Overview of I Love My Partner, So Why Can’t I Let Go of My Ex?
In this episode of Where Should We Begin by Esther Perel Global Media, a caller wrestles with how to stay fully present in a loving current partnership while still carrying deep love, grief, and unfinished feelings for a former partner in the Philippines. What begins as a question about “loving two people” becomes a larger exploration of attachment, abandonment, immigration, transition, and how a past relationship can remain emotionally alive even when it is no longer viable as a partnership.
Main Storyline
The caller describes:
- A six-year relationship with a current partner, who is supportive and non-binary.
- A former partner in the Philippines, whom she loved deeply and even married in a ceremony there.
- A relationship that never fully closed, partly due to visa barriers, geography, and life changes.
- A recent reunion in the Philippines that felt emotionally intense, followed by the former partner abruptly disappearing again.
She says the ex still feels like a “thread” pulling at her attention and emotional energy, making it hard to stay grounded in her current relationship.
Key Themes and Insights
Love, closure, and unfinished relationships
Esther distinguishes between:
- What the caller chooses to remember and carry internally
- What a relationship becomes over time, which requires mutual participation
Her central point: the caller can preserve the meaning of the relationship, but she cannot maintain a live partnership alone.
The ex as a developmental bridge
Esther reframes the former partner not as a soulmate she must stay attached to, but as a person who helped her through a life transition:
- She arrived in the Philippines during a destabilizing period in her early 20s.
- The ex provided grounding when family life felt fractured.
- The relationship helped her survive a difficult stage, but may not belong to the next chapter of her life.
Esther emphasizes that this was a major developmental story, not necessarily a forever story.
Connection to family abandonment
The emotional intensity around the ex is linked to the caller’s family history:
- Her parents divorced.
- Her father effectively ghosted her.
- Her mother was struggling severely, and the caller felt responsible for holding everything together.
Esther suggests the ex may have represented safety, continuity, and being cared for when the caller was carrying too much alone.
The problem of obsessive contact
The caller keeps calling and messaging the ex despite no response. Esther frames this not as romance, but as a lack of containment:
- The relationship is “taking over her brain.”
- She feels responsible for his safety and sobriety.
- She struggles to tolerate impermanent boundaries, likely because of her history of cutoff and abandonment.
Esther Perel’s Guidance
1. Write a goodbye letter
Esther recommends writing a letter by hand, possibly several drafts, that includes:
- Gratitude
- Love
- Closure
- A clear ending to the romantic/partner role
This is not necessarily for the ex alone, but for the caller’s own psychological transition.
2. Create a memory box
Esther suggests making a beautiful box of memorabilia from that phase of life:
- Letters
- Objects
- Photos
- Receipts
- Small keepsakes
The goal is to gather the relationship into a contained place rather than having it remain diffuse and emotionally flooding every part of daily life.
3. Separate memory from obligation
Esther gently challenges the caller’s tendency to equate love with responsibility:
- She does not need to be responsible for the ex’s life, health, or choices.
- She can care without maintaining an open-ended promise.
- She can say goodbye without erasing the importance of the relationship.
4. Reassure the current partner
Esther encourages the caller to show the box to her current partner as a symbol of presence:
- “I am here.”
- The past still matters, but it no longer defines the present relationship.
- This helps restore trust and reduce the strain of ambiguity.
Important Takeaways
- A relationship can remain meaningful even when it must end.
- Love does not always mean partnership.
- Unresolved family abandonment can intensify attachment to an ex.
- Containment, ritual, and symbolic closure can help where emotional logic alone cannot.
- The caller’s challenge is not whether the ex mattered — it’s how to honor that meaning without being trapped by it.
Practical Action Items
- Write a handwritten goodbye letter to the former partner.
- Include gratitude, love, and a clear statement that the partnership is over.
- Create a keepsake box for the relationship and life chapter tied to the Philippines.
- Share that symbolic closure with the current partner.
- Stop carrying the ex’s well-being as a personal responsibility.
- Allow grief, but avoid continuing a bond that only one person is actively sustaining.
Notable Insight
Esther’s core reframe is that the caller is not asking how to “not love” her ex — she is asking how to let the relationship take its rightful place in her life story rather than letting it dominate her present.