I wake up angry. If I’m angry. I’m not always angry, to be clear. But I’m always angriest when I start my day. Not at the very first moment, but on the way to the bathroom or when taking a shower. Deep in a spinal twist today I wondered for the fist time (shockingly) why that is? I realized somewhere in supported bridge pose that it’s because I don’t want to be taken advantage of. I don’t want to wake up in my morning haze, ready to start a new day and forget everything’s not okay – there are issues on my plate, because I’d like nothing better than to let go and just be open and happy – and so would the person taking advantage of me (usually Emily).
Recent trends in popular culture have created a word that at first I found a little annoying, until I realized it was useful to me: gaslighting. It’s one of Emily’s tools in trade – the clever denial of something that just happened or is clearly happening. Emily hates to take ownership of what she says and does – so issues that could end quickly and simply with a simple, “Yeah, I did that. Sorry,” or, “That’s absolutely not how I wanted you to feel” or even a “I understand why that bothers you. I’ll try to do something different next time,” can turn into protracted cat and mouse games and escalating arguments. Most of the time I don’t even need her to apologize – just to recognize, acknowledge, take ownership. I don’t like when you tease me in front of friends. It doesn’t mean you’re a horrible person or did a horrible thing. Just recognize that for whatever reason, that feels bad to me and out of love and respect, make a different choice in the future.
The denial of the event even happening – or the elaborate excuse that it wasn’t what I thought it was because that’s not what meant – or because our friends didn’t seem to interpret that way – it drives me crazy! I annoy or accidentally hurt Emily, I feel terrible – even if I didn’t see a problem with what I did. In fact, the issue can be divided between how she feels and is my behavior appropriate. We could talk about both things – but the first thing is to repair the hurt or offense.
Emily would love if I woke up, forgot it all and accepted her gaslighting. Part of me would too – but then, I would just find myself increasingly diminished. Increasingly accepting a not necessarily intentional – but borderline abusive behavior. I would be living in a fictional world in which I would be giving up my self-respect.
For Emily, my insisting on being recognized and wanting her to own what’s hers is criticism. It cuts her to the core because she was raised in a demanding, critical environment. She doesn’t want to have to justify her behaviors, take ownership or apologize. She wants to be accepted for who she is – exactly as she is – whatever behavior she chooses to exhibit or not. Nice work if you can get it.
Contracts are often pretty onerous documents. If you really read most of the contracts you sign in life, you would probably be horrified by language addressing terrible scenarios and remedies you would prefer to never encounter. I was once part to a contract that I happily signed because it was simple, non-onerous and I trusted the other individual. When later there was a disagreement and I showed it to an attorney friend, he looked horrified within seconds pointing out the contract had circular logic and was missing all kinds of provisions that would have settled disputes including the one I was in. In short, it was a completely inadequate contract. His advice has always stuck with me: everyone goes into the relationship with the best of intentions and highest hopes – the contract is there for what happens if it doesn’t go as planned. So, it may suck to read about worst-case scenarios, but that’s a contract’s job.
In business relationships, it’s easier to imagine a range of potential scenarios and pitfalls that might occur. Contracts can govern a large swath of them. In personal relationships, there’s so much you can’t imagine coming to pass. We can try to talk through as many issues as possible in early stages, but we can never think of them all. Therefore, the path of a relationship – especially a marriage – comes with lots of little or even big negotiations and renegotiations.
Sometimes people – especially bitter, hardened, emotional bootstrapping kind of people like to stay that no one owes you anything in this world. We have no entitlements. While I’m no fan of overly-entitled people, I also don’t believe life is absent of social contracts. Neither does the field of Sociology or the Supreme Court of the United States which in many decisions has recognized the concept of social contract as an important element to consider – because legal theory alone can’t govern the world, it has to be tempered by practical realities and people’s ability to reasonably rely on government and order to live their lives.
On a macro level, we owe one another safety, the means to survive and arguably, the means to thrive. I would like to stay freedom and respect, but the world has never agreed on this and much of the human population lives without it or at least in various degrees of restriction and personal empowerment. Still, some of us believe they should be included.
Right here is part of the big negotiation of life. What do we owe each other? What is the social contract?
More often, we more easily identify it when we see it broken. Russia invades Ukraine. Hold on there! That’s not okay! You’re invading sovereignty, taking away freedom, destroying lives, property, world order, displacing human beings. NOT COOL.Half the world sends arms, half the world does nothing or even roots for Russia. A man slaps his wife in public. NOT OKAY. Call the cops, domestic violence, go to jail. A woman literally steps over a sick and dying man on a sidewalk in Delhi. Hmmm…. well, that seems pretty horrible, but maybe it’s okay because of the culture? We drive by people camped under a freeway overpass in Los Angeles – we’re outraged but do nothing except blame the political establishment? Singapore has a 3,000 bedded psychiatric hospital – but no homeless, mentally ill or drug abusers on the streets. Realistic if not even forward-thinking view of providing help to those in need or draconian oppression of the disadvantaged in order to maintain a national image? France tries to avoid a potential default on a national debt payment with a proposal to change the retirement age from 60 to 62. Half the nation up in arms protesting and striking and having their pension payouts postponed, the other half supporting responsible government. Children in school gunned down. National horrification and no clear plan of action from leadership at any level of government other than school districts adding security that apparently doesn’t always work.
What do we owe other human beings?
We’re a species that can’t agree of the value of human life or the definition of respect. One culture’s respect is abhorrent to another and vice versa. Think of the difference between Japan’s highly collectivist and communitarian respect and Texas’ “keep off my property” respect. Not the same thing at all.
Obviously the social contract of Patmos is quite a bit different than that of Westlake Village. My new friend Maria told me the man who owns the cafe in front of her house keeps an eye on it for her throughout the year – he’s happy to do it for a neighbor, even one who isn’t Patmian and just has a vacation house. On the other hand, she can’t expect to go outside and have any anonymity and privacy. When she walks around town, it’s constant greeting and socializing. Maria has a position in the community and that means servicing the relationships even if she would just like to be with her thoughts as she goes from here to there. And never say a mean word about anyone, Maria told me. That’s a cardinal rule for success on Patmos.
In Westlake, waving hello to one another is common and most visitors consider the community very friendly. For most people demanding more than a wave would be invasive and no neighbor is going to be happy, let alone willing to check on your property for protracted periods. As nice as our neighbors are, when we were here in 2019, a sprinkler valve broke and water was pour from our sideboard out to the street. It took a day – and the notice of the gardener – before anyone told us. The gardener turned off the water and replaced the valve – which was great. However, it wasn’t a social contract that saved us.
So I wonder – are the contracts between individuals part of a larger social set of expectations? Or is every pairing a uniquely negotiated deal? Does honesty have to be an explicit clause in the agreement or is that part of the social contract that any two of us should be able to expect from one another? Do we all have the right to be loved without conditions – accommodated with flaws, quirks and all? Or is there a standard of owning one’s shit that is universal? As a Western World, we seem to have come to agree that physical violence within a relationship is not okay. Or maybe and more likely what we can and can’t accept and accommodate is a unique negotiation between every two people. Perhaps human relationships are a “buyer beware” kind of thing.
Still, if it were all helter skelter, we wouldn’t be able to function in large numbers. Families and communities would fall apart. There has to be a baseline. When I think about being gaslit and the cruel attempt to bend – or simply deny – basic facts to an emotional end, I feel like one of the most basic contract standards has been broken. We don’t have to agree – but we don’t have to pretend. We don’t have to trick one another to avoid pain and responsibility. If anything, it seems to be a fundamental piece of not just the marital contract, but the social contract is getting better at owning what’s our as we age. I should be less afraid to admit a mistake now than I was 20 years ago. I should be secure enough in myself to know that life is full of subtleties and I can be right about my point and wrong about how I get someone to see it. Most importantly, maturing means knowing we’re all wrong – and that being wrong or making a mistake isn’t some kind of irredeemable crime – but that failing is human, part of our process and the way we learn. No one succeeds without failing.
Another good friend recently reminded me of the Jospeh Campbell quote, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.”
This could almost be the definition of maturity. Learning this is hard – for societies and individuals. Good contracts are designed around failure more than success. It’s what we do in the challenges, the hard times that matters. At the same time, just as not all that glitters is gold, not everything that appears as failure really is. Learning how to parlay failure into education is fundamental to personal growth.
Emily has wanted to tie her actions and choices up in this bow for awhile. She wants something different now. Maybe she made a mistake committing to a marriage when marriage is too restrictive for her. She failed me – maybe she failed at marriage. It may be painful, but she’ll move on, learn and grow. I have condemned this as flippant, irresponsible, heard hearted, indulgent, selfish. It felt like she was just taking the write-off on a loss or bad debt instead of giving our marriage and family the respect we were due.
Now I can see that while she may not have been right, she wasn’t necessarily wrong. While I don’t think Emily gave me or our family the respect we were due – and I think she gave up easily rather than hold herself accountable, challenge herself to grow and live up to our commitment to one another – there can be a value to learning from failure, growing from missteps. The treasure, the source are in that fearful cave. I hope for her that if she chooses to divorce – she’s right and whatever she needs – whatever I couldn’t give her or prevented her from having – is there.
Moreover, I’m starting to sense Campbell’s quote applies to me. I’ve fought like hell not to go into that cave. Divorce has felt like an ultimate failure for myself and my family. I have been the hero of my epic by fighting against whatever evil lives in that cave. I can’t say I would have done anything different even in retrospect – but maybe it turns out that cave contains a gift. Maybe there’s no success in life – no completing the journey – without going in there.
I still don’t know how the story ends, but the epic requires the hero to return home with different eyes. I have at least achieved that. I see things differently than the day the Blue Star 2 ferry took me here. Tonight I’ll ride it back changed. I’ll have my day in Athens to prepare and then home I go, perhaps all the stronger for the stumble – hopefully all the more mature for being able to take stock of myself, come to a new place and know that the shadows and unknown aren’t all bad and don’t have to be scary. Perhaps my treasure awaits.
