The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards – Coaching Jessica Waite

LEAH: Welcome to Good Girls Talk About Sex. I am sex and intimacy coach Leah Carey. And this is a place to share conversations with all sorts of women about their experience of sexuality. These are unfiltered conversations between adult women talking about sex. If anything about the previous sentence offends you, turn back now. And, if you’re looking for a trigger warning, you’re not going to get it from me. I believe that you are stronger than the trauma you have experienced. I have faith in your ability to deal with things that upset you. Sound good? Let’s start the show.

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Surprise! I told you that I might show up in your feeds occasionally during my hiatus, and I’m absolutely thrilled that today is one of those days. This break from producing the podcast has really been much needed. Some of my other creative juices are finally starting to flow again, and I’ve got some things brewing that I’m really excited about. It’s also given me space to take on more coaching clients, which is an absolute joy. I’m going to pop in again soon to share more about what’s going on, but also by soon, I mean, sometime between a couple weeks from now and the end of the year. I’m trying to give myself more grace around not creating so many self imposed deadlines.

But in the meantime, this special bonus episode is so meaningful to me. Those of you who are familiar with my story will remember that I spent a year in my early forties traveling the United States, pursuing the dream of sexual healing. Both of my parents had passed away. I don’t have any siblings, and I’m not super close with extended family. It was painful to feel so alone in the world, but it was also an amazing opportunity. I didn’t have anyone who I needed to impress. There was nobody judging my choices, and I no longer had any living ties to this mythology of me as a good girl who always does the right thing and fulfills expectations, whether it brought me any joy or not. It was the perfect moment to explore something that had always felt off limits to me, sex.

A few months before I left on my trip in 2017, I stumbled into an incredible stroke of luck. I joined an online writing class with women from around the world. I didn’t particularly connect with the teacher or the work that we did in the class, but there was a group of us from the class who created a really profound bond. We had a Facebook group that we initially started to continue sharing writing with each other, but almost immediately, it turned into something so much more. Our little group was constantly overflowing with messages. We were celebrating new love, cheering a member through a challenging pregnancy. We funded cleaning for one of our members when she found toxic mold in her house. We cried with each other through heartbreak, PTSD, medical diagnoses, the level of support we offered each other was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.

These were the women who held me as I traveled around the country having wild adventures. Lara and Michelle were my wing women. Anytime I had a date, I would send them a photo in advance so they could do an outfit check, and they also had all the information to give to the police if something went sideways on a date. I knew that Naina and Viola were breathlessly waiting for updates on my latest adventures. I could always rely on Arwin and Annie to reflect back what they were learning from my stories in a way that showed me that what I was learning was valuable to others too. Jessica was a bit more of a mystery to me. While I knew that my story of sexual healing had some intersection with her own, she kept her own story a bit more guarded even as she participated in all of the hubbub offering tons of emotional support and encouragement. I knew two things about her story.

Her husband had died suddenly a couple years earlier, and after his death, she had found massive catalogs of pornography that she didn’t know he had. I got to meet Jessica in person for breakfast while I was on the road traveling, and I told her that obviously, as soon as she was ready to share her book, I wanted to read it. For 5 years, Jessica was hard at work on that book. In January of 2023, she announced that she had finally finished her manuscript. She wrote, quote, the next step is to query publishers. That takes a long time and is generally punctuated with heartbreaking rejection, end quote. Publishing is a tough industry. Selling a memoir to a major publisher as an unknown author with no platform is kinda like finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

There are people who spend years, even decades, querying agents and publishers, trying to find that one person who’s willing to take a chance. For Jessica, it took 6 weeks. Her book sold to Atria in what’s called a preempt. Basically, that means that they wanted her book so much that they were willing to pay extra upfront, so no other publishing house even had a crack at it. That is how good her book is. When I finally got my hands on it earlier this year, I could not stop reading. From the time I started it one afternoon to when I finished it the following afternoon, the only break I took was to sleep. And it doesn’t hurt that it has one of the best fucking titles I’ve ever heard: The Widow’s Guide To Dead Bastards.

Last December, still several months before I actually got to read the manuscript, Jessica messaged me to ask if I would do a coaching session with her for the book. I mean, of course, I would do anything I could to support this dear sister, but what was she asking me to do? I’ve only coached people, not books. Well, it turns out there was one scene that she thought might be interesting to look at from a different perspective. It’s the story of a romantic evening she planned Why did she have Why did it go wrong? What could she have done instead? Were there things she should have been able to intuit from his behavior? Basically, what she wanted to know was, should I have already known he was having an affair? The conversation was so interesting that I asked if she’d be willing to share it on this podcast. So in celebration of today’s release of The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards by Jessica Waite, I am so proud to share this conversation with you. I really hope you’re gonna be intrigued enough to read the book yourself. It has glowing reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews.

It’s already appeared on Canadian bestseller lists prior to publication. And earlier this month, it was named one of the top ten most anticipated books across all libraries in Canada. It’s available today, and there’s a link to purchase in the episode description in the app you’re listening on now. First, you’re gonna hear Jessica’s voice reading the chapter in question, and then you’ll hear our coaching session. Take it away, Jessica.

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JESSICA: My memory zeroes in on a time 5 years ago, the day our new mattress was delivered. Our bedroom renovation was finally done, and I had spent the morning wiping down drywall dust, washing bed linens, and fluffing pillows, making the bed beautiful like in a nice hotel. After preschool, I took Dash to IKEA to return an item, and we stayed for a meatball lunch. The clearance table near the exit was loaded with pink and red glass candle holders. Perhaps I could delight Sean of the grand gesture by making our inaugural night in the bedroom memorable. VOTIVES were 50¢. Tea lights a quarter. I loaded up a big yellow bag and checked out with $20 worth of post Valentine’s Day discount romance supplies.

My friend, Angie, agreed to take Dash for an impromptu sleepover with her kids. I walked him to their house, and once he was settled, I came home, showered, shaved everything, and smeared my body with lotion. While my hair was air drying, I peeled off sticky price tags and arranged the candleholders in clusters of 3 along the ledge behind our bed and on each of our nightstands on top of the dresser. Even unlit, the little triads of pink and red glass looked pretty like 3 petaled flowers. I styled my hair and did my makeup following a YouTube tutorial for a smokey eye. The results were dramatic, but a little more goth than I was going for. Sean texted to say he was working late, and I shouldn’t expect him until about 9 o’clock. I washed off the eye shadow and started again.

About quarter to 9, I changed into a red and black corseted teddy, wrestling with the hook and eye closures to get myself squeezed into the push up bra. My boobs spilled over the top, practically hitting me in the chin. I belonged atop a piano in an old Western saloon, someone playing Scott Joplin tunes in the background. I lit all the candles. Arranging myself so deliberately into an object of desire was something I hadn’t tried before, and I took cues from what I’d seen on television. The man was supposed to walk in at the perfect moment and sweep the lovely lady off her feet. TV hadn’t shown me what to do if the man wasn’t there yet, so I lay on my bed playing angry birds on my iPad, clearing level after level, while the candles burned down and the room grew over warm. Eventually, Sean walked into his red glowing bedroom and flipped on the light.

I flinched. My eyes were strained from hours of staring at my screen in the candlelight. Sean looked around and gestured toward the candles. Where’d you get all this shit? I jumped up to grab my robe, feeling overexposed and vulnerable in the bright light. In the bathroom mirror, I saw what rubbing my eyes to stay awake had done to my makeup. Tiny black rivulets and sparkly flakes of pigment had migrated into my crow’s feet. The overhead light shone hard on the gray roots at my hairline. I looked used up, an old tramp like Lola, the lounge singer from the Copacabana.

I wrapped my fuzzy, frumpy bathrobe tightly around me, cinching it at the waist, and stepped back into the bedroom to answer Sean’s question. I went to IKEA. We don’t need to be wasting money on all this crap. It costs less than $20. My voice was as soft as the chenille flowers on my robe. I walked around the bed to where Sean stood. His blue checked dress shirt was crinkled after a long day of work. I could smooth it out.

I reached my arm toward his shoulder. I could help him get past all this bluster. I just wanted to make it nice in here for you. You do this all the time and I’m fucking sick of it. He picked up a votive and whipped it across the room where I’d been standing a moment before. The candle flickered out, but the holder smashed against the wall, sending shards of pink glass in all directions. Red wax splashed down the newly painted wall like spattered blood. The other candles flickered like gas lights.

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JESSICA: The big question that I’m grappling with is how like, what could I have known? Do you know what I mean? Like, was was there like, what did I know? What was I intentionally maybe blind about? What was I being deceived about legitimately? And then and then what like, when your intuition is screaming at you, but there’s also, like, insecurity, jealousy, doubt, wanting to have faith and trust in the person that you love, like, that that kind of thing. Because, you know, you can’t have a successful relationship if you’re always jealous and looking for problems.

LEAH: Yes. So true. You can’t be participating in your relationship and also trying to perform the person who you think you’re supposed to be in your relationship. And so that came up with there’s that moment where you say, like, I arranged myself deliberately into an object of desire, which I think is such an amazing image. I know exactly what you mean. I I know exactly what the thing is that you were like, the the kind of poses that you were going for. At least I imagine I do.

JESSICA: Oh, I’m just cringing because I I know what you’re seeing, and I’m like, oh, I totally was.

LEAH: And that is very much a performance. That is not you just being in the moment and thinking what feels really true to me. That is what’s gonna look and appear and make him feel these things that I want him to feel, which is a performance. Something that I think is so interesting is the level of performance that’s happening in this whole piece.

JESSICA: Yeah. So, my husband, Sean and I met in Japan in 1995. We got married in 1998. And what the scene that I’m writing about happens in 2010. So we’re in a very well established long term relationship. And I have been feeling very lonely and that our sex life is not what I want it to be. And so, in the scene, we’ve just finished a renovation of our bedroom. I got the impulse to make it into a beautiful, romantic, inaugural night in the new bedroom.

JESSICA: Mhmm. Partly, I’m like, maybe this new bedroom is the thing that’s gonna like to turn it around for our sex life. Right? Okay. Yes. Because that kind of thing always works. But but but also, my late husband was the king of the grand gesture. Like, he’d he would always go over the top and do these big, beautiful, elaborate productions. And so in my view, I was kind of giving in kind to to something that he would really respond well to.

And so I spent this whole time setting up the room and then I I set myself up. I put on I, like, shaved everything. I put up makeup on. I did my hair. I just I really, like, based on what I had seen on TV Yeah. Like, turned myself into, like, an object of desire. And then waited and waited and waited for him because he was working late and it was taking forever. And then he came home and flipped on the light and picked a fight with me.

And so instead of things going how I thought they were gonna go, they went a 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Mhmm. And it was absolutely baffling. So, basically, the fight that he picked was, like, where did you get all this shit? You name the candles and all this stuff because I had picked it up at the bargain table of IKEA. And, and I spent, like, $20 on the whole kitten caboodle, but he was like, why are you spending money like this? We don’t need to waste money. And as I came closer to him to try and smooth it out, he picked up one of the candles and threw it across the room. It smashed against the wall, pink glass, red wax dripping down, and we had just it was just painted, just finished. He ruined the room.

And he was meticulous about caring for our home. Like, we had done most of these renovations ourselves. Like, it was so, like, wildly disproportionate in the response. And then

LEAH: he ever thrown anything before?

JESSICA: Well, he was definitely moody, and he had like, he could lose his cool and storm off, but no. Like, he he didn’t throw things or he wasn’t, you know like, he was explosive, but not violent. So so and it it just it was so it was baffling, and I was very much back on my heels Mhmm. In how I responded. And so finally, I lost my cool, and I’m like, what is wrong with you? And I started, like, hitting him on his shoulders, like and then he this is an awful thing to admit about oneself having done this.

LEAH: But it’s real. It and I just wanna pause here for a second to say, no, hitting somebody is never okay. And also, there is a moment where sometimes you just have taken as much as you can take and your adrenaline system takes over.

JESSICA: Yeah. It

LEAH: is not an excuse. It also is reality.

JESSICA: Yeah.

LEAH: Like, I think those things need to exist in the same space together.

JESSICA: Yeah. Thank you for saying that. And I also think, like, you know, sometimes when, like, someone is, to use a very antiquated term, hysterical and someone slaps them across the face. Like, it was that kind of gesture.

LEAH: Like, I think

JESSICA: that I was doing that I was like yeah. And so I was and I I was saying, I like, I’d stop them. I’m like, look at me. Look at me to try to get the attention back. Or at least, I guess, in some ways as I’m saying it, like, to come into connection instead of this Yeah. Wild overreaction where and so he did look at me, but he grabbed my wrist and held them in front of him. And he was stronger than me and I couldn’t move. And then the fight went out of me.

And he said, I don’t deserve you. Mhmm. And that in the moment, like, it melted the explosiveness out of the room. Mhmm. And I felt some validation in the sense that, yeah, you don’t deserve me because I just did this amazing thing for you and you totally fucked it up and, but 5 years later, I found out that he had been having an affair. And so I once I got that bit of information, I pieced together that he must have just come from wherever they were together. Mhmm. And that if I got close to him, I would have busted him.

LEAH: Mhmm. Because you would have smelled her on him.

JESSICA: I would have smelled her on him. And also, you know, he could see that I wanted a romantic evening, and he wasn’t gonna be able to deliver that. And so this was, in some ways, a big smoke show to just distract and divert the conversation.

LEAH: So let me ask you one technical sort of logistical question. You said that you’ve pieced it all together. Do you know for certain that’s where he was, or has that become a certainty that that you’ve created by connecting the dots?

JESSICA: It’s it’s connecting the dots. So I know for certain that he was having an affair. I know for certain the affair started then, but this would be oh, what do they call it? Circumstantial evidence. So this is like, so circumstantial evidence. So it’s this is my deduction and my sense making. So I do not know 100% for sure, but it made sense. This is so this is, yeah, thank you for clarifying.

LEAH: Yeah. And the reason I asked, ultimately, I’m not sure that it matters because what you just said is that he had an affair and it started right around then. So whether or not he was with her in those immediate hours before, he he would have been probably in some level of new relationship energy, what we call NRE, which is the sort of chemical state that your brain goes into when you’re, like, having those emotional amazing feelings of falling in love or maybe not even falling in love, but just, like, having this new exciting thing in your life. It’s literally like being high. It’s all, like, dopamine and all that stuff flooding your brain. And if somebody is having this experience while also in relationship with somebody else, so whether that’s ethically, meaning ethically nonmonogamous, or nonethically, meaning cheating. Yeah. It can kind of create one of 2 paths.

One is that it will bring you closer and have more excitement and energy for sex with the already established partner. The other is that it can make you be like, nope. Not going there. I don’t want this right now. I just want the new person. So regardless of whether he was with her in that moment, he was probably one of those people who was the avoidant type of, nope, I’m I am all of my attention is on this new person and I’m having almost a revulsion, response to my already established partner.

JESSICA: That’s fascinating.

LEAH: That has absolutely nothing to do with you. It has a 100% to do with the chemicals going on in his brain. Absolutely nothing to do with you as a partner, how good you are as a partner, how loving, any of that stuff. There’s probably nothing you could have done that would have brought him closer to you.

JESSICA: Yeah. That’s really interesting because it makes it so much less personal. It’s almost like a magnetism. Right? So so that it’s like then it’s like the reverse polarity, and it’s just

LEAH: repellent. Yeah. And so then, like, you you talk about how you think that he was burning up with shame, probably exactly right. Like, here is this woman who loves me, who wants to do all these things with me, and I can’t handle that because I know that I’m over here fucking up. This is entirely speculation. Yeah. But what I’m guessing is that his brain goes, nope, because I wanna be over here, and then his entire nervous system goes, I gotta push you away as violently as possible so that there’s no confusion about where my desires lie. I don’t wanna get into a situation where I have to placate you, or where I have to have sex with you that I don’t wanna have because maybe my dick won’t get hard, and then you’ll know that something is going on.

So instead, I’m gonna push you away so violently that you will begin to think it’s you instead of having any question about whether it’s me.

JESSICA: Yeah.

LEAH: Again, that’s all speculation, but I can imagine that that might be going on.

JESSICA: Yeah. Well, and I I love that we’re naming that this is all speculation. And so we’re not we’re because we’re just looking at clues, and I’m finding a lot of benefit already in just, you know, expanding it out to, like, what are the possibilities. Because, like, what you’re naming, I saw part of that, but I didn’t have that whole new relationship energy piece. And then it’s it’s just a whole other factor of, like like, biochemically, what’s happening, behaviorally, what’s happening. And then and then who is like like what you’re saying, like making hip like, the the the those actions make me feel like it’s me. Like that because I didn’t name as I was sort of describing what happens in the scene like well, I mean, I’m gonna cry saying this part, but like like, what happened when I looked in the mirror after laying on my bed waiting for him to come and rubbing my eyes and do you know what I mean? And then it’s like when he flipped the light on and it was such a harsh light, and then I just looked so old and tired and used up and desperate, you know. And so that real kind of desperate energy, I think informed how I, like, reacted or internalized the situation and what I what I did after that. Yeah.

LEAH: That’s so interesting. The the way that you just used the word desperate makes me wonder if you went into this whole thing with a sense of desperation. Like, I’m going to do this grand gesture because I don’t know what else to do. Or if you went into it with a, like, this is gonna be fun, because those are 2 very different energies.

JESSICA: Yeah. It really was joy. So, like because at first, I was, like, cleaning the room and, you know, it’s a big mess of drywall dust and all of that. And I got into, like that I was turning it from, like, messy to beautiful. Then I wanted to make it really beautiful, and then I really got into it. And so I think that that’s part of what made the whole thing so difficult is that I was doing it out of joy and love, and that was the initial impulse. But then, of course, when he didn’t show up and I was waiting and waiting and waiting, the energy shifted a little bit because I think I took some pride in being patient and self sacrificing. Do you know what I mean? Like, that sort of thing, like, put putting my own needs aside.

And so at some point, probably, you know, the sunk cost fallacy where it’s like, I should probably give this up. Do you know? But but it’s like, but I worked so hard. So I I’m gonna I’m gonna see it through to the end. Like, I definitely feel like my romantic appetite had waned. It was on the verge of expiration by the time, like, he finally got home. So

LEAH: if you can put yourself back there in that moment, you’ve been waiting for a long time. The room is too hot. You’re tired. There’s frustration that he hasn’t shown up when you thought he would. This sort of sense of romance and excitement has begun to wane. What are you imagining will happen when he walks in the room?

JESSICA: I think that what I imagine is that when he comes in and sees it all, he’ll take the cue from the environment and be like, oh, my like and that even though my energy is kind of sagging, he’ll bring the new energy and then the whole

LEAH: Yeah.

JESSICA: Fantasy will reignite and will go from there.

LEAH: So he’ll pick you back up and the 2 of you will go in that energy together. So if you think back over the course of your relationship, is that how the energy tended to go in your relationship that he would pick you up and sweep you along in things?

JESSICA: Sometimes, yes. Like he he definitely had a lot of charisma and a lot of I’ll just say tenacity, like, to make big dreams come true. And so so he was somebody that I really love to have in my corner. And, yeah, we could imagine, like, grand adventures and then make them happen. And so definitely, there was some of that established. And and now that I’m talking about that, it’s maybe even that feeling more than just, like, having sex was what I wanted. Yeah. Yeah.

LEAH: That feeling of being seen and swept up and just adored, I think, is what you’re talking about.

JESSICA: Yeah. Yeah. And and definitely for him, like, he loved to be adored. Like, that that that was one of his big drivers.

LEAH: I’m really interested in this concept of the grand gesture. You say that he was the king of the grand gesture. Can you give me, like, a very brief snapshot of what one of his grand gestures might have looked like?

JESSICA: Well, there’s one, and this is not, like, entirely relevant, but it just shows he was like this his whole life. But even when he was a kid, his sister had her boyfriend come for Christmas and he had grown up in Liberia. And so Sean, as a kid, he knew that Liberia was in Africa. So in order to, like, welcome this new person into the home for Christmas, he got all of his, like, jungle stuffed animals because he imagined that. And, like, and decorated the room all, like, so that to to just try to make him feel at home. And he would always do like, he just tried to, like, make people feel at home, make people feel welcome, be super hospitable, and and he would you know, if we were throwing a party, he would just make sure we had way too much food of every like, everything vegan, vegetarian, like, every, like, whatever that anybody could want or need that that would be there and provided for them. So that that’s the kind of over the top energy.

LEAH: Yeah. So that that story is adorable. And I can imagine that a lot of the time, those grand gestures were received really positively. But I imagine that there must have been some times when a grand gesture went awry. Can you remember a time when something didn’t go over the way he wanted it

JESSICA: to? I don’t remember a specific occasion, but what I do remember is that when it came to executing the plans, he had a very rigid kind of thinking. And so there was a lot of frustration if a plan needed to change. Like, he was not really okay with the plan changing.

LEAH: Mhmm. Yeah. So the reason that I’m asking about the grand gestures and how they manifested for him is because it sounds like this was not something that you did regularly going the other direction, that you didn’t create a bunch of grand gestures for him. There’s something interesting there about the fact that this was sort of his, like you said, love language, the way that he showed people that he cared for them, but that when it came to somebody else doing a grand gesture for him, he couldn’t accept it. Yeah. He couldn’t even see it for what it was. And the sentence that you have in the chapter is you do this all the time and I’m fucking sick of it. What in the world was it that you did all the time?

JESSICA: Yeah. Nothing.

LEAH: Because it certainly doesn’t sound like it was big gestures

JESSICA: he time, I was a stay at home parent and he was the sole breadwinner for our household. And so even though in general and by his nature he was quite generous, the dynamic between us did change when I stopped earning my own money and became financially beholden to him. And so I didn’t spend money frivolously, like and even in a calmer state, I think he would take that back. I feel like just he’s throwing candles. He’s throwing Yeah. False allegations. And I say in the chapter, like, what I spent on those candles, like, he spent that at Starbucks every single day. Right.

So so there was just, like, a ridiculous double standard. But, yeah, the inability to receive something that you give is if that’s an interesting question.

LEAH: One possibility that comes to mind for me is if he was somebody who struggled with self worth, and I guess I’m gonna check-in with you. Was he somebody who struggled with self worth?

JESSICA: I’ll say yes. He definitely had expressed feelings of being an imposter. A lot of times, he would have anxiety attacks and he’d have recurring dreams of just, like, failing over and over and over again. Okay. Yeah.

LEAH: So this may not show up on the surface. Very charismatic people, often, that is a cover for feeling deeply, deeply wounded and unworthy. You know, it’s such a trope, but it’s a trope because there’s truth to it. Comedians tend to be the people who make us laugh the most tend to be some of the most wounded people.

JESSICA: Yes. Yes.

LEAH: Because they learn to cover their pain with humor. So somebody who is charismatic in the way that I’ve heard you describe Sean potentially has a deep well of unworthiness. And

JESSICA: one of

LEAH: the ways that I can imagine that showing up is I am going to prove my worth to the world by doing these grand extravagant gestures that make people feel so good about themselves. So then they feel good about me. Yeah. But on the flip side of that is, potentially, I don’t feel worthy of receiving a grand gesture because I’m not good enough for that, especially if I’m feeling shame for something I’m doing on the side.

JESSICA: Yeah. Absolutely. That that’s really hitting home for me and I yeah. I’m I’m remembering a scene that I saw in a movie recently where a father had a teenage daughter and they were on a little bus tour in Turkey. And he messed up by getting wasted and accidentally locking her out of the hotel room and cussing out. And then the next day was his birthday. And, she got the whole bus to, like, sing to him for He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.

LEAH: Uh-huh.

JESSICA: And he was standing there and just feeling like the biggest piece of shit. You could just see Yeah. How it didn’t mesh for him to be celebrated in that way. Like and so I think that’s exactly what you’re saying. And I I feel deeply how that could be true for in this case with with Sean on that that night. So Yeah.

LEAH: My hope is that in having this conversation about this particular scene, that what we bring to it is a level of empathy for his situation, not because what he did was okay. It was categorically a 100% not okay. And also there are reasons. We, as people, almost never act in a completely unreasonable way, in a way that is completely out of step with reality. It may look unreasonable and out of step with reality from the outside because we don’t know what’s going on in someone’s brain. But if you’re living inside their brain, what they’re doing almost always makes complete sense.

JESSICA: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I love that, like, this exploration has gone to other levels of of compassion because, you know, not to be completely self interested about it, but the the the more more It’s okay. You

LEAH: can be.

JESSICA: The more compassion that I find, the more healing that I find for myself in the whole situation and it just becomes very freeing. Like, I, like, I don’t I I’ve learned a lot about forgiveness through the process of living these events and writing the book. And one of the hardest things is that you can’t will it. You can’t make yourself forgive. Oh, yeah. But but when I come to the a place of just understanding, like, just that but to me, that’s compassion and then forgiveness just floods in. So so that it’s it’s a a well that we just tap into, and and then that is very liberating. Yeah.

JESSICA: I I don’t know

LEAH: if this is useful, but it’s in my mind because it’s something that I’m dealing with right now myself. So I just started with a new therapist and we’re specifically looking at narcissistic abuse recovery, which is something I’ve been searching for for several years, and it’s been very hard to find somebody. And thank God now I’m finally with somebody who’s really great. And one of the things that I have been struggling with is I know what my father’s story was. And there tends to be a fairly common story about people who start exhibiting narcissistic behaviors. They tend to have a particular kind of childhood. I know what his childhood was. There’s no mystery to me why he turned into somebody who had these behaviors Yeah.

Which sometimes makes it hard for me to fully feel my anger because I’m so busy thinking, oh, but, but I know, I understand. And so, like, this forgiveness that you’re talking about, I think is so incredibly crucial. And at the same time, sometimes those of us, especially who think of ourselves as really empathetic people, will use that to then beat ourselves up for having any anger left at all.

JESSICA: For sure. For sure. And it’s it’s almost like I don’t know. I’m I’m just making a little map in my head right now. But before that deep well of compassion, there’s a little off ramp like a waterslide that takes you down where you have that intellectual understand you know what I mean? That like, exactly what you’re talking about, that you’re not allowed to feel that because you’re supposed to just understand them and that that erases, like, whatever the thing is that you’re still pissed off or we’re being high or whatever. And and I think I I did that to myself so many times, especially about the woman that my husband was having the affair with. And so it’s it’s very tricky.

LEAH: Yeah. I do have something I wanna close-up with, but is there anything else that feels important to talk about that we haven’t hit yet?

JESSICA: Yeah. I’d love to know, as you read the scene, what sort of stood out for you? So I’d just love to know what were the moments.

LEAH: So for me, the overall thing that stood out was this idea of the grand gesture. I think when used to try to reignite romance or sex, the grand gesture is very often our go to, and it is very often the absolute worst thing you can do. You put all of this attention and energy into doing this amazing thing, and your expect and I’m using the general you,

JESSICA: not specific you. That’s cool.

LEAH: Okay. Your expectation is, oh, they’re gonna see this, and they’re gonna bring all of that reciprocal energy and attention and excitement back to me, and we’re just gonna have this, like, fireworks of love and romance and everything is then going to be back on track and okay. That is a huge amount of pressure to put on something that has probably been going off track for quite a while. And there’s probably a whole lot of little pieces of resentment and misunderstanding that have popped up through the process of going off track. Not to mention, there’s an additional infidelity, a massive break in trust going on. So the grand gesture is very compelling, but it puts so much pressure on that one moment to get everything right and everything perfect that it’s too much pressure for you as the person who’s who’s, organizing it, and it’s a ton of pressure on the person who’s receiving it because they have to receive it perfectly in order for the whole thing to go the way that everybody’s hoping it might. And it so rarely works.

JESSICA: Oh, you just named that so beautiful. Like, I’m laughing because I can see as you’re saying it, like, how fraud it is and and how, like, and how the more you put into it, the more overwhelming it would come to receive. So it’s just like it’s no wonder why it doesn’t work because it’s a terrible setup. Like, it’s a it’s a terrible setup.

LEAH: The way that I like to think of it is it’s far better to take a whole bunch of practically invisible little steps Yeah. Toward the goal. You know, whether that’s putting your hand on their shoulder, if that is something you’ve gotten out of the habit of, or, you know, giving them a kiss goodbye, if that’s something you’ve gotten out of the habit of, like reintroducing these very, very, very small intimacies and building up over time. If you can imagine, it’s kind of like, I am not a sports person, so I’m about to use a sports metaphor, and it’s gonna sound stupid. But, is a a football field a 100 yards?

JESSICA: Yeah. I think,

LEAH: something like that? Okay. Cool. So let’s imagine that you’re standing on one end of the football field, and you want to make a field goal through the upright thingies that on the other end of the football field a 100 yards away, The chances of you making that one singular kick in one try are minuscule Unless you’re a professional football player who

JESSICA: is trying to do it.

LEAH: But I imagine even they can’t.

JESSICA: No one can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas

LEAH: if you did that same 100 yard try, but you did it a 100 times from the 1 yard line, you’re likely to make it 95 times as opposed to missing the one shot at a 100 yards.

JESSICA: Yeah. No. That’s a brilliant metaphor. And it’s and just, like, the robust, Like, if it doesn’t work out those up 5 times even from being close Yeah. It’s far less painful. Right?

LEAH: Yes. Yes.

JESSICA: You didn’t, like, dislocate your hip trying to kick so hard. Yeah.

LEAH: Exactly. You can recover from it far more easily than if you’ve tried the 100 yards, and it went wildly awry

JESSICA: Yep. Yeah.

LEAH: Like it did for you.

JESSICA: Yeah. So that’s super useful.

LEAH: What all of this makes me wonder is if you ended up in another situation today, knowing all that you know, having experienced all that you’ve experienced, if you ended up in another situation where somebody acted so out of step, so unreasonably to what you thought the provocation was, how would you handle it? Or how would you like to handle it?

JESSICA: Yeah. I say I’m going so idealized right now. With what I know now, if I could even just, like, take a breath and be like, what’s going on? Like, just to ask what is well, hold on. What’s going on? Like, why did you throw that candle? Like, what are we doing? You know, like, those kind of things to just slow it down. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Because I I think that’s the other thing about, like, like, when you were kicking the football thing, I’m also thinking about, like like, a slingshot.

Right? Because you’re pulling it back, pulling it back, pulling it back, and then you’re letting it go, and it’s just it it was so fast. Yeah. It feel like it feels like the turn was so fast, that it was just mind blowing. And then in the chaos of it, I just shrunk, like, I just shrunk into not being able to do anything. And then if I could have slowed it down in the moment, something else would have happened. At least that I wouldn’t have internalized. Like, because I was really wondering what I did wrong Right. To stop that from happening, which, you know, not making the grand gesture.

JESSICA: But but good good initial move.

LEAH: Even if you had made the grand gesture, which, yes, we can agree, maybe, you know, was a lovely thought, maybe wasn’t the ideal. But even if you had made it, I think what you’re saying is exactly right, which is slowing things down. Because what happens in a situation that’s really chaotic is that each person escalates it further and further and further. Yeah. Because he’s like, what the fuck? And you’re like, wait, but I did this thing, and he’s like, but I never did.

JESSICA: And no. No. No.

LEAH: And then I’m gonna throw something, and oh my god. I’m

JESSICA: hitting it.

LEAH: You know? Like, it Yeah. Escalates so quickly. 1 when I’m working with couples, one of the things that we focus on most significantly is slowing their communication down so that they’re actually hearing each other. So in a situation like this, like, I love what you said. Like, wait. There’s something going on here that I don’t understand. These guys really get on the same page with you. Another option would be, cool.

LEAH: I see you just threw something, and I don’t feel good about that. So I’m gonna go in the other room, and we can talk about this in the morning.

JESSICA: Yeah.

LEAH: Slowing it down. There are lots of different ways to slow things down, but our nervous system is very adept and very fast at escalation. Yeah. It’s the fight flight thing. Yeah. But or freeze. And so it takes a lot of self knowledge and self awareness and understanding of what is going on in your nervous system to be able to say, okay. Let’s take a breath because you’re working against that evolutionary, drive to fight or flight.

LEAH: But the more that you can slow things down, the easier it’s going to be to maintain something that feels like sanity in the midst of chaos.

JESSICA: Well and and one thing that I’ve noticed and I can see it where it’s like he’s like, what the fuck? And I’m like, double what the fuck? Like, right. Like, then the more I am in that fight or flight freeze response, the less possibility I can perceive. And so if I can’t perceive a choice, I don’t have a choice. And so then it just goes, like, on its trajectory.

LEAH: Exactly.

JESSICA: Yes. Yes. So yeah.

LEAH: Beautifully said. So what I hope for you going forward is with this experience in your back pocket is that you will take a moment when things begin to feel like they’re escalating to breathe and say, what do I wanna do here? And if you want to escalate and go into the chaos, because sometimes, honestly, it feels good and you just need to, no shame. But also sometimes if you can give yourself that breath and say, how do I wanna respond? You’ll be able to take a different path.

JESSICA: Yeah. Yeah. And I definitely see this exchange as one of the junctures where our lives could have totally taken a different path. Like, if I had been able to do that in that moment and said, what’s going on? And maybe he would tell me what was going on. Right? And maybe not. Maybe and maybe not. But but it’s I guess every moment in life is like that to a degree, but I do feel like a lot more life choices. Because at that time, in my mind, I was considering ethical nonmonogamy.

Like, I proposed that to him. So so that was a chance where he could do you know what I mean? Like like, a lot of things could have come out at in that little chaotic period, but Yeah. But they didn’t because we were going too fast to allow that to happen. And so so they went how they went and yeah. But but I really, I feel like slowing it down now. Mhmm. And having your insight has really kind of rounded up the picture and and put me into a better place about how the whole thing went. So thank you, Leah.

LEAH: I am so pleased to hear that. Thank you. I am honored to get to do this with you. Friends, if you haven’t already clicked purchase from a bookstore or put a hold on this book through your library, do that now. The widow’s guide to dead bastards by Jessica Waite is available today. Jessica, thank you so much for trusting me with your baby. I love your book, but I love you even more. And to all of the members of the cafe, you are in my heart now and always.

And to listeners, I’ll be back soon ish with more updates. In the meantime, I’d love to talk with you. Set up a free 20 minute consultation to see if my coaching is a good fit for you. I work with couples and individuals on all aspects of your relationship and sex life. So until next time, here’s to your better sex life.