SA: We’re often the most stubbornly attracted to those who represent forbidden, or unresolved, aspects of our personality. In this light, it’s worth considering that you’ve cheated on “multiple boyfriends” with this man. Could it be that your overwhelming desire for him allows you to behave in ways that otherwise violate your sense of self? After all, it’s not exactly “sensitive” or “empathic” to betray a series of lovers. I say this not to make you feel guilty but because the path to the truth so often runs through shame. Perhaps being with this man allows you to indulge certain darker aspects of his personality that dwell within you while also disavowing them.

CS: Bingo. This is precisely what I mean when I suggest you consider the narrative you’ve established about your ex, which is all about dichotomy. You’ve described him as your “complete and utter opposite,” and yet perhaps what draws you to him are not the ways he’s unlike you, but rather traits or impulses you share. These emerge when you speak to him or even think about him — and they thrill you. Pay attention to that.

Like Steve, I’m struck by the fact that you cheated on several boyfriends with your ex. He has functioned in your life as someone who disrupts your romantic stability (even if he doesn’t destroy it). We generally see that as a negative, but very likely, in your deepest truth, you wanted or needed that disruption. Do you want or need it now? Your concern about living near your ex — a concern, I’ll note, you describe as terror — seems to me to be both a fear and a wish, and it takes you entirely out of the equation, as if his hold over you and your agency is inevitable. But it isn’t. You ask us for advice about how to free yourself of him, but it’s not him you need to be free of. It’s your own desire for the part of yourself he makes manifest.

SA: One other significant aspect of all this is the timing. You’ve settled into a stable marriage and just had your first child. You’re at a moment in your life when everyone expects you to behave like a dutiful and doting mother — to suppress the uninhibited and frankly destructive lust that made your affair with this man so exhilarating. Nobody knows the precise ingredients of temptation. We can only attempt to know ourselves. That’s ultimately how we gain control of our lives. It’s not that we banish our desires. We simply learn to manage them, so that they no longer hold the power to destroy our happiness.