What if pleasure and pain are so closely connected that he who wants the greatest possible amount of the one must also have the greatest possible amount of the other, that he who wants to experience the âheavenly high jubilationâ must also be ready to be âsorrowful unto deathâ?
Friedrich Nietzsche || The Gay Science (via gentle-tragedy)
There is always a man eager to explain my mental illness to me. They all do it so confidently, motioning to their Hemingway and Bukowski bookshelf as they compare my depression to their late-night loneliness. There is always someone that rejected them that they equate their sadness to and a bottle of gin (or a song playing, or a movie) close by that they refer to as their cure. Somehow, every soft confession of my Crazy that I hand to them turns into them pulling out pieces of themselves to prove how it really is in my head.
So many dudes Iâve dated have faces like doctors ready to institutionalize
and love my crazy (but only on Friday nights.)
They tell their friends about my impulsive decision making and how I âget themâ more than anyone theyâve ever met but leave out my staring off in silence for hours and the self-inflicted bruises on my cheeks.
None of them want to acknowledge a crazy they canât cure.
They want a crazy that fits well into a trope and gives them a chance to play Hero. And they always love a Crazy that provides them material to write about.
Truth is they love me best as a cigarette cloud of impossibility, with my lipstick applied perfectly and my Crazy only being pulled out when their life needs a little spice.
They donât want me dirty, having not left my bed for days. Not diseased. Not real.
So they invite me over when theyâre going through writerâs block but donât answer my calls during breakdowns. They tell me I look beautiful when Iâm crying then stick their hands in-between my thighs. They mistake my silence for listening to them attentively and say my quiet mouth understands them like no one else has.
These men love my good dead hollowness. Because it means less of a fighting personality for them to force out. And is so much easier to fill someone who has already given up with themselves.
My Mental Illness Is Mansplained To Me Again, Lora Mathis (via lora-mathis)
If life and existence were an enjoyable state, then everyone would reluctantly approach the unconscious state of sleep and would gladly rise from it again. But the very opposite is the case, for everyone very willingly goes to sleep and unwillingly gets up again.
Sometimes partnership is learning to be second best.
Laura, my wife, is smarter than I am. She has almost double the degrees. (This bit shouldnât be entirely surprising; the gap between college and graduate degree attainment for men and women is 4.7 percent). But even understanding that diplomas donât equal intelligenceâââor, for that matter, equal pay or representation in the workforceâââLaura approaches things intellectually that I canât even wrap my head around. She canât tell you who Coltraneâs band was on A Love Supreme or how many points Kevin Durant averaged in college, things that years ago would have been important to me, but sheâs an in-demand educator. And there is likely no world in which I will ever be Lauraâs financial equal.
To my generation, boys birthed into the 80s and coughed up in the early-mid 2000s as men, this narrative is familiar. We were promised that the weight of our spectacular mediocrity would attach itself to a woman far more appealing and on top of things than we are; the women in our lives reduced to an overbearing, hysterical stereotype by our inability to bring anything to the relationship other than complication. I was conditioned to think a âhealthy partnershipâ meant a woman absorbing my failuresâââespecially if the woman happened to be successful and respected in other areas of life.
When I was younger, I often saw myself as a guy who was âemotionally complexâ and âmisunderstoodâ by women. I made terribly sequenced mixtapes for women in order to show off my aforementioned emotional complexity, because this freed me from having to do it by showing any ACTUAL emotional complexity. I crawled out of stagnant relationships largely unscathed, having risked nothing, and blamed women for simply ânot understanding me.â
Emotionally stunted men blame their romantic failures on the woman who just wonât love them âas they are.â They find themselves in relationships with stunning, successful women who have the primary function of simply surviving the mishaps of their partners. There is a long storied tradition of men burdening women with our inability to meet them half, or even a quarter of the way in relationships. Menâââalways the central figuresâââforget anniversaries, spend money on silly things, neglect the needs of their children, and are ultimately forgiven.
I spent my formative years seeing romantic partnership reflected back to me in the form of dominant men living like children due to the safety net of a woman. Being in a relationship with someone who both has their shit together and has no time for me to NOT have my shit together is a crash course. I went from attempting to coast by on half-measures in our early dating, to waking up in a reality where I was really in a battle for our shared joy. And I was expected to take it on with her, at every turn. When Laura and I got married, we decided to take on each other entirely. We both hyphenated our names, partially for the sake of pre-existing publications on both of our ends, but also as a small symbol of us standing on the same ground, each with an equal view of the horizon.
A lot of men like to talk in gym locker rooms. I have always known this, but fully realized it last year, when the regulars at my gym found out I was getting married. The advice that I most regularly received was in the form of jokes from other men, generally in their 40s and 50s, who had been married for years. Theyâd lightheartedly tell me how much of a burden their wives were, before breaking out into laughter; theyâd gift me tips on how to build a âman caveâ and the importance of getaways. All the advice revolved around escaping the presence of someone you promised to love.
The thing about undertaking any partnershipââânot just romantic ones, not just hetero-romantic onesâââis the entire process of unlearning the selfishness that weâve all cultivated (potentially) over decades. In my case, Iâm with someone who almost certainly would be just as successful without my presence, which accelerates the process of becoming less self-involved. Itâs easy to romanticize sacrifice in tandem with love, but it isnât easy for men who have spent their lives reading the hype of their own existence. What my gym mates didnât tell me is that the best part of any commitment, explicitly for men who are told that they have to escape, ISNâT looking for a way out. Itâs also understanding that hiding from growth puts an inescapable burden on the women we love.
One day, three weeks before my wedding, an older guy who often ran on a treadmill next to me at the gym gave me the only tip I considered worthwhile. He stopped me on my way out of the locker room and said: âLook. The best and most exciting part of marriage is figuring out how to do it.â
I laughed and asked, âWell, how long does that part last?â
His reply was, âIf youâre lucky, your whole life.â
Partnership is a learning process that never stops. I still make mistakes. I spend money that should be in savings on sneakers. I donât go on a big grocery shopping trip with Laura, even though I know she needs help, so that I can play an hour of video games. I apologize lightly for these things but case the âsorryâ in the accusation that my needs are being ignored.
So often, I got caught up in the idea of simply feeling the feelings of love. The mixtape as a bridge to my emotions, my writing as a bridge to my understanding. Early in our marriage, Laura told me that she believes that the key to marriage is coming to terms with the idea that loving each other is a choice we make, every day. It is either something that you decide to do, or not do. Itâs not enough to just feel love. You have to do the very real work that comes with it, and constantly think of the person who exists at the other end of your desire.
I once thought myself massive and unwilling to shrink at the feet of anyone. I once thought myself a window, but never a mirror. I still do, sometimes, on days when I use the myth of âemotional complexityâ that so many men hang their hats on as an excuse for not giving my partner all of myself. Yes, it is not a âman caveâ or a bar where you can run to at night after your wife falls asleepâââitâs worse than that. And it stops men from reaching their full potential, from being the best partner that they can be.
When men stop relying on the women who love us to do the heavy lifting of partnership, we can name these things on our ownâââwhich gives them a life, a moveable body. I am lucky to love a woman who allows me to realize my own flaws; allows me to name them and watch them grow smaller and smaller. Until there is enough room for both of us, and all we carry.
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