When I'm Manic I Cheat

0:00What you are about to hear is a classic session of Where Should We Begin with Esther Perel. None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel's, and each episode 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.

0:46You know, I was the good girl. Like, I got married all the college. I was abstinent. I did all the right things. She played everything by the rules. and he broke all the rules. So many people had seen my marriage as this example of a good, solid relationship. And so now it's the opposite. It's like kind of the hot mess relationship. He did the one thing that was not to be part of marriage. There was like five different encounters and I had sex with two of them. And he tossed her entire structure of life. Her sense of identity, her expectations around marriage, her sense of herself as a woman. I've been diagnosed bipolar, and I think that that has a significant bearing on how I've evolved.

1:46He's really interested in a non-monogamous relationship, and he thinks that's the only way he can operate, honestly. It's like all these really shocking revelations that I'm trying to figure out how to process. The aching question that they bring, both of them, is are we still even compatible?

2:22I see things in him that I have in me, but I almost wish I could express more of in my life. I love his spontaneity. He strikes me as kind of like a wild guy who loves new adventures and opportunities and just can easily put himself in situations that I might find uncomfortable and so when I'm with him I always feel like I can sort of just like go along for the ride and it feels really exhilarating and I've always loved that about him which is actually initially why at first for various reasons I kind of wrote him off as a romantic partner because I had I was you know very itemized and I had my boxes of what a partner would look like and he didn't really check them but um wildness and spontaneity great as a friend not reliable enough as a boyfriend yeah definitely and he wasn't he wasn't nearly his face yeah he wasn't nearly as religious as me at the time and so all these things you know caused me to dismiss him initially but our relationship grew and developed and and i changed you changed a bit i changed a lot Yeah, yeah.

3:31Meaning? The wildness that you allude to sort of caught up with me. I almost saw myself as a prodigal son, and I needed to kind of come back into the fold of conservative, not conservative, but just Christianity that we'd been raised with. And I was also getting older. So, you know, three out of four of my brothers were teenage fathers, teenage husbands. and I was going on 25 and I was just thinking, oh my gosh, I need to get my life together. I'm getting so old and I don't even know what I'm doing with my life. I haven't even graduated college yet. I also have been diagnosed bipolar and that was just starting to catch up to me at 24, 25.

4:18I had never really experienced it. I would have the kind of hypomanias, but the deep depressions I did not have and the extreme manias I didn't have. and that was starting to hit me at around 25 and was just trying to reassess my life and made the decision that I would surround myself with wholesome people and ideally Christian people. And I thought to myself, well, who's wholesome that I know and no one that I know is even religious. And I thought, oh, that's right, she's Christian. It all seemed ordained. It all seemed that it was by God. We were very tapped into that sort of way of thinking.

4:52I was effectively trying to be something like you and latch myself onto you. I feel like, and your goodness and your wholesomeness, because that's what I felt that I wanted. And experienced as a divine intervention. Yeah, I felt that way. Well, I think part of it is like that was sort of the religious community and context we were in, where how fast everything happened for us at the time felt very normal in terms of the people we surrounded ourselves with. And now we're in such a different space. We're even hearing about that and kind of like, oh my god you know I feel like such a different person but I think it felt it didn't feel strange to us at all and in fact like you talking about your brothers oh right that were kind of forced into getting married because they had you know kids when they were teenagers and we felt like downright old and adult getting married after getting our college degrees you know in a way all these decisions that you have made, you made with a lot of clarity and a lot of certainty.

5:58Maybe in part because they were prescribed, that's what was expected, and therefore you didn't have to ask yourself, what does it mean for me? How do I respond to this? What do we want to do with that? And that clarity has accompanied you up to now. And now, for the first time, you have a question for which what is prescribed doesn't fit the two of you.

6:35They start by telling me their origin story. How they met and what drew them to each other. And how clear things were. There was a set step of progression. You meet, you fondle. If you want to have sex, you get married. When you marry, there's a very clear code of how you behave within marriage. This very clear idea that she had of life, he shattered it. And he interpreted his multiple affairs as a sign that he must be polyamorous. And because she has been living no longer just in one culture with one value system, She begins to wonder, maybe there is such a thing as an open marriage. Maybe that's going to make him more honest.

7:21But then she thinks about her mother.

7:31Do you wish you had done what your mother did? Sort of just divorce and then no. No, I don't. Because she, I think, I mean, I know that she was in a very different phase of life. She had three kids. And the nature of their affair was really different than ours. Meaning? My dad would have, like, long-term relationships with women, with, like, a singular sort of girlfriend. And so I think that just really wounded my mom because so much of her love and identity still is derived from family. And so that felt like such a deep cut for her that I don't think she's recovered from still. You know, she's never wanted to date.

8:18And so I don't want that. And at one point she even told me a few weeks after I found out, and it makes me really sad for her, but a few weeks after I told me he cheated, I said, I'm just sad, Mom. And she said, you're always going to be sad. And that really made me, that broke my heart for her because it's been over 20 years for her. And I can't imagine, like, the depth of pain that I felt without him even being in a long-term relationship with someone. I can't imagine sitting in that kind of grief.

8:56What sense did you make of it? What did it mean for you? Yeah, so I think that the desire, thoughts, impulse toward like a voracious consuming of life has always kind of been in me. I think that sex falls into that category. I want you to talk to her. and I think that sex falls into that category. And I think that

9:33I effectively had to shut off that part of myself and manage when we got married. And so I would take care of it myself, solo. I would work out. I would throw myself into work or travel or us, you know, at various times. Like, we would buy books. We would try to work on it ourselves. So it wasn't like I was completely just, oh, I won't, I'll neglect this. But it was like, I'll work on it with you. Also, knowing that this was not something that you were trying to, you weren't really pressing for outside of me. So that caught up with me. And then year four and a half, year five, the chance that something might happen outside of my, of course I'm always in control, but the chance that I would just let it happen became greater and greater.

10:29I'm getting a sense that maybe the priority is not a conversation about polyamory, but rather a conversation about bipolarity, which is known to have acceleration and a sense of mania that comes with intense sexual arousal. but that arousal should not be confused with curiosity and non-monogamy.

11:05We are in the midst of our session. There is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break, so stay with us.

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14:36We didn't know what the issue was necessarily. And I was still under this, I was still trying to flagellate myself, you know, of not being so sexually cued up all the time. and how I wouldn't want to put my shit onto her, you know? And that was a big part of it, you know? I thought that this was something that was kind of a solo struggle, that this is something that was my problem and that you did not need to be involved in it if it wasn't your problem. And my problem was? That I think about sex all the time. Yeah, and I'm attracted to a lot of people. I want to be careful about not conflating a possible discrepancy of desire between the two of you, with one of you being more interested than the other, and infidelity, and bipolarity.

15:34Yeah, that's hard. We need to separate some of this. Now the conversation becomes layered. Mm-hmm. Very. Rather than everything subsumed, you know, open-close. Mm-hmm. It may still be a conversation about open-close, but what you're describing right now has nothing to do with monogamy. Okay. All right. What happens with medication? You are on medication? Mm-hmm. Lithium. And has that changed? The peaks and valleys are far less. So it's just, it's rolling hills now. And so I don't go into a severe manic state anymore, and I don't get depressed. And, you know, medication, certainly lithium has helped that.

16:21I also maintain a job because that offers stability. So you have to show up every day. There's a schedule. There's a structure. I see the same people, and they're usually in the same mood, and my moods will be different, and they can sort of anchor me. Yep. Good. I know. So she's no longer the only pole of stability. No. That's good. Yeah. You know, she can continue to be, but you can't rely only on her as the anchor. That was not healthy at all. You needed the anchor and then you resented the anchor. Yeah. All right. So you have, this is good. This is good. So you have a stable job. I meditate.

17:04Transcendental meditation. So you do two times 20 minutes per day? I don't. I do one time in the morning. Okay. It's okay. I'm not your pastor. I do one time in the morning. I do one time in the morning. Well, that's because that's what they ask you. Two times 20 minutes a day. It's like, oh my God, I can't do that. No, but I do one time in the morning for 20 minutes. Can you take a deep breath just right now? Mm-hmm. Just take a deep breath.

17:33Now, breathe in and count five. In, two, three, four, five. Out, two, three, four, five. When you rev up, it's good. I told you I was getting manic today. No, you rev up. And you can feel it in your speech. You know? slow it down and there is nothing that will regulate you more than breath yeah if you just say i'm getting manic you don't know what to do with it manic is some overwhelming state it's interesting because it just feels like i'm being normal likewise when i'm feeling hypersexual it doesn't feel like i'm hypersexual it feels like it's just this is how I always am. It's okay. You're learning to, you know, if you had diabetes, you'd learn to manage it.

18:40That's what you say.

18:44It just, you just got me thinking when you said they feed into each other. You think about sex, so you keep thinking about sex. Then you think about, you think about how you're going to think about sex when you're not thinking about sex because you're thinking about this whole conversation around monogamy, non-monogamy. And it's like, yeah, I mean, we could have those conversations that's good and we need to it's not going anywhere but how else can we mitigate that a little bit would be good it's not even mitigate i think your sexual obsession is separate from a conversation about non-monogamy and your non-monogamy isn't going to solve your sexual obsessions you stop drinking you stop doing any other things and so this is the one that takes care of all the soothing.

19:32My guess is you are often revved and you discover early on something that many people, boys more easily discover, which is that if you masturbate, it relaxes you. And then slowly this activity gets a name and it gets a meaning and it becomes sex, masturbation, it actually gets a word rather than just soothing, falling asleep, relaxing. And then gradually images and fantasies and other things begin to join it and everything gets mixed up. When you're anxious, you masturbate. When you're happy, you masturbate. When you're worried, you masturbate. When you're sad, you masturbate. When you're bored, you masturbate.

20:16Everything leads to the same outlet. You understand? And then comes an ideology that says, oh, if I was sexually free. You could be sexually free and in a different relationship with your wife, but that is not going to address the obsession, the compulsion, the feeling that when anything happens in my body, before I even know it's a feeling, it's just a sensation. My mind fills up with those kinds of thoughts. Your mind could have filled up with lots of other kinds of thoughts. It's more that you don't necessarily choose if you want that thought. And you don't know when you have that thought, how to switch it to another thought, if you chose to.

20:57Yeah, right. And that's the compulsive nature of this. That's what distinguishes it between, you know, so he has a rich, fertile, erotic mind. What's the issue? Versus he feels beleaguered by it. He feels like he gets taken hostage and he can't take himself out of it.

21:16what I'm trying to tease out with him is the difference between thoughts feelings and actions and the fact that they don't necessarily have to be lumped together you have a thought therefore you have a feeling therefore you must act and then we look at his other resources because this is a strength-based way of thinking for me he has been able to stop a lot of things that used to compound his condition. Sexuality is the place where he feels hostage. It has a different meaning for him. Drinking wasn't an issue. His food habits were not an issue. His sleeping he was able to correct. He's done a lot to change and to manage his health.

22:00And all of those resources will become handy in helping him When he feels in the grip to be able to redirect his energy and his attention.

22:22How do I bring in other thoughts? How do I deal with breath? How do I learn to bring in other stimulants? So that I don't feel like I'm helpless. Yeah, I think that's the honest answer. I think I could just occupy my time a little bit more. Yeah, and I think that's what's made, when we do try to have conversations about non-monogamy, it's what makes them so confusing because there's not this clear understanding of why exactly you want it or need it. Or, you know, it's kind of... No, you can't need non-monogamy. Yeah, and that's what... It's a choice of life, of values, of what sexuality means, of what curiosity means.

23:03even if you agree to consensual non-monogamy it is not going to address this this is existing on its own since you're eight years old when you do act is it act or is it act out sure is it a real choice or is it just like you know he didn't know what to do with himself that's a different reality for her to be with someone who is actually thinking about life and he's conscientious about what he's doing versus someone who is in the grip of impulse of obsession and he's not really choosing right yeah I'll just say that I absolutely want to be the first thing that you said I want to be the conscientious thought out person in life you've made a ton of progress I guess I have in terms of like treatment and self-acceptance.

24:02Yeah, you don't see that you do, but you do. You have. Yeah. You what? You don't see that you make progress, I guess. It's hard to see it when you're the one living with it. But you have an amazing witness next to you. But here we are. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, there's been a ton of progress. She's witnessed a lot. Yes.

24:30We need to take a break, but please stay with us.

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