Is It Our ADHD, OCD, and PTSD? Or Is It Us?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Is It Our ADHD, OCD, and PTSD? Or Is It Us?"

Podcast: Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel
Host: Esther Perel
Date: October 6, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this raw and illuminating session, Esther Perel counsels a couple navigating the stressors of new parenthood, differing mental health diagnoses (ADHD, possible CPTSD, Autism), evolving professional identities, and financial stress. Throughout, Esther challenges the pair’s reliance on psychological jargon and diagnosis labels, guiding them to move beyond therapy-speak and focus on the emotional realities and patterns that underpin their relationship struggles. Together, they examine trust, support, communication, the dynamics of “enmeshment,” and the critical role of playfulness in reconnecting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Strain of Parenthood, Identity, and Finances

• New Baby Stress: The couple discuss how becoming first-time parents to an 18-month-old triggered depression and anxiety, especially for the male partner.
  • Partner 1 (Male): "In response to [the pregnancy], my anxiety and depression just shot through the roof." (01:57)
• Career and Money Concerns: The female partner’s pursuit of illustration/art has introduced financial uncertainty, leading to friction over roles and expectations.
  • Partner 2 (Female): "We're running out of money and he can't support us on his income only...then I will get mired in self doubt." (02:52)
  • Partner 1 (Male): "A lot of that comes down to money as well..." (02:35)

2. Neurodivergence & Therapy-Speak Saturation

• Both partners navigate neurodivergence: she identifies with ADHD and he suspects he falls on the autism spectrum or has CPTSD.
  • Partner 2 (Female): "I have ADHD, he believes he has autism...we have very different ways of relating to the world." (03:33)
• Esther’s Caution: Esther points out how therapy buzzwords and diagnosis acronyms dominate their dialogue, often obscuring deeper understanding.
  • Esther Perel: "You label every behavior, you label yourself. It's like you're not unhappy, you're depressed. You're not worried, you're anxious, you're not rebellious, you're ADD...In effect, you never say what you feel." (24:42)
• Potential Pitfall: Over-reliance on labels risks reducing each other to a diagnosis, collapsing curiosity and real connection.
  • Esther Perel: "Many people live with health and mental health conditions that doesn't define their entire being...the last thing I would want to do in my work is curb the curiosity for knowing more because we think we know, because we have the refuge of the labels." (08:56)

3. The Loop: Support, Trust, and Power Struggles

• Both partners articulate feeling unloved, unsupported, and trapped in self-protective cycles—each tending to their own survival and treating the other's coping mechanisms as problematic.
  • Partner 1 (Male): "We've been so focused on our own survival that we've treated the other person's coping mechanisms as a problem...I responded to her with judgment, annoyance..." (10:10)
  • Partner 2 (Female): "We both care about each other deeply but we don't trust each other to really care about the other person as much as we want them to say that." (11:31)
• Communication Breakdown: Requests become power struggles, and good intentions are interpreted as control or criticism.
  • Esther Perel: "We are very kind, compassionate people who get into power struggles, but we don't name them as power struggles." (14:22)
• Reciprocal Undermining: Each person feels diminished by the other, despite claiming the other holds more 'power' or influence.
  • Esther Perel (on Partner 1): "He can shrink her into a tiny shrimp. He can make her doubt herself...But in his mind he's doing that because he feels small himself and as a result he tries to bring her down." (15:13)

4. Everyday Conflicts as Patterns

• Personalization of Issues: Everyday logistical conflicts (child’s food, plans, schedule) become loaded indictments of character or concern, cycling into frustration and withdrawal.
  • Partner 2 (Female): "Everything that I say to him, he's taking it as I'm judging him...he can never do something right for me." (21:03)
  • Esther Perel: "They talk about trust, vulnerability, anxiety, depression...but...the relationship is permeated by aggression, covert and overt. They are symmetric...both doing the same thing to each other." (24:42)
• Symmetry in Criticism: Both partners indicate a tendency to reframe observations as personal attacks, often missing the practical point.

5. Revisiting Family & Childhood Roots

• Partner 1's Background: Shares his childhood fear, feeling materially cared for but emotionally unsafe and misunderstood.
  • Partner 1 (Male): "I was provided for materially, but it was like there's no emotion to it. And so me being an emotional, sensitive, scared child...I was just met with this constant questioning of who I was and what I was about..." (42:01)

6. The Role of Humor and Playfulness

• Esther’s Prescription: Diffuse recurring, escalating interactions with playful interventions: music, ritual, humorous naming of anxieties (e.g., "Oh Mary, come on, what are you doing?").
  • Esther Perel: "You can regain a lot of power and a lot of control with humor, because humor brings perspective...and playfulness actually introduces a boundary...to create a more healthy space." (24:42, 56:00)
• Practical Rituals: Suggests establishing simple couple rituals (a kiss in the morning, music, candle ceremonies) to reset emotional tone, provide connection, and break negative cycles.
  • Partner 2 (Female): "We used to have moments where we would light a candle, turn off all the lights, play music..." (52:37)
  • Esther Perel: "Rituals are routines that are imbued with creativity and intention...but you don't have enough rituals that create an enshrinement around the two of you." (53:32)

7. Autonomy vs. Togetherness & Enmeshment

• Enmeshment Realization: The couple recognize the consequences of years spent constantly together, often in small spaces, leading to blurred individuality (“enmeshment”).
  • Partner 2 (Female): "We, like, never were apart for years. We lived together in a really small space, often in tents...I think at a certain point...we realized this is actually really unhealthy." (50:06)
• Task for Growth: Esther highlights the developmental necessity of learning to balance separateness and connection—applicable with the self, a partner, and their child.
  • Esther Perel: "One of the most important tasks in every relationship is how we straddle autonomy and togetherness...you're new and gradually learning to create separateness, independence, individuality, freedom, air space differentiation..." (50:54)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Jargonization:
  Esther Perel (24:42):
  "You label every behavior, you label yourself. It's like you're not unhappy, you're depressed. You're not worried, you're anxious, you're not rebellious, you're ADD… In effect, you never say what you feel."

• On Defensive Power Dynamics:
  Esther Perel (15:13):
  "He can shrink her into a tiny shrimp. He can make her doubt herself...But in his mind he's doing that because he feels small himself and as a result he tries to bring her down to the same level."

• On Changing Emotional Rituals:
  Esther Perel (52:14):
  "If you shift the mood, then you can shift the dynamic. And whoever initiates the disentanglement needs to be met by the other… No talking, because in those moments, talking is not helpful."

• On Humor as Boundary:
  Esther Perel (56:00):
  "The essential word is playful…I have a feeling that some of the trust that you're talking about is more likely to come back with playfulness than with rules."

• On Joint Life Navigating (the Boat Metaphor):
  Partner 1 (Male) (19:23):
  "I'm running around plugging holes on a boat left and right...And I can imagine you saying, where is she on this boat? And I'm like, oh, she's up at the top deck pointing at all the beautiful islands that she wants to go to...while I’m down here by myself being like, there's this massive hole..."

• On the Desire for Ritual & Slowdown:
  Partner 1 (Male) (54:06):
  "The alternative is this feeling of, like, things are always falling forward for me. And it's like, can we pull back? And, like, in the morning, kiss the morning before we say anything else?"

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:38-03:56 | Initial context: Child, new parenthood, career, neurodivergence | | 05:10-06:13 | Current emotional “pulse check”; experiencing relief and joy | | 07:27-08:56 | The “life is pointless” narrative and the power of self-statement| | 10:10-15:12 | Power struggles, accountability, and cycles of self-protection | | 19:23-20:22 | “Plugging the boat” metaphor and teamwork discussion | | 21:00-24:42 | Everyday requests morph into criticism and trust issues | | 24:42-29:13 | Therapy jargon, labeling, and confusion over intent | | 42:01-45:15 | Delving into Partner 1’s childhood and the roots of anxiety | | 47:10-53:10 | Play, ritual, humor as relationship repair strategies | | 53:32-56:00 | Reintroducing ritual, playfulness, and concrete interaction shifts|

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Episode Takeaways & Tone

• Language & Labels: Esther consistently redirects the couple from the comfort of psychological labels to candid self-expression.
• Patterns, Not Pathologies: The recurring struggles are not merely the sum of ADHD, OCD, or PTSD but reflect relationship patterns, emotional histories, and unresolved needs.
• Trust Rebuilt Through Play: Playfulness and new shared rituals, not further dialogue or diagnosis, are the first steps toward breaking destructive cycles and rekindling trust.
• Authentic, Empathic, and Practical: The tone is warm, gently challenging, and replete with pragmatic suggestions.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

• This episode strips back the comforting veil of therapy-speak to reveal how relational patterns—especially those around control, trust, and unspoken family histories—drive many couple’s core struggles. Esther’s guidance is to foster connection through everyday ritual, humor, and honest emotional presence, rather than getting stuck in the quicksand of diagnosis. The session is filled with relatable moments, exemplifying how even the most self-aware partners can benefit from stepping outside their narrative loops.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel. Each episode of Where Should We Begin? Is a one time counseling session for the purposes of maintaining confidentiality. Names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices and their stories are real.

[Esther Perel]

Support for Where Should We Begin? Comes from the Guardian. Not all journalism is the same. Take the Guardian. Their coverage has something special fierce independence. Nobody owns them or tells them what they can and cannot say, so they seek to report the whole picture. They connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever they find it, and give fresh perspectives on everything from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to the Guardian for [e-mail].

[Narrator/Host]

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[Partner 1 (Male)]

So the big one of course is the child. She's 18 months old and she's our first child. We're never prepared for what kids are gonna bring up in us.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Since having a kid, he was in basically the worst depression of his life. Tons and tons of crippling anxiety.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

You know, she got pregnant quickly and here we go. And in response to that, my anxiety and depression just shot through the roof.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Last year everything became just so anxiety provoking around our child's sleep, around her eating enough, around like everything. And I was kind of in the opposite way where I wasn't anxious and I wasn't super overwhelmed with it and even to the point where I actually really want to have another child. And he's like, do you remember what it was like for me?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

A lot of that comes down to money as well and where we are with money. She decided early on that she didn't really want to continue work as it was and she wanted to be a full time mom and wanted to move into illustration and being an artist. That's been a slow process.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

I have wanted to be an artist and an illustrator for my whole life and now I had a kid and I really liked staying at home with her, but we're running out of money and he can't support us on his income only. So he's really pushed me and asked me hey, it's time. If you want this dream, you have to choose it now. And then I will get mired in self doubt and say that I will do things, and then I have a lot of trouble actually doing them.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

There's issues of neurodivergence. My partner's ADHD and my. What might be neurodivergence or CPTSD or both.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

The last piece that's very big for us is our non neurotypicalness. I have adhd, he believes he has autism. And so both of us have very different ways of relating to the world. And that also plays into our struggles with communicating, with being kind to each other and supporting each other.

[Esther Perel]

When I read the intake interviews about the changes that had happened in this couple's life. They have an 18 month old. They experienced a transition to parenthood. They experienced changes in their professional lives, but they also had a lot, a lot of jargon, a lot of therapy, speak a lot of words that are meant to help understand the other person. But in fact, they muddle becomes a conversation of acronyms. Adhd, cptsd, Autism, Neurodivergence. And there is definitely a need to attend to any of these acronyms. But also there's a need to understand the role they play in a relationship and the way that sometimes they are used between partners. All right, let me do a quick pulse check with each of you. Where are you? Where do I find you? Not just geographically, but also mood, relationship, internal, weather.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

We're in. In our house. I'm in my daughter's bedroom and I'm feeling a little bit nervous, excited.

[Esther Perel]

How old is your daughter?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

She is 18 months.

[Esther Perel]

And is she there?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

She is gone with a friend.

[Esther Perel]

Wonderful.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah. This is the first time that we've actually put her in someone else's charge for this long of a period.

[Esther Perel]

And you experience relief, freedom, space, or you experience primarily anxiety, worry, concern at your daughter being with a friend, or even joy, for that matter.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Joy, yeah. Joy. Yeah. Spaciousness.

[Esther Perel]

Great.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

It's been a thing for a long time where I really felt like we need to create that space with her. I was ready for. Not the right reasons, maybe.

[Esther Perel]

What does that mean?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

What are not good reasons to make my anxiety go away?

[Esther Perel]

My anxiety about.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Literally everything.

[Esther Perel]

Yes. But what is the problem with doing things that diminish your anxiety? Why is that framed as something negative?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Because what I've learned this year is that anxiety is a block to being able to live life in some capacity. And this year has been showing up to those scary things in service of the life that I want. In the past few days, I just had a meeting with my business coach and he brought me to saying something that not only dissolved all my imposter syndrome. It also dissolved this very powerful story that I'm pointless, that my life is pointless, that I'm never going to be the person that I'm supposed to be. And it all came out in this one very simple phrase.

[Esther Perel]

And the phrase was.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

The phrase was I help people solve their problems and it didn't require me to be anything but what I was. I identify as an enneagram for. So there's a lot of staying in my own world and feeling lack and loss and grief and non inclusion. And that's what's really changing this year after a really, really horrible year. Last year.

[Esther Perel]

Is it important for me to know about last year or is there a different place for us to start?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I wish we had recorded literally the 30 conversations we've had approaching this time.

[Esther Perel]

Maybe I want to start asking you about that. How did you prepare and. And what has come up? Like what is the session that you have had or the sessions in preparation of this session?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Do we want to just like rattle them off?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

There's so many.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

There was the one. This is kind of a little self serving. There was the one where she for the first time turned to me and said I'm pretty sure I have OCD and I've been very controlling about things. And that has been something I've been like waiting to hear and just have a shared understanding around so we can move through it.

[Esther Perel]

I often say in the beginning of a session that I'd like to meet the people before I meet their problems because I sincerely believe that we are more than just the problems that we face. And the same is true for our diagnosis. It is helpful to know if we struggle with ADHD or if we have neurodivergence or if we are on the spectrum. All these terms that have really proliferated in the last years have helped us articulate ourselves, make sense of who we are, understand our relationship to our others and to ourselves. But I sometimes use them more cautiously because we sometimes also can run into the danger to collapse a person into a diagnosis, to see them only through one lens. Many people live with health and mental health conditions that doesn't define their entire being. It says a lot about them, but it doesn't say everything about them. And the last thing I would want to do in my work is curb the curiosity for knowing more because we think we know, because we have the refuge of the labels.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

There's another conversation where we both acknowledge that for as much as we love and care about each other, we've been so focused on our own survival that we've treated the other person's coping mechanisms as a problem. And I was setting up a dynamic where I responded to her with judgment, annoyance, trying to change her, shaming her, telling her she's doing it wrong, till that became a standard way of our interacting.

[Esther Perel]

So we had two accountability sessions. And you connect them to the fact that we were going to have our. Our conversation today.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Why I tend to be the space taker. And so I would really like to create space for her, to share for her. Yes.

[Esther Perel]

This was a very nice move on his part to know that he had had a chance to express himself at quite some length and to just basically say, I know I can take the space. I want her to join us at this moment. And I didn't say it, and I'm saying it now.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

I feel like the two of us are really committed to each other and really invested in each other. And we've spent a long time in our relationship caring about one another's struggles. But we also feel so stubborn and so adamant about ourselves getting heard and feeling like we're really being taken seriously by the other person. I think that's like a huge part of why we just keep running into the same problems in pretty much every area of our lives, is that we both care about each other deeply, but we don't trust each other to really care about the other person as much as we want them to say that.

[Esther Perel]

Again, we care about each other deeply, but the other person doesn't trust it.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Yeah.

[Esther Perel]

So I care about you, but you don't trust that. That's what I do.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Yeah.

[Esther Perel]

And how does that distortion get created? What is it that you do, each of you, that lets the other person think you don't have my back?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

I think our actions and our words are different. I certainly know that for myself with my adhd, I struggle to actually do the things that we've spoken about in our partnership. As important. He used to ask me for a Monday meeting every single week where we would sit down and we would talk together about what's coming up during the week, what we're going to do. And I think I made that Monday meeting a priority. Maybe twice in the many, many months that we tried to do it, something would come up. I need a snack. I need to go to the bathroom. I could barely sit still. And I don't know why? That was always happening at these Monday meetings that were very important to my partner and I wanted them to be a priority and I felt so.

[Esther Perel]

Rebellious.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Yeah, yeah. Rebellious is a huge part of my life.

[Esther Perel]

So would it be accurate to say we care about each other deeply but we don't necessarily support the requests of our partner because we also experience these requests as controlling?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

[Esther Perel]

So we are very kind, compassionate people who get into power struggles, but we don't name them as power struggles.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Well, we do actually, because one of the things that I have said is that I feel like I have no agency that she wears the pants in the family. And I often state it in very, either harsh or just like big energy. But like they're angry ways because I feel small, because I don't think they're going to be listened to and respected. So then I'll say something like, well, this isn't going to work anyway or you're not going to do this or I don't know what the point of this is.

[Esther Perel]

And then she complies. She complies. She basically acts in a way that completely agrees with what you just said. It's not going to work. Nothing's going to happen.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yes. She complies with that.

[Esther Perel]

She complies. Yes. Yes. It's interesting to hear him say that he doesn't feel he has agency in the relationship. Especially after both of them have just acknowledged that he can shrink her into a tiny shrimp. He can make her doubt herself. He can tell her that she's not proactive enough, that she's not confident enough about her job. He can rattle down a list of things that she does wrong. But in his mind he's doing that because he feels small himself and as a result he tries to bring her down to the same level where he is. And what's very interesting for me in listening to them is that they are full of self awareness and they even have a lot of awareness about what they do to each other. But it doesn't serve them. We have to take a brief break. Stay with us. Support for where should we begin comes from Shopify. Starting a business means that there's a never ending to do list. So finding the right tool that can help you simplify everything can be life changing for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started. They have hundreds of ready to use templates to help design your brand's style and they can make marketing easier by creating email and social media campaigns. And best yet, Shopify is your commerce expert with world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. If you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. You can turn your big business idea into a big success. With Shopify on your side, you can sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com Esther go to shopify.com Esther shopify.com Esther support for where should we Begin? Comes from Babbel do you want to learn another language? Let me ask you why? Is it because you're dying to memorize grammar tables? No, of course not. It's to be able to speak in the real world with real people. For that, there's one choice. Babbel. Learning a language with Babbel is all about small steps, big wins and progress that you can actually track and feel. They even offer a large collection of podcasts where Babbel experts reveal language secrets and offer an inside look at local cultures. I like the Babbel podcasts because language is a gate into cultures and it's a great way to dive into those cultures with stories that are told by actual native speakers. Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners right now. Get up to 55% off your Babel subscription at babbel.com Esther get up to 55% off at babbel.com Esther Spelled B-A B-B-E-L.com Ester babbel.com Esther Rules and restrictions may apply.

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[Partner 1 (Male)]

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[Partner 1 (Male)]

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[Partner 1 (Male)]

You know, I had a period. I tried to set up a lot of systems because I'm a systems thinker. But yeah, it was that sense of like, okay, we'll try this. Okay, we'll try this. Okay, we'll try this. And then none of the things worked out and I felt very alone. And the metaphor that I've been using a lot lately, the idea that I'm running around plugging holes on a boat left and Right. And that's my entire existence. And I can imagine you saying, where is she on this boat? And I'm like, oh, she's up at the top deck pointing it at all the beautiful islands that she wants to go to and grabbing the steering wheel and sort of pulling it left and right while I'm down here by myself being like, there's this massive hole, and now there's all these other little holes that keep popping up every day that I have to keep fixing, keep fixing, keep fixing, which, as you can tell, anxiety. And really, the question that I felt like we could bring to you is like, how do we get it? So we're steering the ship together and plugging the holes together.

[Esther Perel]

That's your question?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

That's my question.

[Esther Perel]

What's your question?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

I want to know what's it going to take for us to trust each other? I think the way that we communicate feels like we don't believe each other's on the same team. And so I really want to find a way that we can connect and care about each other in our everyday life.

[Esther Perel]

So instead of, what do you do?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

It feels like now everything that I say to him, he's taking it as I'm judging him. I'm telling him he's wrong. I'm telling him he did something that isn't working. You know, I will say something to him like, oh, I'd really like for the baby's food to be cut little smaller. And he'll say, I've got it. I know what I'm doing. Don't tell me what to do. And he's always feeling. It seems like he can never do something right for me. And I think if we trusted each other more, he would know I wasn't coming from that space. I was just sharing my preference.

[Esther Perel]

In highly reactive couples, this is very common. If somebody says something about the food, the other person hears it as if it's about them. Everything gets personalized and seen as an attack. They talk about trust, they talk about vulnerability. They talk about anxiety, depression. They don't talk about aggression. But in fact, the relationship is permeated by aggression, covert and overt. And I think they're trying to behave very well in front of me. But when they say these things to each other, as she just said, around the cutting of the food, and he says, you know, once again, it's not the right. I'm imagining in myself a reaction in him where he feels attacked. It's that differentiation that needs to happen. That is first and foremost to distinguish between a criticism and a request, and at this moment, this is blurred. And the other way around, how does it go?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Yeah, I feel like I'm pretty generous with the requests he makes, but I often question them, and that also creates a lot of distrust. He brought something to me a couple weeks ago and said, I'd really like to consider this as a new way of thinking about our child's sleep. And I said, well, I don't really believe that. I don't really see it that way. And when I say something like that, he'll often say, I really would have appreciated if you had said, wow, that's a great insight. I'm so glad you're learning that. That is so cool. I really want to support you. And I don't know that I trust that or that's not my opinion, But I often come back immediately with a response with some kind of triggered way of being that is just not appreciating and acknowledging him for the work that he's done.

[Esther Perel]

When he says, I've got this. I know how to cut the food, you think, oh, how could I say something and he not take it so personal, or you get annoyed.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Probably both. I wish that I could say something in a way that didn't make him feel bad about himself or wrong for doing something. But I also recognize that I comment on pretty much everything, and that's not necessarily helpful in a relationship.

[Esther Perel]

If when I sit with a couple and I see one person putting the other one down, there is a sense of, oh, that's the direction of the arrows. But then if you wait long enough, you suddenly realize that actually the other person is doing something quite similar. So they are symmetric. They are both doing the same thing to each other. That's part of why they're both able to recognize we don't trust each other enough. We care deeply about each other, but in fact, in our interactions, that's not what we end up experiencing. And yet they both say, we have this deep connection and we could do better. And they find themselves a bit miffed that they are derailing and they don't understand why. They're at each other's throat much of the time. You know, you talk a lot about issues of trust, but I'm sensing other things as well. And I have a bit of a dilemma because you, you are very articulate people, and you are extremely jargonized. You have internalized the entire vocabulary of modern psychology. You label every behavior, you label yourself. It's like you're not unhappy, you're depressed. You're not worried, you're anxious, you're not rebellious, you're add. You're not pissed that he's telling you what to do, and you absolutely don't like anybody telling you what to do. And so it becomes ocd. And my reluctance is I don't want to add to that because I want to create more air and space between the two of you that isn't psychologizing, jargonizing, and pathologizing, because that I don't see where that helps with trust. Sometimes it's good to know and to name things. Don't misunderstand me. But this, it's like everything is labeled. So in effect, you never say what you feel. You know, when you say, I'm a systems guy, she's rebelling, and you are saying, I have better systems, and you're not actually reading when she says, I don't want all these structures. Don't tell me what to do. Then you suddenly start to feel depleted and defeated. It becomes depressive energy. It's a dance between the two of you that has a few elements. A, it has pieces of power struggles, but not acknowledged as such, spoken about in the language of compassion, or lack of compassion and trust. But in fact, there's controlling issues, and that doesn't mean one of you is controlling. It means the other person experiences your requests as controlling. Two, everything gets personalized. Cut it differently becomes, I can't do it right. Rather than, are you concerned that she could choke or come back with the pieces and say, I did the right measurement? Mrs. Basically, you can regain a lot of power and a lot of control with humor, because humor brings perspective to this instead of, oh, now I've been pierced with a dagger again, I can't even cut the food. And I'm thinking, this guy needs a lot of humor to diffuse this because it takes it so personal. And the third element is there's very few things that one of you can feel or do or say that doesn't elicit a reaction in the other. You're too close now. It's a terrible thing to say to people, you're too close. Because we supposedly all strive for a certain kind of closeness. This is too close. That closeness leads to personalizing rebellion, friction in order to create more distance. And so you each are constantly pushing your elbows to say to the other, give me space, give me room.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I have a thing I call toxic coaching that I do only with her, where it stops being about me helping, and it starts being about, why isn't she getting this and when we got together, I felt what we could be together. I felt my potential. I felt her potential. And you're absolutely right that there has been something with her where I've been so impatient and so intolerant, but I was so scared last year that we were going to run out of money and that all these other things were going to happen. Part of the thing that kept me down last year was the feeling that not only was I unemployable, which I have a history related to that, but basically she's unemployable because of the adhd, because of the challenges of being on time. It created enough fear in me that I didn't know if she would actually be able to earn money, although she has earned money in the past, and actually a large portion of our relationship has been the major breadwinner. In her own way, that's fine. But, you know, she's been saying she wanted to be an artist for 10 years, and then now it's like, in a more impatient way, I'm like, okay, what are you doing? Just choose to do it.

[Esther Perel]

The word anxiety, which he uses frequently, is so important to decode because he sees himself filling the holes in the ship, and he describes it as his being anxious. At the same time as he says, I am responsible. I'm looking at all the fractures in our relationship, and she is dreaming about islands. She's clueless, which is part of the putting her down and experiencing himself as the one who does it all, when at the same time, she has been the primary provider and he has struggled with work. And so part of what he wants is he wants her to be productive, accomplishing, confident to compensate for what he feels he doesn't have inside of him. I mean, it's a very interesting thing that he coaches her when she's the one who's actually been doing quite well. She may be in transition. She has questions about if she wants to be an artist as a career or if she wants to be artistic. But fundamentally, she's done quite well, and that is covered up all the time.

[Narrator/Host]

We'll be back with a session right after this. And while we love our sponsors, if you want to listen to this session ad free, click the Try Free button to subscribe to Astera's office hours on Apple Podcasts.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

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[Partner 2 (Female)]

I feel pretty scared about my own inability to do what I want to do and my partner is sort of like naggingly in the background going, well, you said you wanted to go in this direction and you're not. What are you doing? And when I became a mother, I felt that magical flow of oh, this feels really good. Like I'm challenged in a really good way all the time, every day. And I'm not feeling that about my illustration or art. And so I think it's feeling stagnant and I don't quite know how to get to the next place with it. And I am really afraid of disappointing my partner and disappointing the narrative that I'm going to become this successful illustrator.

[Esther Perel]

There is your pursuit of art as an identity. There is you're using your talents as an artist to have a career which may not be the same. And then there is what do you both need in order to provide for your family and for your life? And do you have an understanding that this is a joint endeavor that you expected both of you to be financially providing? And if you do that, then your questions about your art, you can do as much thinking about that as you want. It's yours. You can basically Say to him, we agree that I need to provide this amount of money, and that's what I do. And how I do it is my business at this moment. Everything is constantly bleeding into each other. Child, family, mother, artist, illustrator. It's all flowing as if it's a delta, you know? And therefore, he needs you to be the successful artist so that he doesn't have to feel that he's the sole provider. I'm trying to do a little storage arrangement because you talk about one thing. You talk about six things.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah. The challenge is, you know, I talked about. I'm a systems person, and I found it very helpful. And that hasn't really worked for her or with her.

[Esther Perel]

What happens, though, is that you're so invested. It's like a parent who wants their kid to do their homework more than the kids should want themselves or play the piano or go to the baseball or whatever. You can't want more for the other person than the other person wants for themselves. If you want it so much more than them, then something happens inside of them where their preoccupation is less about the issue itself and more about how to get you out of the system.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

And I appreciate that. I think the question is the how. How are we steering the boat together? Yeah, that's what I want to know. I don't know how.

[Esther Perel]

Let's go very concrete and basically practice other vocabularies than the primary one that you both are in. And that is fine, by the way. It's just that it's too dominant, this kind of ongoing processing.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Can I bring up the example? Sure. The example I really wanted to give, which happened recently, is I wanted to take our child to the pool. And we also had a dinner to go to right afterwards, and it's about an hour before we have to leave. And he says, that's not enough time. That's too rushed. This is what you always do. What if something goes wrong and we can't quite make everything on time? He's often telling me, I don't really think through, how long does it take to get ready for something? How long does it take to prepare for the next thing? The moment he starts talking about that, my brain is going, I can't concentrate on what you're saying. I need to get ready. I need to get our child ready. We need to get out the door. We're going to make this happen. I want to make my dreams come true. Everything's going to happen, and it's going to be great. And he says to me, hey, you're not acknowledging that I'm here having a little bit of a freak out. I need you to pause, take some time to acknowledge that I just said, this is really too much for me. I need you to honor that and say, I hear you, I really get it. And basically have some compassion for him in that moment. This has happened millions of times and I sit there and I kind of freeze up and I'm like, how do I get this all done? And now he's upset and now it's my fault and I've only got 20 more minutes and I just want to make him happy and feel better. So I'll just say, I hear you. Okay? Okay, it's fine. I won't be late. And that really triggers him because he'll say, I don't trust that you actually care about me right now. It feels like you don't care that I'm overwhelmed and you don't care that this is having an impact on me.

[Esther Perel]

So this is a perfect moment when where they illustrate how it doesn't matter the situation, the form is going to be the same. When she says, can you cut small pieces? He personalizes it as if he can't cut a food for his child. When she says, let's go to the pool, he says to her, you are a klutz with time. You can't schedule. You have no sense of chronology. And instantly they have both taken an issue and you and made it something to blame the other person with and to diminish the other person with. And that's for me, the moment when she said, it doesn't matter. This happens all the time. It's always the same. This is the moment when they are describing to me the always the same. Did you go to the pool.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

And.

[Esther Perel]

Did you go to the dinner and did it work out?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yes.

[Esther Perel]

The thing that jumped at me when you told this beautiful example, because it's very rich. This could be a few hours just on that, you know, first one is, I want to go to the pool. And he says, but you will never plan. You are obviously. So you start with an activity and it becomes a rant about your personality. There is no longer a discussion about timeliness or ability to put two activities. It's not about the subject anymore. It instantly goes to the person. And then once it becomes about the person, the sad piece is that she tunes you out. She recruits you and she tunes you out. And that's confusing because she brings you in, you play the part, you do the reasonable person. And then she basically tells You, You're a bore.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

She tells me that who I am and what I am doesn't matter. And that's back to my past.

[Esther Perel]

Okay, let's go there.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

So there you go.

[Esther Perel]

Go ahead.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I was raised in a house where I was provided for materially, but lived in fear, particularly of my stepfather and of the day that the verbal harassment and yelling would turn violent. It didn't. At least not physically. But the story I always tell is that I had fashioned some weapons that I kept under my bed, and I had planned out in my head how I was going to stop him if I needed to stop him. That never happened.

[Esther Perel]

But you kept yourself small.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I was scared all the time, constantly. And then my mother, who I am not in communication with, I was provided for materially, but it was like there's no emotion to it. And so me being an emotional, sensitive, scared child, I was just met with this constant questioning of who I was and what I was about and whether it was okay. And it was actually my mother who chose to break off contact with me after an incident and extremely unreasonably so to me, her not taking literally 30 seconds to tune in, say, I hear that's true for you and I care. What can we do? And. Or is it still okay if we move forward?

[Esther Perel]

Now I see you shake your head. So that means, you know that. That if you actually took a moment. Yes. That if you took a moment to acknowledge him, that would dissipate.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Oh, yeah.

[Esther Perel]

Okay.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

I've had a couple of therapists say, you know, exactly what he needs. So if I can stop and take a moment and really drop in, like, hey, I notice you're feeling alone right now. I'm really sensing that you're feeling anxiety or fear and how can I support you? I've had many people just say, like, it's so clear what he needs. Right. And. And I just have this tendency to want to say, it's not my responsibility. I don't want to have to do that. Like, I told him, there's an hour before we have to go. Let's get ready and do it. Why does he need so much support right now and that. I feel terrible about that. And I also feel somewhat justified because it comes up almost every time we have to go anywhere. Actually, it's gotten a lot better. But it used to be that he, like, viscerally didn't want to go most places, so he would actually get really upset and he would come to me and say, I actually feel so anxious and I'm so uncomfortable and I don't know if I can go. And I would say we have 20 minutes to get ready. I hear your social anxiety or whatever's coming up. I have to get ready. I can't be there for you in this moment.

[Esther Perel]

Have you ever tried the other direction?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Actually stopping?

[Esther Perel]

No. Instead of, I can't help you. We've got 20 minutes. I've got my own stuff to deal with. The other direction would be, you'll be fine. You often have a little freak out just before. But we have a beautiful community. That's where you're going. You say, I don't want to be in the deficiency. I don't want to have to take care of something that's not my responsibility. Nobody says it's your responsibility. It's just a nice thing to do. So you don't want to parent him in that moment. Do you have a kid? You don't want another kid. Get it? But you can reassure somebody very quickly and just say, shall we put a good piece of music? What's a song that can accompany us? Not talk about it, necessarily. Put a good piece of music. Say just something about how much fun it was when you went the week before. And then name this anxiety. Give that anxiety a name and just say, you know, Mary came for a visit again. We should tell Mary that she's not invited tonight or something. Whatever the name you want to give to. But this anxiety needs to become named and externalized rather than constantly seen as invading your entire being. And then you just say, oh, Mary, come on, what are you doing? But now you're talking to Mary rather than to him. There's a ton of different ways to respond that are, A, more fun, B, more productive and kinder and probably more effective. You know, a kiss would actually really help me in this moment. A hug, a smile. But it's about diffusing. It's not about not taking these things seriously, but it's also about not letting them run the show.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm feeling some dance off energy.

[Esther Perel]

Yeah.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I think we're just getting into it, like, nope, it's time for a dance off. Yes, let's do it.

[Esther Perel]

But the point is to cut it short because you spent too much time in there. And then you become more defiant and more rebellious to him. Because every situation becomes a 10 very quickly. You first need to change the intensity, the predictability, the rigidity and the reactivity. And then we can go to the content. One of the issues of the content is we have a kid. We think about financial stability. Differently from before. The goal is not that your identity needs to be connected to your career needs to be connected to your income. And if he's not a good advisor, you find someone else. That's fine. It's not a personal rejection.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I would like that air. I would like to not have to take on that. That I want to trust her, that she can do this.

[Esther Perel]

No, you don't have to trust her.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Okay.

[Esther Perel]

No, you don't. You may, but you don't have to. You may think that. You don't really know if she will one day pull through on this and throw herself into it.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I don't need to trust that she's going to make an art career. It's actually a little more fundamental. And I've seen her work patterns, and they're not all great with late invoices and all of that, and it drives me bonkers.

[Esther Perel]

And could you help her in that area to set up?

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I tried.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Okay.

[Esther Perel]

That's okay. Don't do it. Then she'll hire someone. She'll hire a bookkeeper for two hours a week.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah.

[Esther Perel]

But what I'm hearing that you say as well is you get good advice.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

You.

[Esther Perel]

You go to therapy, you have other people telling you what would help, and then you say, why should I? You do, solicit and dismiss, like you do with him. You probably do with the therapists, too. You may want to ask yourself, how. How do I step out of that? I ask for help, and then I defy.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Yeah. I mean, I've had multiple therapists where I said, I really want help with adhd. I want help with specific things in my relationship. And I asked them for help, and then I decide not to work with them anymore. But I just kept coming up against. I'm the only one who has the answers. They're not giving me enough information. It's not helping me. Yeah.

[Esther Perel]

So have you had this running text today as well?

[Partner 2 (Female)]

No, actually, I really appreciate the humor idea. And this idea of enmeshment is huge. I mean, we joked that we were spending every day with each other. We, like, never were apart for years. We lived together in a really small space, often in tents because we were farming together. And so we would live in these tiny places with each other and rarely do anything apart. And that was something we liked. But I think at a certain point in our relationship, we realized this is actually really unhealthy.

[Esther Perel]

One of the most important tasks in every relationship is how we straddle autonomy and togetherness. This is what you're going to have with your child, too. You're good at how to create togetherness. You are new and gradually learning to create separateness, independence, individuality, freedom, air space differentiation, as we would call it. So I have a question. What's a good piece of music that you like, that when you start to feel like you're getting all entangled? You would say, time for.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I can think of, like, five or six that would make me happy. I'm just trying to think of ones that would also make her happy too.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

What would make you happy?

[Esther Perel]

No, it's not happy. Disentangle us. Stop us in our tracks. Shift the mood. If you shift the mood, then you can shift the dynamic. And whoever initiates the disentanglement needs to be met by the other.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Who.

[Esther Perel]

Who says, okay? Because you have to see this as a maneuver to help the relationship. It stops us from going down that rabbit hole. And no talking. Because in those moments, talking is not helpful.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

We used to have moments where we would light a candle, turn off all the lights, play music. It would often not be when it was super heightened, but more when it felt like he was in need of a break. Like, let's take a pause, and we're about to cook dinner. We're about to get into the next thing. Let's just.

[Esther Perel]

Beautiful. And probably more helpful than we should have a Monday meeting to discuss the week.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah, the meetings was just more about slowing down. I know the planning and the this and what are we doing? This and. Oh, this. And it's to the point where it's like, I just want to say good morning to her and have a kiss and, like, try that. Instead of literally her coming down and saying, like, hey, do you know where so and so is? Or I have to do this thing.

[Esther Perel]

You need.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

Slowing down is important.

[Esther Perel]

Okay. But it's slowing down and it's reintroducing some ritual. You have rituals with your daughter and you have routines for yourself. Rituals are routines that are imbued with creativity and intention. You probably have rituals if you go to dinner with other people and you do your holidays, but you don't have enough rituals that create an enshrinement around the two of you.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

I think that's so helpful because the alternative is this feeling of, like, things are always falling forward for me. And it's like, can we pull back? And, like, in the morning, kiss the morning before we say anything else?

[Esther Perel]

But if she's not giving you the kiss, give the lead with a little more spice so that it doesn't come from that place. Of I feel neglected, I feel unseen, I am upset. Or now she has to decide if she wants to get into a caretaking session and all of that. Use your spunk. How would that be? Can you come down a second in the way that he thinks he's too fast, too busy, too distracting. Give him the lines. Oh, like, this is a scene, so we may just as well.

[Partner 2 (Female)]

So I walk downstairs into him and our daughter having breakfast, and I say, oh, you know, I forgot that I told this person we were gonna get there at 3pm and he says, can we just stop? Can we just connect and say good morning and be present with each other and then.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

But I'm already stressed out by that time.

[Esther Perel]

Right, okay, all right.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

But I totally hear what you're saying. So instead of me saying the thing that she said, what's coming to me now is I would turn to our child and I'd be like, hey, baby, I'm going to kiss you. Because mama doesn't want to kiss. And, like. And it's a little shaming, but it would be very playful. I'm not trying to shame her. We'll see how it lands. But, you know, just bringing a little joy, bringing a little connection. And then she'd get the message, I.

[Esther Perel]

Think, and kind of snapping her out of her thing, but without taking it personal.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah, yeah, totally.

[Esther Perel]

The essential word is playful.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Yeah.

[Esther Perel]

I have a feeling that some of the trust that you're talking about is more likely to come back with playfulness than with rules. And for that, there needs to be a little bit more space. The space is in order to come closer, but differently. I only have one session with this couple, so I'm not going to be able to transform the whole culture of the relationship. But I do introduce the notion of playfulness, because when you play, you can say a lot of things without taking them too seriously. When you play, you have the license to be slightly aggressive or hostile, but it's for fun when you play. It's when risk taking is fun. And I'm trying to first create a different mood between them because they take it very literal, because the enmeshment is such where everyone is experiencing the reality of the other as if it was their own. It's that kind of loss of boundary. And so playfulness actually introduces a boundary, but the boundaries in order to create a more healthy space where people can actually connect.

[Narrator/Host]

Where should we be? The episode Begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast network in partnership with New York Magazine and the Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsome, Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller and Julian AT Original Music and additional production by Paul Schneider and the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker. We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller and Jack Saul. Adobe Acrobat Studio so brand new. Show me all the things PDFs can do. Do your work with ease and speed. PDF Spaces is all you need. Do hours of research in an instant with key insights from an AI assistant. Take a template with a click. Now your prezo looks super slick.

[Partner 1 (Male)]

Cool.

[Narrator/Host]

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