Esther Perel is a psychotherapist, a best-selling author, and the host of the podcast Where Should We Begin? She’s also a leading expert on contemporary relationships. This column is adapted from the podcast — which is now part of the Vox Media Podcast Network — and you can listen and follow for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
This week’s “Esher Calling” caller is faced with a dilemma: Her fiancé wants to invite his boss to their wedding. The problem? The caller used to work for her too, and their relationship was difficult. But the groom is “still 100 percent loyal towards her, despite witnessing her psychological abuse towards me for almost two years,” the caller explains. Although she left her job two years ago, her feelings of anger as just as intense as they were then. “I would just like to understand why I have so many lingering feelings, why my fiancé chooses to be loyal toward her, over me, and why I keep questioning what happened and my own sanity,” she says.
In the course of their call, Esther Perel helps the caller understand why she feels it’s so important for her to have her fiancé acknowledge their differing perspectives about shared reality.
Esther Perel: You’re coming to me today because this wedding is imminent.
Caller: Yes, it’s coming up within the next few months and this really seems to be the last point of conflict between myself and my fiancé. Although I’ve left this previous employer two years ago, it still feels like yesterday and I’m not really understanding why he would still insist that this person attends one of the most important days of our lives.
Esther: As I listen to you, I don’t know if the question is “what happened between this previous employer and me, what am I carrying from this relationship,” or is “my boyfriend is loyal to someone” — that someone could be a previous employer, but it could be an ex or it could be a friend of ours, it could be a third entity — “and I feel that he is more invested in protecting that relationship than standing up for me.” It’s a loyalty dilemma more than an employer dilemma.
Caller: I think it’s the first part. Because to be honest, I believe that I wouldn’t have such a dilemma with the loyalty part if I myself could just let it go, you know? I’d like to think I have enough introspection to move on but I keep lying to myself about it. I keep thinking I’m not angry anymore but if I hear this person’s name or I bump into someone that this person is related to, it’s feelings of fury and I don’t understand why.
Esther: What happened? Tell me a little more about how this pierced through you to the extent that it has.
Caller: It’s such a long story, I’ll try and keep it condensed. I had met this really wonderful French man back in South Africa and of course we fell in love and he needed to go back to Europe. So with my perhaps overestimation of my confidence, I decided to show up at his employer’s home and ask her for a job so that I may also go. I went in, I sold my skills to her, and she said yes. I think at that time, I was very vulnerable and from that point on, I was kind of at her disposal, and she treated me as though I constantly owed her something. It was a lot of manipulation and threatening and I felt somewhat like a slave. It was a very confusing time because she tried to play a sort of motherly role, but professional boundaries were constantly being crossed.
So at one moment she would say, “Oh come to me, let’s talk about your family, let’s talk about all these personal things,” and then the next moment she would use that against me. Basically it was a lot of psychological back-and-forth and a slow breakdown of my confidence because I started to question my own sanity. She’d say one thing, then do another, and then say another and made it very clear that I should be grateful that I’m even there. There’s always this looming threat of being sent back.
Esther: And you were especially chosen for this? I mean, she didn’t do this with your boyfriend, she didn’t do this with others? You were the special target.
Caller: This is what’s really fascinating in a point of conflict. He is very highly valued in her company. We were almost, in a way, a package deal. I was speaking with some other colleagues and I was not the only one who was being treated this way, but it was definitely much more extreme toward me. Perhaps she felt that she was taking more risks with me. So the point of conflict really is that her treatment of him and her treatment of me was very different and very separate. I think I’ve also realized that there is sort of an underlying theme of women bullying me in the workplace, at school, and I very much wonder if it’s something that I do to provoke women, especially in an authoritative position, that makes them treat me so harshly.
Esther: Say more.
Caller: I know this is not a very trendy opinion, but anyone that’s ever bullied me in my life has always been a woman. And I don’t know if there’s something about me that intimidates them. My mother and I have a wonderful relationship. She’s my best friend. She’s never treated me this way. Perhaps I just expected everyone else to treat me the way my mom treated me. But, women just don’t like me despite me wanting to please them so much.
Esther: Or that’s what they sense. They sense that you want to please them very much, and then they basically abuse it and misuse it and exploit it. Any predator needs prey. Predators are good at finding prey and prey are often good at trusting predators. Not always. But sometimes there’s something inspiring about her, there’s a desire to want to please her, there’s a desire to want to prove yourself to her. And when you’re mistreated, you think, I just need to try harder. I’ll do it again. I’ll do it better. Because she may give you intermittent reinforcement. Sometimes she approves and sometimes not. So you think, Last time it worked, so maybe I should try this again. You enter into a form of psychological coercive control with this person.
Fascinating that we always end up asking ourselves, What’s wrong with me that I find myself in that situation? A good con artist leaves people wondering What’s wrong with me? rather than being very clear on what is off in the conning itself. You say, “I’ve been in a situation like this before. This is not my first interaction with a certain kind of woman who I want to be appreciated, I find myself in a very dependent position” because you were very vulnerable. She probably had your working visa, right?
Caller: Exactly.
Esther: So there was a built-in vulnerability. It’s not just internal to you, it’s internal to the relationship and the situation. So when you say, “I’ve been there, but it’s not my mom, it’s not in my family, but it’s something I have been taught by other female authority figures,” what words do you use to describe it?
Caller: I would say that I have a very low tolerance of any person that is unable to control themselves emotionally. A lot of the time this has been women in my life. Anyone that behaves one way one second and then completely different the next, I have almost no ability to cope with this change. I always feel that I need to keep myself together and keep myself collected because it’s not appropriate to lose your mind and to behave this way. I just have no tolerance for this sort of manic behavior. Coming back to what you saying about the coercive control, that’s exactly what it was. It was “you’re praising me one moment and then I’m terrible the next moment and then praising me and then being awful.” And I’m angry with myself because I can see it for what it is. I’m not stupid, I can see what’s happening. But I am still incapable of cutting myself off from that and being neutral. I just want to figure out how I can stop having this affect me so much.
Esther: And when you say “it affects me,” it’s what? “I’m angry at myself. I don’t understand it. I’m curious. I lack compassion. I am ashamed.” What is the relationship with yourself in response to this very difficult, hurtful, crazy-making situation? If somebody left you starving, you would say “I’m hungry” and you wouldn’t say “what’s wrong with me that I’m hungry because I haven’t eaten in days.” But when someone starves and gorges you psychologically in and out, up and down, then you don’t experience this as situational. You personalize it.
Caller: Yes, I do. It’s almost as though I lose all focus. I’m so overwhelmed by this person’s emotions and their back-and-forth, I can’t focus. I feel like, I need to fix this situation. Why is she treating me this way? I’ve done A, B and C. It’s a total distraction from the task at hand. I feel physically ill. I feel like I’m being blindsided. Where did this come from? I’ve done all the steps. I did everything I was supposed to do. And now I need to fix something I don’t know that I’ve broken. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. So just an overwhelming feeling of confusion and feeling like I failed at the task at hand and therefore I’m not valuable.
Esther: Confusion and perfectionism?
Caller: Yeah, perhaps a mixture of both.
Esther: As in, “I do things really, really well? I don’t give up? I deliver perfection?”
Caller: I don’t think I deliver perfection but I try my very best.
Esther: And if things had gone differently, what do you imagine when you retrace and replay the tape? What’s the thing that hangs over you?
Caller: I should have stood up for myself.
Esther: And done what?
Caller: And verbalized the way I was thinking and feeling and not just lying, rolling over and taking it. I just kept my mouth shut and carried on working. And I think perhaps that’s why there’s still so much resentment because I thought I was stronger than this. I thought I would be able to stand up for myself since things like this have happened to me so many times already. I should be practiced by now. I’ve had this conversation in my mind so many times. Why didn’t I just stand up for myself?
Esther: And I would have said?
Caller: I would have said plainly things as they are. That your behavior is this one moment, this the next moment, I can’t keep up with this. I’m feeling as though you’re taking advantage of me and you’re holding a visa over my head, you’re completely suffocating me with your micromanagement and breaking down my confidence each and every day.
Esther: And if I entered her role, you tell me if it resembles anything. I could imagine saying “given what you’ve told me about your friends or your family I’m not surprised that that’s how you feel because you have a tendency toward paranoia. I am not at all putting you down and I’m not at all micromanaging, it’s just that you made mistakes and I had to intervene. I’m not going to let you just do things wrongly. I think you are seeing things that are not really there. And when they’re there, it’s because they’re called for.”
Caller: Yeah, what do I say to that? Because that sounds logical.
Esther: What I’m saying is sometimes we think we want to talk to people and tell them “what’s up” as if that’s going to make them actually acknowledge our version of reality. Did you leave or did she make you go?
Caller: I left. It took me a long time to get there and I left with the help of a German psychiatrist who helped me to build up some courage to leave her. I felt completely trapped. I felt like I had to be loyal to her, like it would be this big slap in the face, this big betrayal.
Esther: And what did he or she or they help you with? What did they say that allowed you to break the spell and the kind of power that you had imbued in this person. On the one hand, they put me down, and on the other hand, I experienced them as if I can’t leave them because they won’t succeed without me.
Caller: Exactly. It was actually really fascinating because it was completely the opposite of what I thought I needed to hear at this time. I’m in Germany and I’m intimidated. I don’t really speak the language very well. But I was so hysterical all the time and I couldn’t focus and I was crying constantly. Like, “I need to do something. I can’t carry on like this. I need to go speak to someone. I need, I don’t know, medication. I need to calm down so that I can come up with a plan.” So I showed up at this man’s office and he laughed at me. He said, “We’re going to have some sessions. I’ll make sure your insurance and everything’s work and we can talk about what’s going on here.” When I explained the examples, very sort of black-and-white scenarios of things that were happening, he laughed and said, “You are a slave that gets sugar cubes every once in a while.” This stuck with me and he just bluntly told me exactly what the situation looked like from outside. I think I just needed that validation of, Okay so I’m not making all of this up in my mind. This is actually happening right? And he helped me come up with a practical plan to get out of the situation and apply for other jobs and see what my other options were. But I just needed someone to tell me that it is bad enough to leave.
Esther: And each time this happens, you find yourself unable to hold onto your grip of reality. Because I’m hearing very loud and clear, I needed him to ascertain for me that what I was describing was actually real, that it was true, that it wasn’t just a figment of my imagination, that it wasn’t just an expression of my weakness, that it actually was a coercive situation with what calls the sugar cube, what I call the intermittent reinforcement. Just enough to build you up and then put you down so that you come back to me to build you up again because otherwise you’re going to stay down. It’s a phenomenal but very common control trip. So when he validated you and said “this a shit show and you’ve got to get out of there,” then what did you do?
Caller: Yes. I listened to what I was told.
Esther: Okay. You took his authority instead of hers?
Caller: Exactly. I’m realizing that now.
Esther: You follow his command rather than her command, but you like to be commanded.
Caller: Yes, that’s actually very interesting.
Esther: And you are angry as hell and you don’t know how to express it. Because part of you has a fantasy of once and for all being able to tell her what you think and be angry with her and let it out. So you end up having contempt for yourself. So now you have a wedding coming.
Caller: Yes.
Esther: So what’s the opportunity here?
Caller: Um, I don’t know it’s …
Esther: Do you want her not to come? Do you want her there and you tell her off? Do you want him to not invite her? What’s your favorite outcome?
Caller: I would just like her not to be there because so many personal boundaries were crossed and a wedding celebration is extremely personal. I don’t want to let her back into that bubble again whatsoever. I just want very clear distance. The other thing is shortly after I had left she had said some quite rude, let’s say she hit a bit of a nerve point. She basically had insulted my upbringing and said that my parents didn’t raise me right and she’s going to meet the parents that raised me so terribly, you know? I feel like I’ll be distracted on this day and it won’t be about me, it will be about trying to avoid her.
Esther: And how adamant is your boyfriend about it?
Caller: Very. He says he can’t not invite her. He’s worked for her all of these years and she’s his business partner.
Esther: And are you able to have a conversation?
Caller: Yeah, we have had many conversations, but he seems to sort of shut down. He doesn’t want to deal with the conflict. This is also something why I’m so happy in our relationship, his level of emotional stability. He’s not up and down whatsoever. He’s extremely stable. I find this very secure. So I think that with this situation it’s difficult for him to really be brutally honest about how he feels. The conversation gets to a point and then it stops and there’s no real resolution. Neither of us want to push too hard and possibly upset the other. I’m not sure. I’m trying to be accommodating. I’m trying to not make it just about me. I’m trying to put myself in his shoes and understand how he must feel. I know that this is complicated for him and it’s a different relationship that he has with her than what I had with her. I don’t want to make his life difficult. I just really don’t want her to be there. That’s all it is. I don’t feel like that’s such a big sacrifice.
Esther: That’s what you’re telling him.
Caller: Yes, I’ve said that to him.
Esther: And then he answers you, I have no choice, I must, etc. So each of you basically keeps on repeating and reinforcing your own positions and nobody really crosses the street to go and see what it’s like on the other side.
Caller: I’ve been trying to cross the street, like you’ve said, and trying to just be like, Okay, I need to just put my own issues aside and suck it up. But I haven’t seen him ever say, “Okay, let me just think about it a little bit more, or maybe we can come up with a different solution.”
Esther: Has he ever had a conversation with her about what happened? He works with her or for her?
Caller: For her. Briefly. I know, some weeks ago, she had said to him, “I think we should address the elephant in the room and that is your fiancé and her like having no contact with me for two years.” She wanted to apologize to me. But I didn’t trust myself enough to receive it because I felt as though I’ll just be like, “It’s okay. I forgive you”. I’ll be polite. I know that’s my default — just say the right thing. And I didn’t want to do that. So I just completely avoided it.
Esther: If she’s aware that there’s an elephant in the room, you can tell her, “I understood that you would like to clear the elephant in the room. And since you’re going to be attending my wedding, I think it may be a good moment to do so. Then you let her speak. You don’t respond necessarily. You just take it in, you hear it, you’ll see if it satisfies you or not. She probably will have a completely different view of reality. She’s probably going to put everything on you. You should just be prepared. At best, if you want, you can try and you can just say something. It depends what you want, on if you want to tell her “you mistreated me” and get that acknowledged or if you want to say “I’m upset with myself that I allowed you to mistreat me” and that you want to have acknowledged. Or if you kind of want to say, “I would like to find a way to get over this so that you don’t remain a presence in my marriage to the extent that you do. One thing is that you work and you’re a colleague of my husband. But the other thing is that it feels like I’m in some loyalty bind. And that I would like to have cleared before.”
So, you have to find your reason why you would reach out, what you would want to hear from her, what’s the outcome that you’re seeking. If speaking to her is the way to go for that, or if it’s speaking with your boyfriend that is a way to go … do you get from him an acknowledgement of what happened? Is he able to actually see the situation for what it was, or does he kind of join you in asking what’s wrong with your submissive tendencies and your inability to put limits.
Caller: No, he really will not acknowledge what happened. It’s as though I should have just handled myself better. And she didn’t treat him this way, so it’s not really relevant to him. But I’ve noticed he’s got a much higher tolerance for emotionally unstable people in his life if I look at his upbringing. So I kind of think that he’s just used to this behavior and to him it’s not a big deal.
Esther: But that’s not the issue. You’re not the same people. He doesn’t have to have the same experience as you. But he needs to be able to recognize what the experience was that you had. It’s not because I feel the same thing that I understand it. It’s because I am able to reach outside of myself and see you that I understand it.
Caller: Exactly. I’ve said to him before, “I just want you to say, ‘yes, it was shitty. She was shitty. The situation was shitty. You were taken advantage of. I’m sorry that happened to you.’” Just some sort of acknowledgement. But again, why do I actually need that from him? If I can trust my own viewpoints or my own sanity, why do I need his validation of what happened? I know what happened.
Esther Perel: What would you say? “He can handle unstable emotional women, or more volatile women. I may even be one of them. And he’s my stability. And I like this”. The other version is, “maybe he takes it too much and I have a different sensor. And she may not have acted with me the way she acts with him because she responds to the reactions that she gets and we did not react in the same way.”
Caller: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I do wonder when you say his reactions were different. What’s interesting is I think that he’s even more of a people pleaser than I am, even more so wanting to keep taking it and not pushing back ever. Perhaps that’s why they worked together well, because there’s just no resistance and she could sense more of a resistance from me. I don’t know.
Esther: Yes, that’s the flip side of the way you’ve always described it. I think it’s very wise thinking. The question is a good one. What it looks like isn’t necessarily what it is.
Caller Yeah, I’m realizing that now.
Esther: But I’m left with the question, is this a triangular situation? You, him, her? Is this a dyadic situation? You, her? Or is this a dyadic situation, you, him? And we could add, or is it him, her? What is the geography of conflict?
Caller So if I look at process of elimination, I would say that it’s not just him, me. I think that it is even him, her, me. I would say that’s the issue of the dynamic. Maybe I would say the conflict is probably more between her and myself. He’s more of a bystander. He’s trying to be neutral, but I don’t think he can be neutral.
Esther: Imagine two siblings and a parent. There’s so many other triangles that you can try out just as a tangential way to see what you can learn from them that may or may not be applicable here. One person finds the relationship with the authority figure challenging, controlling, dispiriting, deflating. The other has a coping style that looks like nothing gets to them. Or, indeed, nothing gets to them because they act in such a way that makes sure to prevent anything ever getting to them.
Caller Yep, you basically just described exactly the two of us, myself and my partner, towards the authoritative figure in this case, which would have been her.
Esther: Then you finally extricate yourself and it looks like “she doesn’t do this with him” or “he’s more able to handle it” or “he’s more stable, I am unstable.” A lot of labels are thrown here when in fact you may have been more reactive and opposing and aware and sensitive to this. This is off. He doesn’t even have to get there because he manages to do things in such a way that she cannot even reproach him. So if you think it was stressful for you and not for him, I would invite you to imagine that perhaps the stress for him is so much bigger, but he also has gotten so much training for such kinds of relationships that he’s not even aware how stressful it is.
Caller: Yeah, I’m actually I’m sure that that is true. He’s just so composed and manages to mask his stress much better than I do.
Esther: Right. So when you say, “I want you to see what happened to me, I want you to acknowledge it,” what you’re actually also asking him is for him to acknowledge what it’s doing to him. And that’s why you’re not getting the acknowledgement that you want.
Caller: Yes, that’s exactly it. He just doesn’t say anything about it. I know how she’s treating him. I’ve seen the emails that she’s written to him but there’s no reaction. And then I feel like I’m kind of crazy because “why am I reacting this way and you’re not reacting at all?”
Esther: Because you actually had the training that said, “this is off.” And he may have had a training where this was part of mother’s milk or father’s milk. Whoever the surrounding was.
Caller: That makes sense. So do you have any sort of advice on how I can make him feel like he could speak to me about the response from his side or do I just let it go?
Esther: At this point, he won’t tell you if ever he experiences something because he doesn’t think you can be neutral. He will experience you as finding ammunition for your cause.
Caller: Yes, I can see that.
Esther: So for that to happen, you would have to be done with this story. Where it enters the chest of bad memories of relationships you wished had never been in. They were challenging. It took you a while to get out. But you acted well. You found the help you needed. You knew you needed somebody to help you extricate yourself. You knew you needed a validation of reality and steps of how to do it. And you did it.
Caller: Yes, I think this is why I’m circling back to the original question. I got myself out of this situation. I work for an incredible company. I work only with men. I work with engineers and never thought I would enjoy this kind of job but my living situation has vastly improved, I basically tripled my salary, I have wonderful colleagues, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been at work. I’m motivated, I’ve got a very stable manager who treats me very well. A lot of trust and transparency between us. I’ve never experienced this before. Yet there is still this lingering anger. It doesn’t make sense to me because everything’s great now, I should be over this. I shouldn’t care anymore. I don’t understand why I still do.
Esther: And what’s your thought? How do you answer your own question when you ask yourself?
Caller: I don’t know. Am I seeking validation? Or am I seeking someone to tell me that I wasn’t crazy, that everything did happen?
Esther: But you’ve had that. You’ve had that. You got someone.
Caller: I have. So why can’t I just let it go. I don’t know what it is that I’m looking for. Iis it something I just need to get out of my system? At some points I felt like I was constantly talking about the situation. It’s like I became obsessed with it. I almost wonder if he could also just acknowledge what had happened, that it would be easier for me to just let it go.
Esther: I agree with that very much. If he was able to say you really suffered there. That was a real struggle. You tried your best to please her and she constantly kept her thumb on you. She played with your confidence. She belittled you.
Caller: Yeah, I mean, she mocked me, she embarrassed me in front of people. It was awful. I think that confidence is really the worst part. If you think about where the story started, I had all the confidence in the world just showing up at her home like that. It’s quite a bold move, I would say. And from that level to being completely shattered within 18 months, I feel like I’m not the same person.
Esther: But now I’m going to your boyfriend. Because this is a conversation between you and him. “I’m curious what stands in the way of your being able to recognize my experience, mine is different from yours. Somehow because you can manage it, that disqualifies everything I described. I find that interesting. So as we are getting married, one of the challenges we’re going to have in life is how we have two different experiences of the same reality.”
Caller: Yes, I think that sounds like him. I feel like this must be exactly what’s been going on in his mind: If I could keep it together, why couldn’t you?
Esther: Yep, and the question is not about keeping it together. Maybe actually the fact that I didn’t keep it together is a very important skill that I wish you would develop.
Caller: Yes, to want better for yourself. And to not just lay over and take it. Because this may happen again in the future.
Esther: So this is the preparation for the wedding. It’s less about “is she going to be there or not” and more about how the two of you are going to create a relationship that makes space for differentiated experiences. She is very useful for this.
Caller: Yeah, this has been a major hurdle. We can learn a lot from the situation.
Esther: What is helpful in what we talked about?
Caller: I think I thought I could put myself in his shoes but after you explained what must be going on in his mind, I feel like I have a lot more empathy for him and I can improve on the way that I’m expressing myself. Maybe it is more of an us issue than a me-and-her issue. I’m looking for his validation, I think, perhaps more than I realized.
Esther: And maybe it’s you who needs to give him some.
Caller: Yeah.
Esther: Do you want to try and let me know?
Caller: Yes, I would love to.
Esther: Take from here, put it to practice, and then let me know. And then we can tweak it.
Thank you so much for sharing your question. You’re not the first person who extricated herself from an entanglement with a boss or manager with whom they had the most debilitating experience and who thinks that the people who can take it are more stable and more solid. I think that that demands revisiting. So try it, good luck to you.
More From This Series
- ‘I’m a Gay, Devout Muslim Man. How Can I Find Love Without Losing My Family?’
- ‘Was It a Bad Idea to Work for My Friend?’
- Miranda July Knows That Desire Means Feeling Alive