The Unraveling of An Affair with Juliana Wexler
IN THIS EPISODE, WE DISCUSS:
•the shadow side of love
•how telling your story is healing
•the prevalence of affairs vs. the shock of infidelity
•the physiological effects of affairs
•observing yourself becoming someone who cheats
•business trips as a breeding ground for affairs
•power dynamics of dating your boss
•the unraveling of the affair
•cheating to leave vs. cheating to stay
•the effects of lying in a marriage
•when your mother-in-law retaliates
•getting a call from your lover’s wife
•the crashing of a startup & entangled affairs
•grieving the loss of an affair
•an affair restoring your faith in love
•meeting your shadow can transcend your pain
Juliana was raised by two psychologists trying to understand her every move in San Diego. Never quite resonating with the laid back Californian surfer culture, she headed out east to the University of Michigan and was captivated by Ann Arbor’s high vibrational energy. Always fascinated by how systems work, she folded a pre-med education into designing her own major evaluating disparities and inequities in the U.S. healthcare system. Professionally, her 20s comprised living in Manhattan working her way up and out of various healthcare startups. Personally, her 20s were a time of trying to fit into a mold of a person that she desperately sought to be. Upon turning 30, she suddenly realized all the ways her own beliefs and the people and systems around her kept her small and confined. She finally began to recognize her own intuition and started following that little voice. Suddenly divorced at 30, she found herself questioning every aspect of her life. It was through the dismantling of all aspects of the life she built that she began to come home to herself. After quitting her job and leaving NYC, she traveled around the Mediterranean coast alone searching for her soul for several months. Upon getting an intuitive hit to move to Washington DC, she relocated and is currently getting a Masters in Policy Management at Georgetown.
Episode Transcript
Released Feb 18, 2021
Cami: Welcome, Juliana, to the podcast. It is so good to have you back. We are excited to do a fun little episode today. Well, a dark kind of fun, right? So, this is our--
Juliana: [00:00:27 unin].
Cami: Yeah. This is our Valentine's Day episode, our bloody valentine episode. I felt like it should be called that, but I have no idea if that's really what's going to be spoken about. So, we'll have to wait and see, but--
Juliana: We'll see.
Cami: Today, we're talking about the dark side of love. We're talking to Juliana Wexler. She came on the podcast for our first episode ever, and she told us her story about getting divorced and having an affair, and it was an amazing episode. If you haven't listened to it, you should go back and listen to that one first. It's Episode 1. So, definitely, go back and listen to that. Just a caveat, we are not glamorizing affairs or divorce. We are having conversation about them, a topic that's not typically discussed. So, I just wanted to put that in there because I feel like it's important to say. Also, I'm really excited for this. We had a lot of questions from the last episode and we felt like we wanted to share a little bit more, and I had so much fun having Juliana on that I wanted to have her back.
So, welcome, Juliana.
Juliana: Thanks. I'm so happy to be here. I got so many great responses and I know you did, too, from the first podcast. So, happy to be here to give more information.
Cami: Yeah. So, yeah. Tell everyone a little bit about how many people reached out to you and what kind of things they said to you.
Juliana: Yeah. I mean, I expected that people in my closed circle would obviously reach out to me, but it was more people that I didn't know that heard the podcast through you and followed me on Instagram, or people from high school that I haven't talked to since high school, people that I haven't talked to since college, people in my sorority, people that I barely knew in college, people that my story really resonated with, either people that had had experience with infidelity or divorce themselves or just it made them look at their own relationship differently. For me, telling my story initially was about coming forward and entering a new chapter, having the guts to not live under the shame of my own story, and to tell it. I didn't really imagine that it would impact other people. It was more supposed to be like a cathartic thing for me to do, and maybe I'd send it to my close friends. But then it just turned into something so much bigger and it makes going through that whole experience seem much more purposeful, and it gives it more meaning and texture to be able to share it with other people now that it's not like active trauma that I'm processing, and I'm in a place to do that, and for it to mean something to other people and give them some nugget of wisdom.
Cami: Yeah. And also, just so the audience knows, you've done a lot of work around this. This is not something that would have been easy to talk about two years ago, three years ago. I mean, it would have been impossible to talk about three years ago, but you've done a lot of work around it, you've worked with therapists, you've also done a lot of self-exploration. I think one thing we talked about prepping for this episode was that this happens all the time, and yet we act like, "Oh my god, there was infidelity," like, "Oh, my god, this happened." But it's in every plot, it's every story, it's in every TV episode, yet we're always still so shocked, and the stigma around it is still real.
Juliana: Yeah. It's crazy to me. Obviously, I have more of an eye for it now and I notice it, but it seems like in every movie or TV show I'm watching, someone is having an affair even in times when it's not really that relevant to the central plot. And that's just like the media, let alone real-life celebrity culture, there's always affairs. And just people I know, I think like when it was happening to me, I was just turning 30 and now being three years older, I have seen more divorces. I see it more, I hear it more, and it's so interesting to me how blindsiding it is to people, given how common it is. And to think that you're not going to be a statistic with--and I'm speaking from experience. I didn't really consider that I would get divorced, or that I would be cheated on or cheat. It's just I think love is blinding in the sense of in order to commit to someone and marry and merge your assets, and do all these things that don't really make sense if we have a 40% to 50% divorce rate, you have to believe that you're going to defy those odds. So, it's just incredibly shocking when your relationship does crumble even though we know that it happens all the time.
Cami: Yeah. One interesting sliver in what you have said is that when you're going through this, emotions are high. You're essentially flooded with emotions, which makes your cognitive processing not as sharp, right? And so, we'll get into that a little bit more today, but I wanted to just point that out because you do things that you would never imagine yourself doing, and people do things to you that you can't imagine that they would have ever done to you. So, it's important to remember that when you are going through divorce, you are going through being cheated on and cheating on someone that you're not always thinking super straight.
Juliana: Yeah. And Esther Perel in her second book, I forgot what it's called, "State of Affairs," I think, talks a lot about the dopamine--just how you're in a state of basically addiction and dopamine rush while you're having an affair, and it causes normally very sane and practical and logical people to do crazy things. And I read that as Sam and I were separating, that book, and it made me feel really validated because I had a lot of confusion--before the shame, just like confusion of how did I become this person that's lying to someone's face and gaslighting them. Like, it's confusing and surprising to watch yourself become that. And knowing that that's a common occurrence in that situation did help and give me a little solace. And obviously, I've heard that from other people's stories, too, since.
Cami: Yeah. So, we're going to start kind of not at the beginning because if you've listened to Episode 1, you know a lot about what happened. But let's start with why did you marry your husband in the first place?
Juliana: That's a good question. So, we were together from since our junior year of college. We moved to New York, not together, but he was from New York and I moved to New York, thinking I was going to go to medical school, and then didn't, and just stayed there and built a life there. And as the years went on, it was good. We loved each other, we were very compatible. There were issues that were always there mostly in sexual chemistry. And then, the second issue that evolved was my relationship with his family, which was largely an offset of his relationship with his family that was very fractured. And it's hard to have a good relationship with someone's parents when they don't have a good relationship with their parents.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: So, those were the two predominant issues. And I had a really hard time deciding if I wanted to get married. Not many people knew that at the time. I've had a few close friends that I broke down to one time as we were talking about getting engaged. I had a therapist I was working with, a somatic therapist I was working with, that became like a confidant to me that I talked a lot about. She had me write down all the things that I wanted in a partner, and what Sam was and what he wasn't. And I just decided that I was good--I was driving myself crazy in the months after we moved in together when we were talking about potentially getting married. And after several months, I just thought like I need to stop doing this. I'm either going to do this or I'm not, and there's not enough to not do it, but I know that it might not last forever, but that's where I stand now. It was a very logical pro-con list. I have many old pro-con lists for our relationship dating back to college that I saw--
Cami: Number one rule is that if you're making a pro-con list for the person you're with or that you're marrying, they're probably not the one.
Juliana: A hundred percent. And I thought that I was that person. Like, I told myself, the story I told myself was that I am a very analytical person, I overthink things, I will never just be someone that's blindly in love, that won't be me. I'll never be sure. This is who I am. And I was very removed from emotion about love in relationships and just thought like, yeah, it's like when you're compatible with when you like to do the same things, when you want to have kids, when you want to live together, it's just this thing you do and you build your life together rather than it being this person that you feel like makes you better or somehow fills your life in a way that someone else does not.
Cami: Yeah. And it's really interesting because you--well, we'll get into it. You ended up having an affair, right? Your husband cheated on you when you were engaged, right?
Juliana: Yeah.
Cami: And then, after you got married, you met someone on the job, and you--
Juliana: On the job.
Cami: On the job.
Juliana: Make it sound like I was like in construction.
Cami: So, you met someone on the job, and we'll get into what that job was, but you met someone on the job that made you feel something that your husband never made you feel. And it was something that you didn't even know you were missing until you had it, right? And I think that is so interesting because--I don't know. Like, you are always someone, I mean, you said this to me before, that you said, like, love isn't that important. It makes more sense if you just get along and you're compatible, and XYZ. And now, knowing you, I can't imagine you saying that because you're such a romantic, but yeah, it's funny to think about that. But anyway, so you met someone at work, and I want to know--tell me a little bit about that first day on the job.
Juliana: So--
Cami: On the job.
Juliana: On the job. So, I was hired by the guy that I later had the affair with, who was a co-founder of the company. He was essentially like the COO of the company, started it with another guy. He hired me. I actually heard about the company through my ex-husband. It's a long story, basically, like, he got put in--the guy I had the affair with, who is the founder of the company, got put in touch with my ex-husband for something professional, not related to me at all. And my husband said, "I think you would like this company. You should check them out." And I did, and I interviewed with them, and then I got the job. So, that was always like a funny just story of how I got connected to them.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: Being on the job, so it was a healthcare startup there. I was like the eighth employee. It was very mission-driven, very high-achieving, very ambitious, like looking back, probably destined to fail anyway because we were trying to do too much with not enough capital. But certainly, the emotions and sexual attraction of several people in the office together just made it implode. And being in the job, I did not--
Cami: You were the only one?
Juliana: No, we were not the only ones. We got the most shade, but we're not the--were the first, not the last. So, being on the job, I didn't really think anything of it. He hired me. I thought he was attractive, but not really my type. I was married. It just like didn't cross--I was not the type of girl, I'm not the type of girl that is always looking at hot guys. I'm not throwing any shade on anyone that does. It's just I don't notice that, really. And especially when I was just married, it was just not on my radar.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: And he trained me and onboarded me. I worked directly for him. At the beginning, I reported directly to him, but I eventually got promoted and my role shifted. I reported to the CEO. But we got along. I thought he was like kind of a dork. I thought he was overachieving, like typical Manhattan Brad Princeton (ph) type of person, just like really fulfilled all those stereotypes, and kind of lame. But I thought that he was--like I knew that he was objectively attractive and other people talked about it. And I was sort of like, "Oh, okay." I didn't see him like that.
Cami: Yeah. So, let's give him a name before we accidentally call him by his real name.
Juliana: Okay, okay. What do you want his name to be?
Cami: Let's call him Steve.
Juliana: Okay. Okay.
Cami: Let's call him Steve. So, when did you realize that Steve was more than--like, who's interested in more than just like a co-worker relationship?
Juliana: Yeah. So, a few months in, we had traveled to Phoenix a few times because we had our partner, like these partners that we were doing business with over there, and it was just the two of us. And this was the second or third time we were there, so it's like in the late fall, around Halloween. And we had gone to dinner, just the two of us, the night before, and we're drunk. I think that was the first time we drank together, maybe not the first time, but one of the first times. It felt like we were on a first date kind of. He was like, "So tell me about your family." Like, we were just talking about more than just work. And he knew my husband indirect--he had spoken to him professionally. So, he asked me questions about him. It felt like we formed some little connection, but friend-wise.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: And I remember when the waitress--we're at a Mexican restaurant and the waitress came around to ask if we wanted another drink, and I immediately said no, like, instinctively. And I think looking back, I felt that something was escalating and was trying to put an end to that. So, then the next day, we spent the day together all day, doing work stuff, meeting with these people, and I really excelled and took charge of a bunch of business items that needed to be done, and we got a lot of deals done that needed that were above our expectations and met a lot of goals. And I think that attracted him a lot. Looking back, I was magnetic because I had done--like, he was kind of idolizing me in that moment. And not to say that it wouldn't have happened without that, I just remember that. And then, he started saying things to me, like he started telling me about his personal life. And then, just we got drinks at the bar in our hotel, and that was the night where everything happened. And I also remember just the events of that day leading up to it, it felt like we were being pulled together. And suddenly, we were looking at each other very differently. And I don't know--according to him, he always looked at me like that, but I felt something shift, and maybe that was just in me.
Cami: Yeah. Yeah, because you went on the trip being like, "I'm married." [00:17:06 unin] love this, right? So, this dynamic--
Juliana: I don't think that he did. I mean--
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: Yeah. I'm not--who knows.
Cami: Yeah. I'm just illustrating that, right? But this dynamic is not unusual, right? Like, we wanted to talk a little bit about workplace romance because it happens all the freaking time, right? So, tell me a little bit about that dynamic, the power dynamics of dating someone that's your boss, or who's above you, right?
Juliana: Yeah. So, at the time, when people found it, when I originally told people about this, that my ex and I were splitting up, and this story, people were--this was in the middle of all the me-too stuff. And people were like, "Oh, my god, that's such an abuse of power." And I was so defensive that it wasn't because it was consensual, and it was consensual. But with a few years under my belt, and a more understanding, and more research, and just kind of nuanced conversation around what the me-too movement was about, is about, I do see a little bit of why it was an abuse of power. He had direct control. He hired me. He could have fired me in a second. He controlled my salary. He controlled how the CEO--I mean, I had a relationship with the CEO, but he could have influenced that wildly, if he wanted to prop me up or tear me down. And in no conscious way did I consider that when we decided to get together, but unconsciously, subconsciously, that has to be there to some extent. And if nothing else, he knew I was married and he was engaged, which is close, but it is--I'm four years younger than him. I mean, it's hard for me to not admit now that it was some abuse of power. And he even has joked, like, "I was scared you were going to sue me." I mean, he knows that, too. It's not lost on anyone.
Cami: Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting because what you felt at the time was a connection. You thought you were in love. Maybe you were in love, right? It's interesting because it's not a clear yes or no. It's a gray area.
Juliana: Yeah. And it's hard to know what's going on at the time.
Cami: Totally. And you're flooded with emotions. Your nervous system is totally overwhelmed and you're not even--one, think about like how your brain is functioning when you're falling in love. And then, two, put that cheating, infidelity, layer on there, like--
Juliana: Yeah. It's a lot on your brain. Might be your poor brain.
Cami: I know. So, that goes my next question of, so you decide to leave your husband, right? You are going to be with this person, Steve. If you're going to be with Steve and you trust Steve, but you also know that Steve is cheating on the person he's engaged to, he gets married while you guys are still having an affair. What makes you trust this person?
Juliana: Yeah. I think a lot about that, not now, but in the year after everything ended. In the moment, I felt like--well, I can't judge him because I'm doing the same thing. He's feeling what I'm feeling, so we're both acting on that. And I did have some definite hesitation that I told him about the fact that he was getting married during this because I said to him, "My ex had an affair for a few months while we were engaged and there was a lot of times that I was uncertain even before that. But the day that we walked down the aisle, I was sure." And when I said my vows, I felt 100% confident in him. And anyone who's at my wedding can attest to that because you could feel that.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: That obviously changed, but I think to go into a wedding where you're in love with someone else, where you're texting a woman that you're having an affair with right before you walk down the aisle, is [00:21:35 unin]. Again, I'm not saying that it's horrible because I can't say I was doing things that many would say are horrible, but to me, it felt like another level of deception in almost psychopathy that you could pull that off.
Cami: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's illuminating, right?
Juliana: Yeah.
Cami: So, this person obviously made you feel something that your husband didn't feel. What was that thing that was missing in your marriage now looking back?
Juliana: I think acceptance. Like, I am already a perfectionistic, critical, judgmental, I mean, mostly turned in on myself, goal-oriented. It's hard for me to accept myself and I need to be with someone who just sees all of me, and is okay with all of me, and isn't trying to change me. And I felt like with my ex, I had my own wounds, they were not his fault, but his disposition was like pouring salt on them. And Steve was very self-critical, and he had a lot of tendencies that I did. So, it was like we got each other on that level. And we didn't do that to each other because we knew how devastating and crippling that can be to have that disposition towards yourself. And so, I just felt like seen and I felt safe being vulnerable in a way that I didn't with my ex at all.
Cami: So, what did your husband do when you told him you were going to leave him?
Juliana: So, he [00:23:20 unin] I was working--how did that happen? Okay. So, I was working with a therapist throughout the whole experience, the therapist that he and I had seen when we were engaged, when he was cheating on me. And so, she sort of knew our story. And I always wanted to ask her like, did you see this coming? I never did, but I just thought it'd be interesting, because she didn't seem like that surprised, and she never tried to talk me out of leaving him. So, I thought like maybe she saw this coming.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: And we were working towards April 1st was the day that I was going to tell him, and I wanted to get far enough with Steve where--it was like I needed time. And I was also actively mourning my life with my ex and thinking like the--I remember we spent New Year's with his friends, and thinking like, "Okay, this could be the last time I see them." I was kind of saying goodbye to things in my head. And then, the last day of February, he saw a text from Steve that said "I love you." So my plans got skirted and everything exploded then, which like, yeah, looking back, things were heating up at a level where even Steve's wife was starting to have questions--like, work eventually found out. Like, there were things that were unraveling as they tend to later in an affair where you get sloppy.
Cami: Yeah. Did your work find out before you guys told your significant others?
Juliana: No, they found out the next week. It was like a crazy 10 days, or a week is that. So, my ex saw the text. So, I panicked. I mean, this is the part where it's hard for me to even say this because it's just so not who I want to be or who I think I've acted as in my whole life, but I was in shock and just was like, "Can I delete the text message if I go to my phone or on my computer?" It was on my computer that he saw it, and, can I delete the message? I was like just not ready to tell him, and so I had to find a way out. And he called me out on it and he said, "I've never seen you like this. You're panicking. I've never seen you panic. You always have your shirt together, and I can feel that you're panicking."
And I was saying to him that it didn't say "I love you," because he just saw it for a second, and then X out of it. You're going to feel silly when you know--and I was just swirling in my head. And then, eventually, I told him what was going on, and he initially--I think at first, I told him it was just emotional, and then I realized the next morning like I don't want to lie anymore. And what's the point? Because I don't want to be with him. So, I might as well tell him. And I told him everything. And his first thing was he said, "We should move to California. Let's just getaway. You quit your job. We'll get away from my parents since that's such a stressor for us. Let's start over."
We talked about moving to California at some point because I grew up there. And I said, "I don't think you understand. I'm in love with him." And then, I told him all--and we talked for hours that night about--this is the second--I think the second or third night after he found out about why Steve and what it meant, and that I had things with him that I didn't have with my husband, and that this was not--when he had an affair, he's went on for a few months, but it was not someone that he ever considered being with. For one, he was married and not interested in leaving her husband. And I don't think that he was interested in being with her, and it's very different when the person that you're cheating with is someone you really want to be with and are in love with.
So, it was heartbreaking. Those conversations of breaking to him that this was not the type of cheating that he had done, it wasn't the type of cheating to stay, it was the cheating to leave, were really heartbreaking. So, then I think he stayed in a hotel for a few days after that, and to think about things. And then, he came back that next week. But by that time, my work had found out and I was just dealing with that because that was a whole eruption. And he came back and said, "Okay. I think we should separate." And I was devastated. I was just looking back just so ridiculous because the whole time I had been telling--the few of my friends that I had told, and my therapist, and Steve, like, I want out of this marriage. I don't want to be in this marriage. But there was something about hearing him--he had always been so sure of me that there was nothing about hearing him say that he wanted to separate, that just like was so hard. And that's when I called my mom and told my mom. I called her and said, "He hates me." And I told her the whole story. And I realized how irrational that is. It's just--
Cami: I wonder why.
Juliana: That's what it felt like in the moment. I mean, temporarily for a few hours, it just felt devastating. And then, I came to and realized like, "Okay. This is what I wanted. I want him." And then, I shifted my energy. And I remember writing this in my journal of like, "I want him to feel good about leaving. I don't want to just leave him." If he came to me and said, "You know, I think that we can make through this, I think that this can be an opportunity, like my affair was, to strengthen us, and I want to go to therapy, and I want to do this," it's like I wouldn't have wanted that, but I might have respected that in the short term. And to hear him, I wanted him to have clarity and conviction about us getting divorced because I didn't want it to be like I'm just ending this nine-year relationship singularly.
And so, a part of me felt good that he felt good about leaving. And I think his anger was really energizing as anger is. Anger is an energizing emotion. It gives you the desire to take action. And I felt good about those initial conversations, and he did, too. I mean, he was not that surprised. He had suspected that something was going on, as you always do. I felt a lot of compassion from him in the first few days before he told people. After he told people, it was like a different person showed up. He was angry. He didn't want to give me any money. He just wanted vindication. But before that, when it was just his true self, I felt a lot of empathy and deep compassion, which is really beautiful.
Cami: Breakups are really, I don't know if people have experienced this, it's like when you first break up, you do have so much compassion for the other person. You're like, "Oh, I understand why you can't be in this." Right? And then, the anger comes and you're like, "Fuck you."
Juliana: Well, I think the other thing was I felt--I've been hiding this from him for four or five months. And when I told him, I felt this release and I felt kind of bonded to him in a weird way, not that I wanted to stay together--have I thought about it, it's like, no, I don't want to be in this marriage anymore, but I felt closer to him by sharing this deep secret with him, which is [00:30:43 unin], too.
Cami: Because he was your best friend at the time.
Juliana: Right.
Cami: You know, it's hard to hold secrets from your best friend.
Juliana: Yeah. That was the worst part. I mean, definitely, I didn't really feel that guilty about the betrayal physically, I felt horrible lying. It just felt like our lives, there was just this huge wedge between us and our life. We couldn't really enjoy each other because there was this huge piece missing because I was living this other life.
Cami: Yeah. Okay. So, you tell your husband, you move out, you move into an apartment in Brooklyn. Like, you are ready to be with who you think is the love of your life, right? You're decorating your apartment in Brooklyn together. You're picking out TVs.
Juliana: Yeah. He picked online TV [00:31:32 unin] to pick it up together. I told you that.
Cami: And then, he is going to tell his wife that he's going to leave her as well?
Juliana: Yeah.
Cami: What happens then?
Juliana: So, he flies to Seattle where his wife is living and is going to stay--so, he's staying with me. He was staying with me in New York, living with me for, I don't know, a few weeks. And then, he wanted to take a key from my apartment, I remember, to Seattle because he was like, "I'm just going to be back in a few days." And I said, "Absolutely. You are still married. You can't take a key to my apartment." So, he goes to Seattle to tell her. A few days turned into like a week or two, there's never a good time. Her brother was staying with them. And so, he's like, "I can't do this while her brother's sleeping on the couch," whatever. Then I get a call. And so, I'm struggling, but okay, I trust him a lot at this point. I believe that he's going to do it because he gives me a lot of conviction [00:32:36 unin] he is so in love with me, and he's never really felt that for her, and that he knows it's going to be hard, but he wants us to be done, and blah, blah, blah.
So, then he calls me one day and says--okay. He says, "I just got off the phone with one of my wife's best friends. She got a postcard in the mail that says, 'Juliana Wexler has been having an affair with your husband since the fall over the course of your wedding. I thought that you should know.' And the postcard was signed the name of our company. And on the postcard was a building, or a picture of the flatiron building, which our office was [00:33:29 unin]." And I was like, "Oh my god." And so, we thought it was someone from work because work had found out and people were pissed. Not everyone knew, but that's another story. I mean, it was obviously supposed to look like that.
So, I'm like, "Send me a picture of the postcard." And he sends me a picture of the postcard and it's my ex-husband's mom's handwriting, 100%. I just knew. I mean, I knew her handwriting. And it's just something she would do. And she had been so distressed. She had like burned, I don't know about burned, she threw away all my clothes that were at their house, she's marked all of our wedding photos on Facebook as spam and reported my account to Facebook as spam. She was sending Steve's wife messages on Instagram, but I guess they weren't coming through because she wasn't a follower of hers. This came out later. She had reported my Instagram. She was like following Steve on LinkedIn. She was like really going off, which is funny because I always think like my mom knew when my ex has been cheated on me and she didn't do anything. It's always, yes, I get the anger, but also, it's not your life.
Cami: And you would never know the full story. Like, his mom never knew he--
Juliana: Didn't know that he cheated.
Cami: Yeah, yeah.
Juliana: Oh, yeah. Okay. So, the postcard comes. So, then he tells--I don't know how she got the address of this friend of Steve's wife's friend, how my husband's mom--I would just spell this out because without names, it's kind of hard. My husband's mom got an address of Steve's wife's friend. I don't know. I think that from following her on Instagram, she must have seen some of the names of her friends, like her bridesmaids, and then looked them up, and this was an address that she was able to find.
Cami: Yeah.
Juliana: So, the friend calls Steve, and Steve says, "Okay. I'll tell her tonight." She basically says, "If you don't tell her in 48 hours, I'm telling her." And he says, according to him, "You don't understand. This is not just physical. I'm in love with her. I'm leaving her, like, my wife. I need a day or two to tell her. This is something I'm working towards, but okay." So, he tells me this and I was like humiliated because it was my ex's mom, and I never told Steve that. Actually, he doesn't even know that, that I thought it was her. And I immediately sent it to my ex and said, "Can you please confirm that this is your mom's handwriting?" And he said, "No, that's not. She wouldn't do that." Meanwhile, two days later, I get a text from him back saying, "I talked to my mom. Nothing like this will happen again," or like, "I'm sorry, nothing like this will happen again."
Cami: [00:36:21 unin] a mom's child.
Juliana: Exactly. Mama bear. A helicopter mom, especially. So, Steve tells his wife. He gets a hotel because her brother is staying with them, tells her that night. Obviously, I don't know what's happening. I know that he's like, "I'm going to go dark for the night and you're not going to hear from me. I'll talk to you tomorrow." The next day, I don't hear from him in the morning and I text him, and basically, he ends up FaceTiming me and he tells me like, "I told her, but I can't do it. I tried to do it, but she made a lot of points about how I haven't tried in the relationship and how I--we've been apart, we've been long-distance for a year, and we just got married, and I haven't tried, and she's right."
And the opening line that he was working on his therapist with to say that he opened with, which I thought was a good line, was, "I don't see a road to happiness with you and I do with Juliana." I mean, I don't know, obviously don't know exactly what he told her, but she ended up calling me, so I know a week later. So, I do know that he told her--I at least got to tell her a lot of things, like, she knows the story. I mean, the shock of that, like I just felt my stomach dropped all of the things that you feel in heartbreak that I just couldn't--it's like I couldn't believe it, but I also could believe it, and it was [00:37:57 unin] to happen, and it was just such a surreal moment. I was in a coffee shop. It was horrible. And then, we talked for several hours that weekend, and it was just hearing--he admitted a lot of things that he had lied to me about, which actually made it a lot easier to walk away. He had told me that he had cheated on her before. So, he had cheated on a previous girlfriend, a previous like several year girlfriend with a girl who was subordinate to him at his first job. And then, his wife, he had gotten together with at his second job, and she was under him. So, now, he has three women, one of whom he's married, that he's been above in a work situation. So, I'm like, "Okay. That's a little suspicious."
Cami: It's interesting because you can shift those power dynamics, but it's not that easy to shift those power dynamics.
Juliana: Well, I don't know. Three is just--and the fact--so he had told me that he had never cheated before, or that he hadn't cheated on his previous girlfriend. I don't know. There's some big lie about when he had started cheating, and then he admitted that it's actually been going on for many years and with multiple people. And he couldn't even remember the last time that it had happened. It became very clear to me that what happened for me with him was very different than what happened for him with me. And he wasn't going to leave because he had experience with this and he hadn't left in the past, and yeah, he was more interested in living out the facade of their life together and not prepared to leave. And I think he is the type of person who, from getting to know him, that is very emotionally reckless. I don't think that he means harm in the moment, but I think he just does whatever the hell he feels like doing. He's like a bull in a china shop and he just creates a lot of destruction wherever he goes, and he's very intellectually manipulative, and also intuitively manipulative to women.
Cami: Can you tell us what intuitively manipulative means?
Juliana: So, his line was that he has the intuition of a female, and he told me that when he was in his 20s, he saw a therapist because he could feel that he was using his deep intuitive abilities to take advantage of women. He didn't want to do that because his dad had had affairs and he didn't want to be like that. And, you know, it's so funny because I've read and people say, "Men always, maybe everyone, but definitely men, show their cards upfront. They tell you their red flags. Women just don't want to hear them." And looking back, it's like, yeah, he laid everything out on the table for me. I just didn't want to hear that stuff. And I thought with me, it's different, all of the things. But it's a good lesson that if you listen carefully, people do tell you who they truly are, and what they're willing to do or not to.
He also admitted to me at the end, that last day, that he had lied about--he told me he tried to call off his wedding a few weeks before and that his wife sort of threatened suicide, and she had a history of major depression, and said held up their dog, and said, "You're never going to see the dog again," and said, "I don't know how I'm going to go on," and that she called her mom. It's this whole story, and then he told me that he made that up and that he didn't really do that. And at the time, that signified to me that he was willing to try to call it off, and that kept me in the game, actually, for better or worse. And he knew that. It was just enough, just enough, to keep me around. And so, there were a lot of those, a lot of those moments.
Cami: Yeah, because if people don't know you, like you're super practical.
Juliana: Very practical.
Cami: You're not going to do something unless it's lined up to be what you desire, right, or desire at the time because looking back, that was the best thing that ever happened to you is not being entangled with someone who clearly has some things they need to work on, right? If you had known that your life--obviously, Steve stayed with his wife, you were left in Brooklyn by yourself, no friends because all your friends were from college and you went to college with your ex. You had your girlfriends, right, but--
Juliana: Yeah. I had my friends, but I lost a lot. A lot of our friends at that point were joint friends and they were more friends with my ex. So, yeah, I lost a lot of friends.
Cami: Yeah. Your parents were halfway across the country. You then lost your job because the startup tanked. So, tell people a little bit about how that affair impacted your job.
Juliana: The startup, so the CEO found out about Steve and me, and forced Steve to resign. Like, had already talked to the lawyer. Again, this was March 2018. This was the heat of me, too. This was when like--I mean, I'm sure this is still true, but this is when everything was blowing up and everyone was being really careful. And also, the CEO wanted him out. So, it was a perfect storm to get him step down because of this. And Steve fought it for like a day or two, but then once he knew that their lawyer had already drawn up the paperwork and everything, just I guess agreed to, which I thought in--like at the time, I wanted him to fight more, but in retrospect, I think it was probably the right decision.
So, when he stepped down, then there was just the CEO and no one to oversee the operations and assist in the fundraising process. Oh, and also, the CEO lied and said that the venture capital firm that had given us our biggest investment knew about this and asked that he step down, which later, Steve found out was not true, but it was too late at that point. So, he stepped down, then went to Seattle to be with his wife, and ended up staying there. He said he was going to come back in a few days, but--and he was like looking at other jobs in New York because he was going to come back to New York after he ended things with her. But obviously, he just stayed there and got a job there.
So, the CEO's chief of staff, who was a girl a few years younger than me, I remember confronted me. She was the one who found out about us from a note that he had--either a card I had given him or a note that he had passed me at work. And she told the CEO, and then CEO told Steve, and then I confronted her because I was friends with her, and I just thought like, "You don't know that my husband knows. You could have confronted me before taking this to the CEO." And she looked at me with so much disgust and disdain, and said, "I would never do something like this. I would never sleep with someone I worked with. I would never jeopardize the company like that. I would never lie. I would never cheat on my husband." She was single.
I later found out, and people always suspected, that she and the CEO had a thing, but that she denied it vehemently. I later found out that she and the CEO were together. I don't know if they were physically together at this moment that she confronted me, but certainly in the weeks after. And that the CEO left his wife and his newborn baby to be with her. She was like six or seven years younger than him. They lived together and they were together in secret for a while. They lived together for a few years, and I think they're broken up now. But I just thought, "Oh my god." I was so angry. I mean, I was so angry at the way she talked to me and that she was doing the same thing. It was just so--
Cami: I mean, the judgment runs rampant, right?
Juliana: Yeah. And if you think about triggers, now knowing obviously so much more about psychology in the shadow, I was triggering something in her. And I think like, triggering the idea that she was probably in love with the CEO and maybe hadn't acted on it, and seeing that I was acting on it triggered her, and maybe made her realize, "Oh, I can act on it." That wasn't always my theory. I don't know.
Cami: It's so interesting. And then, what happened to your job?
Juliana: Oh, so then the company tanked because we're trying to raise more money, but without--I mean, it was not 100% because Steve left, but if Steve had stayed--Steve was integral in the fundraising process. He had a good relationship with the venture capital firm. They were supposed to give us more money. And a byproduct of his departure, as well as some other things that weren't working, was that we weren't able to raise more money and the company failed, and we were all left unpaid for several months of work. Like, we were supposed to be getting paid, and then our paychecks were put on hold because we were raising money, and then we just never got them. So, I was suddenly stuck with no income and no job, living by myself for the first time with my husband hating me, not speaking to me, and half my friends don't talk to me, and my family on the other side of the country. So, it was a dark time.
Cami: So, knowing all this, would you have left if you knew the next two years of your life was going to be the two hardest years of your life?
Juliana: So, I think I had to believe that I was going to be with Steve to leave because if I had known that I wasn't and just like how much grief--the grief just lasted so much longer than I thought it was going to, and I was doing so much work and it just felt like never-ending for the first year, close to a year, really the first year. I felt like I lost so much and I think I would have left, but I would have done it very differently. I don't know that I could have left without Steve. I think eventually, maybe I would have, but also eventually, we would have had kids and it would have been next to impossible for me to leave, and it would have just been harder to follow my soul's calling. I think that Steve restored my faith in love and gave me my zest for life back, and I don't know that I would have known that I was missing that if he hadn't come into my life. I wish that I could have gotten there in a way that could have been less painful for all involved, families, friends. Everyone was heavily impacted by this, but I just don't--it's not what happened, and I don't know that it could have happened like that.
Cami: Yeah. Can you explain to the audience what shadow is and what shadow means in psychology? Because I think a lot of people can't quite understand how you can speak about this so openly, so freely with--and just really illustrate it, because a lot of times, subjects like this are hard for people to talk about. And doing your shadow work can make this something that's more accessible to talk about. So, I'd love for you to tell people what that is.
Juliana: Yeah. So, the shadow self, which I believe was originally coined by Carl Jung, who's the father of a lot of modern psychology, not Freud, but a lot of elements of modern psychology, defined the shadow self as the parts of ourself that we deny and separate ourselves from because we don't like how they make us feel, essentially. They're not synonymous and they don't fit into our cognitive schema of how we want to see ourselves. And so, it can be parts of you that you were told in childhood didn't get loved. Like, in childhood, for example, for me, it was a lot about like accomplishments. And so, I learned very early on that being smart and doing well in school were things I was going to get loved for. And so, any part of me that didn't fit in with that I denied. I said I'm not going to lean into elements of myself that don't get me love because that's all a kid wants.
I mean, this is like I don't really know what I'm talking about, but the shadow, from my understanding, is all the parts of ourselves that we've denied, or let go of, or don't want to see because they are upsetting mirrors and they don't fit into how we want or see ourselves and who we want to be. And they can both be things that we think we are, and we fear, and we don't want to be, or things that we were told in childhood are not acceptable and not lovable. So, it's interesting to think. And I've done a lot of shadow work, and a lot of people have--a few people have come up as like just really triggering my shadow and elements of my--and you can tell that someone's triggering your shadow when they just bug you, like they just bother you on such a deep level. Like, they're getting under your skin in a way that doesn't really make sense. It's usually that they're triggering something in you, it's less about what they're doing.
Cami: Yeah. No. And I would say that you're really good at explaining that. You do know what you're talking about. You've worked through a lot of it, and it's really fun to watch and inspiring. Everyone should do some shadow work.
Juliana: It's pretty powerful. There's a lot of resources out there. I mean, you can just google shadow work and there's a lot of journal prompts, and meditations, and things to think about, and it's pretty straightforward once you get into it of what it is. And I like it because it's pretty--it kind of moves on its own, like once you start thinking about, "Oh, what was valued in childhood? What did my parents or my caretakers value? What elements of myself didn't fit with that? Or, what made me feel unlovable?" And then, you start to see like, "Oh, these are people who triggered that and that's why." And then it all just makes sense.
Cami: Yeah, yeah. It's pretty incredible, and it's hard work, and it can bring up a lot of emotions and a lot of things you don't want to deal with. So, be prepared for that as well. I think what the most significant thing in my mind that has come out of this experience for you is the fact that you are now awakened to what love can actually feel like. And even though it may not have been--I think the love was really with Steve, but it wasn't long-lasting, right? It still allowed you to know what it felt like to be in love, and that has opened you up to a whole new just level of calling into your life, not settling for someone that is compatible, but doesn't light you up, like will be a good dad, but you don't enjoy having sex with them, right?
Juliana: Right.
Cami: So, it has awakened this newfound love in you, and I want you to speak to that a little bit because I think that is the silver lining of this really hard time you went through.
Juliana: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it restored my faith in love, and that also was self-love. I mean, really, what you fall in love with when you're in love with someone, especially in an affair, is the version of you that shows up. And really with Steve, who I was in love with, was the me that came and showed up to that relationship every day, and the version of me that he saw, and that that could actually be who I am. And that opened up so much potential for me to step into that person, and who is that woman, and where did she come from. And it just felt like that's not who my husband saw me as, or elements that he saw me as, I didn't feel that way in his presence. And obviously, I'm sure that fades over time, but I felt a different side of me come forward with Steve than I had ever felt, and that's the side of me that has stayed.
And it's not about Steve at all. I am both so grateful and so angry at him, but he awakened a part of me that I now bring forward to myself, to my romantic relationship, to my friendships, to my family. Like, he unlocked some, or he was like a key that unlocked something in me. And could I have gotten there another way? Maybe. It didn't happen. I don't know. And so, I think it's less about him, and he was more there to show me what I could be and how I could feel, and that I could have the life that I want, and that I didn't have to settle, and all these things. And even though it didn't end up being with him, I'm still getting all those things now. And there was a lot of grief and a lot of sadness, and it was so much harder than I thought it was going to be because I was just like high on the affair. I thought it was just going to be--I left my husband, and then I was with Steve, and that was not what happened at all. But it was still like in each moment in my life today, I just see the blossomings of the person that I was prior to my ex-husband, and that developed in my relationship with him, but a lot of things were pulled out in my relationship with Steve, a lot of parts of me that I dusted the cobwebs off of and really came into.
Cami: Yeah, yeah. And people are so scared of hitting rock bottom and having a triggered-to-life moment. We always try to sidestep pain. And when you're meant to go through something, you're meant to go through something like that because you learn so much in dark times.
Juliana: And rock bottoms are really beautiful. And I mean, this is not a hot take like a lot of psychologists and spiritual advisors will say. But when you're in that period of everything is falling and you have no anchors--I remember my therapist, I said, "I just have nothing to--I've lost my job, I've lost my apartment, I've lost my financial stability, I've lost my husband, I've lost Steve, and I've lost half of my friends, a lot of my social life. I have no anchors. It feels like I'm just drowning." And she said, "You have to be your own anchor." And I said, "No. I'm not going to do that." I don't know how to do that. I only look for things outside of myself to fill myself up. What am I paying you for?
But I realized over time, as I spent more time with myself, and then went to Europe for those months in 2019 by myself, that I am the only person that can fill myself up. And yes, being in love now is a different experience. And obviously, a romantic partner can give you a lot that you can't give yourself, but it comes from--there is something to be said for the foundation of love yourself first. I think you don't have to be fully fixed and healed and perfect to be in relationship, but you have to be at a place where you're content with yourself because it's hard to love someone who is really disgusted with themselves. And I was not ready to be loved by anyone until like a year ago, certainly.
Cami: Oh, I love that. We'll leave it at that.
Juliana: It's a good ending.
Cami: Yeah. Thank you so much, Juliana. This was so fun. It's always a treat to talk to you. I'm lucky I get to talk to you every day.
Juliana: I know. Thanks for having me back. It was great. I hope people get their clarity on what really happens.
Cami: Yeah. It's important to tell your story, and thank you again for being open and honest. This really helps so many people and I'm excited to see how everyone loves it.