in my opinion, a major reason for the beatles’ breakup was, in short, john beginning to resent paul’s… fakeness (for lack of a better term). i think that paul was very dependent on john in similar ways that john was to yoko, but less destructively. paul always needed somebody to kind of shake him and get him to live life non-robotically, and i think john changed the course of paul’s life in that way. paul never really needed to be directly emotional to john, because john established it so that he was the leader, the protector, and the one who knew john above all. and when john challenged this dynamic (with people like stu), john was used to paul fighting to get john back, and because john kind of associates love with chaotic intensity, this extreme dependence they had on one another fueled the band and their relationship with one another.
india forced them to surrender all of their safety nets and finally confront their lives from a sober, realistic, crushing angle. paul’s engagement to jane ending only a few months after this trip solidifies this for me, as this was paul’s ultimate backup plan for safety and escape. to me, it’s evident that paul didn’t love jane the way he wanted to love a wife. he proposed after brian died, his 1967 summer of freedom with john ended, and there seemed like no other option but to finally ask jane the dreaded question. i always thought that jane’s relationship with paul especially bothered john because it was the absolute embodiment of paul’s fakeness, avoidance, and bubbled-in reality. as much as john liked understanding paul, he grew angry that after all this time, paul still remained largely emotionally unavailable.
i think john expected paul to someday wake up with some sort of revelation or sense of honesty, not truly understanding that paul is incapable of doing that. one of paul’s core struggles is an inability to understand his own feelings. i’m unsure if paul saw that john’s emotional intensity came from a similar place of disconnect from self; while paul isolates, john erupts. india took away the resources for paul to hide from the reality that was crashing upon him, and made john simmer in his own misery and self-destruction. they return home, and everything goes to shit because everything that went unspoken and avoided has now blown up in their faces, with john and paul having to face the brunt of most of these issues. they can’t resume life with one another without things feeling weird, because nothing has ever been so openly turbulent before. so they both seek out heterosexuality (and mothers), with john making extreme public strides with yoko. and yet, john placing yoko on a pedestal didn’t make paul finally make any sort of move to be honest with john, or confess any feelings, or admit is own need for john to help him. john, as chaotic as his mind was, always depended on paul’s dependency and loyalty. and yet, john felt that in the moments that mattered most, paul was unable to surpass his own emotional repression for the sake of salvaging his relationship with john. and john, high off his mind half the time, read this as paul being dismissive, and so his punishment of paul begins. and paul knows he is being punished each time yoko is dragged into the studio, but paul is paul, and he really doesn’t know how to exist as an independent entity wt this point, so he just nags, hides, throws himself into work to feel useful, and self-destructs.
luckily, linda (who i find similar to john in many ways) barreled through the chaos surrounding paul’s life because she saw the inherent goodness paul possessed, especially with heather. but even then, linda and yoko both got dragged to the studio as objects of comfort for their respective partners, as well as weapons used for said partners to attempt to one-up each other. and the “i want a divorce” announcement from john truly put an end to any sort of emotional illusion of possibility for the band and thus the relationship between john and paul to be reconciled. john didn’t expect paul to take it so harsh and personally, and paul running away to scotland to avoid dealing with anything scared the shit out of john. i’m sure john didn’t even know where paul truly was, or if paul was okay, and i think once paul finally showed himself in public again (in the form of saying the beatles were over), john’s worry turned to resentment and anger. i also think that paul’s breakdown was a shock to linda, but she worked with paul through his worst moments for the sake of their new family, and in these moments, linda truly became paul’s new john in a consistent way that i think john and yoko ultimately lacked.
if i could time travel and talk to them, i think i would slap john across the face and tell him that he is so deeply loved and needed by these people in his life, and is inability to recognize this is ultimately what proves to be his biggest downfall. i would tell him to pull his shit together and stop thinking of himself as so irredeemable, and instead work towards preserving the love that exists in his life rather than intentionally annihilate and disregard it. and i would tell paul to buy a diary. genuinely. i would tell him to write down a list of experiences that have hurt him, and i would tell him to gently unpack those realizations within himself. i’d let paul know that by repressing every horror he has experienced since he was a little kid will build and build until the overflow of everything becomes too much to stomach, and that sometimes, his empathy needs to appear a bit more outwards. i would tell them BOTH to stop being such men, because their ideas of masculinity and heterosexuality and all of the above is disconnecting them from their own happiness, damn it!
anyway. sorry about this ramble. i’m not fact-checking it, because this was literally one of the first things i did after waking up from my 6 hour “nap.” i also had a midterm today, and had an hour to hand write an essay along with other bullshit so i am too tired to make any edits or changes. so i hope this makes sense. this was made after reading @bambi-kinos ‘s wonderful post linked here: https://www.tumblr.com/bambi-kinos/797955296895123456/why-do-you-think-john-was-so-eager-to-initiate-a. GO READ THIS!!!
