I mean, your argument can’t be dismissed. There’s certainly something there, some sort of universal truth….and yet, I have had conversations with complete strangers at a bar — someone I had never spoken to before and not spoken to since — that felt much more intimate to me than some of the physical penetration I have had. Something about a meeting of minds, a moment of being completely honest and open about myself that is the pinnacle of intimacy,
This is a well known phenomenon, as I’m sure you know.
I was, in fact, disappointed that I neglected to mention it in my previous reply, but I didn’t want to edit any further in case you missed it — Medium has been appalling with its notifications at my end for some time now and I can’t be sure someone hasn’t seen my reply within seconds of my posting it, because I won’t get a notification for a couple of hours … might not see their own reply for a couple of hours after that.
So …
As I am sure you’re aware, there’s a perceived safety in sharing things with strangers, because we don’t expect to ever see them again; they don’t know us, can’t (wittingly or otherwise) betray our confidence to anyone who knows us … it’s safe to confide in them — in fact, somewhere in one of my past posts, I alluded to that very idea when I suggested there might be things the revelation of which would have such undesirable consequences for us that we wouldn’t even confide them to a stranger.
And yet, by your previous ‘argument’ (it wasn’t an argument per se, but you get my drift) that intimacy isn’t possible, because there isn’t a closeness between you and this stranger with whom you are sharing an, ironically, intimate moment.
And that’s what I was driving at really …
Intimacy does not require closeness. It does not need a lasting foundation or even a connection. It can even be, seemingly, unidirectional (insofar as we unburden ourselves to a stranger without their necessarily inviting us to do so, let alone our reciprocating in our turn). I say ‘seemingly’ because, in reality, short of the other person being physically incapable of telling us to StFu (let alone relocating) they are a willing party to the social transaction — they choose to share the moment with us.
It can be fleetingly transitory … but it exists, nevertheless, as a platonic form in its own right — regardless of either participant’s thoughts or feelings on the matter.
Our shutting down our emotions with a long-term partner for whom we now feel nothing but the negative doesn’t alter that fact. The reason for shutting down is to prevent that intimacy from deepening further than we now wish but we cannot deny the intimacy that exists in that situation any more than we can the fact that revealing intimate details to a stranger makes those details or that moment intimate — otherwise we would be equanimously accepting of it in the same way we are when we are the stranger to whom the other unburdens themselves and would feel no need to shut down in any way.
something I strive for but not always achieve with sex. I suppose it’s part of my baggage that this can be easily achieved in a good conversation partner I don’t know and will never know, but can be a struggle with a partner I would want to share my life with.
As I said, you are far from unique.
I mean … just look at all the agony columns, sex therapists, etc.
So many of us have hangups … so many of us are, to some degree or other, repressed about our emotions and/or sexuality that even widely read newspapers discuss these matters in a way that would’ve been unthinkable only a generation or two ago. I mean … never mind a recent column in which a woman revealed her masturbatory technique … (and nice girls don’t masturbate, remember, let alone talk about it in a national paper) … the advice columns even exist!
All of us have our secret thoughts and desires that we feel unable to discuss with anyone else … even a stranger.
Would you really want to discuss your secret, incestuously necrobestial, yearnings with a stranger on a bus or in a bar?
“I secretly want my teenage son to fuck me with a dead snake.”
Yeah … I can see that conversation taking place.
And even if it were to, I’ve spent enough time with the kind of person for whom that kind of revelation would be a thing to know they’re liars: that isn’t really their fantasy. Their real fantasy is the one they live out as they ‘reveal’ it: exhibitionism. Even when they fantasize about that very thing during sex, the thing that really gets them off is the transgression. And for that to take place requires that what is going on in their head at the time be them observing themselves fantasising about something transgressive. They’re narcissists/histrionics; if they were watching a porno in which they starred, they’d be masturbating to themselves, not their partner — think Alisha’s criticism of Curtis when he asks her, in Misfits series 3, whether their sexual activities were satisfactory when they were an item (if you still haven’t watched Misfits, it’s long since time that you did). So, even they are repressed (they can’t even admit to themselves what their real desires are).
The only people who are not repressed are exhibitionists who happily admit to it. And that need to engage in histrionic display is usually a sign of severe psychological issues that they are, themselves, unaware of (and hence … wait for it … repressed).
Welcome to the human race — you’re in company ranging from good to outright reprehensible.
You say it doesn’t require closeness for it to be intimate, and I have to admit you are correct. I was in no way close to this stranger in the bar I shared a deeply intimate moment with. I just realized my understanding of intimate is about me, and has nothing at all to do with anyone else, even your hypothetical rapist. He might want to force intimacy upon me, but if my walls are up, if I dissociate, he can not penetrate me, only my body. He could inflict harm, but he could never be intimate with me because intimacy can only be granted.
Ah … I think I see where the disconnect is here.
You, yourself, put your finger on it by saying that the intimate is about you and has nothing to do with anyone else.
Well, the same is true of your rapist — whether your ‘walls’ are up or not, there is, by your own argument, an intimacy by virtue of the fact that they experience it.
In fact, it needn’t event be that extreme … after all, as rape isn’t about the victim but the perpetrator (it’s narcissistic), your rapist is really only experiencing an intimacy with themself … but requires only a differential between the degree of emotional investment of the two participants for the point to be adequately illustrated.
But that’s only by way of illustrating that the intimacy arises not because both, or even one, experiences it but because it exists sui generis. Just as I do not need to find there to be anything particularly romantic about about Romantic art, you/I do not need to experience intimacy for it to exist between two people.
Intimacy is situational, not personal — two strangers sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, not exchanging so much as a glance, let alone a word, are in a more intimate relationship than the same two people sitting in different waiting rooms in different parts of town.
Compare an introvert’s experience of sitting in a crowded bar to that of an extrovert’s — because of their perception of the situation, the introvert will find it uncomfortably intimate.
Only if you see all betrayal as unforgivable. I find it interesting that your next thought, after thinking of betrayal, is hate. I don’t think I hated anyone who betrayed me.
It wasn’t really my next thought — you’re leapfrogging over a lot of other thinking there.
Moreover, my thinking vis a vis hatred concerned not betrayal but bitterness.
You can’t feel embittered towards someone without there being some degree of hatred towards them. Even if its only a resentment of some action you feel to be unjust … like ‘unfairly’ favouring someone else over you for a promotion at Work … that resentment is only really a transference of hatred of them to resentment of their action (an internalisation of the socially acceptable … a sublimation of the ego’s toddler temper tantrum, if you will forgive the Freudianism).
Disappointed, yes. Mundane betrayal reveals that the “us” of the relationship for them was on a much lower priority.
I said, did I not, that I didn’t hate them either?
To consider that someone’s behaviour constituted a betrayal of me, I would have to be of the conviction that it were due to deliberate choice on their part … or willful negligence of a promise actively made (a dishonest undertaking to begin with, therefore, and thus a betrayal of mutually agreed trust).
Hence my observation that I did not hate them but rather despised them. I’m pretty black-and-white in my thinking in that regard: either I respect you or I despise you for being someone unworthy of respect; and I don’t mean unworthy of my respect but of anyone’s (I despise the dishonourable).
Do you remember how this conversation got started with me saying I felt like I never wrote a proper break up? lol.
Yes. Do you remember how I said I felt you still weren’t? 😜
What you say is correct, but all the details I knew was about their (singular) relationship and not their (plural) relationship. They might as well have imagined themselves in a relationship with a cardboard cutout. If you don’t have two people, you don’t have a relationship. At best I had an impression of one.
Perhaps that’s the very thing you/the story is exploring then: the nature of relationships rather than the specific relationship(s) in question in any given story you write.
I’ve observed of my own ‘process’ that my own thinking is not altogether infrequently opaque to me … that what I was really trying to do at a given time may not become apparent to me until after the fact — and that certain themes (most notably communication and self-reference) recur time and again.
Perhaps the very fact that you didn’t want to reflect upon the relationship particularly but upon the character in isolation therefrom is a reflection of the reason why the story you were/are trying to tell rewrote/is rewriting itself and they end/ed up breaking up.
Perhaps what the story is trying tell you is that the most significant aspect of the relationship is that the character(s) in question might as well, as you say, have been in a relationship with a cardboard cutout … or, when you get down to it, might as well have been a cardboard cutout themselves.
Perhaps it’s trying to tell you who the character really is, rather than who they want you to believe.
Who exactly is doing the thinking for you about what’s important here … you, the story(teller), or the character? I would be suspicious of the latter’s motives … and wonder if you aren’t maybe too in love with them to see that they’re trying to distract you, lead you astray and keep their unsavoury secrets from you: “Look at me” … “I’ve never been so in love with an author in my entire existence” … “I feel like you really understand me” … “You are my soulmate” … “You should tell my story” (I, me, my, mine).
At the end of the day, what we’re discussing here is the craft of writing … more specifically of story telling. And whether a story is plot or character driven is immaterial … the task of the author is to tell the story to the best of their ability.
Thus the duty of the author is to immerse themselves … to invest themselves … in the story, not to allow themself to fall prey to the distractions offered by any of its locations or to be seduced by the wiles of any of the characters.
So, although I was being facetious when I said “go to a creative writing workshop” and “learn your craft”, there was a truth to it nevertheless — I was drawing your attention to the craft itself and the purpose it serves … why it is, in fact, a craft and not simply a talent.
You need to split up with the characters … kick them out of your space. You’re a reporter, not their lover and need to be dispassionate in your handling of them — sparkling eyes and a nice ass are great, sure, but who gets the Pullitzer when you’re done writing, you or them?
Tell the story that is there to be told … not the PR notice the character/s is/are trying to spin you. And it starts with a (failed) relationship … so, investigate it .
After all … you wanted to write something else, but the story itself refused/is refusing to be written that way — maybe you should listen to it and what it’s trying to tell you. The story itself is telling you that’s the most important thing by refusing to be written the other way; listen to it, not the character lovebombing you with their story — they have an ulterior motive … the story just wants the justice of being told.
So …
The punchline is “They split up”.
The joke is their relationship.
And the purpose of the story is … well, when you know why it wants to be told … what injustice was done to it … you’ll know why it’s haunting you, as it were — so, get your shovel and start digging … go through its trash, get your notebook out and go door to door asking the neighbours about it, get a few photos, interview people close to it, get witness statements.
And by ‘the’ story, I mean the one that is insisting you write it before the year is up — the one that you would rather ghost.
Alternatively, if a relationship that started out as an honest connection between two people, both with flaws and strengths, both with their likeable and unlikeable sides, who break up in messy, ambiguous glory is proving too traumatic for you, you could go and see a therapist/counsellor instead and get it off your chest at long last 😉 — I’m free and, conveniently, an anonymous stranger … but you might feel more comfortable not writing it down on Medium’s server for posterity (I know I would … whoever purchases it down the line might not feel bound by any client/’doctor’ confidentiality).
After all, as a psychologist, when an author tells me they wanted to try writing about a relationship that ended but they could never do it to their own satisfaction, one or more of the people in it might as well not have been part of the story they ended up writing, they were never invested in own story, that they have never written about a relationship that started out honest, well, I don’t immediately think “tell me more about why you want to fuck your parents” ¹ … but I do wonder why they don’t listen to what their subconscious is telling them ².
Oooh … get me being all insightful and astute.
Sorry about that.
I’ll try to make it up to you by being all glib and facile again soon, I promise.
—
¹ That’s a nerdy psychology joke — look up Freud, non-directive Rogerian therapy and Joseph Weizenbaum’s ‘ELIZA’.
² I don’t actually … I know full well why they don’t — but you take my point.
