Three Silly Questions, Answered.
In writing about my friend and the problems he was having with his messy girlfriend, I got a lot of angry comments saying, “Shouldn’t he have known she was messy when he dated her? After all, he’s moving in with her. And if he knew she was messy, why the hell is he expecting her to change?”
There’s three really silly questions there, and I feel I should address each one in turn.
First off, I didn’t specify whether he’d moved in to her apartment, or whether they’d moved in together to a third place… but acting as though the question of “Who was there first” matters is a dripping bag of vinegary douchebaggery.
If you have agreed to move in as a romantic relationship, as part of building a life together, then you have agreed to build a home together. This is not some landlord-and-tenant situation where some third party is paying you to stay there, with no further benefits provided; it is, theoretically, a place where someone has said, “I love you, I need you in my life, let us live with each other because I want to be with you.”
In short, it’s not your home any more, it’s our home.
If you have entered such a bargain and then treat your lover like they’re renting a room at your hotel, rejecting all changes because this place is mine, mine, mine! then chances are it’s not gonna work out. Because your lover is going to feel alienated, living in a space that s/he has no say over, and won’t particularly feel welcome.
Living together involves changes as you adapt to each others’ habits, making new and joint ones. Maybe you have to put the toilet paper roll on the new way. Maybe you have to pay bills differently. Maybe you rearrange the furniture or get new curtains. And in an ideal relationship, this oft-stressful period of readjustment is not some moronic all-or-nothing power struggle where either ORIGINAL TENANT WINS or NEW ARRIVAL EMERGES VICTORIOUS, but rather you meld your habits to find something maybe not as comfortable as it was living alone, but acceptable.
As to the second silly question – ‘Why didn’t he know?” – maybe he was aware of her messiness, but didn’t recognize it as a huge problem right away, because it didn’t bother him in small doses. Maybe the clutter didn’t bother him when it was just “visit the pit for a movie and some cuddles, then go home to rest in wonderful cleanliness.”
This isn’t an entirely silly question, as there are a lot of people who turn off their brains and go, “I’M IN LURVE, HE’S PERFECT” and proceed to overlook all sorts of things that should be dealbreakers. And yeah, if you know you absolutely want some kids and you’ve fallen in love with Mr. Confirmed Bachelor, you probably shoulda done some research.
But the suspicious way these questions were phrased seemed to imply that you had one time to notice all your partner’s flaws, and if you weren’t bothered then, sir, then that deadline has passed. Which is something I reject so violently, you can hear the glass shattering as I heave it out the window like a bomb.
Relationships are evolving things. What was cute yesterday in the throes of NRE becomes annoying after months of mundane relationships. What were acceptable levels of snark last year when you were much less confident in things may not be okay now that you feel better about yourself. That inability to get a job was fine for the first six months of the relationship, but now the bills are due and goddammit, you need to bring in an income.
The terms change. The terms always change. And making it seem like someone is wrong for raising or lowering the bar is itself wrong.
I dig the origins of this particular concern. It’s kind of terrifying when a girlfriend says, “Okay, everything I liked about you? It’s kind of irritating me now.” And it’d be wonderful to know that when you met someone, acting this way would forever be acceptable. It’d be nice to think that a lifelong marriage was because the perfect people met and that was it.
But no. Lifelong marriages happen because the perfect people met and kept growing in the same direction. Those people are still changing as they get new jobs and have kids and make new friends and experience grief; they just were smart enough to ensure that they never grew apart, and in part they did that because they kept checking in with each other. Yes, they met when they were twenty and are still together at eighty, but the twenty-year-old them and the eighty-year-old them are, in some ways, fundamentally different.
So yes, it’s scary to think that what you’re doing now might not be good enough for your partner five years from now. But the answer, to my mind, is not to treat that with hostile suspicion, as though they were Darth Vader renegotiating terms with Lando Calrissian. Because then you’ll be more concerned with assigning blame, and making your wife Darth Vader, than actually asking what’s changed about her or me, and what’s this mean for all of us.
The answer is to understand that yes, maybe they thought the messiness wouldn’t bother them, but after two months it really does, and that’s ugly and not-nice but it’s there.
So what do you do about that, now that this element’s introduced? I’m pretty certain that answer isn’t, “Tell him to shut up, this is the way it is.”
And as for the final question, which is ineffably stupid: people asking, “Why should I change?”
The answer is the same as it’s always been:
Because you don’t want to see your partner made miserable, you oaf.
You change because you want your partner to be happy. That’s why you always change for your partner, in an ideal world.
Now, that answer isn’t quite as simple, of course; there are all sorts of caveats, provisos, quid pro quos in there. I’m not saying you should bend your whole life to your partner every time they get upset. Sometimes you do the analysis and your partner is being unreasonably upset by something it would take you more effort to change than it’s worth. I mean, if your partner has a fifteen-minute crying jag every time you use the letter “E,” well, then the proper answer is probably, “I’m not going to change that.”
And there are some people who get their partners on the expectation that they’ll change large portions of their personalities, usually to disastrous results. If you’re dating all bad boys and dumping them once you’ve worn them down into nice, obedient boyfriends (or girlfriends), then you’re changing people for no good reason and probably should learn to link up your short-term attractions to your long-term needs better.
And your partner should be willing to change, too. If the changes are all on your end – and some great manipulators can arrange it so that they are – then you should reevaluate and ask whether this is a relationship, or a transaction.
But the question stemmed from people who seemed outraged by the idea that they should have to change for something that’s clearly their partner’s quirk. Which it is. And maybe, after some discussion and negotiation, the proper answer may actually be “Sorry, but you’re acting out of line here, I don’t think I should change my behavior.”
But I’m pretty sure that if your primary reaction to someone you love expressing pain at something you did is a stiff “Why should I be bothered?” rather than “Oh, crap, I’m sorry that hurts you,” then you’re probably not that good of a partner.
Good relationships stem from caring. And you can have some lastingrelationships that aren’t that good at all, because the people involved are too terrified or guilt-ridden or ashamed to leave. But the good relationships, short or long, revolve around that primary question of, “I love you. What can I do to help?”
Any other question is dross.
Why Coulson Is Terrible In Agents Of SHIELD
Look, I don’t mean to keep going on about this show. But like Season 6 of Buffy, you can sense that this entire season could be salvageable with just a few tweaks, it’s so close to being good that in a way, it’s actually more fascinating to theorize about how to fix it than it is to have a workable show.
But today’s problem’s an easy shot: Why was Agent Coulson so beloved in the Marvel movies, and so tedious in Agents of SHIELD?
It’s who he’s surrounded with.
You know who’s a lot like Coulson? Mal, from Firefly. He’s a wry straight man in the middle of a cast of wild guys like Jayne and Wash and Inara and my God I’m falling in love all over again just writing their names. But Mal is the straight man to the rest of the Firefly cast – he’s the guy with the morals that sets the ship, yes, but a lot of Mal’s best lines are from Mal reacting to someone else. Mal is beloved because Nathan Fillion is always cocking an eyebrow at his crazy crew, as if to say, Really? And yes, you love him for it.
Agent Coulson is just as wry, and yet the problem is he’s a straight man in a room full of straight men.
If we had a bizarre cast of characters, then Agent Coulson would be magnificent at the job – a grounding force to unite the on-the-edge hacker, the PTSD-torn veteran, the loopy scientists, and so forth. He’d seem wise and noble because like Mal, someone has to hold this crew of malcontents together, and when he clashed with them it would be the same representation Mal served in Firefly: Mal/Coulson inevitably took the side of “the hard reality on the ground” and the crew inevitably takes the side of “our morals and ideals matter,” and in the end – shamed – the leader picks the right path between “what must be done” and “what makes us great.”
Except Coulson doesn’t have those choices. We don’t care about his crew, who haven’t gotten a real spotlight to make us feel sympathy for them. His choices are in service not of keeping an independent tradition alive, like Mal, but in hewing to a cold and callous bureaucracy. And the people he’s fighting with aren’t people but mouthpieces.
I see what they’re trying to do here. Agent Coulson was great when he could play off larger-than-life personas like Tony Stark, Thor, Captain America, being the dash of reality in their crazy antics. And now he’s the dash of reality to a slurry of reality, a wry wink at a joke that wasn’t funny, and as such he’s rapidly losing appeal.
In The Grand Scheme Of Things, It's… Actually Pretty Relevant
A friend of mine emailed me because the girlfriend he just moved in with has turned out to be a slob. Not a Hoarders-style, dead-cats-piled-in-the-closet slob, but “Hey, I just opened this Amazon box and I tossed it on the table when I was done” kinda messy.
And it’s driving him nuts, all this clutter. He needs a made bed and a clean counter in order to feel comfortable, and his girlfriend is perfectly happy as long as she can scoop out a space somewhere to watch Doctor Who on her laptop. He’s stressed all the time, and snappish at her, and he feels bad because this is his problem, and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. So he asked me for some advice.
And I asked, “So why doesn’t she realize she’s doing something wrong?”
And he replied, “Because she isn’t actually doing anything wrong?”
No.
If she’s doing something that’s making you feel stressed and claustrophobic and unwelcome in your own home, then she is doing something wrong.
Now, the important thing is to remember is that cleanliness is not an objective wrong. If the girlfriend was living on her own, and she was happy nestling up in a big ol’ pile of crumpled McDonalds bags, then I say more power to her. But in this case, she’s chosen to live a tandem life with you, and acting as though you’re doing her some good by swallowing back all this stress is a perfect lie.
They tell you that in the grand scheme of things, the little stuff doesn’t matter. I’m here to tell you that quite often, the little stuff matters way more than the big things. Because, yes, maybe once a year on Valentine’s Day I can cover you in roses and bring you to a big dinner and tell you I love you… but if every morning you wake up to find I’ve pissed all over the toilet seat and I never even notice how disgusted that makes you, then you’re getting the wrong message three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year.
And it’s not just messiness. If you’re sensitive about your big ears and I think it’s cute to mock them, that’s gonna hurt you on a regular basis. If you get worried sick when I stay out late and don’t call, then you’re going to be worried when a single text could make you sleep better. If you really hate the way I leave the bedroom door open so the cat gets in and rubs her allergy-inducing fur all over your pillow, then you’re going to be sneezing wildly on a regular basis.
The little things matter.
Gini and I did a lot better as a couple when we acknowledged the concept of “silly.” As in, “Something can be silly, and trivial, and still hurt your feelings.” And if you’ve got a good partner, sharing that silliness will usually not get you the reaction of, “Oh, how silly! You’re silly!” but rather, “Crap, I don’t want to hurt your feelings!”
So the solution is not to eat your pain and push forward bravely, silly though your needs may be. The solution is to say to her, “Look, I know it’s silly, but all of this clutter makes it hard for me to be comfortable. I feel like this isn’t my home – and it isn’t, because my home wouldn’t have me kicking aside old shoeboxes to make my way to the bathroom. So I’ll pick up, because I recognize part of this is my quirk, but can you also show me you think about me by putting your dishes in the sink once in a while?”
And you negotiate. Because there’s a certain irony in my buddy asking me this – me, the guy with three empty Amazon boxes stacked on his table as I write this. I come from a family of hoarders, and it drives my wife nuts. And our house isn’t as clean as she’d like it, ever. That’s her compromise. But I pick up enough to make it not a hostile environment for her, and I do probably 400% more cleaning than I’d ever do if I lived alone, and every time she sees me cleaning out the pile of books in the bathroom, Gini knows that’s my way of showing love.
We meet in the middle.
Now, my buddy’s girlfriend doesn’t mean to do anything wrong! But “intent” is not a magic wand. A partner can hurt you or stress you out unintentionally. The trick is that if you’re still hurt by it, move that to the intentional zone. Habits die hard – I don’t mean to just toss the Amazon box to one side, I just don’t think not to because HEY, NEW BOOK! – so when Gini says, “Sweetie, I know you don’t mean to, but this really bothers me” in a kind tone of voice, it makes me remember how much I love her and oh shit I shouldn’t do that.
Even now, I put the Amazon box into the garbage unguided maybe one time out of three. But she recognizes that’s literally an infinite improvement from the “never” times I’d do it if I lived on my own. And I’ll sometimes get the “oh crap” realization when I see the box, and clean it up later unasked.
But the first step in my buddy solving his problem? Pushing past this harmful idea that the things that stress him out are trivial. It’s good that he waited a few weeks, sat on the idea, so as to not bug his girlfriend with every irritation. That’s awesome. But eventually, if you’ve sat on it and it’s still causing you enough stress that you feel like texting a friend to ask, then it’s time to open up.
There’s no shame in sharing. It’s not silly. It’s the first vital step in melding both of your lives together, and unless you can be honest you can’t start the long progress of compromising effectively.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some boxes to throw out.
The Slowest Twitter
Three days a week, I drive down to the hospital to take place in cardiac rehabilitation – or, as we call it, “The gym with electrodes on.” My therapy is basically going to work out with a monitor slung around my neck so they can rescue me should I stroke out.
(As one of the nurses said, “If your heart fails, you’ll get to watch your death right here in real time.” To this day, I’m shocked at how well she clued in to my sense of humor. Or maybe she just terrifies nine out of ten patients and lucks out on me.)
But like all gyms, the cardiac rehab center has a couple of TVs blaring the morning news shows, and what shocks me is how these news shows are totally like an inefficient Twitter. It’s basically a soupcon of media references, news links, discussions of the day’s social uproars, referendums (“What do we think about this trend in movies?”)… but to me, who’s used to flipping through my Tweetstream and picking out the best and most interesting links, it’s just totally slow.
But it’s basically the same thing. Twitter is steaming about the dumb thing some guy said in an essay? Well, Good Morning America is talking about some dumb thing some politician said in a speech. Is there some news on the next Catching Fire movie, or a photo of the new Batman suit? Well, I heard it twelve hours ago on Twitter and saw the picture, but it’s basically the same thing. Is there a round table where people are discussing the pros and cons of some social issue? Well, that’s the back-and-forth I get when people post links to their blogs on whatever topic’s caught fire today.
My Twitter is a little more news-oriented, because I’m a little more news-oriented, but it’s essentially the same thing. But whereas I can stuff a whole news cycle into ten minutes of skimming and clicking on Twitter, after an hour with my eyes on the TV I’m still waiting for the inevitable “Did you hear about the Sriracha plant? Isn’t that nutty?” that was emblazoned all over Twitter yesterday.
And it’s like, “Do people just find this comforting? Why would people watch this when there are better alternatives? I mean, I get why it’s on in gyms and airports, because it’s inoffensive and you don’t have to pay attention, but who’d put this on first thing in the morning?” And I wonder if it’s because they don’t know about Twitter or RSS or Facebook, or have found those options somehow lacking, and yet it’s weird to think that at the core, these mass audiences and I are seeking much the same forms of entertainment but this is so different in style and substance.
It’s not a coincidence that these morning shows have made Tweets a part of their cycle. They are Tweets. Just extremely inefficient ones.
Oh, Hi! Good To See You Again.
Having finished revisions on my latest novel, I went back to do major revisions on the third act of another novel I’d been shopping around… an act I’ve been dreading.
I dreaded it because this novel had been rejected by a handful of agents, and I’d written another far superior novel in the time in between, and going back just seemed like pummeling myself with bad old prose. Better to leave this novel on the ground, thought I. Just move ahead and forget it existed. And so I managed to avoid working on it for a solid week as I dinked around with other projects.
And yesterday, holding my nose, I started revising the opening chapters.
To my surprise, I quite liked them.
Oh, all the problems that everyone pointed out were still there, of course, and I still don’t know how to fix them: it’s a really complex world, and setting up the rules for that world comes at the expense of investing the reader in character development. But I like my lead character. I like this novel’s voice. I like the emotional moments I’m trying to set.
I like this novel.
And it’s weird, because my memories of this book had been colored so much by the rejections I’d endured that I just sort of assumed it was bad, despite the agents’ very kind rejections telling me that it was a perfectly nice novel, just not for them. My personal heartache had smeared into my experience of the book itself that I had come to think of it as an embarrassment, when actually it’s a quirky little novel with some magnificent challenges that I still don’t quite know how to fix all the way… but I think that’s every novel. (This is why it’s said that a novel is never finished, only abandoned; I myself stop revising when I just don’t have the energy.)
There’s still a lot of work to do here, where I have to literally rip out the entire third act I used to have and pop in something more fitting, but that’s fine. I’ve re-discovered this is a book I’m willing to fight for. It’s not as good as the one I’m shopping around now, but it certainly doesn’t deserve to be left on the floor.
That’s a nice feeling. It really is. Even as I wonder how many of my other “terrible” works are actually more colored by editors’ rejections, and how many I might wanna resurrect and polish at some future stage.
Writing’s full of weird things. I keep discovering ’em. And wondering how universal this might be.