This ramble has two different threads, the connection being that events and articles have been triggering memories of RM and F the ex-bf. One RM issue made me remember other RM issues, which I related to the "where are you from" issue. Then, a conversation with a friend made me remember F. Let me start with RM because it's more straightforward.
RM's handsiness wasn't really an issue; he did it once (as described above) and I recoiled and he apologized, and then he did it again and I really recoiled and was about to ask him to move out but he'd already decided the same (or got reassigned). Pretty much everything else that RM did was much more of an issue, and one of those things was relentlessly commenting on my eating habits. Which got old, fast.
Now, I talk about food with friends. I also talk about ethnicity/immigration with friends. Those conversations do not suck. I noted last night (link (2) above) that I prefer to avoid the latter issue with strangers because I don't know that they're not going to be idiots about it. In other words, I don't want to enter into a discussion with someone who has ignorant baggage about what me ethnic identity means, just like I don't want to enter into a discussion about food with someone who has ignorant baggage about what my eating habits mean.
RM would relentlessly point out that I ate healthily. I mean, I guess, but what was his point? I didn't see my food as health food; I just saw it as food. To him, my preference for healthy food betrayed an obsessiveness (he thought I followed a meal plan that I was loath to deviate from, when, in reality, when one cooks for oneself, one ought to have some sort of plan). And there was no getting through to RM (just like there was no getting through to the mansplainer who insisted that my family had to be well-connected to get out of the Soviet Union in the 1980s). He was going to believe what he was gong to believe, and I wasn't going to argue with a brick wall; I would just disengage.
Let's revisit another RM story, merely for the purpose of transitioning to the other thread in this roundup. You may recall that RM would often fall over himself to tell me how willing he was to help, only to avert his eyes when I actually asked him to do something. I didn't ask him to do much in the way of general house stuff; I did ask him to throw any "organic" waste into the covered rubbish bin so as not to attract roaches or rodents, but he never did. I regularly transferred his food-waste covered trash from the uncovered bin to the covered one. But, on two occasions, when he saw me frantically scrambling to get out the door, he asked if there was anything he could do. I think once I asked him to scoop out the litter box and once I asked him to take out the trash. He averted his gaze until I said "never mind" to both. But I think once he did do something--I don't even remember what it was--and he really wanted a proverbial cookie for it. It reminded me of a story told by a woman mentor, speaking to a group of women (myself included) about how women would do well to proclaim more. She told us about how her husband once came back into the house, practically thumping his chest, and proclaimed that he'd taken out the trash. This woman thought, "do you want me to tell you what I've done today?? Sit down."
This is where we leave RM, because even though he was a dick for, among other things, presenting himself as the ever-ready helper while being unwilling to actually help, he wasn't responsible for things like the trash and the litter box (well, maybe the trash; it was probably about half-full of his take-out containers and half-full of cat litter). The transition I want to make here is to people with shared, agreed upon goals and responsibilities.
The phenomenon is most clearly articulated in a Times article from a few years back, which I can't find. It was about men leaving their wives because the latter were spending too much time on things like being involved in their kids' school. Either I read it and it reminded me of F., or the F. breakup reminded me of it. It also kind of reminded me of my mother, particularly that time that she attacked my character for spending too much time on the wrong things--specifically, food preparation--after I'd spent so much time on food preparation in response to the excessive amount of food she'd bought, against my protests.
And yet, I'm sure neither my mother nor F. nor these NYT-profiled guys have any sense of irony about their complaints. I mean, mom can sure be manipulative and horrible on purpose, and F. certainly did many things either to be a dick or knowing full well that he was being a dick, but I doubt this was one of those things. This being, for example, giving me shit for never planning anything he wanted to do, when I'd been asking him pretty much since we'd started dating to take on some of the planning. The dickishness of the whole thing is really enough to make my blood boil, even now that I haven't given a f* about him for nearly three years. Probably because part of me is not only bruised from personal experience, but aware of how prevalent that kind of thing is. I mean, F. took the gaslighting to a whole new level (as did those guys in the NYT story), but I feel like dudes pull that shit all the time, i.e., losing patience with their partners for spending time to achieve shared goals. It kind of reminds me of another friend, who was trying to cut back on extras after the birth of her child. She suggested to her husband that he not buy a hobby item, to which he replied that she'd been spending all this money on diapers.
I'm shaping this as a gender thing (except with the example of my mom), but I guess it goes both ways. I just mostly experience and hear about the guys being the dicks who don't understand that lifestyle choices involve trade-offs.
Which brings us to "drama" as a silencing tool (though F. preferred to just change the subject):
The specter of “being dramatic” or “causing drama” is often used by people who want to minimize their partner’s legitimate concerns or who are uncomfortable with expressions of emotion. The term “drama” can quickly become a substitute for calling the other person “crazy” or “irrational.”This is the cousin of needy. Don't you dare make it known that you have needs; that would make you needy, and that's the last thing we want to be. We're supposed to be cool. Except that we can only be cool when our needs are being met, and if someone cares about you, it's not too much to ask that they help meet them. If someone doesn't care about you enough to address your needs or hear your concerns, the issue is on their side of the equation. Your trying to be less needy or lower-drama isn't going to restore equilibrium. Their addressing your needs and listening to you is going to address the neediness and the drama. If they can't do that, you're better off without them.
***
Update: Harris O'Malley, writer of the 'drama' column above, just posted a column on calling women crazy. Here's an excerpt:
It’s a form of gaslighting — telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way that they do. Minimizing somebody else’s feelings is a way of controlling them. If they no longer trust their own feelings and instincts, they come to rely on someone else to tell them how they’re supposed to feel.
More often than not, I suspect, most men don’t realize what we’re saying when we call a woman crazy. Not only does it stigmatize people who have legitimate mental health issues, but it tells women that they don’t understand their own emotions, that their very real concerns and issues are secondary to men’s comfort. And it absolves men from having to take responsibility for how we make others feel.
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