[Two Pronged] Hots for our helper

Jeremy Baer, Margarita Holmes

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'My problem is that I've been having these urges towards our house helper,' goes this week's dilemma

Rappler’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’ve done something really bad. I’m married and have 2 kids. My problem is that I’ve been having these urges towards our house helper. Some nights, I’d sneak to her bed and touch her. After about the 4th time, I stopped. I was trying to fix myself.

For a while I was clean, until last night. I offered her a drink and she got drunk; I drank a few bottles too. She was getting really dizzy and I got into touching her again. I thought of taking advantage, but I stopped.

I love my wife very much, and my kids. I went immediately back to our room and made love with my wife. After that, I confessed to my wife about my problem. She was angry because I kept this [from her] for a while. I didn’t tell her back then because I was trying to fix myself. I thought I was already okay after those months I didn’t have those urges. But it happened again. This time, I thought to myself I needed help. I don’t want to lose my wife, my family.

My wife is really understanding and she’s trying to help me now. Can you give us an advice on how we should handle this?

Best regards,

Al

—————– 

Dear Al,

Thank you for your letter. 

Our lives are immeasurably complicated by the fact that marriage does not usually extinguish our propensity to be attracted sexually to other people. While for a small minority, finding their soulmate renders them blind to the rest of mankind, for the rest of us there is no on/off switch that shuts down the instincts that have propelled us in the search for a mate in the first place. 

Instead, we are likely to come across a number, perhaps a large number, of people for whom we feel physical attraction because attraction, just like thirst or hunger, is not something that we can expunge from our existence. 

However, there is a world of difference between experiencing attraction and desire on the one hand and acting on it on the other. What sets us on a more elevated plane than other animals is that while we too have instincts, we can choose not to be slaves to them. If we then combine this with the ability to discern between right and wrong, we are capable of achieving our full potential as human beings.

Turning to your particular circumstances, you say that you have these urges towards your helper. In fact, not only do you have urges; you have actually indulged them. This raises three issues: your infidelity, your abuse of power, and your lack of self control.

Infidelity needs no further comment.

Abuse of power is all too common. To use one’s position of ascendancy over another person for one’s own selfish gains is often unbelievably tempting, especially as it is so easy to indulge and so seldom punished. Motorists shout at traffic enforcers, shoppers rant at sales clerks, bosses subject their subordinates to pressure, sometimes subtly, sometimes less so – the list is endless and most of us succumb now and again. 

However, abuse of power for sexual gain is also criminal. You, Al, are forcing your helper to submit to your advances in the knowledge that she is not in a position to resist because her livelihood is at risk. Slightly to your credit, you appear to understand that what you have been doing is wrong, so there is a foundation for rehabilitation.

As for your lack of self-control, I find it hard to excuse your behavior on the grounds that you are incapable of acting otherwise. Surely you are more evolved than an animal faced with a female in heat. If you have learnt to wear clothes and use cutlery, to speak grammatically and observe simple social etiquette like not scratching your genitals in public, it is not an impossibility to restrain yourself from assaulting any female who may take your fancy.

I will now pass the baton to Dr Holmes as she is far more knowledgeable when it comes to how to structure your rehabilitation.

All the best,

JAF Baer

 

Dear Al:

Thank you very much for your letter. In addition to trying to help you and your wife come to terms with what happened, I will also be available for a little hand holding in case you are shell shocked by Mr Baer’s no-holds-barred-no-punches-pulled answer above.

Actually, I jest. I like to think my answers are just as “no holds-barred,” but perhaps a clinical approach is by nature less judgmental than most others. 

One reason for that is sometimes we ask some follow up questions before answering.  This is one of the many reasons I am so thankful to rappler.com and to my co-columnist Jeremy, because both of them have made it possible to have an “advice column” – and then some.  

Advice columns are usually meant to well, “give advice” or, what we prefer to do, point out underlying biases and self-fulfilling prophecies that the letter writer (in this case you) may not be particularly aware of but which control his behavior anyway.  

Yet the dilemma is that, if the entire column is merely Q and A with the columnist merely asking questions, it’s nakakainis and nakakabitin (annoying and unsatisfying). So I cannot help thanking my asawa (husband), Jeremy Baer, for agreeing to answer questions in Two Pronged with me, because his answer alone more than satisfies the requirements of an advice column – it is intelligent, logical, funny, and wise. 

But always, they speak to most of us because, while the problems presented may be differently, they all hearken to our basic needs of wanting to be loved and appreciated.

Sometimes, however, I get a problem that is a bit different from most. Then I need to understand the circumstances surrounding it by asking questions which may be more clinical than others because that will enable me to share insights that may resonate and thus help you more. So here they are:

How old are you and your wife?  Did this happen only with your present maid or has it happened before? Where is your maid right now? 

I also want you to know that your telling your wife what happened is a clear indication that you value your marriage and want to stop this behavior from happening again. Not many men would risk sharing so much of himself with his wife…and with us here at Rappler. Thank you. 

I’m 28, my wife is 26. Weve been married for 4 years, but before that we had been living together for 3 years. Our helper is still with us. It seems like she didn’t remember a thing.

When I was a kid, I use to sleep in the same room as our maids. I snuck up once and never did it again. I don’t know if my history of being molested is related. But I’ll share it with you also. 

When I was just a kid just before kindergarten, I had a guardian who did things behind me. He would invite me to the room, offer me a toy in exchange that I would lay on the bed face down. He would then ride on my back. It was hurting. This happen for everyday for 2-3 years. I even learned to like it. 

When I was in elementary school, I realized what he did was very wrong. I had an identity crisis. I wanted to straighten myself as a boy. I was telling myself that I wasnt gay. I was trying to prove this to myself and this made me sneak to our maid who was sleeping and touch her. I got what I wanted and that never happened again.


Dear Al,

Being sexually abused, especially when as young as you, affects people in many different ways.  Also, it can affect you one way after the first few years and in another many years later, like when you are married and have kids of your own. A few more questions, please, Al, so I get a clearer picture?

Did you tell anybody else about being molested? If so, how did they react? 

Are you an only child? Why did you use to sleep in the same room as the maid? You said you would sneak up to your maid while she was asleep and touch her.  How old were you then? I so hope these questions do not seem intrusive to you?  I just want a clearer sense of how all that is happening now relates to what happened to you then.

MG Holmes

Dear Dr Holmes:

Thank you very much Doc Margie for helping me. Only my wife knows about my history and you. I understand that you will be putting this online, and my wife and I are comfortable with that. My wife’s initial reaction was to avenge me. She said she’d kill the one who did that to me.  

I am the only child; my mother left me to her sister’s care. I am an illegitimate child of my father. I can’t remember how old I was when I did it, maybe grade 6 or a freshman in high school. I won’t mind more questions Doc Margie, please feel free to ask more. Thank you very much. 

Dear Al,

I will answer more fully in a later column, hopefully before next Sunday.  Also feel free to ask or tell me things that you feel will help me understand you more fully. Thanks very much and hang in there!

MG Holmes

P.S. Dear readers, I also hope you can put in your comments/suggestions to help Al and help me in the forthcoming column.   

Need advice from our Two Pronged duo? Email twopronged@rappler.com with subject heading TWO PRONGED. Unfortunately the volume of correspondence precludes a personal response.

When leaving a message on this page, please be sensitive to the fact that you are responding to a real person in the grip of a real-life dilemma, who wrote to Two Pronged asking for help, and may well view your comments here. Please consider especially how your words or the tone of your message could be perceived by someone in this situation, and be aware that comments which appear to be disruptive or disrespectful to the individual concerned will be removed.

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