I don't think it was schtick. I think Ethan was a complete asshole to AB under the guise of it being schtick. It always rubbed me the wrong way. Now clips are spreading of Tamara talking not very kindly about AB and I personally believe they had some weird connection over their dislike for AB. Not sure why he disliked him so much, don't want to dig too deep on that. But it seemed pretty obvious to me, which sucked to watch. I've always loved AB and Lena and thought they deserved more respect and appreciation from him.

This reel popped up on my feed and I saw that Hila liked it, it’s about cheating. Some interesting insight into what she’s feeling currently.

Angels on her body <3

Yes first and foremost he owes his family and the crew more than us.

BUT Ethan knows that we stuck with him through the absolute most heinous shit thrown at him and Hila. He knew that it wasn't easy being an H3 fan these last few years being called genocide deniers for watching a podcast. People here getting shit talked in real life for wearing Teddy Fresh.

And yet he gambled everything and proved everyone right who called him a selfish asshole and made us all look like absolute fools.

It doesn't matter anymore what points snark or whoever made up about him and what they had a point on because now everyone on the outside will assume the most heinous shit they heard about him and the community was true all along.

The more I think about the entire situation the madder I get.

Like Dan is a true ride or die. He gave this podcast his absolute ALL… ethan is so incredibly selfish.

The face of a Man who knows he lost everything

Being late ALWAYS was so lame. especially as paying members.

The coffin, the white suit, the shirtless depressed texting, the defeated face as he says goodbye. The public nature of all of this is mind blowing. Fuck Ethan, bro.

With everyone discussing who they want hosting the show, I'm not seeing enough love for AB & Lena. Their dynamic reminds me so much of Ethan & Hila before the podcast, before everything. They're young and in love and they moved to the big city to make it big. These 2 are really funny and they have done so much for the show behind the scenes. With all the negativity around, can we show these 2 some appreciation?

📸 [u/kmsas](u/kmsaski)[a](u/kmsaski)[ki](u/kmsaski)

if anyone out there in the family has some helpful tips with feeling nausea, idk if they’re looking at the sub now but could be helpful!

❤️

Like many of you, I've spent far too much time these past few days watching old clips, reading posts, and getting completely sucked into the Ethan and Tamara situation. I've got a few thoughts I'd like to share, and unfortunately for anyone reading this, brevity has never been one of my strengths.

For some context, I'm a therapist, and I've worked with quite a few people who cheated on their partners. I've heard plenty of justifications, rationalizations, and explanations for why cheating somehow seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. I've also seen what happens when those same people are eventually confronted with the consequences.

Some of the questions I've seen people asking here reminded me of conversations I've had in therapy, so I figured I'd throw in my two cents.

I should also mention that I've never been a particularly dedicated H3 viewer. I watched Ethan and Hila's old videos years ago and followed Frenemies for a while, but that's about it. So I'm certainly not claiming to know everything about these people or what happened behind closed doors. I'm just sharing some observations based on patterns I've encountered in my work.

One thing that seems to have baffled people is just how brazen some of Ethan's interactions with Tamara look in retrospect. Watching certain clips now, it's hard not to wonder how some of those moments went largely unquestioned at the time. Of course, hindsight makes everything look more obvious, but the behavior people are discussing is something I've encountered many times before.

People generally assume that someone having an affair would go to extraordinary lengths to conceal it. And initially, that's often true. They're careful about their communication, come up with elaborate excuses, and try to avoid anything that might raise suspicion.

But the longer they get away with it, the more comfortable they tend to become. Every potentially compromising situation that goes unnoticed reinforces the belief that they're in control and nobody is catching on. Eventually, they may start taking risks they wouldn't have considered at the beginning.

And sometimes, that's part of the appeal. Having a shared secret can create a rather intoxicating sense of exclusivity. You can exchange seemingly innocent comments, gestures, or inside jokes that mean absolutely nothing to the people around you but carry an entirely different meaning for the two of you. You're effectively communicating something intimate right in front of an audience that has no idea what's going on.

For some people, there's a certain satisfaction in that. You're getting away with something forbidden, and the fact that nobody seems to notice can become a source of excitement in itself.

So when people ask why someone having an affair would repeatedly draw attention to themselves, my answer would be that apparent carelessness isn't always accidental. Sometimes the secrecy and the possibility of being discovered become part of what makes the whole thing exciting.

Another thing I've found interesting is the discussion about the power dynamic between them.

I've seen quite a few people point out the obvious imbalance between an older, wealthy, established employer and a younger employee who was previously a fan. That's a legitimate concern, and the professional power imbalance doesn't simply disappear because a personal relationship develops.

But power in these situations can be a little more complicated than that. I've encountered cases where someone who initially appeared to be in the weaker position gradually realized just how much influence they actually had over the other person.

Think about it. One person potentially has a marriage, children, a reputation, a business, and an entire established life that could be jeopardized if the affair comes to light. The other person might have considerably less to lose in those particular areas.

At some point, the person with more conventional power may become heavily dependent on the other's discretion. They can't easily risk upsetting them, alienating them, or losing their cooperation. That creates a different kind of leverage, that Tamara seems to have been very aware of.

I also read a particularly interesting post here from someone who admitted to having been the other person in an affair. Their description of the emotional gratification involved reminded me of things I've encountered professionally.

Being chosen by someone who's already committed to another person can be an enormous source of validation, particularly for someone who struggles with their self-esteem. There's the obvious excitement of being desired, but also the satisfaction of feeling special enough that someone is apparently willing to risk their existing relationship for you.

Sometimes it even becomes a sort of competition with the existing partner. Being the person someone chooses to pursue despite already having a family can create a sense of superiority, however misguided that might be.

And when the person involved is someone you previously admired or considered particularly successful, that validation can become even more rewarding. Someone who once seemed unattainable is suddenly pursuing you, and you might find yourself having more influence over them than you ever imagined.

Of course, none of that means Ethan would somehow be a helpless victim of another person's influence. He's an adult and responsible for his own decisions. I just find the interpersonal dynamics interesting because affairs can involve considerably more than romantic attraction.

Something else people have pointed out is that Ethan appeared increasingly cold or dismissive toward Hila during the period in question. And this brings me to one of the patterns I find particularly interesting about infidelity.

People having affairs sometimes develop an increasingly negative perception of their existing partner, even when they previously considered their relationship relatively satisfying.

Part of that comes down to making a rather unfair comparison. A long-term marriage, especially one involving children, shared responsibilities, and years of everyday life, simply isn't going to feel like the beginning of a new relationship. The novelty wears off, routines develop, and your partner has responsibilities and priorities that don't always revolve around you.

Some people struggle with that more than you'd expect. I've worked with individuals who resented no longer receiving the same undivided attention they experienced earlier in their relationship. Some even struggled with the attention their partner devoted to their children.

Now imagine beginning an affair with someone who doesn't share those responsibilities. Suddenly, you're receiving attention, admiration, affection, and excitement without having to deal with the less glamorous aspects of maintaining a long-term relationship.

You get to feel like the center of someone's world again and it's remarkably easy to convince yourself that this is what you've been missing all along.

The problem, of course, is that you're comparing the exciting early stages of one relationship with the ordinary, sometimes frustrating reality of another. Your affair partner isn't the person you're raising children with, managing finances with, or arguing with about whose turn it is to clean the kitchen.

It's a pretty convenient comparison, really.

This is also where cognitive dissonance and motivated reasoning become relevant. Most people want to think of themselves as decent human beings. Nobody particularly enjoys acknowledging that they're behaving selfishly, betraying someone they love, or potentially destroying their family.

So when their behavior contradicts that self-image, they need some way of making the contradiction easier to live with. And one way to do that is to convince themselves that their existing relationship is actually much worse than they previously thought.

Suddenly, ordinary disagreements become evidence of fundamental incompatibility. Their partner's perfectly reasonable frustrations become proof that they're controlling, unappreciative, or impossible to please. Meanwhile, the affair partner is apparently wonderful because they provide attention, excitement, and reassurance without the usual domestic responsibilities.

I've even encountered people who seemed to actively provoke negative reactions from their partners. They might deliberately neglect responsibilities, stay away longer than necessary, or start arguments over trivial things, only to then use their partner's predictable frustration as further evidence of how terrible their relationship supposedly is.

Sometimes they're aware of what they're doing. Other times, they seem genuinely oblivious to how much they're contributing to the very problems they're complaining about.

Either way, it creates a rather convenient cycle.

The worse they convince themselves their existing relationship is, the more justified the affair feels. And the more invested they become in the affair, the more motivated they are to interpret their partner's behavior negatively.

Eventually, some develop genuine resentment toward the very person they're betraying, which is particularly unpleasant, considering that the person being wronged can end up being treated as though they're somehow responsible for the whole situation.

And that brings me to another question I've seen repeatedly: How could Ethan possibly risk his marriage, children, career, and nearly two decades of shared history for something so comparatively new?

One thing I've noticed in therapy is that people who cheat are often perfectly capable of understanding the potential consequences on an intellectual level.

They know their marriage could end. They know their children could be affected. They know their reputation, finances, and professional lives could suffer.

But there's a difference between rationally knowing something and actually allowing that knowledge to influence your decisions.

Some people become remarkably good at compartmentalizing. They mentally separate the affair from the rest of their lives and focus almost exclusively on the immediate gratification, while treating the potential consequences as some distant, hypothetical problem.

They tell themselves they'll never get caught. That they're being careful enough. That nobody's really getting hurt because nobody knows. That they deserve to feel appreciated. That their marriage was already unhappy anyway.

Some even convince themselves that getting caught might ultimately be a good thing because then they could finally be with the person who supposedly makes them truly happy.

What's interesting is how genuinely convincing these explanations can become to the people constructing them.

They're not necessarily sitting there every day consciously deciding that a few months of excitement are worth sacrificing their family for. They've gradually built a version of reality in which their behavior feels understandable, sometimes even entirely justified.

And then they get caught.

Suddenly, all those carefully separated parts of their lives collide. The consequences that previously seemed hypothetical become very real, very quickly.

I've seen people experience an astonishing degree of emotional collapse at that point. Someone who spent months rationalizing their behavior, complaining about their marriage, and convincing themselves that their affair was worth the risk can suddenly become absolutely desperate to preserve the very relationship they were willing to jeopardize.

And from the outside, it's almost absurd. How can someone be so surprised by consequences that were obvious from the beginning?

But that's precisely the issue. They never really confronted those consequences emotionally. As long as they believed they could have both, they didn't have to seriously consider what losing one would mean. Sometimes it's only when they're actually facing that loss that they seem to fully appreciate what they had.

I wouldn't be surprised if some version of this process played a role in Ethan's situation.

Ultimately, I think what makes situations like this so interesting is that many of the underlying psychological mechanisms are actually pretty ordinary. Wanting to feel admired, enjoying attention, seeking excitement, protecting our self-image, and interpreting situations in ways that make us feel better about our decisions are all fairly normal human tendencies.

What makes them so destructive in the context of infidelity is how far some people are willing to take them, and how effectively they can convince themselves that they're somehow justified in doing so.

I also think it's worth remembering that someone can genuinely love their partner and still behave in ways that are incredibly selfish and hurtful. People aren't always particularly consistent in their emotions or behavior. But loving someone obviously doesn't excuse betraying them, and understanding someone's psychological motivations doesn't make them any less responsible for their decisions.

If there's one thing I've found particularly sad about working with people in these situations, it's how often they seem to recognize the value of what they had only after they've already caused significant, sometimes irreversible damage to it.

And by then, the person they've betrayed has often spent months trying to understand why their relationship is deteriorating, sometimes even blaming themselves for problems they didn't create.

Anyway, these are just some of the things that came to mind while following the discussion. I don't pretend to know exactly what happened between the people involved, and I'm certainly not claiming that being a therapist gives me some special ability to figure out their motivations from a bunch of podcast clips. But I've encountered enough similar dynamics in my work that I thought some of these observations might be worth sharing.

Alright, I'll shut up now. Thanks to anyone who made it through all of that and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

41 year old man not being able to be on time