0:01

How’s work is an unscripted one time counseling session focused on work?

For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality names, employers and other identifiable characteristics have been removed, but their voices, and their stories are real.

0:30

I had an eight-year affair with my career.

You took a crisis for him to find out.

You said before that sometimes the solution to our problems should be just to lie better, if I’m not saying that any book.

I knew that I would slip in the truth would come out.

0:50

So it was better that it came out from me.

It was better that I not continue the life and I just tell him.

In, what should we begin?

I often explore Secrets, but they often are romantic Secrets, family, history Secrets, but this is how his work.

1:11

They came to talk about the Deep conflicts and the secrets that they both carry surrounding their work.

The work I do is not nearly as sexy as people think it is.

There’s a perception of what it is.

1:28

It is not that one person can’t talk about what she does.

And one person can’t talk about the fact that he no longer wants to do what he does.

Being a physician is like being a sponge.

Every patient that you see, you take something from them and keep it with you.

1:50

And I think my sponges full during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

He was at home and he described it as a very emasculating experience crisis.

2:06

Came.

Some people were drawn to the fire.

And so people were pushed away.

He didn’t go to the hospital setting and I’m not sorry.

I know how dangerous covid is.

I’ve watched enough people die.

2:22

I’m glad he wasn’t one of them.

Is that selfish with me?

Yes, could you know?

And secretly happy that you’re safe here.

I guess it would be nice to get my hands.

A little dirty.

She has that opportunity.

2:39

She has that opportunity to much.

I can help him get his hands dirty.

I don’t think he’d like it much.

I think that both of us have lost sense of who we were before, we started down this long road, and the journey that we took both professionally and personally, ran and continues to run concurrently with our marriage.

3:15

And while our marriage has issues, you know, we have issues in our own individual lives that we need to deal with and we also Need to deal with how they intertwine with our with our marriage and our relationship.

First degree.

3:32

I’m sure that every time we will go a layer deeper.

But as a first layer, what are we talking about?

When you say, you know, we’ve lost ourselves.

I think.

Where did they begin?

3:48

Where did they land?

When you say we have our own individual issues?

I say what are his?

When you say it also involves work, I say what’s just happened and I would probably start with the more recent and then move backward because I think that there’s a lot of changes happening in our work lives.

4:10

So you can pick whichever one of those three to start and I will just keep my foot on the pedal.

I’ve been a physician now for about 15 years, more than that actually.

But decision to become a physician was made.

4:25

Before I knew what being a physician was all about the decision to become a physician.

Put me on a train that I didn’t have to get off of till the very end of the journey by didn’t have to get off.

4:41

I didn’t need to get off.

Didn’t want to get off.

And look at anything else along the way.

We continue to work and sacrifice and look forward to arriving and ultimate goal.

Now that I’ve been there for a while.

4:58

I’m not sure if I want to stay at that station and it is hard for me to imagine myself doing anything else, but what I have worked at for so long.

And yet, I know I need to change, but that is very scary, and it brings out a lot of insecurities, because I’ve never had to prove that I can do anything else other than what I’m doing now, and I do it.

5:28

Well very well.

Can I ask you to hold one moment.

Tell me if I heard that accurately.

I have always known and wanted to be a physician.

5:47

I have never known to be anything else and yet I no longer have the fire and I’m wondering if I am to be, not just to do something different, but to be someone different, this is not just a change of what I do.

6:05

This is almost an identity shift.

It’s a fundamental identity shift and they will be an identity shift that many people will not understand.

And whatever necessary risks I have to take to search for whatever it is.

6:26

I want which I’m not exactly sure what that is, but I know it’s not this sometimes just a very uttering of I don’t want to do this anymore.

6:49

Is such an ominous statement.

That feels almost like a taboo.

Because your whole identity is wrapped up in this, you spent so many years investing in this studying it, how can you suddenly say, I’ve done.

7:09

I don’t want to be at this station, but his dilemma is not unique.

And it is actually a statement that many people find themselves making at some point in their life.

Some people are many people may not understand it.

7:30

But is it accurate?

If I say, if I understand it, and if my wife understands it, those are the main protagonists of this transition of this loss of this redefinition, and of this, probably new life that this will create for us.

7:53

Yes, we will be the ones.

Who hopefully will expect the benefit.

We will be the ones who potentially will pay the price for failure.

But the embarrassment of failure will spread Beyond just the walls of the house and the marriage.

8:13

And that’s real.

Who are we talking about?

Who’s the Greek chorus?

Certainly my my parents, as a middle-aged man still searching for an understanding that.

8:29

I probably am not the person that they thought I would be and the fundamental break in the relationship between my wife and my parents has to do with that.

8:45

Marrying.

Her took me in a much different direction.

I think than they envisioned and therefore they were not prepared to see me go off in a different direction.

What religion you grow up Episcopal and was for being Jewish an issue.

9:07

That’s not them to therapy themselves. so because if my son marries a Jewish woman then Conniving.

So I’m just going to continue ask.

I think we are children that I heard jury.

9:25

His mother was, I think delighted that we never had children because they would have been Jewish.

They would have had in their own words, mixed blood, they use those terms.

Does Sting.

I come from a family that had Holocaust Survivors as Grandparents, who escapes and That some say the least put some, it still stinks.

9:52

It burns it burns every day.

I see it and feel it.

As you say it.

And did that he pursued you anyway?

You took the brave asleep ago.

I’ll just say it.

10:10

It’s the 19 years.

That’s insane.

If you knew me, you’d know how insane.

That once.

I’m hoping to get to meet you in a minute.

It is a little insane, but basically I didn’t marry who you wanted.

10:26

But at least I have the profession that you wanted and I’ve Done You Proud by my profession.

And if I give that up, now then I basically have nothing left for you.

To actually look to me for I have not put it in those concise words, but that’s probably it.

10:46

You know, we don’t live there.

Not a doctor anymore.

Didn’t give him any grandkids, not there when they get older pretty much.

I guess the things one would expect from a child.

Are you an only child?

No, brother.

11:02

And where is he much closer to my parents start than I am.

The doctor to no it’s not.

What was the other profession that was expected.

He he works.

He works with my father in the business and he is single and gay in the closet.

11:28

It is our belief that one of the reasons he cannot come out of the closet is for fear of the reaction.

I’ve been kicked out of the business.

Maybe not kicked out of the business, but he was certainly be looked at.

If they couldn’t handle marrying, a Jew being gay, takes it to another level which is the parent that you fret about most, when you think about leaving medicine.

11:56

I think that my father is likely to be more proud of the fact that I’m a physician, but leaving the profession with probably sting harder with my mother.

The more I listen to him the more he’s kind of affectless tone stirs intensity inside of me.

12:27

My producer thought that it was a kind of a doctor’s Cadence.

I began to question to, what extent am I in the presence of repressed anger.

And that this anger is the consequence of a conflict.

12:42

A sense of loyalty that he has towards his parents rage at himself for what he did and didn’t do rage at the family for squeezing him for making it impossible for him to make certain choices freely.

12:59

And for all the losses that he had to live with it.

Certainly what we’ve set this far as painted a pretty bleak.

Picture of them, are my parents, perfect.

13:15

They are not.

No, no, no.

No, this is not about Bleak.

This is about a son who is acutely aware when he disappoints.

His parents was deeply attached to them.

Doesn’t want to upset them.

13:34

And has done all kinds of things to try to lessen the volume of their voices inside of him.

It’s a love story.

It’s not a bleak story.

Its father is wonderful.

13:55

His father is lovable.

I feel like I have to speak there because he is, he’s amazing.

The polio Survivor.

He built a life from nothing.

I wouldn’t want to disappoint him if you were my father.

14:15

We don’t have you don’t have children.

So it’s difficult for me to imagine how a parent feels about a child and the expectations, the vision, the dreams that you would have for them.

14:32

I think that my parents want only the best for me.

I think that they want me to be happy.

They sense that.

I am unhappy.

Can I ask you why?

You don’t want to stay at the station?

I think as as hard as you might try, being a physician is like being a sponge.

14:54

Every patient that you see, you take something from them and keep it with you.

And I think my sponges full.

Needs to be wrung out so they can absorb more things.

15:13

I know that when I come home, there’s nothing much left for the people and the person that I love and care for the most.

It has been spent Elsewhere on other people in a much more superficial way.

15:33

The longer I say a physician the more I dislike people and that’s not healthy.

It prevents me from doing my job.

Eventually, my patience will pay the price they haven’t yet, but I can absolutely Envision a scenario in, which they would.

15:50

And they haven’t paid a price yet because I still have energy enough to project a facade.

But that facade is certainly much more thin than it used to be.

I do Primary Care.

16:07

Very care, is centered on the management of problems over time, which are sometimes it’s a euphemism for not fixing them, but indeed just management.

So if you can’t sell a fix, then you have to sell yourself. to encourage people to get on the train with you and That cost something.

16:34

So When I Envision doing something else helping people is still part of that, but helping people in a different way that doesn’t require as much and something.

You know, my mother was a schoolteacher.

16:53

My father worked in a shipyard.

For 40 years.

I’m sure that there were times when they didn’t want to go to work.

They had frustrated angry may be hopeless.

But they didn’t quit.

And certainly part of me definitely thinks that after having grown up under their care having ad much is not at all provided for me, if there’s anyone who doesn’t have a reason to quit.

17:27

It’s me.

And yet, I’m the one who wants to.

He’s chose of the word.

Quit is very telling he could say, I would like to change.

17:44

He could say, I would like to try something else that I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

He could say, I would like to take some of the skills and begin practicing medicine in a different context.

It is very clear that the word quit.

18:02

An entire meaning to this transition that he’s contemplating and a meaning that is anything, but positive, it is self loading.

It smacks of contempt for himself.

Of course, he can’t move and he stuck and angry about being stuck and angry at the people who remind him how stuck he is.

18:37

That makes me angry moms and make you angry.

Because their choice to be selfless.

Is not your burden to carry.

It seems to me that they chose that path.

18:58

They gave you something amazing.

Something I am often in Via self.

But they gave it to you.

In theory.

I remember the worst fight I’ve ever had with your mother was right before the wedding was about free.

Will they gave it to you?

19:14

So you could become something amazing because you are incredibly smart of I’ve seen what you’re capable of.

They gave you these, they gave him this toolbox.

Then he can do anything with it.

And I know that people go to work and do horrible things for their children.

19:33

Much worse than be a school teacher by an engineer.

But that doesn’t mean that their children should not go and be exotic dancers or whatever.

I just went and told them.

I’m going to quit and they said, okay.

19:51

Tonight, that might happen.

Addition.

It makes silly.

That might be it because I don’t mean nothing actually be the way that you would approach them.

What you just shared is the inner dialogue.

The soliloquy.

But that’s not necessarily the way you talk to them.

20:10

The way you would talk to them.

May involve first and foremost how much you appreciate about?

They put you on in the values that they have inculcated in you including the value of Free Will and agency and and diligence and integrity and the wish to help and Citra.

20:31

And that you’ve decided to find different platforms, different spaces in, which to bring those values that you adhere to no less.

The way you’re presenting it, I Quit anybody with a vocation like you.

20:47

If they stop has only one vocabulary.

It’s the vocabulary of quitting, you know, because it’s one passion is replaced by another.

It’s the passion of doing it and the passion of not doing it.

But when you talk to them, it’s about what are the values that are involved in what you do and that you are going to translate into other fields.

21:08

You will always be a doctor even if you don’t practice as a physician properly, but I’m going to put three dots at the end of this, for a moment.

And then I’m going to ask your spouse here next to you, your partner because where I use and what needs to happen for you today.

21:28

And where does the personal and the professional connect in our conversation today, for you?

I don’t know if I have a personal and professional anymore.

I’m in a very different kind of book.

21:45

I have helped people five paramedic.

I fix cars.

I found lots of things.

Some of them, not so reputable, some of them reputable.

But what I do know is I work for the government.

22:03

Do one job on the face of it and there to another in reality.

And what I do in reality comes with a significant price tag one that he did not sign up to pay.

I did not tell him when I made my decision.

I had an eight-year affair with my career.

22:22

Took a crisis for him to find out.

I found out.

Are you told him?

I told him.

I told him at admittedly, I think five that gin and tonics in with my dying sister in the Next Room and all my family dad around me just for tonight wouldn’t have told me if you didn’t feel your head.

22:50

You would have continued.

I felt I was out of options.

I had I couldn’t run interference on too many fronts anymore.

I had maintained one job on the face of things.

I had maintained the other had been in an ICU for months.

23:05

My sister trying to keep her alive.

We had gotten her back alive.

Miraculously was tenuous it had taken Millions.

Five states.

It took superhuman efforts even by my ridiculous standards.

23:28

And I had a well I knew that I would sit in the truth would come out.

So it was better that it came out from me.

It was better that I not continue the light and I just tell him so I told him and so he found out that he was on a train that he never bought a ticket for And it was incredibly unfair and I will live with the guilt for the rest of my life.

23:52

Every morning.

I wake up, there will be that.

Every night I go to bed.

It’s still there.

And I’m also tired like curious.

I’m tired of all those results because there have been many faces to me.

24:09

Lots of space, lots of places, the work I do is not nearly as sexy as people think it is.

There’s a perception of what it is, and it is not that just long nights and airports where people know you better at an airport bar than your own family will ever knew you.

24:30

But like him, I was born into it.

I’m set on a path.

I was custom built like a car for a specific race.

And I’ve driven that truck and the car is now burning oil.

The valves are burnt.

24:49

Probably leaking it to exhaust port.

Number four.

I’m exhausted.

And he carries the burden of my exhaustion on top of his exhaustion and it’s ridiculous.

And yet here we sit in the middle of covered where we all had to come colliding together to do two very confidential jobs in a very confined space and my whole world and network that I had built and worked so hard for and that he has helped support me.

25:20

And since I told him the truth, that came crashing down around me when you couldn’t travel anymore.

Those connections that interpersonal Bond where you have to meet the person for them to trust you.

You have to meet them.

They have to see you in the flesh.

25:36

You need to share a drink with them.

They need to know that you can handle your liquor because of great.

You never trust.

Someone you have Spears.

All those things went away and I watched my world dissolving now in a new way.

25:55

And so here, we said he wants out of his world and mines crumbling around me again, and it’s really the only thing I have left alive.

Everything else is dead.

He is my world.

Yes.

He is everything if I leave my world in my job.

26:12

I leave some of the security that comes with it.

It protects me.

We protect our own.

Her dilemma is less clear because in some way her dilemma is not being played out in the session but is being played out by the very fact that you reached out for the session listening to her.

26:40

I thought a few times, what could she be doing?

And then I decided it’s none of my business, but it’s probably nothing that I am.

Ancient or maybe even you are imagining, she applied?

She was tired and fed up and wanting at least have the option of leaving by coming to doing this podcast with me.

27:08

She was basically creating a path of no return to make it impossible to go back and that is the Dilemma that is being played out without my Or knowing what she actually does.

27:34

There are two people who have reached a limit.

But only one of them will be able to leave at this moment because at least one job needs to maintain the stability, the economic survival of this family.

27:51

And mine is making very poor money at the moment with no ability to go out into the world.

But desserts accurate.

What?

I just said that one of you at this moment it’s about in part deciding which one of you could go could go and what are the family repercussions the economic repercussions and the safety repercussions.

28:22

Yes, I can make money doing anything probably enough.

So for me.

The economics don’t matter so much.

I know he worries that I will worry about the economic stability, but that comes second to physical safety social safety.

28:46

I’m not seeing him progressing something.

I called him off hand a corpse a couple weeks ago in the living room.

It was like watching a corpse do their job.

It was awful, which was a little harsh.

He’s that. exacerbated, because of confinement, because of covid-19 probably has pushed everything more exacerbated, things like a frosty of if push it up to the surface more, so because we’ve been in close quarters, I think, as we have, as we have become more frustrated, In our jobs.

29:29

And as we have recognized that, Our frustration shows to each other. and as we have, Learned my frustration.

With my job, makes her angry for me.

29:49

Her frustration with her job, makes me angry for her, but there’s no one else to direct that anger at except the other person.

So often times, she gets angry at me for staying at my job, and she sometimes seems to set out to make my job.

30:11

Appear Miserable as if to give me more motivation to leave, but because I can’t leave tomorrow.

It really makes it much harder to actually, go into work.

I’ve tried to turn it down, right?

30:29

When what happens is that you put.

So taking over the experience of the other person that you enter into a situation that we call a Patek distress, instead of being able to really be an empathic listener to the distress of the other.

30:48

You take that distress in and you are unable to be emphatic to each other, and you become angry to each other.

And now each of you on top of your miserable job situations, you have each other that you need to fight with as well.

We have done much fighting.

31:04

That’s right.

Much more than the last 18 years in the last.

Six months.

Give me a snapshot.

Backyard last night house last night now, something, what’s the scene?

31:21

Just so I have a sense, a very good example.

I wife obviously needs to stay in touch and connected all the time with many different people, all over them, and most of the time, it seems that the types of things they deal with are back.

31:44

So, We might be having dinner for watching a TV show or having to bed and my wife by virtue of her job is still way tuned in to the Badness of the world.

32:01

And there is no real opportunity to shut that off and to kind of break that connection.

So she and I may have dinner.

Her with many more people who are invisible to me.

32:21

I used to be able to do things like just detach and sit and read a book that girl is not able to exist.

The definition of my job is to care for million different people.

32:40

In a million different cities by virtue of its nature.

And today instead of the books, you drink.

Drink.

Sit in the backyard.

Scroll through email email text messages, single email text message signal.

33:06

So he says, when I come home, I’ve given the best of me to my patients and I bring the leftovers home and I have nothing left to give to myself or to my wife.

But you say, at the end of the day, there is no end to the day because I have to give everything of myself to this people and since they’re all over the world.

33:31

There is no time zones.

And therefore there is no day and night.

And I have nothing left to give to myself and to him this and you are both depleted and then you end up taking it out on each other.

So the next day, right?

33:48

So the first thing we need to find a way to insert here.

Is the ability to not make each other continuously feel worse about that, which you need no help feeling bad about.

34:11

That’s true.

Let’s say we passed and self-flagellation exercise.

Very well.

Yeah, but then you go back and forth between blame and self-blame.

And you need food.

34:28

You need to nurture each other.

As you are contemplating, major life transitions, each of you in your own right are making a very important decision.

Even if you only have one of them put into action right now, if you spend All your energies on fighting each other off, you will not be able to make any decision about work because you both are massively isolated and you are each other’s biggest support.

35:02

If you don’t have that available, you will not be able to make any decision.

You are each other’s most important conciliator is here, but if you experience the other as on the attack, then you can’t ask them to help you to sit with you.

35:19

You to ruminate to think it, rude, to calculate the consequences, the cost, and benefits of every inch of the decision.

He has no one to talk to about this or at least not in the important cast of characters and you have nobody to talk about this in your cast of characters.

35:42

We’re very isolated and it is growing worse, in covered very alone.

Probably for many people, still work environment is, I’ll only one.

I have many acquaintances at work, people that I work with quite well, all day long.

36:03

We’re Pleasant and laugh and do all of the superficial things that you do as you are at work.

Am I going to go ahead and drink with any of them’s, kind of talked about how I really feel with any of them?

36:19

No, they’re not.

Those types of relationships.

We are employed by an Administration which is oftentimes distant and that’s probably characteristic of many workplace environments.

36:35

No, the tell her that you came from, something better explain that you have a point of comparison.

I think just like I do it came from something that worked your prior practice.

And so you know how isolated you are.

36:51

Now, I think that is a point.

Pain here for him.

He knows it can be better.

And if you know, there is better out there, what you’re experiencing is 10 times worse.

Yes, that is true.

I came from somewhere but it’s different.

37:07

I came from somewhere where I was in loner.

And when I first started working where I am now, I was frustrated because of the differences.

And I was frustrated that we were unable to accomplish things.

37:23

And be the type of doctor that I was.

But you never think.

Do you, do you think sometimes?

I need a different place to practice rather than I need a different profession.

So sure simply doing Primary Care in a different environment or returning to my former place of employment and I have thought of them say more.

37:53

My gut tells me that my path is satisfaction run somewhat deeper than that.

It occurs to me that while he is talking about his gut.

He keeps speaking from his head when should actually listen to the dog and not to him, the dark seems to be reacting with the kind of intensity to the matter that he is repressing.

38:26

Do you know how to put your head on his shoulders and location?

Regardless of if you are talking about how you feel, but just simply to rest, is he good at putting his head on your shoulder to, you know, how to support each other.

38:43

Just with your hands and body without having to talk to lean on each other.

All I wants one of us is sobbing, her angry.

It has to get bad before we reach that point.

It’s not a habit.

We would perceive each other as week, because we’d correct doctors taking every week.

39:04

And in my line of work, you can never be with a good sport.

Just, our family is showed signs of breaking down with look weak in my eyes, plus, forget everybody else.

And if I just came in and sobbed and sobbed and broke down or say I was weak, if I asked you for help.

39:26

I would seem to be a burden and you would think less of me.

So it’s easier just not to ask and we also aren’t necessarily the best teachers and supporters of each other.

39:43

Yeah, he sounds like the voice in my head right now.

If I come home and I tell him, I need a hug.

I failed at picking myself up off the ground and dusting myself off.

You said before that.

Sometimes the solution to our problems should be just to lie better.

40:03

If I’m not saying that any book if I come home, and I’ve had a bad day at the coffins and I show that it’s my fault because I wasn’t I haven’t suppress it before, I walked in the door, if you have a bad day at work and you show it, it’s because you haven’t hit it well enough.

40:25

And that is just so fundamentally wrong that it’s built into the cultures of our jobs.

And here we are talking to her.

Yes, because we’ve replicated in our home life.

So don’t seem like it’s no.

40:43

I’d say it’s pretty Monumental failure.

Other than the fact that we’re still sitting here.

This is what happens when to type a analysts survive for 19 years together until the last sentence.

We were doing really well.

41:02

And I broke his.

He went ahead and deflected the whole thing.

You actually, you know, you’re very cognizant of what’s goes on, you agree.

I think quite a lot about the State of Affairs.

41:20

You share the Insight.

You don’t know what to do with it yet, but for a moment, you actually each, we’re able to say this is what happened.

To us.

This is what we have done to each other and with each other.

41:38

Some of it is our professions.

And some of it is our families that we come from and what we have internalized and how we each basically live with the same monologue in our hands of button up.

41:54

Be strong, be stoic.

Be Fearless play through the pain, toughen it up do.

Complain.

And even if you do, there won’t be anyone there for you truth.

So you share.

42:10

Actually, you may have very different work lines, but you actually share a certain psychology that has been part of your work and part of and that you have done brought into your relationship.

You need to find a way.

42:28

First and foremost to establish a base of support together.

Because I think part of why you don’t resolve the professional dilemmas is because on some level, you’re afraid that if you do, it’s going to separate you, we will look weak.

For having given up for being white equals quitters and neither of you are quitters.

42:52

And you come from families where nobody quits and you’ve been given all the Privileges of people who shouldn’t quit.

I’ve fought very hard to not quit.

I fought too hard to quit.

Now.

That’s what my brain tells me.

It’s taking too much.

43:09

And then I know this doesn’t work.

She defines herself to a very great degree by what she is overcome and the struggles that she faces.

And if things were to get easy quote-unquote, because she wouldn’t have a struggle to Define her.

43:31

Why were you asked to go home?

The idea was to help with social isolation to physically, remove yourself from the environment.

But why did they not your primary care?

43:47

Doctor?

Why did they not want you in the hospital?

Because we don’t do hospital-based working.

Patient hasn’t helped patient.

Only primary care doctor with a hospitalist team that supports you and takes care of your patients when they’re sick.

44:05

We can talk about a lot of stuff over the phone, a lot of stuff over video, but you don’t have to necessarily be there in order to get that work done, YMS, collated.

I think when you’re a doctor, you have a perception of yourself as a doctor that I’m going to wear a white coat and stroll around the hospital and treat sick people and fix problems make people.

44:37

Well, we do some of that in Primary Care.

We also manage people chronically over time and that is less dramatic.

When a crisis came so people were drawn to the fire.

44:55

And so people were pushed away.

Does it give you a crisis of conscience?

I should have been on the front lines and I chose the comfort of Home Instead and I feel that if I was in quote, the real doctor that I’ve always thought.

45:19

I was, I would have made sure.

To be on the front lines.

See your experience is different from hers.

She says, I have paid my dues in the suffering and loss department.

I don’t feel guilty about asking you to stay home.

45:39

But you seem to be at odds with yourself about it on some level.

I guess it would be nice.

To get my hands a little dirty.

45:55

Doing office space to Primary Care as a pretty clean existence, you know, I think sometimes that leads to a false experience, apple and experience.

And certainly during covid, when one day runs together into another without much definition of time-space.

46:19

You know, you’re looking for something else, something to break the monotony, something to break the mold.

Then, when you asked earlier what it is that I’m looking for, or where or why?

46:36

Now, that’s certainly part of it is to try to find something new to challenge myself and to have an experience of something.

I think you’re right and then It was easier to be stuck and unhappy, and Bland because at least she knew where you were.

46:56

You resent her for it, or do you?

I am somewhat envious until I really think about what it is that she does.

And I wonder would I really be up for that.

47:13

It’s easy to think that you can do things.

It’s harder to actually do them.

I guess what I’m searching for is chance to prove whether I can or I can’t, She has that opportunity.

She has that opportunity too much.

47:32

So she’s on the front line.

She’s definitely on the front line and you struggle with a feeling of cowardice and he is not, but I can’t convince them quickly to the defense.

47:48

I know, but I can’t convince him and it brings.

It hurts it, physically hurts that I can’t.

Tell you that you’re not a coward.

I haven’t really been now.

Given that many opportunities to prove that.

48:03

I’m not.

Won’t you stay with me for 19 years, that does, is there something?

I don’t know.

I, you have proven time and time again, you are not a coward and it’s so so upsetting to see.

48:22

You sit in this chair and rot.

I think so little of yourself.

When I know differently and I can’t convince and visit.

This is one pitch for the Angels.

I can’t make, I can’t sell this one.

I can’t convince this one.

48:38

I can’t translate it.

I can’t do it.

Because what he says to you is I need to go get my hands dirty to you get hands, get dirty a lot different hands, different dirt, but he needs to go and test himself and the fact that he is there for you is partly helpful, but he’s left with a bit of a moral injury.

49:10

Between what he does and his values strong.

His values are very strong.

Right, but then there is a gap between those values and his actions.

We call it in my line of work, ideological chasms.

49:31

They’re very dangerous because when people step up to the edge of them and they know where they should be, they can fall in so quickly and just be lost.

You will do anything not to lose him, of course understandably.

49:50

So.

So what are you going to do?

He has some idea of how he needs to start.

His course of action.

I can help him get his hands dirty.

I don’t think he’d like it much.

Now that you have some of you on questions to answer, I’m tired.

50:11

Very tired.

He needs to go do the things that I can’t do anymore.

That hurts or maybe it’s time to reverse Rose.

50:29

You’ll be there by him while he goes out on the train.

The Trenches scary.

I jumped protect those scary the boot sit on the edge of a precipice.

50:48

That their careers have been so Central to who they are as individuals and how they have structured their relationship to each other and especially to the world around them.

We may be at the end of the session, but we have just begun this conversation.

51:21

Esther perel is a therapist best-selling author speaker and host of the podcasts.

Where should we begin?

And how’s work to apply with a colleague or partner to do a session for the podcast or to follow along with each episode show notes.

Go to how’s work?

51:38

Dot Esther perel.com, How’s work is produced by magnificent noise for gimlet and Esther perel Productions.

Our production staff, includes Eric Newsome, evil.

Watch over Hewitt, a Gitana and Kristen Mueller, original music and additional production by Paul Schneider and the executive producers of housework are Esther perel and Jesse Baker.

52:03

We would also like to thank Lydia Pole, Green Colin Campbell, Courteney Hamilton, Nick oxen horn, Sarah Kramer, Jack, Saul and the entire Esther perel Global media team?