‘Why Is My Husband So Boring?’

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 caller says she was first attracted to her husband for his relaxed steadiness. “I’ve learned through my life that going for the safe person is the safest option for me,:” she says, “and when I ever have been after something that is exciting, I end up getting hurt.” Lately though, she’s been feeling bored. And she wonders if he’s holding her back from everything else life has to offer. “I never had emotional stability in my life, and real stability makes me scared,” she tells Esther Perel. Below, Perel helps her recognize a familiar relationship pattern — her mother’s dependency on men — and helps her reframe her husband’s stability as a good thing and complementary to her own adventurousness.

Caller: I have two questions. The first one is: How can I forgive people around me when I was growing up, especially my mother who didn’t give me the best relationship example? And second is: How can I heal this so it doesn’t affect the current relationship I am in?

Esther Perel: If it’s okay with you, I want to ask you to be more specific. 

Caller: In the country where I was born, men usually have this fame of being players, and that was also the case in my family. I grew up living with my grandfather and my mother’s brother, and they all had multiple girlfriends or women on the side. My mom was with my father and my father was an alcoholic. I saw them fighting, saw my father drunk many times, saw him being arrested. I always saw from her that she didn’t take time to just heal and went to the next husband or the next partner. I saw from the part of the man that we’re not trustworthy and from my mother’s side that you still need a man even though you cannot trust them. As I grew up, I always had multiple partners, not at the same time, but I dated someone and I would just get enough and jump to the next person. My husband is the person who I have been with the longest, and I found myself lately feeling like I need to explore other things.

Esther: So the men whom you grow up with are unreliable. They are roamers. The women don’t like them but at the same time don’t feel that they can’t live without them. So when one is no good, they find the next one. You experience Mom as, on the one hand, blaming the man, on the other hand, being dependent on continuously finding another man. So you say, “I’m going to find a better man. I’m going to find someone who’s trustworthy, reliable, stable. I’m not going to put myself in the same position as her.” 

Caller: Yes.

Esther: Have you ever had conversations about all of this with her, or all of this happens in your own head as you grow up? 

Caller: I’ve always felt so much responsibility for my mom. Every time I’ve had a subject that I need to talk to her about, something that hurt me, I end up hurting her. So I — many times just choose not to tell her so I don’t hurt her more.

Esther: And you end up hurting her because? 

Caller: Because she didn’t mean to give me and my sister that example. She didn’t mean to hurt me.

Esther: So she makes it about her. 

Caller: Yeah.

Esther: And she wants you to understand how bad she feels that she made you feel bad, but it’s all about her. Did she leave the country with you? Or you left alone? 

Caller: The first time we left together.

Esther: Okay. And this continues till today? 

Caller: No, when I moved to the U. S., I did it by myself. And I’ve had the best time of my life. I was always my mother’s daughter. She has the same career as I do. So I was always in an environment where she was the most experienced one, always under her wing a little bit. Except for when I came here, and I came by myself. Everything I have accomplished, little or big, has been on my own for the first time.

Esther: That feels great. So there are the things that you’re able to do by yourself separately and differently from her, but then there are parts of her and of what you’ve watched and learned from her that seem to be traveling with you. And what are those? 

Caller: I think just being dependent on men. That’s the biggest one. I always get haunted by the experiences that I’ve lived or I have seen with her. So I don’t know right now if what I feel toward my husband, this feeling that I need something else, is from my own self or if it’s something that I learned.

Esther: Well, first you learned it and then it became yours. That’s possible too. But when you say dependence, what is it? What kind of dependence? Are we talking economic dependence? Are we talking, woman is incomplete unless she has a man by her side? Are we talking, the man defines her? What dependency are we talking about? 

Caller: I think just emotional. I’m very financially independent. Now that I look at it, I have such a different personality and way of seeing the world than my partner. But he’s so good to me that I don’t think I’m ever going to find someone who loves me as much as he does.

Esther: That brings tears to you. What are the tears saying? 

Caller: That I never felt that I deserved someone who loved me this much, and if I lose this, I might not get it again.

Esther: And I never felt I deserved because … How did I learn that? 

Caller: Because I was never given that love from my father’s side. And I never saw my mom getting that love for her.

Esther: Did she give it to you? 

Caller: In a way, yeah. I used to think it was a generational thing. We were never allowed to talk about feelings or things that hurt us. I wasn’t allowed to cry. I was always told if I had tears in my eyes — I was told to not cry. I wasn’t given a lot of opportunity to just express myself. And …

Esther: How does crying feel at this very moment? 

Caller: It’s just liberating.

Esther: Okay, we can cry. 

Caller: I understand so much about her because I know my grandmother was a very tough woman. She was very cold to my mom, very demanding. This is the example that my mother grew up with. My mom was abused when she was a girl by her own family. She was abused as a woman by my father. I try to understand how her life has been. That’s why I don’t like telling her. I still have pain inside of me. And I want to forgive her or forgive this part of me that resents her.

Esther: And you resent her for … 

Caller: For putting me on a side and always giving the next man more importance.

Esther: So in a way. It’s a double story, right? It’s as much about how you saw her turn herself into a pretzel to seduce and attract the next man and the messages that that conveyed to you about who comes first and what is important in the life of a woman. But it is also the neglect leaving you to fend for yourself, to find other parental figures because she was too busy to define herself as a woman and therefore was not invested enough to apply herself to the role of mother. Does that describe it? 

Caller: Yes.

Esther: So you have the feeling of the daughter in response to the mother who wasn’t there as much as you wanted and needed her to be. And then you have the feeling of yourself as a woman, who saw this woman basically try to fend for herself but continuously find herself in self-destructive stories. And then you also came up with a kind of division that there are passionate but unstable men, then there are stable but boring men. You’ve divided the world in a very unfortunate way, the world of men. 

When you talk about your husband and say he’s kind, he’s generous, he loves me, he admires me, he stands by me, and yet? So let’s talk about the turmoil inside of you, rather than you defining him as stable but boring. 

Caller: I guess I’m not very stable myself, emotionally. I have so many passions and I have no containment a lot of the time. I’ve always been one thing regarding my career and I’ve found myself discovering other things that I’m passionate about. One day I’m thinking, Oh, I want to study this, and all I talk about is that new thing and how I’m going to get it. Then a week passes and I’m like, You know what? No, I really like this other thing. So, I think I’m a mess.

Esther: And when I discover something that I’m interested in, I instantly imagine myself becoming that thing. I don’t just say I enjoy something or I’m curious about something. I want to basically change my entire life and make a whole new choice. So I find myself continuously imagining myself in different professions, in different relationships, in different countries, in different lives, in different identities. I merge on the spot with the latest passion. There is strength in this, and there is versatility in this, but there is also a wanderingness. Because I could be anything, anytime, anywhere, all the time. I feel not anchored enough. And then I find a partner who is a very strong anchor for me and I start to rebel against him. Because I have outsourced the very thing that I need inside of me. Then I begin to think that he’s the one who’s restricting me. 

Caller: Yeah, I feel I’ve put myself in the victim role for a long time and never realized. I never heard this, what you’re telling me.

Esther: Say it in your own words. What you just heard. 

Caller: I would say that because I never had emotional stability in my life, I don’t know how to have that inside of me now. And the real stability makes me feel scared.

Esther: Of? 

Caller: Falling in the same patterns. If I stay in one place, I’m gonna end up being like my mom.

Esther: Shall I ask you to talk to me about your husband, so that I get a more fleshed-out version of him, rather than this very narrow, reductionistic, stable and boring category? Or, shall I explore more your distrust that you may have a better grasp of reality than your mother, that this is less about you and him and more about you and her? Which is the first fork we need to take in the road? 

Caller: I want to go with my mom. I know why I chose the person I’m married to. He’s a very cut-to-the-chase person. We knew each other for a few years before we got married. It was a very quick, out-of-the-blue attraction. We never felt attraction toward each other before, and everything happened very quickly after that. I moved here and was by myself for a year, then he came and we got married. He has no interest in the outside world. He’s not great at making friends or connecting with other people. He’s very interested in me. So I also feel this responsibility that I am the only thing he has. I feel it puts me in a very similar situation that I was in with my mom growing up. That’s the part that scares me.

Esther: Right. That’s been addressed with him? Because here’s the thing that jumps out. He may not be interested in the world outside, openly. And he may not be someone who makes friends and connects with people. He may have come as the person who is stable and focused, but yet he picked you after he knew you for quite a few years. So it’s not like he picked a mysterious you. Anybody who presents as that stable and that uninterested in the outside world, but picks someone like you, who is very interested in the outside world, responds to any stimuli that comes your way, has outsourced as well. He may be the introvert, but he has outsourced his connection to the world to you. He may not be as stable as we think, or as boring as we think, let’s put it like that. You outsource stability to him and he outsources passion, spontaneity, improvisation, curiosity, playfulness to you. This relationship has all the necessary ingredients, but it needs a redistribution between the two protagonists so that it doesn’t become polarized, so that you become Mrs. Passion and he becomes Mr. Boring. Because you need his parts and he needs your parts. 

Caller: Well, this gives me hope. I understand.

Esther: Anybody who wants stability and just stability wouldn’t pick you. If he was just about stability and boredom, he wouldn’t have left his whole life. That doesn’t change that when someone is completely living in the margin of you, that that doesn’t bring back a sense of responsibility for their well-being. Even though his well-being is very different from your mother’s well-being, the structure is the same. You find yourself once again with a feeling of burden and responsibility. But you were going to talk about her, and you landed on him. 

Caller: That was the easier part. After my father, my mom got married to my sister’s father, and this man became my new father.

Esther: How old were you? 

Caller: I was 6, and my sister was born when I was 8. So it was two years of building that relationship and feeling very stable. After my sister was born, this man just transformed into a different person. I kept hearing fights with my mom and him about my mom giving me too much attention and not taking care of my baby sister. Fights of who gets priority, the 8-year-old or the newborn? At that point my grandparents took a lot of care of me. I have memories of many years sleeping in my grandmother’s bedroom, being picked up by them at school, things like that.

The relationship lasted around ten years. And when it ended, this man cut me off completely. He didn’t want anything to do with me, with my mom, or my family. He only wanted to do with his daughter. I felt like I lost a father as well. My mom became a mess, which I understood for many years. This was the only time where my mom was by herself and she was very heartbroken. I guess this is where I started taking care of her. She got into very bad relationships— just short adventures, married men, close family. It was very messy, and for some reason I knew everything about it and I was her confidante. She met this man, and two months after they were already living together in the house where I was living too. They’re still together. I always thought that, after all of her experiences, she would take some time to know the new person, and she just jumped at it. This man is just not the person I would have liked to see my mom with, let’s just say that.

Esther: Because?

Caller: My mom had a very good career at that point. She married someone who wasn’t intellectually or financially or in any way matching with her. It pained me to see that she was settling. That’s the way I saw it from outside. Of course, it’s not my right to make any decisions for her, but I thought my mom deserves so much better than this.

Esther: Are you wondering if you settled? 

Caller: Yes, all the time.

Esther: So when you look at her, you see yourself. And you think, what? My partner is not meeting me, neither artistically nor intellectually?I wanted an anchor? What is it that you see in you when you look at her that makes you think you’re one and the same? 

Caller: My partner is intellectually matching with me. It comes back to the same. I have this eagerness to explore and eat the world and new things and —

 Esther: And he joins you? Is he curious with you? 

Caller: He’s starting to be more curious. That’s something I have come to realize. He’s very supportive of my craziness. He’s always curious about what I think of my things. I don’t necessarily see him making these types of decisions for himself.

Esther: When you think about freedom, do you think about doing the things you like to do or trying new things, or do you sometimes also think that freedom can come from choosing not to do certain things? 

Caller: I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to choose, I think, in my life. So to be able to choose, I need to go out and have many possibilities, I guess.

Esther: Are you talking about other men? What are the things that you find yourself drawn to while he’s by your side? And what are the things that you start to experience that you’re being secretive about? 

Caller: I think professionally — that’s the the biggest one — I’ve started to do things that are not what I always did, and I really have found a lot of passion in doing other things. I guess I want to have knowledge of different things. I feel alone in a lot of ways. So I try to diversify myself …

Esther: So that no one has so much power over me. So that no one can totally rattle my life by leaving. So that I don’t find myself too vulnerable and too dependent on any one person, one source, one career path. It makes sense with the history that you have that you would say, “I don’t let myself lean too much in one direction, even though you lean on him.” When you lean on him, you don’t get scared. Not of him. You get scared of yourself leaning but not of his not being someone whom you can lean on. So, I don’t trust leaning too much in one place. I’m going to scare myself to suddenly realize that all my weight is on one leg and I’m going to try to rebalance myself and shuffle some weight onto the other side by doing something drastic. 

Caller: Sometimes it comes out of nowhere, and it happens in all senses. I went to a work trip a few months ago. It was the last day, there was a dancing party and I was having such a great time with my co-workers, with the people I met there. And I was just blown away, feeling free, I was in my element dancing. By the end of the party, this guy came to me and was talking to me the whole night and showing so much interest in me. He was so curious about me. That one thing just switched everything. I couldn’t stop thinking of this person just because he was so interested in me. I wasn’t even thinking of being with someone else or being interested in someone else, and it just happened.

Esther: And that’s why you send your question in now? I always ask myself, “Why now?” You tell me, “I had so many experiences where I had no attention, where I felt all on my own, where my mother was so self-absorbed that when somebody puts the entire focus on me, I feel like I exist. I grow taller. I feel alive. I feel seen.” Here’s the challenge. How can I experience it, appreciate it, and keep it for what it is? So, this is wonderful. It feels great. But this doesn’t have to throw my entire life into question. 

Caller: I even asked my husband when I came back if we could be in an open relationship. I was this close to just ruining everything.

Esther: What did your husband say? 

Caller: He was so upset. Just me mentioning it, it threw him off. He didn’t speak to me for days. The good thing that came out of that is that now he’s taking therapy.

Esther: And he started therapy because? 

Caller: Because he felt shaken by the thought …

Esther: … that his stable life may not be as stable. That the stability he thought his wife needs so desperately can be overthrown in just a few hours. Things are not nearly as fixed as we sometimes want to see them. But that’s true for you and for him. 

When you saw yourself suddenly willing to throw your entire life up in the air because of the nice attention that this man bestowed upon you, that’s when you suddenly thought, Oh shit, I’m no different from my mom. So it had an awakening for you, for the two of you. We should maybe send a thank-you note to the guy. He was effective but in many ways that he didn’t anticipate. 

Caller: Emotionally, sometimes I feel like everything is bad with my life, with me. The next day I’m just ecstatic. I’m so happy.

Esther: So you’re saying: “My mood can shift and my life hasn’t changed. The same life one day is seen as the best thing I could ever imagine and the next day as the worst thing I could ever imagine. But that’s about my mood. My mood distorts my reality. It’s not like my life is different the next day. Some days I feel blessed, and some days I feel trapped. Some days I feel like I’m myself, and some days I feel like I’ve been hijacked in the stories of others. Some days I appreciate my partner and my choice makes perfect sense, and the next day I question the whole thing and I’m ready to toss it.” 

I think if you stick to the descriptive, you may have a better way of saying “Here are certain things I want to understand better and see to what extent I can change.” You are in a big transition in your life. You are recently in a new country, recently in a new marriage, recently in post studies in your career. So a lot of things are happening for you, and that involves asking, “What are the parts of my relationship story, or even my sexual story, that I want to hold on to, that I want to develop further, that I want to maintain. And what are the parts of my relationship story that I would like to leave behind, to let go of, and to change?” We all have a relationship story, and there are pieces of it that we probably want to hold on to, even if it’s things that you learn on the basis of what you missed. Our resources don’t always come from what you got. Sometimes our resources and our resilience comes from what we didn’t get. Or we got a piece of it that we like and another piece that we think we could let go of. This letting go and holding on is part of where I see where you are at at this moment. 

Let me ask you this: When you’re in a bad day, do you remember that you have good days or they feel like they’ve disappeared or that they are just an illusion and the real stuff is the dark? 

Caller: No, I remember that I have good days.

Esther: Okay. So that’s great because that means that the two parts — the light and dark, the good and bad — they live inside of you, but they know each other. That’s great when they know each other, when they’ve met. Sometimes they haven’t met. When one takes over, the other one completely vanishes. So then you can start to have a conversation between the two. If we continued the conversation, which unfortunately we can’t, that would be: What does the part that says “You made good choices” say to the part of you that says “My life is a mess, I made a mistake.” How do they talk to each other? 

Caller: I have conversations with myself, I guess. A part of me is like, Oh, you really messed up. And the other part of me is like, No, it’s all good, it’s not a big deal. So I attack myself out of the bad thoughts, I guess.

Esther: Yes. So you’re not just having a blaming self, you’re having a self that is a mediator and mediates between two parts that sometimes become slightly too sure of themselves. 

Caller: I love the point of view that I have now about my relationship and how we actually complement each other more than I ever thought. But my mom is just —

Esther: Say one more thing about how you see the complementarity. I just want to hear you. 

Caller: That my, my husband’s stability and grounding is something that I’m using for myself, and it’s actually helping myself and my adventurousness and it’s feeding him as well.

Esther: That’s right. 

Caller: So it’s not only him giving to me.

Esther: If all he wanted was a calm and square and structured life, he wouldn’t be here, nor with you. There’s a lot more we could talk about, but we have to leave it at that. 

This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Esther Perel , 2024-05-06 18:00:29

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