What you are about to hear is a series Esther calls the arc of love.

Each session centers around a couple's story, whether it's issues of trust and betrayal,

care and aggression, closeness and distance, repair and

rupture, polyamary or monogamy.

The episodes can be listened to in any order you want, but were curated with the beginning, middle, and end.

As always, none of the voices in this series are ongoing patients of Esther Perrells.

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. Shall we listen to your question? Shall we listen together? Of course.

Hi Esther. My husband and I we had a wonderful relationship together.

We were married for eight years before we started having children and it was just lovely.

The two of us, we fit well really good. But once we had our first son that created pressure on our relationship and also

his health started deteriorating and some things were left and said.

I feel that he was trying to keep it together and provide for the family and not complain too much.

And I feel like I failed him in not helping him address the health issues that he had, but kind of almost tucking it away and letting him deal with it.

I probably could have done better. Some people could say that his health was his responsibility,

but everyone knows in the relationship that's not really how it works. You become two halves of a whole,

and I should have done more. The one thing I'm really

struggling with is how is it that I didn't connect the dots between his

health and our sexual health.

And we never talked about it.

...