Continuing thoughts about transitions out of partnerships and how to do them cleanly. But first a confession. I'm in the middle of a transition out of a partnership. It's awkward writing about in the thick of it, but in recent weeks I've come to think of it as a useful sport to try. I'll call it "performance introspection." It's a spectator sport in which audience skepticism is encouraged. Watch me to see if I can do a clean job of it. My goal is to say not just what I need to hear or what serves me in my current state, but what is generally true.
Moral philosopher John Rawles called this perspective deciding from "beyond the veil of ignorance" by which he meant deciding what's fair in a interaction as though you don't know role you will be playing in it. It's like how we get two children to divide a piece of cake fairly. We let one of them cut the cake and the other choose who gets which piece. The cake-cutter decides how to cut from beyond the veil of ignorance. Not knowing which piece he'll end up with he tries to cut as evenly as possible. It's a great way to defeat the natural conscious and unconscious tendencies toward holding double standards. In Performance Introspection, I'm trying to cut the cake of relationship fairness from beyond the veil of ignorance, as though I don't know which role I'd end up playing and therefore can't afford a double standard that gives more cake to the role I happen to be playing.
To encourage audience skepticism as to whether I'm writing from beyond the veil, in this my first official round of Performance Introspection, I'll provide a few footnoted Skeptic Alerts -- questions that should come up for you if you're going to watch to see if I do this cleanly. They're not the only questions that could come up, but they give you a sense of the audience's role in Performance Introspection.
I was going to talk this week about what it would take to make a partnership's ending as clean as possible. But I can't really talk about that because I'm not doing it that cleanly. Instead I'll continue on last week's topic-- Why we don't break up cleanly even though we should.1
For those of us who haven't settled into marital bliss2, I think of romance as it is most often practiced as a five step process. I'll call it The Book of Love In Five Chapters.3
1. Character Aspiration: I want a super-endorsement of my character. I seek out someone who affirms me big time.
2. Character Affirmation: I find someone. It's wonderful!
3. Character Assignation: Since this person adores me, I'll assign this person maximum credibility. He/she is now officially an authority on who to adore. That makes his/her adoration of me that much more affirming.
4. Character Assassination: This person doesn't adore me anymore and leaves. Ouch!
5. Character Extrication: How do I extricate myself from this person's judgment now that he/she no longer affirms me?4
There are two main ways to try to achieve character extrication so as to regain the sense that you're right and good and fine even though you've been rejected. Either you can say, "I'm right, and my ex- is wrong, in which case I was wrong to have put my faith in him/her. Or you can say "I was right to put my faith in him/her which means I'm wrong since he/she says I am."
Neither of these options are satisfying. They both force us to confront our own errors, so we tend to oscillate between them in what I have called a sorrytaliatory cycle. Sorry one minute for being the bad person your authoritative ex thinks you are, and retaliatory against your ex for acting as an authority regarding your character (though we're the ones who assigned them that authority.)
Which brings me to a triadic chord we arpeggiate in such situations. I've called it the youmeus point. When something feels amiss between two people--for example you and me, it's the point where I decide whether the problem is you, me, or us. In other words, if I'm frustrated or disappointed and I need to know why and what happened, I'll wonder whether it's your fault (and retaliate against you for causing me grief), my fault (and say I'm sorry to you for my faults) or neither of our faults but rather is just differences between us.
Last week I introduced game theory's explanation for how the risks of escalating blame increase during a breakup. That's the "you" vs. "me" dimension playedout between two people. Two weeks ago I talked about how we all say what we need to hear in order to keep our ambivalences from loosening our commitments to whatever path we've chosen. During a breakup partners often have to explain what happened in opposite ways. After a long term commitment to telling a shared story about the wonderful bond, it's hard to go separate ways telling opposite stories about how it's for the better.
The logical solution is toward a kind of moral relativism whereby both parties say "not wrong; not right, just different." In other words the problem wasn't you or me, it was us. We were not compatible enough to stay together longer than we did. That's the logical solution unless in fact one of you is really more at fault. That does happen. Partners sometimes do very insensitive things. There's no law that says both parties do equal amounts of wrong to each other. So though it's nicest to just "agree to disagree," it's sometimes a sacrifice of accuracy and more generous than the more offending party deserves. Thus rather than readily stabilizing at "us" we can easily find ourselves5 cycling between all three positions--you, me and us:
"It's my exe's fault, no it's my fault; no it's no one's fault it's just irreconcilable differences, no wait but that's not really true. It's really it's my exe's fault..."
I call this visiting all of the stations of the cross. That's where I haven't been as clean as I've wanted to be. See, I was really hoping to do this breakup as cleanly as possible. I even wrote a goodbye song that was designed to be a real no strings attached, no tentacles tugging tune on the subject. No "You treated me wrong," or "we'll be together again," or "please take me back," or "you'll regret it," or "I was a fool to treat you bad." Just clean. The song is called Second Honeymoon.6
But me, I've been visiting the stations of the cross in communication with my ex, as though we could somehow come up with a story together about whose fault it was. Not good. Better to cycle on my own until the cycling loses juice. Absence makes the heart grow fonder for a while but then if the absence persists, it makes the heart fuzzier and then fade through evidence that life doesn't revolve exclusively around the old pairing.
1. Is Jeremy going to tell us why it's hard to break up cleanly so we will forgive him for not breaking up cleanly?
2. Marital bliss--sounds cynical like he's got sour grapes about not having achieved his goal of partnership success.
3. Yup, calling this the book of love is kind of cynical. Is Jeremy just expressing bitterness?
4. He's claiming a lot of love works like this. It's basically ego stroking--not how normal relationships are but he wants to depict them this way because misery loves company.
5. Speak for yourself Sherman. You're cycling so maybe that's why your tell us that this is what people do.
6. Second Honeymoon
You’re fabulous again
Charming and a friend
I see the one
The one I once adored
I see that winning smile again
It had to wait until the end
It’s back though cause
There’s no more tug of war
You’re natural again
The bending had to end
And now your glowing grace
has such a shine
I see you as you mean to be.
And me too cause we’re now both free.
You're in your element
And I’m in mine
Now that you’re gone
I’m loving you anew
Loving you for who you are
And all the things you do.
And no I’m not calling you back
We’ve sure been all around that track
The open road’s for us
and I’m not blue.
It’s like a second honeymoon
Though now in separate rooms
But that don’t mean
I don’t remember you.
Your kindness when we said goodbye
The way we freed us both to fly
The kindness in your eyes
