March 7, 2023 • 22 mins
Loneliness is an epidemic in America, even for people who are married. It is a major driver of depression and it can drive people to desperate measures to feel less lonely, including having an affair.
This week's guest "Sabrina" didn't initiate her affair because she wasn't feeling fulfilled sexually -- she was feeling neglected by her husband and lonely and friendless. The man she is having an affair with has since become her best friend and she can't imagine her life without him. Now she worries about what will happen to her if he ever chooses to end their affair, or if her husband, who supports her financially, finds out about her infidelity. Jo is also joined by psychiatrist Dr. Gail Saltz and therapist Dr. Lori Gottlieb who both share their thoughts on loneliness and infidelity.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I didn't want it to feel like a date, but
it was a date. A married woman on a date.
It didn't feel good at all, but it felt good
at you know, it's at the same time. If you
understand what I'm trying to say, that voice you just
heard was Sabrina. Sabrina's in her fifties, she doesn't have children,
and she's been married for twenty years. Unlike our last guest,
(00:24):
Sabrina didn't initiate her affair because she wasn't feeling fulfilled sexually.
She wasn't really feeling much of anything except loneliness. Her
affair just sort of happened, and when it did, she
found it filled a different need for her. It fulfilled
something that she'd been missing with her husband for a
pretty long time. I don't know if I was looking
(00:48):
for another relationship. I think I just was looking for
someone to talk to. My husband's always at work. You know,
we have no children, so I think I was just
really looking for a good friend. But it just happened
to turn into something more than friends. The man Sabrina
started cheating on her husband with made her feel good again,
(01:08):
like she had a real companion, one who was actually
invested in her. He tells me that I'm his best friend,
and that just melts my heart. You know, not just
oh you're my lover, You're just someone that I'm sleeping with.
He tells me, I'm glad that I've met you. That
(01:31):
must feel really nice to be seen like that. Yeah. Yeah,
and I feel like he's my best friend as well.
I'm Joe Piazza and you're listening to She Wants More,
the podcast where real women talk openly and honestly about
the extra marital affairs that have completely changed their lives. Sabrina.
(01:51):
That's not her real name, by the way. We changed
it to protect her identity. Sabrina hasn't always been lonely
in her marriage. When Sabrina and her husband first got together,
he was obsessed with her. My husband even has a
tattoo with my name on it, which he did on
(02:11):
my birthday, I believe, when I was turning thirty five.
He surprised me. He came home one day with the
tattoo on his neck. Did you like the tattoo? Yeah,
I love it. I love it. I love it. That
is love. Yes, I've never met anyone like him before,
you know, And she was pretty obsessed with him too.
(02:33):
How'd your husband proposed? I'm just actually I proposed to him.
I asked him to marry me. Okay, I think you
were at his parents' house, I believe, or his sister's house. Yeah. Yeah,
and I asked him to marry me. So in the
beginning you were quite smitten. You said I want you.
I choose you. Yes, yes, And we were together ten years.
(02:55):
You know, we were married, so I said it, you know,
it's time to get married. But that was more than
twenty years ago. And after two decades with one person,
things change. People change. I've been happy up until I
would say, maybe fifteen years into the marriage. You know,
(03:17):
I love my husband, but you know, it's just that
we are not very compatible anymore. He's much older than me.
He's ten years older than me. Okay, so make a
big difference. Yes, So he's not as active as I am.
He likes to just you know, stay home and you know,
do the boring stuff, the boring stuff. So he's not
(03:42):
very active anymore like he used to be. He's not old,
but you know, he just doesn't enjoy certain things anymore.
Sabrina was lonely. Her husband worked all the time. They
had no kids, and she was home all day because
of an injury that forced her to take a leave
from more And it was ultimately that loneliness, not a
(04:03):
desire for sex or passion, that let her to have
an affair in the first place. Loneliness is currently a
public health epidemic. That's psychiatrist doctor Gail Salts. We heard
from her in the last episode. I called Gail because
(04:23):
I want to know a little bit more about how
debilitating loneliness can truly be and what that loneliness can
lead you to do. It is a huge cause of depression,
anxiety disorders, health, physical health issues, and it is growing,
and not in the elderly population where you think it
(04:46):
would be growing, but all manner of ages. And it
is a horrendous and desperate feeling, and so it will
drive people to do all kinds of things to feel
less lonely. I asked Gail if she'd seen people turn
to extra marital affairs to stave off their loneliness, even
(05:09):
when they're married and they think they shouldn't be lonely
because they've got their person already. Sometimes it's worth being
with somebody that you feel alone with than being alone.
Just because you're legally married to someone doesn't mean that
you feel intimately connected to them and you can really
talk about your emotional state. And so one could definitely
(05:29):
feel very lonely in a marriage and be wishing for
and therefore actually making them vulnerable to who might come
along that does listen to them and does make them
feel heard and understood and empathized with and therefore really
connected to. That definitely would easily be the beginning of
(05:52):
at least an emotional affair and then possibly evolve into
a physical affair. Sabrina never imagined being a cheater throughout
my years my relationships. You know, I never cheated. I
was always just me and that person in the relationship.
You know, I didn't see any to cheat, right, If
(06:14):
you have to cheat, then you know you should just
not be any relationship. That's how I felt back then.
But now as I'm getting older, it just changed. My
feelings just changed. As you get older, you need, you know,
any more compassion in your life. So I didn't particularly
want something different, but I did want the attention. He
(06:35):
wasn't giving me any attention, and the affair, it it
just sort of happened. Nothing that I was set out
to do, plan to do, it just sort of happened.
And I gotta say, I get it. I understand why
this situation was so appealing to Sabrina. Before this, she
(06:55):
felt invisible when she first met her husband. He was
the I who was obsessed with her, the guy who
tattooed her name on his neck. And then suddenly he
was coming home from being at work all day and
she felt like he didn't even see her. After the break,
we'll hear more of Sabrina's story, starting with how she
(07:17):
met the man who'd changed her life and everything that happened. Next,
we're back with she once more. So Sabrina is out
at this club for her friend's birthday and a guy
comes along. He's handsome, and he's paying a lot of
attention to her. He's younger than her husband, younger even
(07:42):
than her. He started talking and you just connected. He
gave me his number. But the thing is he is
also mad. Should we give him a name or should
we call him Randy? Randy? Okay? When you and Randy first,
was there a spark? Were you flirting? He was flirting?
(08:05):
He was very good at flirting. We just had good
conversation and you talk for hours, and you know, I've
had a lot of things in common. It felt kind
of strange, knowing I'm married talking with another man, flirting
with another man. So it was kind of strange but fun,
I would say. And so he gave you his number, Yeah,
(08:28):
because I don't want to give him my number, you know, right, right,
And so the ball was in your court. Yeah, basically. Yes,
Actually I waited two weeks before I called him. You know,
I had to sit and think what am I doing?
So yeah, I waited, waited two weeks before I called him.
(08:49):
Sabrina was pretty nervous when she first called, and she
didn't really think that anything was gonna come with us.
She thought it might just be a dinner, a chance
to hang out with someone new, and that is it.
I didn't want it to feel like a date, but
it was actually a date, you know, so a married
(09:09):
woman on a date. It didn't feel good at all,
but it felt good, you know. It's at the same time,
if you understand what I'm what I'm trying to say, Um, yeah,
it was. It was. It was weird. It was weird,
definitely weird. Did he think it was weird. Um, I
don't think so. No, No, he's a man, you know,
(09:30):
man they are Yeah, they they don't care, no care.
And when you went on the date, what did you
think would happen? Did you think, all right, this will
just be dinner. Um, yeah, I thought it would just
be dinner. Maybe I wouldn't see him for a while,
you know, we would be friends. That's what I thought
at first. Did you really think that? Yes? But even
(09:54):
though Sabrina didn't intend to see Randy again, the attention
that he gave her was so nice and put a
little spring in her stuff, and it gave her something
to look forward to. It was very exciting. Yeah. Yeah,
it felt like something new and fresh. I just felt free.
(10:14):
It's hard to explain. And there was a thrill in
the affair too, in the secrecy of it. Sabrina got
a burner phone to arrange her meetings, and she started
taking better care of her appearance, of herself and anticipation
of seeing Randy again. We have se phones, you know,
(10:37):
I have more than one cell phone. Then my husband
doesn't know about so we text on those. Okay, okay,
that part of it must be kind of exciting too, Yes,
it's very exciting. Yes, how is the sex different? It
was different because he was Italian, that that was different,
but just you know the fact that he was not
(10:59):
African American me. So he was my first Italian man
I've ever been with, you know, sexually, first, my god,
first first man I cheated with first, first, everything first.
For her, unlike for some of our other guests, the
(11:20):
affair really seemed to be more about the attention and
the friendship with Randy and how our time with him
made her feel better about herself and less lonely. Didn't
feel like someone was seeing you in a new way too,
because I feel like when yeah, yes, someone for such
a long time, it's like you see me, it's the
same way every day. Yes, definitely to have someone notice me.
(11:44):
You know, my husband notices me, but like I said,
things sometimes they get old. We don't really have anything
really keeping us together, right, you know, it just felt
good to have someone noticed me and send to my needs,
listen to me. I just felt like it's something that
I needed, something I deserved. So I said, you know,
(12:06):
why not? Why not? I just said, let me take
care of me. There's something really powerful in that position
and saying I'm going to do this one thing just
for myself. Yeah, so I can be happy. I want
to be happy. Did you feel like you've been taking
care of just your husband for a long time? Ah, yes,
(12:28):
very much so, and so to take care of yourself
must have felt really different. Yeah, definitely. It's not that
people say, oh, yeah, that was a great thing to do,
was to have an affair. It's more that when people
are not talking about what they need to talk about,
it comes out in their behaviors. That's doctor Laura Gottlieb.
(12:52):
She's a psychotherapist, an author, and a podcast host. She
wrote a best selling book that I Love, Love Love
called Maybe You Should to Someone. And So, if somebody
is using an affair to say I didn't know how
to take care of myself, I felt uncared for in
my relationship and I didn't know any other way to
(13:15):
take care of my needs, and then it gets the
couple talking about the things that they needed to talk
about long before that affair happened. It can have a
really positive effect on the couple going forward if both
people are invested in having those conversations and repairing the
marriage or the relationship. And then also creating something new
(13:36):
that wasn't there before. But affairs are incredibly painful. There's
just no way around that. I don't think that anybody
goes around recommending that somebody have an affair. After the break,
we'll hear more of Sabrina's story, including if she ever
thinks she'll leave her husband. We're back with she wants more.
(14:06):
I asked Sabrina what it was exactly about Randy that
made her feel so good, so much more alive. He's
very touchy, feeling, but very attentive, you know as well,
very attentive. He's just a good man. It's a good man,
good person. For the two of them, it wasn't just
(14:27):
about sex. It was also about companionship and connection, and
both of them knew that they wanted to keep seeing
one another, but they had to figure out how that
was going to work. Randy was married too, but unlike Sabrina,
he had kids. The good thing was that Randy worked nights,
(14:47):
which left his days mostly free, and that's when Sabrina
happened to be available. But from the very start they
knew they had to be careful. We don't meet on weekends,
you know, my husban minutes at home on the weekends.
We schedule certain days, certain times every week just to
(15:07):
be safe because he has children, so his schedule is
kind of more booked than mind. So we don't have
much time to spend together. That's like maybe an hour
if that. Oh wow, so it's fast. It's fast when
you guys meet. Where do you guys meet? Sometime we go,
you have something to eat sometime, the hotel, you know,
(15:29):
walk in the park, you know, something like that. If
you weren't having the affair, how do you think you'd
be spending your time? What would you be doing? The
fellows hours, not doing much. I don't have many friends.
I don't go out much until I met him. You know,
I have something to do now to appropy my time.
(15:50):
What kind of boundaries did you guys set early on?
You know, don't get involved in my marriage. I won't
get involved in yours. You no phone calls my husband,
no poem you know what I'm saying. If we have
an argument or something like that, you're not going to
do that. But a good thing about it is we're
not jealous. You know, I'm not jealous of his relationship,
(16:11):
is not jealous of minds because it's something that was
there before me. You know, he was married to a
way before me. So right, that's something I have no
control over. Basically, Sabrina told me that her affair with
Randy has been going on for eight years now. Eight years.
(16:32):
That's longer than my marriage, and it's a long time
to see one another multiple times a week. I had
to ask her one thing. I had to ask if,
after all of that time together, all of these years together,
if she's fallen in love with him. I would say yes, yes,
(16:57):
Do you still love your husband? Oh? Yes, I love
my I will always love my husband always. How do
you reconcile that in your head? That's a good question,
That's a good question. That's something I will have to
think about. Do you think your marriage is better now
(17:20):
that you've given yourself this one thing? I will say
yes because I'm able to tolerate my husband not paying
me any attention, you know, because if he doesn't, the
other man will. So I'm like balanced, right. But recently,
the guilt that Sabrina has felt juggling two different men
(17:43):
has made her feel nervous, and she's been thinking a
lot about the consequences of her affair and what would
happen if her husband ever found out. It's a tricky,
tricky situation because if my husband found out that I
(18:03):
was having an affair, and say, like he left me,
I feel like I would probably be out by myself,
you know, I would be alone because I don't feel
that my lover would leave his wife. I don't know.
I don't know, and vice versa. If his wife found
(18:25):
out that he was having an affair, I don't know
if I would leave my husband for him, right. So
it's tricky, scary and tricky at the same time. So yeah,
and that I think about that situation a lot. Yeah,
It's gotten to the point where I'm feeling like, now
(18:47):
I don't know, maybe I should end this, you know,
because of that situation, because I don't think I would
leave if his wife left him, he would want to
be with me, but I don't know if i'd be
able to leave my husband to be with him, right
and vice versa. You guys also don't know if you
(19:07):
would be compatible in the real world. In the real world, Yes, yes, yes,
because now it's basically just having fun or whatever you
want to call it. But yeah, I think about that
situation a lot. Do you feel guilty, Yeah, I feel guilty.
I feel guilty, and sometimes I feel like I might
wind up being alone, you know, do all of this. Yeah,
(19:32):
so you know, you know, like they say karma, right,
So I might wind up being alone in the whole situation,
without my husband, without my lover, you know, without So
it's just scary and that could be that seems like
it could be terrifying. Yeah, and that could potentially happen
(19:57):
if your husband did find out about the affair. Are
you worried that you would be alone? But then also,
you know, financially unstable or just unstable generally, Yes, I
think about that all the time. Yeah, I probably would
be financially unstable, but I will be able to make
it too. Yes. Do you ever think about are there
(20:22):
any things that you'd dream that you could do with Randy? Like,
do you ever think I'd love to go on vacation
with Randy. I'd love to be able to do this
thing that we can't do that's impossible for us to do.
I would love to do that, but I know it's impossible,
So I don't even think about it because right now
it's not possible. We both know that it's not possible.
(20:44):
We just have what we have and that's just have
to be enough for now until we decide if you
want to be together and leave our spouses. But we
haven't gotten there yet, so we just in the in
the moment, in a moment, as I would say, there's
(21:04):
something kind of beautiful about being in the moment, Yes,
in a moment. Next up, we'll be talking to a
woman who doesn't just see her affair as a step
in prioritizing her own emotional well being after having a child.
It also became something so much more. It actually became
an important part of her self care. So can an
(21:28):
affair be a form of self care? That is all
on next week's episode, This is She Wants More. I'm
your host Joe Piazza. She Wants More was inspired by
the book A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish.
It was adapted for audio by executive producers Merrill Poster,
(21:48):
Kara Pfeiffer, and Susan Shapiro Parish. She Wants More is
hosted and reported by me Joe Piazza. Jennifer Bassett is
our lead producer and story editor. Our sound design is
by Jessica crencich Our theme was composed by Anna Stumpf
and Hamilton Lighthouser. Our executive producers for iHeart are Ally
(22:09):
Perry and Nikki Etour. She Wants More as a production
of iHeart Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
I didn't want it to feel like a date, but
it was a date. A married woman on a date.
It didn't feel good at all, but it felt good
at you know, it's at the same time. If you
understand what I'm trying to say, that voice you just
heard was Sabrina. Sabrina's in her fifties, she doesn't have children,
and she's been married for twenty years. Unlike our last guest,
(00:24):
Sabrina didn't initiate her affair because she wasn't feeling fulfilled sexually.
She wasn't really feeling much of anything except loneliness. Her
affair just sort of happened, and when it did, she
found it filled a different need for her. It fulfilled
something that she'd been missing with her husband for a
pretty long time. I don't know if I was looking
(00:48):
for another relationship. I think I just was looking for
someone to talk to. My husband's always at work. You know,
we have no children, so I think I was just
really looking for a good friend. But it just happened
to turn into something more than friends. The man Sabrina
started cheating on her husband with made her feel good again,
(01:08):
like she had a real companion, one who was actually
invested in her. He tells me that I'm his best friend,
and that just melts my heart. You know, not just
oh you're my lover, You're just someone that I'm sleeping with.
He tells me, I'm glad that I've met you. That
(01:31):
must feel really nice to be seen like that. Yeah. Yeah,
and I feel like he's my best friend as well.
I'm Joe Piazza and you're listening to She Wants More,
the podcast where real women talk openly and honestly about
the extra marital affairs that have completely changed their lives. Sabrina.
(01:51):
That's not her real name, by the way. We changed
it to protect her identity. Sabrina hasn't always been lonely
in her marriage. When Sabrina and her husband first got together,
he was obsessed with her. My husband even has a
tattoo with my name on it, which he did on
(02:11):
my birthday, I believe, when I was turning thirty five.
He surprised me. He came home one day with the
tattoo on his neck. Did you like the tattoo? Yeah,
I love it. I love it. I love it. That
is love. Yes, I've never met anyone like him before,
you know, And she was pretty obsessed with him too.
(02:33):
How'd your husband proposed? I'm just actually I proposed to him.
I asked him to marry me. Okay, I think you
were at his parents' house, I believe, or his sister's house. Yeah. Yeah,
and I asked him to marry me. So in the
beginning you were quite smitten. You said I want you.
I choose you. Yes, yes, And we were together ten years.
(02:55):
You know, we were married, so I said it, you know,
it's time to get married. But that was more than
twenty years ago. And after two decades with one person,
things change. People change. I've been happy up until I
would say, maybe fifteen years into the marriage. You know,
(03:17):
I love my husband, but you know, it's just that
we are not very compatible anymore. He's much older than me.
He's ten years older than me. Okay, so make a
big difference. Yes, So he's not as active as I am.
He likes to just you know, stay home and you know,
do the boring stuff, the boring stuff. So he's not
(03:42):
very active anymore like he used to be. He's not old,
but you know, he just doesn't enjoy certain things anymore.
Sabrina was lonely. Her husband worked all the time. They
had no kids, and she was home all day because
of an injury that forced her to take a leave
from more And it was ultimately that loneliness, not a
(04:03):
desire for sex or passion, that let her to have
an affair in the first place. Loneliness is currently a
public health epidemic. That's psychiatrist doctor Gail Salts. We heard
from her in the last episode. I called Gail because
(04:23):
I want to know a little bit more about how
debilitating loneliness can truly be and what that loneliness can
lead you to do. It is a huge cause of depression,
anxiety disorders, health, physical health issues, and it is growing,
and not in the elderly population where you think it
(04:46):
would be growing, but all manner of ages. And it
is a horrendous and desperate feeling, and so it will
drive people to do all kinds of things to feel
less lonely. I asked Gail if she'd seen people turn
to extra marital affairs to stave off their loneliness, even
(05:09):
when they're married and they think they shouldn't be lonely
because they've got their person already. Sometimes it's worth being
with somebody that you feel alone with than being alone.
Just because you're legally married to someone doesn't mean that
you feel intimately connected to them and you can really
talk about your emotional state. And so one could definitely
(05:29):
feel very lonely in a marriage and be wishing for
and therefore actually making them vulnerable to who might come
along that does listen to them and does make them
feel heard and understood and empathized with and therefore really
connected to. That definitely would easily be the beginning of
(05:52):
at least an emotional affair and then possibly evolve into
a physical affair. Sabrina never imagined being a cheater throughout
my years my relationships. You know, I never cheated. I
was always just me and that person in the relationship.
You know, I didn't see any to cheat, right, If
(06:14):
you have to cheat, then you know you should just
not be any relationship. That's how I felt back then.
But now as I'm getting older, it just changed. My
feelings just changed. As you get older, you need, you know,
any more compassion in your life. So I didn't particularly
want something different, but I did want the attention. He
(06:35):
wasn't giving me any attention, and the affair, it it
just sort of happened. Nothing that I was set out
to do, plan to do, it just sort of happened.
And I gotta say, I get it. I understand why
this situation was so appealing to Sabrina. Before this, she
(06:55):
felt invisible when she first met her husband. He was
the I who was obsessed with her, the guy who
tattooed her name on his neck. And then suddenly he
was coming home from being at work all day and
she felt like he didn't even see her. After the break,
we'll hear more of Sabrina's story, starting with how she
(07:17):
met the man who'd changed her life and everything that happened. Next,
we're back with she once more. So Sabrina is out
at this club for her friend's birthday and a guy
comes along. He's handsome, and he's paying a lot of
attention to her. He's younger than her husband, younger even
(07:42):
than her. He started talking and you just connected. He
gave me his number. But the thing is he is
also mad. Should we give him a name or should
we call him Randy? Randy? Okay? When you and Randy first,
was there a spark? Were you flirting? He was flirting?
(08:05):
He was very good at flirting. We just had good
conversation and you talk for hours, and you know, I've
had a lot of things in common. It felt kind
of strange, knowing I'm married talking with another man, flirting
with another man. So it was kind of strange but fun,
I would say. And so he gave you his number, Yeah,
(08:28):
because I don't want to give him my number, you know, right, right,
And so the ball was in your court. Yeah, basically. Yes,
Actually I waited two weeks before I called him. You know,
I had to sit and think what am I doing?
So yeah, I waited, waited two weeks before I called him.
(08:49):
Sabrina was pretty nervous when she first called, and she
didn't really think that anything was gonna come with us.
She thought it might just be a dinner, a chance
to hang out with someone new, and that is it.
I didn't want it to feel like a date, but
it was actually a date, you know, so a married
(09:09):
woman on a date. It didn't feel good at all,
but it felt good, you know. It's at the same time,
if you understand what I'm what I'm trying to say, Um, yeah,
it was. It was. It was weird. It was weird,
definitely weird. Did he think it was weird. Um, I
don't think so. No, No, he's a man, you know,
(09:30):
man they are Yeah, they they don't care, no care.
And when you went on the date, what did you
think would happen? Did you think, all right, this will
just be dinner. Um, yeah, I thought it would just
be dinner. Maybe I wouldn't see him for a while,
you know, we would be friends. That's what I thought
at first. Did you really think that? Yes? But even
(09:54):
though Sabrina didn't intend to see Randy again, the attention
that he gave her was so nice and put a
little spring in her stuff, and it gave her something
to look forward to. It was very exciting. Yeah. Yeah,
it felt like something new and fresh. I just felt free.
(10:14):
It's hard to explain. And there was a thrill in
the affair too, in the secrecy of it. Sabrina got
a burner phone to arrange her meetings, and she started
taking better care of her appearance, of herself and anticipation
of seeing Randy again. We have se phones, you know,
(10:37):
I have more than one cell phone. Then my husband
doesn't know about so we text on those. Okay, okay,
that part of it must be kind of exciting too, Yes,
it's very exciting. Yes, how is the sex different? It
was different because he was Italian, that that was different,
but just you know the fact that he was not
(10:59):
African American me. So he was my first Italian man
I've ever been with, you know, sexually, first, my god,
first first man I cheated with first, first, everything first.
For her, unlike for some of our other guests, the
(11:20):
affair really seemed to be more about the attention and
the friendship with Randy and how our time with him
made her feel better about herself and less lonely. Didn't
feel like someone was seeing you in a new way too,
because I feel like when yeah, yes, someone for such
a long time, it's like you see me, it's the
same way every day. Yes, definitely to have someone notice me.
(11:44):
You know, my husband notices me, but like I said,
things sometimes they get old. We don't really have anything
really keeping us together, right, you know, it just felt
good to have someone noticed me and send to my needs,
listen to me. I just felt like it's something that
I needed, something I deserved. So I said, you know,
(12:06):
why not? Why not? I just said, let me take
care of me. There's something really powerful in that position
and saying I'm going to do this one thing just
for myself. Yeah, so I can be happy. I want
to be happy. Did you feel like you've been taking
care of just your husband for a long time? Ah, yes,
(12:28):
very much so, and so to take care of yourself
must have felt really different. Yeah, definitely. It's not that
people say, oh, yeah, that was a great thing to do,
was to have an affair. It's more that when people
are not talking about what they need to talk about,
it comes out in their behaviors. That's doctor Laura Gottlieb.
(12:52):
She's a psychotherapist, an author, and a podcast host. She
wrote a best selling book that I Love, Love Love
called Maybe You Should to Someone. And So, if somebody
is using an affair to say I didn't know how
to take care of myself, I felt uncared for in
my relationship and I didn't know any other way to
(13:15):
take care of my needs, and then it gets the
couple talking about the things that they needed to talk
about long before that affair happened. It can have a
really positive effect on the couple going forward if both
people are invested in having those conversations and repairing the
marriage or the relationship. And then also creating something new
(13:36):
that wasn't there before. But affairs are incredibly painful. There's
just no way around that. I don't think that anybody
goes around recommending that somebody have an affair. After the break,
we'll hear more of Sabrina's story, including if she ever
thinks she'll leave her husband. We're back with she wants more.
(14:06):
I asked Sabrina what it was exactly about Randy that
made her feel so good, so much more alive. He's
very touchy, feeling, but very attentive, you know as well,
very attentive. He's just a good man. It's a good man,
good person. For the two of them, it wasn't just
(14:27):
about sex. It was also about companionship and connection, and
both of them knew that they wanted to keep seeing
one another, but they had to figure out how that
was going to work. Randy was married too, but unlike Sabrina,
he had kids. The good thing was that Randy worked nights,
(14:47):
which left his days mostly free, and that's when Sabrina
happened to be available. But from the very start they
knew they had to be careful. We don't meet on weekends,
you know, my husban minutes at home on the weekends.
We schedule certain days, certain times every week just to
(15:07):
be safe because he has children, so his schedule is
kind of more booked than mind. So we don't have
much time to spend together. That's like maybe an hour
if that. Oh wow, so it's fast. It's fast when
you guys meet. Where do you guys meet? Sometime we go,
you have something to eat sometime, the hotel, you know,
(15:29):
walk in the park, you know, something like that. If
you weren't having the affair, how do you think you'd
be spending your time? What would you be doing? The
fellows hours, not doing much. I don't have many friends.
I don't go out much until I met him. You know,
I have something to do now to appropy my time.
(15:50):
What kind of boundaries did you guys set early on?
You know, don't get involved in my marriage. I won't
get involved in yours. You no phone calls my husband,
no poem you know what I'm saying. If we have
an argument or something like that, you're not going to
do that. But a good thing about it is we're
not jealous. You know, I'm not jealous of his relationship,
(16:11):
is not jealous of minds because it's something that was
there before me. You know, he was married to a
way before me. So right, that's something I have no
control over. Basically, Sabrina told me that her affair with
Randy has been going on for eight years now. Eight years.
(16:32):
That's longer than my marriage, and it's a long time
to see one another multiple times a week. I had
to ask her one thing. I had to ask if,
after all of that time together, all of these years together,
if she's fallen in love with him. I would say yes, yes,
(16:57):
Do you still love your husband? Oh? Yes, I love
my I will always love my husband always. How do
you reconcile that in your head? That's a good question,
That's a good question. That's something I will have to
think about. Do you think your marriage is better now
(17:20):
that you've given yourself this one thing? I will say
yes because I'm able to tolerate my husband not paying
me any attention, you know, because if he doesn't, the
other man will. So I'm like balanced, right. But recently,
the guilt that Sabrina has felt juggling two different men
(17:43):
has made her feel nervous, and she's been thinking a
lot about the consequences of her affair and what would
happen if her husband ever found out. It's a tricky,
tricky situation because if my husband found out that I
(18:03):
was having an affair, and say, like he left me,
I feel like I would probably be out by myself,
you know, I would be alone because I don't feel
that my lover would leave his wife. I don't know.
I don't know, and vice versa. If his wife found
(18:25):
out that he was having an affair, I don't know
if I would leave my husband for him, right. So
it's tricky, scary and tricky at the same time. So yeah,
and that I think about that situation a lot. Yeah,
It's gotten to the point where I'm feeling like, now
(18:47):
I don't know, maybe I should end this, you know,
because of that situation, because I don't think I would
leave if his wife left him, he would want to
be with me, but I don't know if i'd be
able to leave my husband to be with him, right
and vice versa. You guys also don't know if you
(19:07):
would be compatible in the real world. In the real world, Yes, yes, yes,
because now it's basically just having fun or whatever you
want to call it. But yeah, I think about that
situation a lot. Do you feel guilty, Yeah, I feel guilty.
I feel guilty, and sometimes I feel like I might
wind up being alone, you know, do all of this. Yeah,
(19:32):
so you know, you know, like they say karma, right,
So I might wind up being alone in the whole situation,
without my husband, without my lover, you know, without So
it's just scary and that could be that seems like
it could be terrifying. Yeah, and that could potentially happen
(19:57):
if your husband did find out about the affair. Are
you worried that you would be alone? But then also,
you know, financially unstable or just unstable generally, Yes, I
think about that all the time. Yeah, I probably would
be financially unstable, but I will be able to make
it too. Yes. Do you ever think about are there
(20:22):
any things that you'd dream that you could do with Randy? Like,
do you ever think I'd love to go on vacation
with Randy. I'd love to be able to do this
thing that we can't do that's impossible for us to do.
I would love to do that, but I know it's impossible,
So I don't even think about it because right now
it's not possible. We both know that it's not possible.
(20:44):
We just have what we have and that's just have
to be enough for now until we decide if you
want to be together and leave our spouses. But we
haven't gotten there yet, so we just in the in
the moment, in a moment, as I would say, there's
(21:04):
something kind of beautiful about being in the moment, Yes,
in a moment. Next up, we'll be talking to a
woman who doesn't just see her affair as a step
in prioritizing her own emotional well being after having a child.
It also became something so much more. It actually became
an important part of her self care. So can an
(21:28):
affair be a form of self care? That is all
on next week's episode, This is She Wants More. I'm
your host Joe Piazza. She Wants More was inspired by
the book A Passion for More by Susan Shapiro Bearish.
It was adapted for audio by executive producers Merrill Poster,
(21:48):
Kara Pfeiffer, and Susan Shapiro Parish. She Wants More is
hosted and reported by me Joe Piazza. Jennifer Bassett is
our lead producer and story editor. Our sound design is
by Jessica crencich Our theme was composed by Anna Stumpf
and Hamilton Lighthouser. Our executive producers for iHeart are Ally
(22:09):
Perry and Nikki Etour. She Wants More as a production
of iHeart Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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