So I want to read you this week's letter. Dear therapists.
I'm a thirty two year old father to two young
daughters who realized too late that I was not fundamentally
in love with my wife. We started dating in college,
and our naivete led us to marry young. We both
got along by not rocking the boat and decided to
have kids. When we had our first daughter, fatherhood engulfed
(03:50):
me and I had never been a part of something
so important. However, I didn't feel it all connected to
my wife. I loved my daughter, but I felt like
I was alone in this endeavor. Two years ago, my
existence was lit a fire by another woman, a coworker,
to make it more complicated, and as we continued to
seek out time to interact, we started sharing ourselves with
(04:10):
each other in a way that we had never done
with our spouses. Our existence was made complete by each
other and we couldn't go back to what it was before.
Fairly recently, we both broke down and ended our marriages
in a storm of shock, tears, anger, hatred, and sadness.
My wife couldn't understand, because she never really understood me.
We acknowledged our marriage felt broken, but she expected us
(04:33):
to try to fix it because of the commitment we
had made. I am now locked in a bitter custody
battle as a fight for my right to continue to
be the father to my daughters. I am sympathetic to
the position I put my ex wife in, but I
can't imagine that the cost of my fatherhood has to
be staying in a marriage that I know was not
going to give me the fulfilling existence that I can
(04:53):
now have with this other woman. My life is over
as I knew it. The world around me doesn't seem
to accept my decision. My friends have abandoned me, my
coworkers think I'm a scumbag, and my wife seems to
be trying to poison everyone against me. I didn't think
I was making a selfish decision by doing this, but
the world around me is doing a good job of
(05:14):
convincing me that I am all of the terrible things
they say I am. I guess I just don't know
how to think any more about myself or the people
around me. Thanks Mike, Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
So this is a please tell me I'm not a
scumbag letter? And what's interesting to me in the letter
is Mike is so articulate about his perspective and his
feelings and his point of view. You really get a
sense of how he feels about things. It's rich. And
then on the other side you get very unrich descriptions
(05:48):
of what his wife experience is and even what his
girlfriend's experience is. And though he pays some lip service
to yes, my wife expected this or felt this, you
don't get a sense that he really understands what his
wife experiences or perhaps what his girlfriends is currently either.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Right, you said, it was like a please tell me
I'm not a scumbag letter to me, it's I need
to get out of jail letter too, where he's portraying
his existence as if he was in jail this whole time,
and I understand the experience of feeling trapped, of feeling
like you're unfulfilled, but he doesn't take any responsibility for
(06:32):
why he might have felt that way because of some
role that he might have had in this. And so
it's kind of like I was in jail when I
was married to my wife, and then this new woman.
We complete each.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Other, and yet he's more miserable than ever.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Exactly they both left their marriages. He doesn't really tell
us was it hard for her? I don't hear both
of us are going through this and we're really struggling
with this. It's I'm going through this and your wife
is now been left for this other woman. It's humiliating.
You didn't have any interest in trying to see what
(07:07):
went wrong in your marriage because she said I want
to try to fix it. Maybe you don't want to,
but could you at least have those conversations so that
there's some kind of different ending to that marriage. He
wants us to assuage his guilt and say, no, you're
not selfish, rather than him wanting to look inside and say,
(07:28):
is there a piece of me that is selfish? And
if we can get him to see that piece of himself,
maybe he'll have more compassion for the people around him.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
There's another aspect to this that I wanted to point out,
in that there's a lot of passivity that comes through
the whole flavor of the letter. Is like, all this
stuff happened to me. We are all human, We can
all make mistakes. He fell in love. That part happens.
But what concerns me in these situations is that by
not taking responsibility, you're feeling like a victim.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Right. He wants to abdicate his responsibility by having us
say no, no, no, no no, what you did that
was perfectly fine. And it's not so much what he did,
it's the way in which he did it.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Yes, And I wonder whether he feels guilt or he
just feels the negative perception of the people around him,
because what we know from guilt, the research often shows
that it really prevents people from enjoying life and sometimes
even causes them to self punish. It's called a dobby effect,
based on the elf in the Harry Potter books that
(08:35):
you used to smack his head against the all and
go h badobie. And so there's this real phenomena that
when you actually feel guilty and you're not dealing with it,
you can somehow unconsciously take away the pleasure and enjoyment
that you might have from life. You're listening to Deer
Therapists from iHeartRadio. We'll be back after a quick break.
(09:13):
This is THEO therapist. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Well, let's see what he has to say.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Absolutely, let's stop to him. Mike, very good to meet you,
so first of all, tell us a little bit about
where things stand right now in terms of your kids,
how they're doing, whether you're seeing them.
Speaker 5 (09:34):
Yeah, so how they're doing.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I was like, I think, if nothing else, I felt
like me and my act had done a pretty good
job of kind of shielding them from some of this drama.
Just like, not let them be a part of any
of the drama that's going down, and try not to
let them see many a lot of my negative emotions
throughout the last couple of months. How old are the
girls young? Just over three and one and a half.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
What has your time been like with the girls since
you guys split up?
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Well, we first split, we went through a mediation process,
and then after we had filed that mediation agreement ready
for our court date, some pretty nasty rumors got to
my ex and it sent her.
Speaker 5 (10:15):
Off a deep end.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Were the rumors true?
Speaker 5 (10:19):
No, no, no.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
No no.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
There are aspects to the story where I mean, I
did leave my wife for another woman, But the rumors
that were about were as nasty as can be and
kind of like set the timeline very differently than what
reality was. Me and my girlfriend now we worked together,
so that created some serious drama.
Speaker 5 (10:39):
At work.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Were you able to clear up the rumors with your
ex wife to this day? Does she understand that what
she heard is not accurate?
Speaker 5 (10:50):
Not that I know of.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
We really haven't had a good I would call a
productive conversation for a year, Like the last one really
was about a year ago. It was an it was
around this time last year that things kind of blew up.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
What was your communication like with your wife when you
were married?
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Very surface level, I would say one of the issues
was that we didn't share a whole lot of emotions
with each other.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Do you know why you didn't share your emotions with
your wife when you were married?
Speaker 5 (11:22):
I guess I would say they didn't really feel safe.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Like the handful of times I went trying to go
a little deeper, it didn't feel like it was a
supportive place to bring them up.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I thought.
Speaker 4 (11:35):
I just was always worried about how it was going
to change how she thought of me. So like a
couple of times I brought up what were some of
my darker things, it was like almost like pushed aside,
like don't burden me.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
With that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Would she use those words or how did you get
the impression it.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Was met with a lot of just kind of like no,
I would say, silence, but not necessarily like intentionally negative silence,
more just like she didn't know what to say to
me silence.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
And what about the actual relationship? Were you able to
talk with her about your dissatisfactions with it or the
fact that it wasn't what you wanted it to be.
Have you made efforts in that regard? I would.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
I can think of like two or three times a
few years ago, where like I was telling her what
was bothering me? And she snapped and said, stop telling
me what.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
I'm doing wrong.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
I remember like being taken aback, but thinking like that's
not what I was doing necessarily. But it definitely felt
like she didn't want to have that conversation about like
how we could be doing differently.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
So I tried once or twice. I wouldn't say I
tried very hard.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
It felt easier just to like live the circuce level
life that we had been kind of like living and
making dinner, not saying much, put it on a show,
going to bed without much conversation.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
It wasn't particularly negative, It just wasn't super positive.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
What do you think would have happened if you had
said to her, I'm not saying that you're doing something wrong.
I want to talk about something that's going on with us.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
I don't know at this point. It only behindindsight.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
But well, the reason it's not hindsight is that you're
going into a new relationship and there's something to be
learned about what didn't work in another relationship. At least
you're a part of it.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Yeah, okay, I hear that.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And I'm just wondering, you know, why do you think
you did not pursue it, given how desperately alone and
unhappy you felt.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
One of the things I've really been struggling with. I
didn't necessarily know what I didn't have until I had
it with somebody else. So like my existence wasn't super
negative in a certain way. Like it wasn't like I
went home every day miserable trying to avoid my wife.
I didn't have a partnership that I've always felt like
should have been there. So when I found it somewhere else,
(13:54):
it was like, oh man, this is so eye opening.
It felt like I fell in love with someone else,
and that's why I fell out of love with my wife,
and I and I do struggle with wondering what could
have happened if I had tried harder or tried differently.
It's definitely something I like get pretty down on myself
about wondering what I could have done differently to make
this situation better for me and my ex rather than
(14:18):
but just I thing.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Guess somewhere else are the other eras in your life
in which you kind of feel unsatisfied but you really
struggle to know how to make things better or to
take the initiative because you seem to say, Okay, I settled.
Do you do that in other eras of your life?
Speaker 4 (14:37):
Yeah, I guess so. So like in my career, I
am a classroom teacher. I don't have aspirations to do
much more with it. I don't want to be administrator,
I don't want to be a principal. So it's not
like I'm not unsatisfied, but I'm also not striving to
do anything more with it. I think that in a
certain way, that's kind of how I thought about the
marriage at first. Something about the two seemed similar to me,
(15:00):
like where I just kind of found myself going with
what I had rather than thinking about how I wanted
to change it, And.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Do you do that in other relationships and friendships? Accept
what there is and go with it rather than change it.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
I guess.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
So will you say all your friends have turned against.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Yeah, I might have lost lots of friendships, like my
best man in my wedding. Since September, we spent a
few months not talking. We got back in touch. We
were just talking about random stuff like combinistress, soccer, and
throughout some of my more negative times of feeling very
down and feeling just like really depressed about not having
(15:37):
custody of my kids, he just wasn't a supportive even
though he was willing to talk about soccer with me,
he wasn't a supportive person.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
He didn't he didn't.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Try to care about how I was feeling or why
I was feeling it. I definitely felt like he thought
it was more like a well you made your decisions,
so live with them kind of thing. And even though
he was willing to be my friend, I think I'm
choosing not to be a part of that friendship more
than anything.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
But have you said to him, for example, like, dude,
you are my best man, I really need your support
right now? Did you talk to him about the friendship
and fight for it.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
I tried to start a few conversations, and each one
was met with some derision on his part of like
why can't you just let it go? And I said, like,
you're my best friend. I've never been in a darker
place that I am right now, and it wasn't met
with just compassion that I would have thought the friendship
would have carried with it.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
You know what strikes me about that friendship and also
your first marriage when you were feeling really unhappy and unsatisfied,
is that I think what the other people didn't hear
was I understand where you're coming from too, And so
with your friend, he probably had a lot of feelings,
(16:49):
maybe based on rumor or maybe based on what actually happened.
Earlier in our conversation, you said, I feel a lot
of guilt around how I handled things, And I don't
know if you've ever really said that to your wife
about I understand that I didn't handle certain things really well,
but maybe you didn't like there was space for that,
(17:10):
or that it would be met with more blame. But
I don't know that your ex heard that, and I
don't know that your friends have heard that either, it
sounds like you were saying to your friend, I'm in
a really dark place. I'm really struggling, And I think
what your friend might have been hearing was I left
my wife, I left my kids and with the love
of my life, and I'm a victim, right And maybe
(17:33):
that isn't the place that your friend could meet you.
Maybe your friend could meet you in a place of
I know this is really complicated. I know that you
might not have a lot of sympathy from me right now.
I know that I did a lot of things wrong
and I didn't handle them well, and I can understand
(17:54):
why you might have the feelings that you have about me.
And at the same time, maybe we could have a
more nuanced conversation about how complicated the situation was. And
here's what I'm willing to take responsibility for, and also
here's where I'm struggle. I think that might be part
of the reason that people aren't able to have the
(18:14):
compassion for you that you do deserve.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
Interesting, so that definitely sits well. Something I realize is that,
like ulmost like, perspective taking is not my natural instinct.
So I do know that, and I think I don't
think I tried hard enough to figure out where he was.
I have apologized or tried to apologize more than once
(18:38):
to my ex. I'd really tried to be as sincere
as possible at different times, just like, I'm so sorry
for this and for what happened, and for what this
brought to your life as well.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So there's a butt there already. I'm so sorry that
I ruined your life. But right, yeah, so I think
you hit it on the head right there when you
said perspective taking is a little bit of a challenge
for you. I wonder if right now you could tell
us the story of what happened solely from the perspective
of what your ex wife's experience might have been and
(19:13):
what it might still be without making you a terrible person.
Where the actions and then there's who the person is.
And I think that sometimes what gets in the way
perspective taking for people is when they feel like if
they take the other person's perspective, it's going to make
them seem like they are inherently a bad person, as
opposed to I did some things that were bad. So
(19:36):
could you tell us the story from your ex wife's perspective?
Tell us what the marriage was like for her.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Just before you do, Mike, just one thing to keep
in mind. This is a real exercise for you because
perspective taking is something you can improve, and so it's difficult,
but you actually have to put yourself in her shoes
and imagine it, and then from that place, try and
describe what you're seeing and feeling.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Start with the first person, her first person. So I
got married to my.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Okay, so I got married to Mike after a whirlwind
courtship in college. He was my first ever boyfriend, the
first relationship I had really had outside of my family.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
What did you love about him?
Speaker 4 (20:33):
It's okay to cry. Mike's not sure how to answer that,
but Mike's gonna try.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I let's give you your exit name. What's her name?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Elizabeth?
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Okay, so we're talking to Elizabeth. Elizabeth? What did you
love about Mike?
Speaker 5 (20:53):
He was fun.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
He was different than other people who I sort of
been around and surrounded myself with. Had more of a
more whimsy, more of a way to bring humor to
a situation. He me was very committed and into me
and gave me a lot of attention, kind of like
(21:15):
made the relationship seemed to be the most important thing
in either of our lives.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
You said it was a whirlwind courtship. What do you
mean by that?
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Yeah, I mean the first night we hung out together,
I can remember just like feeling so free, just like
walked down the middle of the street on the way
back for the bars with him.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
I had been talking to my friend while I at
the bar, and she knew I liked Mike.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
So when I got in to the apartment after he
kissed me good night, it was like a really special
thing and it was very exciting, just like from kind
of that point. On the next night we hung out
and pretty much.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Most nights after that. How did Mike propose?
Speaker 5 (22:00):
Stupidly he got?
Speaker 4 (22:01):
He proposed in the parking lot of Coals when we
were buying a vacuum for our first apartment. Did you
have a He did have a ring. It was a
family ring. Mike doesn't find a whole lot of value
in expensive jewelry and really appreciated not having to spend
a full paychecks on something. But there was a family
(22:22):
ring that I knew was meaningful to me. It was
meaningful to my mom, so he thought would be meaningful
to me.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Did you find the proposal romantic or did you feel
like it to feel like it wasn't really thought out?
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I was really excited.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
On hind sight, as I thought more about it in
the story, I think I would have rather would have
liked a better story to tell, But in the moment
it was it felt very him.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
Did you say that to Mike that there might be
an opportunity for him to improve on that you mean
to propon a day to make a romantic I.
Speaker 5 (23:02):
Never did, though.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
I would have thought that he would have taken away
that from other things I had said and other things
I showed I valued.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
What were some of the things you communicated to him
that would have maybe helped him to see that you
liked a little more thought to go into some of
these romantic gestures.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I'm not sure I could have said much. He's pretty
stubborn and opinions he has.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
How did you try to communicate to him?
Speaker 4 (23:30):
I wouldn't say I tried super hard, but Mike's very perceptive.
He thinks and took away from just other things that
he knew I would have valued just talking foldly about
other people's stories of romanticism, and.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
Mike probably thought I valued that.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
So looking back now, when did you feel first, even
if you didn't realize it at the time, that Mike
was beginning to drift emotionally away from you.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
Well, then't very long after our first daughter was born.
I could tell how much he was into being a
father and how connected he was to our daughter.
Speaker 5 (24:13):
And I could.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
Tell it didn't translate to me in the same way
that there wasn't a connection between us because of her,
that it almost felt like it was separate. And I
guess I'll pause in a way to say, like, that's
what I feel happened.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
So we want to stop you there. I'll tell you why,
because we really want to keep you in her perspective,
and I think that anytime you leave her perspective, you're
going to lose the important part of this exercise. Okay, Elizabeth,
When you were pregnant, how connected did you guys feel?
Were you both really excited about having a child together.
(24:53):
What was the pregnancy like for you?
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, we were very excited. He made it Every Sunday,
we took pictures and he made a stop motion video
of my belly getting larger, and then we set up
a crane to come down from the balcony and he
wrote a song and sang a song to video, and
(25:17):
so every Sunday we would take these you know, have
a many pictures to create the time lapse, and so
it was something we were both very excited about.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So it sounded like at that stage you were still
thinking that you were included in that in some way,
and yet then after your daughter was born, you start
to realize that actually it's more directed towards her and
not towards you. What did that feel like? That must
have been painful.
Speaker 5 (25:47):
Probably, I think it was easy to.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Not look it directly in the face because of how
my of just my own excitement and taking care of
a young child put a lot of my energy into
that and put a lot of pressure on myself to
do everything right as a mother, and I think that
took away some of my attention to my feeling about
my relationship with Mike.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
And yet there must have been moments where you felt it.
Speaker 5 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, there were there were. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
I specifically asked one of my cousins who I'm close
with were the same age if he also felt lonely,
because I was feeling very lonely and that stage in
my life, I guess I was six months after.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
Or a year after I thought I was born when
I asked my.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Cousin that, How did Mike know that you asked your
cousin about this?
Speaker 4 (26:41):
I told him after he told me he wanted to
leave me. Mike and I had a lot of conversation
between when he dropped that bobshell on me and when
our ability to communicate broke down. I tricked myself into
feeling like it was actually for the better that we
were separating, and that we would be.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
A better apart. So I think he held me back
in a certain way.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
I think he had a pretty overbearing personal and.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
I don't think.
Speaker 4 (27:12):
I wanted to rock the boat enough or cared enough
to kind of like assert my own opinions into the relationship.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
But were you not thinking that you were going to
be together forever?
Speaker 5 (27:25):
I was? I was until the end.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
I was.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
Once we had kids and then had another, I thought
it was going to be foregone conclusion.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
How did you and Mike talk about having a second kid,
given that you were feeling disconnected and you were feeling
like Mike was more invested in your daughter than in you.
Did you want that, Elizabeth?
Speaker 5 (27:50):
I did.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I'm the oldest of two girls, and me and my
sister are really close, so you know, through our whole relationship, two.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Kids was kind of what we thought we were going
to have, So.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
After the first was born, it was almost like an ongoing,
kind of unspoken mostly then spoken thing, Well, when are
we going to have another one?
Speaker 3 (28:11):
The fact that Mike wanted to have another child must
have reassured you that he was invested in the marriage,
that he cared enough about you that he wanted to
expand the family. That must have given you some hope.
Speaker 5 (28:23):
Yeah, I bet it was easy to feel that way.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Did you feel romantically connected to Mike? What was your
intimate life like?
Speaker 5 (28:35):
You have different ways of expressing affection for people.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
I think how did you express affection for him?
Speaker 5 (28:43):
The affection was very much driven by Mike.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
And when I started to lessen, I didn't even notice
until it was nearly gone.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
And when it was nearly gone, did you say anything
or did you miss it?
Speaker 5 (29:00):
I didn't say anything.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Did you miss it? Did you feel hurt?
Speaker 5 (29:04):
It added to feelings of blondiness I had had.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
You were really expecting that this was a relationship that
would go on have its ups and downs. Tell us
about when that bubble burst tell us about the Bumpshell.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
I knew that Mike had something going on. He was
drinking more. There was something very clearly between us that
we're kind of skirting a certain issue of just like
general unhappiness, and I was sharing in him my general
uh happiness as well.
Speaker 5 (29:35):
And when we expressed loneliness.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
In each other and weeth what happened when you would
express your unhappiness and loneliness to Mike? How did he
respond to you.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
By putting it on the relationship? What did that look
like like?
Speaker 4 (29:53):
Acting like a yeah, see kind of thing? We are
both lonely. Looking back on it feels easy to see
that Mike was kind of like setting.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Up Mike might have been Elizabeth. But when you were
sharing yours, When most people do that, what they hope
is for the other person to reach the gap, is
to reach across the gulf. It's usually a request to
get closer. So what you were doing was asking him
(30:25):
to get closer.
Speaker 5 (30:28):
I'm not sure it seemed like to Mike, and that's
what I was doing.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
Perhaps not that's what you were doing.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
We call those making bids, right, you were making a
bid for some kind of connection. And when you would
make a bid for connection. He would say, this is
why the relationship is doomed. What did that feel like
to you?
Speaker 5 (30:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Let me ask the question differently. So remember that guy
with the whirlwind courtship, the guy that was so fun
as and he felt so attentive and he really loved
you and you were so excited to marry him. What
did that feel like when the person you love that
(31:21):
much and that you're trying to reconnect with won't engage
with you lonely?
Speaker 5 (31:33):
Probably felt a little, I don't know, untethered to anything.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Elizabeth. You just had two kids, and you talk to
your friends and they tell you, yeah, it's a rough
patch that happens. But the way you think, Elizabeth, it's
like the foundation of it is that we're going to
be together forever. That's how I see my life. That's
how I see my world. And then you expressed the
(32:04):
mic that you need to reconnect again, that you're feeling alone,
and you're sure that he'll say yo, yah, me too,
and let's really try and spend more time on us
or do something. And he's not making you feel more loved.
He's suddenly making you feel that foundation that you had
(32:25):
crafted your whole life and future around wasn't stable and
that's your life. So what was that like?
Speaker 5 (32:37):
World changing?
Speaker 3 (32:40):
It was not changing. It's collapsing, Elizabeth. That feels very
different than the world changing.
Speaker 7 (32:47):
It's collapsing or collapsing, falling apart. What is that like
when everything that you care about is falling apart.
Speaker 5 (33:02):
The worst?
Speaker 3 (33:05):
Did Mike see how painful that was for you?
Speaker 5 (33:11):
I'm not sure. He showed that he cared a whole lot.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Wow, that must have been rough.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
He seems so focused on this next part of his
life that he wanted.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
So what was that like? Your foundation that you've built,
your hopes and dreams, one is collapsing and Mike has
just focused on his next move and leaving you with
the wreckage.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
However, many synonyms that mean really, really, really.
Speaker 6 (33:48):
Hard, and try a few. You're a teacher, you have
at Cabulary Science Teachers.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Your letter to us was so articulate about your own feelings.
Our listeners can't see this, but I see the tears
in your eyes, and I know that you're feeling something
as you go into Elizabeth's experience, and so I know
you have words.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
It's guilt. It's guilt. I've held on.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I think you might have some guilt, and we hear
that in your letter, but I also think that you
have something more than that, which is empathy. And I
think that the reason that you're feeling the guilt is
because you can empathize with Elizabeth's experience. So this isn't
intended to make you feel more guilty. It's actually intended
(34:39):
to make both of you more at peace and to
move forward in a different way. So if you can
get out of the I'm a bad person because Elizabeth
feels bad and I can't tolerate contemplating how bad I
made Elizabeth feel, then nothing will change in terms of
what happens in the future. And I feel most sad
(35:01):
in that instance for your daughters.
Speaker 5 (35:03):
Yeah too, So let's.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Look at how you can understand a little bit more
about that moment for Elizabeth. So, Elizabeth, first, you try
to talk to Mike about this gulf that you're feeling
in the marriage and the relationship. And you love this
guy so much you want that connection back, and he's
being very cold and distant and not engaging and not
(35:30):
working as a partner with you. On Yes, I feel
lonely too, and let's talk about this. That was not
what you got, even though you suspected that you were
both having very similar feelings. And then at some point
you hear this news. Can you tell us how you
got that news?
Speaker 4 (35:48):
It was just a Thursday night after Yeah, he actually
went to his first therapy appointment that week.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
He must have been hopeful.
Speaker 4 (35:57):
Then.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
People at are often hopeful in the husband whose distant
goes to therapy. They think, oh, he'll come back now.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
It felt like he can't talk to me about whatever
he's going through. But I'm happy is someone to talk to.
Speaker 3 (36:08):
You about it.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
How did the therapy happen for Mike?
Speaker 4 (36:11):
He just told me one day I made a therapy
appointment and it was he told me he made it
before the birth of our second child. But then he
the first appointment wasn't until a month later.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So you were hopeful that he would start to understand
more about maybe what was going on.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
With him m hm, and therefore be closer come back
to you more. Yeah, Tursday night he comes back and
tell us we put our older.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Daughter to bed, and where's your newborn.
Speaker 5 (36:44):
Asleep? Okay on a pillow.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
So in the room where you guys are having the conversation.
Speaker 4 (36:50):
He sat down on the couch and throughout looking at me,
he just said, I'm in love with somebody else. I
don't think we can be together anymore.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Wow, Well, how did you feel first? But it was
going through your body.
Speaker 4 (37:15):
A lot of physical reaction to shock. Just wanted to cry,
but I couldn't really cry. I wanted to ask a
million questions, but didn't have the didn't know what questions
to ask. Asked him who it was, wasn't super surprised
about who it was.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
And you realized that this was going on while you
were pregnant.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Remember in the first pregnancy, howke did that time lapse
and was so invested in the baby? Was he involved
in that way with the second pregnancy while he was
having this other relationship.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
He's always so invested in our other daughter. That seems
we were his focus was throughout the second pregnancy. But
it didn't feel the same as the first pregnancy. Didn't
feel the same connection between us.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
So here we are. It's a month, you've just given birth.
You have a newborn right there. Your husband just came
back from therapy, and you're thinking, Okay, maybe this is
the start of us reconnecting and becoming a real family again.
And he tells you that he's in love with someone else,
(38:31):
and you know who it is, and it makes sense
to you. And in that moment, what is it you're realizing.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
Hopeless? How can I do this with that myself?
Speaker 3 (38:44):
What is it you feel when your whole world is
just being taken away from you? It's more than hopeless. Yeah,
I'm gonna say this to Mike. Now, you're stuck in
your head that if you really describe how she feels,
it makes you the bad person who made her feel
(39:06):
that way, and that's stopping you from kind of to
what her experience was. So you have to be able
to allow yourself to go there without feeling that it
demonizes you because this is her perspective now, it's not yours.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
I'm just having trouble describing what I know would be
probably one of the worst feelings to have. I can't
possibly know what it felt like to be her last spring,
but I do know that.
Speaker 5 (39:37):
She had an incredibly hard time.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
See, I think you can imagine what it was like
to be her last spring.
Speaker 5 (39:47):
Having trouble right now that anyway, So let's just.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Notice that for now, just notice that that's a challenge
right now, and that's going to be part of the
challenge going forward, where like with your friend, like with Elizabeth,
where if they don't see the entirety of who you are,
they are only going to see this demonized version of you,
(40:12):
because we see in this conversation how much empathy you
do have for her, how much you were actually able
to what we call mentalize, which is to get into
the emotional space of the other person. So we know
you have that capacity. But I think because it makes
you really uncomfortable to acknowledge to yourself how much discomfort
(40:37):
and hurt and pain you may have caused other people
that you're not able to own up to that. Saying
I'm sorry, but is not what will help you move forward,
or Elizabeth move forward, or your kids eventually make sense
of this in a way that works well for you, guys,
as a family.
Speaker 4 (40:57):
It felt incredibly unfair to be me as Elizabeth. It's unfair.
I had done everything right up to that point. I
got married, I had a house, I had kids, I
had a husband who I thought loved me, and here
I am, I'm thirty years old, and I can't even
imagine what my life was going to look like a
month from now, a year from now, five years from now.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Yeah, And there's the other piece of she loves you,
and there's the heartbreak part of it too. And we're
not saying that Elizabeth didn't have a role in as
clearly as we saw she did. You know, she may
have tried in her way to bring things up, but
neither of you knew how to communicate. I think if
Elizabeth was on this call, she would feel this relief of,
(41:39):
oh wow, he can see me. He understands something about
why this was so devastating for me in a way
that you've never expressed to her before. And there's something
as humans where what we really need is I see you,
I hear you, I understand you. Doesn't make it all better,
(41:59):
doesn't change whatever feeling she's going to have, but there's
something that shifts in the dynamic between the two of
you when someone says, oh, wow, you get it. This
was how I felt, and you can see that. There's
something so healing about that.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
And the healing, Mike depends on you getting it right
so that she really feels that you get it, and
that could be really useful to you both to school
payments going forward, and to.
Speaker 5 (42:30):
You, Yeah, I hear you.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
I just having lived the relationship now from what it
is for the last however many months, so it's been
so negative that we can barely communicate. I don't know
if she's even in a place to hear from me
in that way.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
So we have some thoughts. We know this was probably
a hard conversation.
Speaker 5 (43:00):
It really really was.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, And the reason is we only had this short
time with you, and we really want to help you
feel better going forward. And that doesn't mean that feeling
better is going to be us saying you're not a scumback.
But I will say you're not a scumback, which is
what you asked in your letter, But we don't think
that's actually going to be that helpful to you to
(43:23):
hear it from us. What we think is going to
be more helpful is if you can work more on
that perspective taking so that people can see that you
understand their experience as well, and also that you own,
without butts, without exceptions, that you owned your part in it.
(43:43):
You had reasons for doing what you did, but in hindsight,
I think you can see that there were also ways
that you handled it that maybe going forward you wouldn't
handle a similar situation. What it does is it says
I'm more aware and I really feel for you, and
whether it matters to them or not, that you've expressed
that to them, and it's not just a general I'm sorry,
(44:06):
but it's what we were doing earlier. Wow, Now I
really see how this must have felt and how you
feel now.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Would like you to write a letter that explains from
Elizabeth's point of view, what her experience was and what
the consequences of your action were from her perspective. But
here's how I want you to do it. I know
perspective taking is difficult for you. I want you to
start by explaining your perspective by saying that you realize
(44:40):
you shouldn't have probably married, that it wasn't as big
a love as it might have been. That you realized
that when you found real love that that wasn't enough.
You kind of knew it and suspected it, but you
realized it later on. So I want you to kind
of set up your side of things in the first part,
(45:02):
and then I want you to write only her part
of things, and then you describe what happened and you
describe the impact on her, what she must have felt,
what it must have been like, all the stuff we
did in that exercise, and then I want you, when
you're done, to take out that first part so that
(45:23):
it's not part of the letter. It's important for you
to write it because you tend to get blocked with
a perspective taking because you keep wanting to explain your part.
So I want you to start that way so you
have it all there, but then take it out because
that's not the point of the letter. The point of
the letter is to be able to show her and
perhaps your best man, that you really get it.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
And again you worry that they're going to say, see,
you are a scumback. I think it's going to be
the opposite. When you're writing it, you're not making the
case that you're not a scumback, but that you did
mishandle things. Here's your opportunity to show them that you
can take their perspective and that you do own the
parts of it that were yours.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, Mikeie was good to talk to you, and we
really do Isshue the best.
Speaker 5 (46:09):
You guys to take care of Mike.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
We look forward to hearing back from you, Okay.
Speaker 5 (46:12):
Take care.
Speaker 3 (46:17):
So Lurie, what do you think is going to happen.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
I think he's in a really tricky place right now,
and I think that the advice that we gave him
will serve him more in the long term than in
the short term. I don't think he's going to actually
give these letters to his ex or to his friend,
but he do think having that perspective taking exercise will
help him with how he negotiates things with his ex wife,
(46:42):
how he negotiates his friendships going forward, how he negotiates
his new relationship, and also how he is as a
parent as he spends more time with his children.
Speaker 3 (46:52):
I agree. I think maybe he'll give it to the friend.
But we know his therapists that when we suggest people
write letters, really we're in it for the writing. In
other words, what you gain you gain in the writing.
So I hope that he gives us a try, and
I do think it'll be at him in the long
tim if he can do it.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
This is dear therapist, and we'll be back after a
short break.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
I'm Guy Wench.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
And I'm Lori Gottlieb, and this is dear therapist. Well,
let's listen to the voicemail.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
So I wrote two letters this morning, one to who
my best man was and one to my ex. It's
hard to describe the experience. I chose not to take
one part of your advice. I did not write my
own perspective down before writing what I thought was theirs.
I felt this morning that I focused too much on
(47:54):
my own perspective and I was trying to move beyond
it and trying to find THEIRS without needing to name
mine first. Ultimately, I cried a lot while writing the
letter to my ex in the same way I felt
the experience while I was describing it. I don't want
to lose sight of the negative feelings that I cost her.
(48:15):
I just hope that at some point you can forgive
me for those negative feelings. And yeah, just for the
sake of our daughters, if nothing else. I sent the
email to my best friend a lot shorter, ad as
many details, but I did want him to see that
I had not been thinking of his perspective much at all,
(48:36):
and I hope you can hear that, and especially when
it comes to the pressure I was putting on him
to feel and think a certain way about my life,
as I was just desperately seeking his understanding.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
I am super impressed with Mike because what comes across
from his voicemail is this whole idea of perspective taking.
He really took them on board, and I'm hopeful that
he's looking at relationships slightly differently and is going to
conduct himself to be going forward.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Yeah, I was incredibly impressed with what he did. I
think it was really hard for him, for anybody it
would be to come into this situation at the place
that he was. We were very hard on him in
that session because we only had a certain amount of
time with him, and sometimes people aren't able to take
in what you're giving them when you move that quickly,
(49:33):
and so in a therapy session, we would not move
that quickly.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
It would be weeks of.
Speaker 1 (49:37):
That months right exactly. So it was really interesting to
see that, even though at the end of that call
he seemed at bit deflated, he really took in what
we said, and so much to the point that he
decided not even to include his own perspective because he realized,
I have trouble taking other people's perspective. Now. Of course,
(49:58):
we want him to keep his perspective. We don't ever
want someone to lose their own perspective. But I think
that he was realizing that the exercise would be easier
for him in this instance if he did it that way.
And the one thing that I want to say, if
he's listening to this, is that he said, I hope
that they'll forgive me. And what I want to say is, Mike,
(50:18):
I hope that you will forgive yourself. That that's the
place we want to get him too, that once he
can take this other perspective, that eventually he will come
to a place of forgiving himself as well, and I
think then he will be able to really move forward.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
I agree, and I think that what's lovely to hear
is when we're telling someone that there's an important part
of life that is not appearing on their radar, and
then they respond in a way that indicates that it's
now appearing on their radar. It gives us as therapists,
and for Mike, a lot of hope. That brings us
(50:58):
to the end of our show for this week. Thank
you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
You can follow us both online. I'm at lorigottlieb dot
com and you can follow me on Twitter at Lorigottlieb One.
We're on Instagram at Lorigottlieb Underscore Author.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
And I'm at Guywinch dot com. I'm on Twitter and
on Instagram at guy Wench. If you have a dilemma
you'd like to discuss with us, big or small, email
us at Lorianguy at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
Our executive producers Christopher Hasiotis, were produced and edited by
Mike Johns. Special thanks to Samuel Benefield and to our
podcast Fairy Godmother Katie Couric.
Speaker 3 (51:37):
Next week. There's no real estate adage that goes location, location, location,
We'll talk about how that applies in a marriage.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
I think I said many times I never want to
live in Omaha cover and I said I'd never want
to live in New York, and we did both. Dear
Therapist is a production of iHeartRadio
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