In terms of my question, ultimately the core of the question is about understanding and working through resentment and anger towards my previous employer.
It's been two years since I've left her and I'm now working for a wonderful company where I'm very happy.
However, my fiancé is still working for her and is still 100 % loyal towards her despite witnessing her psychological abuse towards me for almost two years.
Fast forward to 2024, this has become a major point of conflict as he insists that she, my previous tormentor for lack of a better word, attends our wedding as a courtesy to her.
As much as I try to forget and move on from the way that she treated me, my feelings of anger are just as intense as they were two years ago.
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.
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Okay. And the reason you're coming to me today is because this wedding is imminent?
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 woman, 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.
And as I listen to you, I don't know if the question is about what happened between this previous employer and me, what am I carrying from this relationship, or if the focus 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.
And it's a loyalty dilemma, more than an employer dilemma.
I think it's the first part of what you had mentioned, because to be honest, I believe that I wouldn't have such a dilemma with the loyalty if I myself could just let it go.
I'm not sure, because I'd like to think I have enough self introspection enough to let it go and 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 really of fury.
And I just don't understand why.
What happened? Tell me a little more about what happened that this pierced through you to the extent that it has.
So yeah, such a long story.
I'll try and keep it condensed.
But basically, so I had made this really wonderful French man in back in South Africa.
And of course, we fell in love.
And he needed to go back to Europe at the time.
So with me and all of 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.
And I went in, I sort of sold my skills to her, and she said yes.
So I think, of course, at that time was very vulnerable.
And just sort of from that point on, I was kind of at her disposal, you know, and she treated me very much as though I constantly owed her something.
It was a lot of manipulation and threatening.
And I felt somewhat like a slave.
And it was very, very confusing time because she really much tried to play this sort of motherly role.
But the 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 sort of personal things.
And then the next moment, she would use that against me.
And so basically, it was just a lot of like psychological back and forth.
And it was really just like a slow breakdown of my confidence because I started to question my own sanity very much.
She'd say one thing and then do another and then do one thing and say another and made it very clear that I should be grateful that I'm even there.
That there's always just this looming threat of being sent back.
And you were especially chosen for this?
Yes. I mean, she didn't do this with your boyfriend.
She didn't do this with others.
You were the special target.
This is what's really fascinating and a point of conflict.
So he is very highly valued in her company.
So we were almost in a way a package deal.
But I was speaking with some other colleagues, and I was definitely not the only one who was being treated this way.
But it was definitely much more extreme toward me.
I feel perhaps she felt that she was taking more risks with me.
And yeah. Oh, so this is the point of conflict really is that her treatment of him and her treatment of me was very different and very separate.
And I think I've also realised 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.
Same more. So I just, to be honest, 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 yeah, women just don't like me despite me wanting to please them so much.
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.
And any predator needs a prey, and 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 treated to think, I just need to try harder.
I'll do it again. I'll do it better.
Maybe next time she'll approve because she may give you intermittent reinforcement.
Sometimes she approves and sometimes not.
So you think, but last time it worked, so maybe I should try this again.
And basically 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 who cons a person leaves them wondering so much of the time, what's wrong with me, rather than being very clear on what is off in the cunning itself.
But 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 by, who I find myself in a very dependent position because you were very vulnerable, dependent, she probably had you working visa, et cetera, et cetera.
Right? Yes, exactly.
So this is a built -in vulnerability.
It's not just internally to you, it's internal to the relationship and to the situation.
So what, when you say I've been there, but it's not my mom, it's not in my family, but it's something I recognize.
I somehow have been supervised and managed by other female authority figures with whom something, what's the word you use when you describe it?
I would say that I have a very low tolerance of any person that is unable to control themselves emotionally.
And a lot of the time this has been women in my life.
Anyone that behaves one moment in one second and then completely different the next second, I have almost no ability to cope with this change.
And 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.
And yes, I just have no tolerance for this sort of manic behavior.
And coming back to what you were saying about the cohesive control, that's exactly what it was.
It was praising me one moment and then I'm terrible the next moment and then praising me and then being awful on this sort of back and forth.
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 just still am incapable of cutting myself off from that and from being neutral.
And I just want to figure out how I can stop having this affect me so much.
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 the 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 you and gorges you psychologically in and out, in and out, up and down, up and down, then you don't experience this as situational, but you personalize it.
Yes, I do. I think it's almost as though I lose all focus.
I'm so overwhelmed by this person's emotions and they're 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.
Whether this is just 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 I think this is just overwhelming feeling of confusion and feeling like I suppose I failed at what the task was at hand and therefore I'm not valuable, I suppose.
Confusion and perfectionism?
Yeah, perhaps a mixture of both.
As in I do things really, really well.
I don't give up. I deliver perfection.
I don't think I deliver perfection but I try my very best.
And if things had gone differently, what do you imagine when you retrace and replay the tape?
Do you think I should have what?
What's the thing that hangs over you?
I should have stood up for myself.
And done what? And verbalized the way I was thinking and feeling and not just rolling over and taking it.
I just keep my mouth shut and carried on working.
And I think perhaps that's why there's still so much resentment is because I had, 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 and why didn't I just stand up for myself?
And I would have said?
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.
And if I entered her role and you tell me if it resembles anything, I could imagine saying, but 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 towards paranoia.
And 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 mean, 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.
Yeah. What do I say to that?
Is that because that sounds, that sounds, that sounds logical.
Yes, it does. 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 made you go?
I left. It took me a long time to get there.
And I left with the help of a German psychiatrist, actually, 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.
And what did he or she or they help you with?
What did they say that was that allowed 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.
Exactly. So it was actually really fascinating because it was completely the opposite of what I thought I needed to hear at this time.
So of course, I'm in Germany and I, 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.
And it's 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.
And so I showed up at this man's office and he laughed at me.
And he said, we're going to have some sessions.
I'll make sure your insurance and everything's worked out and we can talk about what's going on here.
And when I explain to him the examples, all very, you know, sort of black and white scenarios of things that were happening, he laughed and he said that you are a slave that gets sugar cubes every once in a while.
And this stuck with me and he just bluntly told me exactly what the situation looked like from outside.
And 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 came up, 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.
And each time this has happened, you find yourself unable to hold on to 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 in which what he calls the sugar cube, I called 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 power trip, control trip.
So when he validated you and he said, this is a shit show and you've got to get out of there, basically.
And then what did you do?
I listened to what I was told.
Okay. You took his authority instead of hers?
Exactly. I'm realizing that now.
You followed his command rather than her command, but you like to be commanded.
Yes. That's actually very interesting.
And you are angry as hell and you don't know how to express it.
Because part of you have a fantasy of once and for all be able to tell her what you think and be angry with her and let it out.
And so what ends up happening is you end up having contempt for yourself.
We have to take a brief break.
So stay with us and let's see where this goes.
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So now, you have a wedding coming.
Yes. So what's the opportunity here?
I don't know. 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?
I would just like her not to be there because so many personal boundaries were crossed and I just feel that a wedding celebration is extremely personal.
And I don't want to let her back into that bubble again whatsoever.
I just went a very clear distance.
The other thing is shortly after I had left, she had set some quite rude, or let's say she hit a bit of a nerve point.
She basically had insulted my upbringing and basically said that my parents didn't raise me right and all of this.
And she's going to meet the parents that raised me so terribly.
She's going to meet them.
And I just don't see...
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.
And how I can invite her has worked for her all of these years and she's his business partner, so on and so forth.
And are you able to have a conversation?
We have had many conversations, but he just seems to shut down.
He doesn't really want to deal with the conflict.
And this is also something why I'm so happy in our relationship is his level of emotional stability.
He's not up and down whatsoever.
He's extremely stable.
And 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 just sort of stops.
And there's no really resolution.
Neither of us want to push too hard, I suppose, and possibly upset the other.
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.
And 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 such a big sacrifice.
That's what you're telling him.
Yes, I've said that to him.
And then he answers you, I have no choice, I must, et cetera.
So each of you basically keeps on repeating and reinforcing your own positions and nobody really crosses the street to go and see what's it like on the other side?
I've had moments where I'm like, okay, well, maybe I'll think about it.
I'll consider it at times.
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, well, let me just think about it a little bit more.
Or maybe we can come up with a different solution.
Has he ever had a conversation with her about what happened?
He works with her or for her?
For her. Briefly, I know some weeks ago, I think at some point she had said to him, oh, I think we should just address the elephant in the room.
That is your fiancee and her having no contact with me for two years.
And 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, okay, it's okay.
I forgive you. I'll be polite.
I know that's my default.
I know that's my just say the right thing, I suppose.
And I didn't want to do that.
So I just completely avoided it.
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 if you want to speak, and since you're going to be attending my wedding, I think it may be a good moment to do so.
And then you let her speak.
And then 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.
Depends what you want, right?
Depends if you want to tell her you mistreated me and get that acknowledged.
Or if you want to tell I'm upset with myself, that I allowed you to mistreat me and that you want to have acknowledged.
Or if you 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.
And 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 into the what's wrong with your submissive tendencies and your inability to put limits?
No, he really will not acknowledge what happened.
It's as though, you know, I should have just handled myself better.
And she didn't treat him this way.
So it's not really I suppose relevant to him, which is, but I do think however, he I've noticed he's got a much higher tolerance for emotionally unstable people in his life.
If I look at his, his upbringing where's so I kind of think that he's just used to this behavior from someone in to him, it's not a big deal.
But that's not the issue.
He's 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.
Exactly. And I've said to him before, like, you know, what, I just want you to say, yes, it was shitty.
She was shitty. The situation was you were taken advantage of.
I'm sorry that happened to you.
Like, you know, just say something, you know, 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 sort of validation of what happened?
I know what happened, you know.
Mm -hmm. What would you say?
See, one way is to say he can handle unstable women, you know, or 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, you know, maybe he takes it too much.
Mm -hmm. And I have a different censor.
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.
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 more of a people pleaser than I am, even more so wanting to keep also just sort of taking it, you know, and not pushing back ever.
Mm -hmm. And perhaps that's why they worked together well, because there's just no resistance, and perhaps she could sense more of the resistance from me.
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. I don't know.
Yes, that's the flip side of the way you've always described it.
Yeah. Yes, I think it's very wise thinking.
The question is a good one.
What it looks like isn't necessarily what it is.
Yeah, I'm realizing that now.
We are in the midst of our session.
There is still so much to talk about, so stay with us.
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Rachel Cohen had decided that volunteering her time wasn't really worth her time.
I'm 32 years old, and I'd say really since I was in late high school junior, senior year, I started to see volunteering as kind of pointless.
It wasn't going to make a big difference on the things I cared about.
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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 a him, her?
What is the geography of conflict?
So if I look at process of elimination, I would say that it's not just him, me.
I think that it is, perhaps it is even him, her, me.
I would say that's the issue of the dynamic.
And 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.
If two people, imagine two siblings and a parent, there are so many other triangles that you can try out just as a tangential to see what you can learn from them that may or may not be able to be applicable here, right?
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 it sure that to prevent anything ever getting to them.
Yeah, you basically just described exactly the two of us, myself and my partner, towards the authority figure in this case, which would have been her.
Okay, then you finally extricate yourself.
And then 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. I mean, 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.
Hmm. 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 kind of relationships that he's not even aware how stressful it is.
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.
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.
Yes, yes. And that's why you're not getting the acknowledgement that you want.
Yes, that's exactly it.
He just doesn't say anything about it.
And I know that she's treating him.
I've seen the emails that she's written to him and I've seen it, 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?
Because you actually had the training that said, this is off.
And he may have had the training where this was part of mother's milk or father's milk.
Who cares? Whoever the surrounding was.
Yeah, 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?
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.
Yes, I can see that.
So for that to happen, you would have to be done with this story.
Yeah. And where it enters the chest of bad memories of relationships you wished had never been.
But 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. Yes, I think what this is why if I'm circling back to the original question is to be honest out, I got myself out of the 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 tripled, basically tripled my salary.
I have wonderful colleagues.
I'm the 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 they stole this lingering anger about that.
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.
And what's your thought?
How do you answer your own question when you ask yourself?
I feel like it must be, am I seeking validation?
Or am I seeking just for someone to tell me that I wasn't crazy, that everything did happen?
But you've had that.
You've had that. You've had that.
So why can't I just let it go?
I don't know. What is it that I'm looking for?
Mm -hmm. I mean, is it something I just need to get out of my system?
At some point, I felt like I was constantly talking about the situation.
It's like I became obsessed with it.
Because I almost wonder if he could also just acknowledge what had happened.
That it would be easier for me to just let it go.
Yeah, I see that as well.
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. Yeah.
I mean, she mocked me.
She embarrassed me in front of people.
It was awful. And I think that confidence is really the worst part.
Because I consider my...
I mean, if you think about where the story started, I had all the confidence in the world just showing up at a 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.
But now I'm going to your boyfriend.
Because this is a conversation between you and him.
Yeah. I'm curious what stands in the way of your being able to recognize my experience, mine is different from you.
Somehow, because you can manage it, that disqualifies everything I described.
And 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.
Yes. I think it sounds like him.
I feel like this must be exactly what's been going on in his mind is, if I could keep it together, why couldn't you keep it together?
Yeah. 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.
Yes. To want better for yourself and to not just lay over and take it.
Because this may happen again in the future.
So, this is the preparation for the wedding.
It's less about, is she going to be there or not?
And it's more about how are the two of you going to create a relationship that makes space for differentiated experiences?
Yeah. She's very useful for this.
Yeah, this has been a major hurdle.
We can learn a lot from the situation.
Yeah. What is helpful in what we talked about?
I think I thought I could put myself in his shoes, but after you'd explain sort of 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 and 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.
And maybe it's you who need to give him some.
Yeah. Do you want to try and let me know?
Yes, I would love to.
I'd love for you to take from here, put it to practice, and then let me know, and then we can tweak it.
Thank you so much and thank you for sharing your question.
I think 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.
Yeah, this is a major eye -opening statement for me.
So try it, good luck to you, and come back to me.
Okay, thank you, Ester.
This was an Ester calling.
A one -time intervention phone call, recorded remotely from two points somewhere in the world.
If you have a question you'd like to explore with Ester, could be answered in a 40 or 50 -minute phone call, send her a voice message and Ester might just call you.
Send your question to producer at EsterParel .com.
Where should we begin with EsterParel is produced by Magnificent Noise.
We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut.
Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destri Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller and Julian Hahn.
Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider.
And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin are EsterParel and Jesse Baker.
We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller and Jack Saul.
Support for the show comes from New York Magazine's The Strategist.
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