She Asked Me Why

Dear L,

You asked me why… and I’ve been thinking carefully about how to answer you.

I want to start by saying that I could see and feel your pain the other night. It was palpable, and it hasn’t left me and it’s just as present in your email.

And, I am truly sorry for what you’re moving through right now. I’m going to be very clear with you, because I think clarity is what you’re searching for. I don’t know who your husband is.

He is one of many. I work with a large number of clients, and I keep both their identities and what they share with me completely discreet. That distance is intentional. It protects them, and it protects the lives they’ve built outside of me. It wouldn’t serve either of us for me to know more, and I would never compromise that boundary.

What I can tell you is this: as isolating as this feels, your experience is not uncommon. I’ve heard versions of your words before. The confusion, the quiet unravelling, the sense that something has been happening just out of view.

That doesn’t make it easier. I know that.

But you are not alone in it.

You asked me, “Why is he doing this to me?” And, I want to gently shift that, because the answer isn’t what you think. As hard as this is to understand… This isn’t about you.

It is not a reflection of your worth, your desirability, or the life you’ve built together. It isn’t about something you’re lacking or something you failed to give him. And it isn’t about him searching for a replacement, having an affair, or even an emotional substitute.

Men don’t come to someone like me because they want a different life. They come because there are parts of themselves they don’t fully understand, or don’t feel they can express safely within the life they already have.

What exists between your husband and I, whomever he is, is structured, intentional, and contained. It lives in a very specific space. It does not spill into yours in the way you’re fearing.

I don’t meet clients in real life. My work is entirely virtual, often across countries, always within clear boundaries. Nothing physical has ever occurred, and there is no desire on my end to disrupt, replace, or take anything from you.

My clients come to me.

And when they do, it’s rarely about indulgence in the way people assume. More often, it’s about control. About placing the messier, more complicated parts of themselves somewhere they can be seen without consequence, understood without judgment, and held without destabilizing everything else they value, including you.

There is care in that choice, more than you might expect.

It may not feel that way right now, standing where you are. I understand that. But what you’re looking at isn’t betrayal in the way you’ve been taught to recognize it. It’s something quieter. More internal. More deliberate.

You said in your email that this feels different, and you’re right. It is. This work isn’t about building a life with someone else. It isn’t about love, and it isn’t even about sex in the way people tend to assume. It’s about understanding, containment, and permission.

A controlled space where someone can explore a part of themselves they don’t quite know what to do with, without letting it unravel the life they’ve already built.

And I want to be very clear about one thing, L: This does not define you, nor does it diminish you, nor undo the life you and your husband have created together.

If anything, it exists alongside it, more separate than it feels right now. I know that may be difficult to accept immediately. You don’t need to rush to make sense of it all at once. But you are asking the right questions.

You handled yourself with more composure the other night than you’re giving yourself credit for. I hope this offers you a little more clarity, or at the very least, a different lens to look through.

Please take care. 

Warmly,
Jessica