I say in lectures in 1996 that fifty percent or more of American marriages go bust because most of us no longer have extended families. When you marry somebody now, all you get is one person.
I say when couples fight, it isn’t about money or sex or power. What they’re really saying is, “You’re not enough people!”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
You’re all that I need
-Practically every love song
I’m starting this post on a cold Monday morning about fifteen minutes before I’ll get in the car and drive to work and do a whole bunch of planning and maneuvering and talking that, in the big scheme of things, won’t amount to a hill of beans – or at least that’s how I think either Vonnegut or his alter ego Kilgore Trout would put it (for sure, the hill of beans part). I’ve packed my lunch. The dog sits behind me, sighing and hoping I’ll play with him before I go. Pieces of a to-do list form in my head and I try not to go there. Not yet. I’ve been wanting and trying to write and I keep coming back to this notion “you’re not enough people” – thinking it should be a jumping off point for something, but I’m not quite sure what.
For starters, I’m not sure if I agree with Vonnegut’s statement. I feel like I’ve been in relationships where the other person was more than enough people for me (though I also find that I don’t need a lot of people and maybe rely too heavily on my partner). I’ve also known quite a few people who consider themselves to be somewhat anti-social or introverted. They freely admit that they’re looking for fewer people not more. Then again, I’m not sure any of us are married – so there’s that.
Aside from my Friday night excursions to the pub, a few phone calls with family, my interactions at work, and the group text that I’m on but don’t really participate in, I do not spend much time being with, or talking to, people. Most of those relationships (perhaps deliberately so) are kept at a distance… and I’m considered the social one of the family. I’m not sure how I feel about all of that. On the one hand, I think I’d welcome deeper friendships, but on the other, they feel like a lot of work and there’s probably a reason I’ve gotten this far without developing them. I suspect the situation, whatever it is, isn’t going to get better with age… I don’t know a lot of people whose social circles have grown as they’ve gotten older. If I’m being completely honest, I’m not sure I know how to develop a deep friendship outside of a romantic relationship. It’s not something I’ve practiced or placed a lot of value on. For as long as I can remember, and in every relationship I’ve had, I always ditched my friends for the girl… and they usually did the same. This, somehow, seems normal but perhaps unhealthy. This feels like the seller’s disclosure I have to share: the roof is probably going to need to be replaced, the plumbing is outdated, and he doesn’t have a large circle of friends and will rely on you and yours for his emotional sustenance….
I have a Facebook friend who is going through a divorce. A while back, I had reached out to him to see how he was holding up. We texted a bit and agreed to get together when I was back home for a visit. He stood me up – family issues. He has been sharing on Facebook some of his issues related to custody and child support. Up until his marital woes, most of his posts were about his business travels and the new bourbon or whiskey that he’s trying. Now, most of his posts are those aggressively inspirational statements like “never care about someone who doesn’t care about you.” The ones that make coldness seem like self-care. He’s only sharing one side of the story in which he’s the victim (and maybe he is), but I suspect he’s having custody issues because for a long time, he wasn’t around. Regardless of the circumstances, what’s clear is that he’s built his life one way, and now it looks nothing like what he thought he was building. I know a few people who have found themselves in that situation…. middle aged in a life that doesn’t feel their own.
For my morning commute, I listened to the Hidden Brain podcast again. The episode I chose was called “The Lonely American Man.” It felt in keeping with the Vonnegut quote and what I’m seeing play out with my Facebook acquaintance. It attempts to understand what is driving a spike in the suicide rates among middle-aged men in America. The episode attempts to understand what is being called an epidemic of loneliness.
Men are not good at making friends or having deep, non-romantic friendships – especially with other men. We are taught, from a very early age, that we need to be self-reliant. We are taught things like feelings are for sissies or are unmanly. Currently in vogue among some right-wing TV folks (Fox / Tucker) is the notion that America is losing its way because men are no longer men (they’re claiming a testosterone shortage). Of course, this is all bullshit. If anything, I suspect men are losing their way because America has evolved, and they (we) have not – or at least not quickly enough.
The podcast interviewed a man who had grown up in a somewhat transient household. His family relocated a lot for his father’s work. He never really developed deep childhood friends. After college, he got married, had a child, got divorced. He got married again, and that relationship also fell apart – she moved away and took the kids. He was willing to meet new people, but was also very aware of how “creepy” it looks when some old dude tries to be your friend. He got to the point, much like the Tom Hanks character in Cast Away, where he befriended an inanimate object (a beam in his house). As the man being interviewed described it, despite going to work and all of those things, at the end of the day, it was just him.
Researchers studying this phenomenon of male isolation have asked a poignant question: who, or how many people, could you turn to in the middle of the night if you felt you were in crisis? Sadly, for many men, there isn’t anyone outside of their spouse (women can typically name several people). To some degree, we’re taught to handle our shit on our own…. For the man being interviewed, he felt incredibly isolated and like he had missed some warning signs throughout his life.
The podcast also interviewed a number of kids – young boys. They talk about their best friends in ways that men don’t. You can hear how much they appreciate their friends as they talk with and about them…. but there’s often a caveat – they try to make sure they’re not seen as gay. I suspect this has something to do with men’s inability to form good bonds with other men – there’s a fear and perception problem. Seinfeld put these types of denials front and center with the famous line, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
On Friday, at the bar, one of the guys I’ve gotten to know (a writer) had a few poems with him. He shared them with me and read them to me. I was, at times, distracted by the appearance of this. One guy reading poetry to another guy at a bar. I struggled to give him or the poems my full attention. There was something uncomfortable about it, and it had nothing to do with what was actually taking place and everything to do with this strange clash of norms. Bars are where guys hang out, watch sports on TV, and either talk about their miseries or sports or grunt something to each other. “yeah, she’s a fine piece of ass” or something equally neanderthal like that. Except, I don’t care about sports or care much for grunting. I go to this bar because I meet interesting people and precisely because one or two of them might be a poet or a scientist or have something more to say than the typical male / bro experience. I clearly have more work to do in my own evolution. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
The thing that feels most uncomfortable about all of this is that, in my own life, I’m not sure I could change much of it or would want to change much of it. I sometimes ask myself if I were in a romantic relationship, would I still go to the bar on Friday nights? Probably not. And that feels like the wrong answer – or at least the answer that won’t serve me well in the long run. I suspect I would go if my partner had other things to do or wanted some time alone, but I wouldn’t go for the sake of building or maintaining the friendships and acquaintances I currently have. I go now to get my fill of social interaction, and while I genuinely like the people I meet up with there, I suspect that need for outside socialization would dissipate with a more intense relationship. This, in turn, puts an unfair (though unintentional) burden on my partner.
Many many blog posts ago, I tried to write about not needing alone time. It was a rambling reactionary mess in which I wondered if developing a need for alone time (to write or do other things) would be useful to whatever future I find myself in. I wondered then, much as I do now, if I would drop these habits, reading and writing (and now going to the bar) if I found myself in another relationship. I’ve also written about this dynamic in which men tend to put all of their emotional needs on their partners – though for the life of me, I can’t seem to find that post. I suppose I worry about piling all of my emotional needs onto someone else, yet I don’t do much to change that outcome. There is this beam in the basement that I’ve become fond of.
I suppose the point, if there is one, is that one of our biggest challenges (relationship or not, male or not) is to figure out who we are, how we fit in, and how to reconcile our silly human contradictions. Can we escape our decades of training and norms? How do we navigate those moments when Ms. “you’re not enough people” meets Mr. “you’re all that I need”?