[Two Pronged] Female Icarus

Jeremy Baer, Margarita Holmes

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An office fling threatens to destroy a woman's perfect family life

 

Dr Margarita Holmes and Jeremy BaerRappler’s Life and Style section runs an advice column by couple Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr Margarita Holmes. Jeremy has a master’s degree in law from Oxford University. A banker of 37 years who worked in 3 continents, he has been training with Dr Holmes for the last 10 years, as co-lecturer and, occasionally, as co-therapist, especially with clients whose financial concerns intrude into their daily lives.

Together, they have written two books: “Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho-Mistress Mentality” and “Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Liaisons.”

Dear Dr Holmes and Mr Baer:

I have a simple problem but for me it is very heavy.

I’m 34 years old, married and a mother of one kid. I can say that my family life is very happy, I have a good and responsible husband and he loves me very, very much. 

This is my problem: They say we must run away from temptation, but I am different. I challenge myself whenever temptation comes my way. I allowed myself to be tempted at work.

I don’t know what to do. In the beginning, it was just a fling – texts and naughty messages, until my love grew based on all this.

But I have so much baggage: My husband and child. This boy is 15 years younger than me and I know this relationship will go nowhere. Never will we end up together because I don’t want to break up my family or even break my husband’s trust in me.

I don’t know what happened to me. All I know is that I am inspired when I go to work, I get kilig (all hot and flustered) when I get a text or call from him, am super thrilled when we go to, or leave, work together. I am sad when we have no work on holidays, when he doesn’t text and when I don’t see him. I prefer seeing his name appear on my cell phone than seeing my husband’s. 

What is this I’m feeling, Dr Holmes, Mr Baer? Is this love or do I merely want to be titillated? I am having such a hard time when it should not be the case. I know it is wrong, but I love and am enjoying it so much.

Why am I like this? What sort of a woman am I? It’s as if my love for my husband has been replaced by my love for this man who is supposed to be “just a fling.” I am finding it so difficult. Please help me. — Sadie

TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN. A wife and mother gets too close to temptation

Dear Sadie,

I too am finding it difficult but in my case the problem lies with summoning up even a smidgeon of sympathy for what you would glorify as your “plight.”

You seem determined to court danger and yet act surprised when you suffer the consequences. You are a modern era version of Icarus whose wax-attached wings, you will recall, fell off when he flew too close to the sun. You however are still alive, unlike poor Icarus, and so it is not too late to learn from your mistakes.

You tell us with great pride that you are different, you do not follow conventional wisdom, you confront temptation head on. This, in and of itself, is absolutely fine. However, such a fearless person – who announces her defiance to the world at large – should be equally fearless when facing the consequences of her actions. After all, it doesn’t take a genius to know that if you put your hand in the fire, there is a high probability you will get burned.

It is reasonable to suppose that someone who defiantly faces up to, rather than runs away from, temptation will have a strategy for dealing with the possibility, however remote, that temptation may triumph. Any other approach would suggest an unbelievable and irrational arrogance. Yet here you are, ensnared in a trap of your own making and whinging about life’s difficulties.

Perhaps it is unfair of me to say this but at least you are consistent. Unfortunately your consistency lies in your apparent lack of self-awareness. Do you really not appreciate the contradiction between deliberately cultivating a workplace romance on the one hand and your statement “I don’t want to break up my family or even break my husband’s trust in me on the other?

Looking to the future, I suggest that you give at least a little more thought to the probable outcomes of your actions if you decide to continue your frontal assaults on some of the world’s greatest temptations, rather than insist on your current strategy of keeping your eyes tightly closed.

I will now leave it to Dr Holmes to suggest some way(s) for you to extricate yourself, if possible, from the enormous hole that you have dug and deliberately jumped into.

All the best. – Jeremy

*** 

Dear Sadie,

Thank you very much for your letter and for your continuing to read on, despite Jeremy’s rather harsh take on your situation. I think this has to do not only with his being a champion of common sense, kindness, and consistency above all, but also because he cannot help putting himself in your husband’s place.

He feels certain that, if he were your husband, he would know what you were doing. But even if he wouldn’t, he feels, as he already stated, this is the last thing a woman who truly loves her husband at least as much as herself would do and, perhaps even more importantly, that secrets in a marriage hurt not only the spouses but your child as well.   

And no, I am not saying the above because I am an excellent psychologist but because this is what he said when we last spoke about your letter. 

I am not very good at “suggest(ing) some way(s) for you to extricate yourself…from the enormous hole that you have dug” but I can share what I feel is a major contributing factor to your situation, and that is novelty seeking. Or, perhaps, I should qualify that.

All of us have a need for novelty and a majority of us fall under the bell curve, in that 70-80% of us are what journalist Wendy Gallagher (author, New: Understanding Our Need For Novelty and Change) calls neophiles, “neither scared stiff by too much novelty and change nor bored stiff by too little.” Another 10% to 15% are neophobes, “biased toward staying safe.” And the remaining 10-15% are what Gallagher calls neophiliacs, having extreme levels of craving for new stimuli.

Sadie, your husband is a good and responsible man, able to make you feel so loved and cared for. Because you need stimulation far more than most people, you have become bored by him, even if he is someone who most women would die for. Thus you seek an intriguing, new relationship to replace your marriage, if only temporarily.

I feel this is not your first office affair, but this is the first liaison where you have not called all the shots because I daresay you find him at least as attractive, if not more so, than yourself. This, too, is a new experience for you and thus has become even more challenging and more beguiling.

BUT – while this is an explanation for your behavior, this is not an excuse for it. After all, there are many other attractive, adventurous neophiliacs who crave excitement as much as you. And yet, they do not have affairs. One of the most common reasons is fear of risking a marriage that gives them the financial stability they also need. Yes, this may seem like a contradiction at first glance, but is actually part of the dynamics that make people so interesting.  

Another, more highly evolved, reason is that they love their husbands.

Yes, I know you love your husband too, but apparently not enough to change your self definition from someone “who challenges herself whenever temptation comes her way, instead of being like most people who ‘run away from it.’”  

But changing your self definition is also doing something new, and oftentimes scarier because it is a deeper, more lasting change. 

Actually, the first person to bring novelty-seeking to my attention was the  psychiatrist and geneticist Dr C. Robert Cloninger, director of the Sansone Family Center for Well-Being at Washington University.

He is also the social scientist who developed personality tests for measuring this trait, and concluded that “Novelty-seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age,” (BUT) “It can lead to antisocial behavior.”

However, “if you combine this adventurousness and curiosity with persistence and a sense that it’s not all about you, then you get the kind of creativity that benefits society as a whole.”

Why not think about what Dr Cloninger and every clinical psychologist worth his or her salt suggests, Sadie: leave the philosophizing and armchair theorizing about what sort of person you “really are” to others.  You have more important things to discover – such as less common and certainly less pedestrian ways to get your kicks.   

There is absolutely no doubt that sex can be reality expanding, breath-taking and soul-changing. But if you are truly blessed and truly pioneering, you will realize that sex is not the only endeavor that can offer you all these.  

All the best. – Margie

– Rappler.com

Need advice from our Two Pronged duo? Email desk@rappler.com with subject heading TWO PRONGED.

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