The existential drama is a chronic low level tragedy that no one even notices- like Willy Loman although not even worth a play- maybe one of those steely cold and aimless short stories in the New Yorker about apathetic, anomic rich white people cheating on each other with other apathetic anomic white people and not even really caring much when it's discovered.
You can live your own story as best as you are able, or you can play a role in someone else's, and put most of your energy into being the person in their story that they wish they were living. When we make a deal to be the character in someone else's story that makes their (fake) life come true, we might as well go jump off a bridge.
Living your own story whether it "makes other people happy" or not (which we can't fucking do anyway no matter how hard we try) is painful because it means saying fuck you to the world to the degree that the world tries to force you to exist for others and their fantasies and their ideas of what their lives ought to be like.
The latter, being the person someone else needs you to be for their life to look like what they think it should, is the weakest sauce there is, however, and the saddest part of all is that the person for whom you are playing the role in order for their story to be true ultimately does not care about you in the least. You are merely a means to the end of them living what looks like the life they think they should live. You are only useful to the degree that you help them look good to their family and friends, and most of all, to themselves- to the degree that you are helping them live the life they think they should be living. To the degree that you are their good wife, good husband, happy householder, reliable bread winner, to the degree that you keep yourself out of sight at any and all times when revealing anything authentic about yourself would scratch that look good.
Everyone is telling a story with you in it. Even if you are one of their main characters, if you are just a fucking plot device, well, that's misery and loneliness.
Have a great Wednesday!"
Finishing up Gorski's book, it feels like his analysis of "healthy" relationships and their characteristics outline the core beliefs of a combination of the human potential movement, family system therapy, 12 step recovery and cis-heteronormative default monogamous ethics. It's always somewhat of a let down for me when the "solution" for the difficulties in my life ends up feeling relatively shallow. There's so much tautology in the "self help" movement that goes sort of like this: 1. My self is broken. 2. I will benefit from inventorying all the ways my self is broken. 3. Here are the totally reasonable ways my self can fix itself. 4. I am now better.
None of it works that way, in my experience, at least not reliably. It's too much like the old joke, "doctor, it hurts when I do this!" "Well, stop doing that."
For example, Gorski goes back to one of the great and I think shaming and frustrating cliches about relationships and love: "The possibility of healthy intimacy starts with the self, This is a fundamental principle of healthy love. You must first develop a healthy self before you develop a healthy relationship. You will only attract to you for an intimate relationship someone who approximates the level of emotional health that you have yourself. This makes it very difficult."
Yeah, this is fucking bullshit. It's a form of therapy/recovery extortion- because of course, if I just try harder, if I just work harder to "become better," I will finally "attract" the "right person" for me. It's not only dangerous because it sounds so reasonable, it's also toxic. It also leads to all sorts of therapy/recovery manipulation of other people, identifying our own "level" of emotional "health" by measuring other people's. I just do not think life really works very well like this. I think the reality is MESSY, as I have said before, and there is simply no way in hell that I can "work on myself" enough to be "worthy" of a "healthy partner.".
There are some bits of good advice in Gorski's otherwise disappointing tautologies and platitudes- have a program of recovery for yourself, learn how to get out of relationships, do things together, have a wide circle of individual and couple friends, etc. But these all ring hollow to me- like superficial look good kinds of suggestions. He doesn't mention discovering much, experimenting, risk taking, taking time apart, being sure to directly and honestly encounter each other on a regular basis- making the relationship important. Nowhere, not onece, does he mention being sure to fight, to express anger and sadness, learning how to grieve together, etc. It feels like his version of "healthy" is mostly that the relationship is really not that important, and definitely is not "as important" as one's self is. I think this may or may not be satisfying for superficial people who use relationships as a *part* of their lives, and who are self absorbed enough that all other people, including their primary partner, basically exist *for them*. I find this framework essentially narcissistic and not appealing to me.
If one's goal in life, however, is to be SAFE, and if "healthy" looks rational, well defined, transactional and can be reasonably explained to others, then a lot of these therapy/recovery ideas of romantic relationships are great. In my experience- and this may well be supported by the evidence of, for example, so many of the therapy/recovery relationship gurus getting divorced, having all kinds of relationship problems, even if they are authentically trying to live their own talk- this intimate partnering is a mystery, risky, an adventure, a huge step toward letting go of control and entering into the whitewater, rather than just canoeing along on a pond.
"Healthy" for me has to encompass devotion, access to the sacred, to a sense of adventure and story, to the depth of feeling that acknowledges mystery at the core of how we come together, and how we come apart. It feels to me like this adventure is available to all- including traumatized people, codependent people, "dysfunctional" people, etc. And it seems like a shame to me that the suggested remedy for addictive relationships is a reductionist, protective, rationalized framework of reasonable decisions and behaviors. This is already all too black and white, and all too tempting for those of us in recovery who are sometimes tempted to equate our feelings of safety with our feelings of having "gotten it right" or "being healthy."
At the same time, of course, it feels to me like relationship recovery offers the promise of reduced agony, increased satisfaction. It feels like there are a lot of ways to have a healthy relationship, some of which, or some phases of which, do indeed involve the kind of rationalist clarity that Gorski and others offer. But too much sanity is insanity, and to think I can lead much of a fulfilling and rich life according to rule based or diminishing behaviors seems delusional.
I think, ultimately, what is even more helpful for people to learn is the range of skills necessary to adventurously navigate the irrationality, unpredictability, mysterious secrets, inexplicable passion, feeling of destiny, adoration, devotion, attention, heartbreak, fear and basic insanity of intimacy. Instead of trying to bleach it all out through perfectly reasonable suggestions, let's assume we simply embrace the entire huge fucking mess, and what we really need to learn is how to navigate that with skill, compassion, tenderness and enthusiasm. That seems truly healthy to me.
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