I thought for a lot of my life that unconditional love between partners doesn't exist.

I always said that you can only get unconditional love from a pet or a mother or for puberty.

Those are the only two times in my life where I've ever experienced unconditional love.

None of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perel.

Each episode of Where Should We Begin is a one-time counseling session.

For the purposes of maintaining confidentiality, names and some identifiable characteristics have been removed.

But their voices and their stories are real.

This is a new couple that is having a long-distance relationship.

We get into these loops where I don't feel emotionally safe.

Then he clearly is triggered by something.

I may be doing a few references to talk about it and we can't get out of it.

I've never been comfortable in relationships. It's always been kind of a feel battle.

But there is one connective tissue that is very important, which is that they've actually known each other for many, many years

because he was a friend of her brother. Her family became a family for him as well.

And she was the younger sister. So they've known each other but they don't know each other.

He attended my dad's funeral. I had friends who saw us together and were like,

you guys look so happy together when you're together.

Both of them are from Nigerian families that grew up primarily in the United States.

But they also within that have a lot of differences.

She grew up in a stable and very loving family.

I feel very strongly that I was shown what love looks like, what it takes to navigate.

Whereas he grew up with a lot of early childhood trauma.

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