Happy Mondayest of Mondays (Gretchen Wieners whispers "It's Thursday"). Tits out to new beginnings.
I come to my laptop with renewed joy about my own writing process. The writing I want to do, verses the writing that I think is important or entertaining or successful or enduring.
While I was away with family, I thought of so many things to write about. I’m on a bit of a backlog. So here are a few micro-posts.
–Cultural Validation: Our society’s refusal to let go of the idea of “the one” is a little like religion’s refusal to stop selling the idea of an afterlife. We don’t know how to live in the moment, how to sit through disappointment, how to move through grief, or how to stop worrying, so we create fantasies that only serve to make us more miserable.
Some of us move beyond the idea of “the one,” but then we meet someone who unintentionally fucks us all the way up. Life with them breaks a certain limit of pre-programmed happiness, and life after them leaves us questioning what the fuck that was. It’s easy to make ourselves the center of gravity in the universe of relationships (and to a certain point, we should), but we have to resist the urge to build a negative worldview around it. The hot-people-are-objectively-terrible and the men-will-always-leave-you bits. It’s not men or hot people. It’s people in general. It’s the difficulty of relationships. Remember that you also unintentionally fucked someone all the way up. And I know this makes me an asshole, but I find that comforting.
Those of us who do not believe in “the one” try our damnedest to warn others when we see them start to fall. Don’t have any preconceived notions. Don’t get carried away before you really get to know them. There are plenty of fish in the sea. But I still see every female high school student I teach fall into a stupor when a boy shows them a minimal amount of attention. And it reminds me of all the ways I twisted myself, happily, to participate in a relationship that depleted me. All the times I drove an hour to his place, low on sleep and energy, because simply the feeling of being near him exhilarated me.
I didn’t believe in soul-mates, and I sure-as-fuck wasn’t monogamous. What fulfilled me? I’ve been throwing around a theory that it was a kind of cultural validation. That when I walked around with this guy who gave me orgasms but wasn’t respectful, other people would see me and know my experiences. The songs by Brand New, Say Anything, and Death Cab for Cutie were about me. Rihanna's pain in her music is my pain. High Fidelity is about me. Love Actually is about me. Everything is about me. The world sees me and I'm real.
Of course, cultural validation goes hand in hand with a strong lack-of-self worth, which is a deeper and more fundamental piece to the story. But the idea stays with me like a wall painting I never noticed before. Especially when I think about every person who says they don’t believe in soul-mates, but still longs to get married.
– “Place-Holder” Dating: This is strong in both monogamous and polyamorous people, and it comes from a monogamous mindset. We date someone that we’re not crazy about because we want sex and comradery, and they’re available. But we’ve got one eye open for a different person to “fill the spot” when we meet them.
This makes psychological sense if you’re a narcissist, but it’s quite a roundabout way of saying that the person is ungrateful.
While I truly don’t want to take the magic out of love and relationships (I’m a witch; I sort of thrive on magic), it is important to me as a relationship anarchist that I treat my partners as whole people. Perhaps it’s also a part of being my own primary. I don’t want to fall into an identity-crises-depression when a partner needs to shift their role or amount of time in my life, especially because when you increase the amount of partners, you also inevitably increase the amount of breakups.
–The Smart Asshole That You Miss, But Are Much Better Without: There is a genre of person that we all left after therapy, and this is the person who projects as much intelligence as they do judgment. They were so clever and funny, had a stimulating vocabulary, and made us feel smarter to talk to them.
…but they also made us feel stupider about some things. Maybe about the differences in how much we read, or consume the news, or remember events from AP History. At least once they’ve made us feel incompetent at our careers by pointing out a mistake that sounded fundamental, but was actually far more nuanced than they had the energy to comprehend.
Cheers, you fun and clever asshole. Thanks for the fun, no thanks for the complexes. I truly hope your self-image and personal relationships are better than when I last saw you.
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