The Soft Underbelly

"it's all an act you're playin'
it's a role that we put on
and it's a faded coat somebody 
handed down into our hands"

["Let It All Fall", Bung]

I emerged from the basement after ushering the last of my friends out the door and locking it behind them, and, carrying our dirty dishes, stepped into the kitchen to set them on the counter before retiring upstairs to bed.  It was an excellent evening of gaming, kicking off a brand new Dungeons and Dragons campaign I had been preparing for over a year.  I was elated.

There, on the floor of the kitchen, for the umpteenth time, was yet another puddle of water, indicating that once more in what would eventually stretch into a six-week long saga of "the brand new dishwasher leaks" a phone call and a bitter argument would be required tomorrow, on the part of myself or, more likely, Liza-Ann.  I set down the dishes, sighed heavily, mopped it up with a few paper towels, and made my way to bed, my heart sinking with each step.  And in my head, the battle with my conscience began.

I just... 
She's probably asleep.  You going to wake her?
I just...
You fucking pussy.  It's trivial.

Yes, first world problem, I know.  Yes, not a big deal in the scheme of things.  Yes, it's "just a thing, not a person" (I would say, were it not me.)  No injuries.  No serious damage.  Such a small thing.

I just need...
You fucking tool.  It's just a dishwasher.  It's just a puddle.  You're being irrational.
I know it's trivial, that's not the point.  I get that I shouldn't be this upset but...
You shouldn't and you know it.  So don't be.  Go to sleep.  Cope.

But it was just so incredibly disheartening.  Explaining why this particular trivial thing upset me so deeply would be a sort of therapy I'd rather not get into here.  It matters only that it did.  I'm a pretty rational person, but not always.  I can be sensitive, perhaps overly so at times.  I don't deny that.

As if I'll sleep!  I'm not getting to sleep in this mood.  But if I just...
Go to sleep.  Deal with it tomorrow, you stunned little wuss.
Is it so wrong to just feel vulnerable?  Just for a minute?  That's not wrong.
Coward.  You don't wake her up.  Cope and tell her tomorrow.

As I quietly undressed and slipped into bed, I could tell by her breathing that Liza-Ann wasn't fully asleep, but probably in that boundary area where she was just drifting in and out.  Years of sleeping together has taught us both to be able to tell when the other is fully asleep or not.

I just need to feel like it will all be okay.
Of course it will.  You gonna risk waking her just so you can feel better?

Several long minutes of contemplation passed, as I lay there blinking at the ceiling.  I wished I could put it aside and go to sleep.  I knew I likely wouldn't.  I knew that from the moment I saw the puddle and felt the life drain from me that I would likely have a very sleepless night.

If she were upset, I would want her to wake me.  I would want to be able to comfort her.
Sure, because that's what men do.  But men don't wake women looking for comfort.

Then I thought about something Ivan Coyote said that time I saw them.

This one does.

I mustered up the courage and said something like, 'Can I have a hug?'

Sleepily, she rolled over and wrapped her arms around me tightly, and I instantly felt better.

The most important thing here isn't the hug, or the dishwasher, or the lengthy saga.  It's not for what strange reason I might have found it as upsetting as I did, or even that I was upset at all, or that I was fortunate enough to have Liza-Ann to comfort me (though I do very much appreciate it - love you, babe!)  It's that several long minutes part.

After two years of examining, disarming, and dismantling the unwritten rules that our culture long ago instilled in me, it remains a struggle to fight back the coded impulses.  Even having drawn back that curtain, pointed at Mr Wizard, and said "AHA!", even fully recognizing the ridiculous bullshit with which I was indoctrinated and now eagerly part with, it is a fight sometimes to overcome the sort of instincts with which I was programmed.  It's contending with a base impulse of "what kind of man will people think you are if you do this?"

And I'm writing this today because I realized I needed to do with this little monster-in-the-dark the same thing I did years ago in my "journey of self-discovery" of my first online journal:  I needed to show it the light of day.  Back then I took those things about myself that most hurt me, those "secret shames", and put them out there in the world because I knew that was the difference between hiding and fighting.  It was the difference between a quiet, internal, eternal struggle, or a louder, shorter, external one.  It was through a "Let the chips fall where they may" attitude that I came to acceptance of a great many things about myself.

And for a long time, I haven't had to do that, because I haven't been digging deep enough to find one.  The newfound shovel of my deeper dive into "what is masculinity anyway?" has shown me there are still things lurking in the darkness, deeper down.

I don't need an 'attaboy'.  I do not expect, require, or desire sympathy.  Rather, I want to simply share my reflection with others, because I want other men to take a closer look at their programmatic gut reactions and their self-imposed exile from emotional connectivity.  I want them to dig deeper.  You are both the hostage and the hostage-taker in this scenario.  Which role you accept is a choice.

I accept my vulnerability.  I refuse to remain hostage to some shit I was spoon-fed by society as a child.  I will forge my own path forward.

Behold, one and all, my delicate, soft underbelly:  sometimes, for the dumbest, most ridiculous reasons, I have a moment where I just feel emotionally exhausted about some stupid little thing, and I need a hug.  Just to feel better.

Gentlemen, you should give it a try.  It's very liberating.

Let Me Count the Ways

"all I need to know

is however far away

my corner is

at least I know that you are in it"

["Storm your Little", Pathological Lovers]

Sometimes, when I tell Liza-Ann I love her, she responds by asking "Why?" putting me on the spot to come up with a specific reason at that time.  There are a lot of reasons, but the urgent demand to spit one out usually puts me on my heels.

So yesterday I opened up Notepad and started making a list, just rapidly typing things as they came to mind, in no particular order.  Not being put on the spot, it was only in a matter of seconds before I had the first twenty, then twenty five, and even now as I sit down to start this, even more come trickling in and the list keeps growing.

So I decided I should share some.  Partly, it's because I'm stingy with compliments and I don't tell her as often as I should.  Partly, it's because I'm proud of the relationship that we've built and how rewarding and functional it is.  Partly, it's because relationships (this one and others) are things I think about a lot, and I think such reflection has given me at least a little insight into what it takes to make a good relationship, and if sharing this helps others to reflect and improve theirs, hey, that'd be a warm thought too.

I won't be providing the full list, because a) it'd be overkill, b) not all of them are appropriate for this forum, and c) it's a fluid document.  Others will come to mind over time, I'm sure.

I present them in no particular order.

#27 She Wins Arguments with Me, and with Great Frequency, but #12 Does so Firmly but Politely

This might seem like an odd thing to put on a list of why you love someone.  I was raised in a family of people who loved to argue.  We argued all the time, both with great passion and dispassion.  We seldom backed down.  We are became quite good at it.  And because we approach debate so readily, with both skill and passion, it's not uncommon to find people reluctant to engage with us.

But I love losing a good argument, because it represents an opportunity for growth.  There was something I didn't understand or was mistaken about, and now I've been corrected or informed.  Liza-Ann is not afraid of me.  She knows sometimes I'm completely full of shit.  She has no fear about explaining to me why I'm completely full of shit about a given thing, if she feels I'm completely full of shit about that thing.

She also argues firmly but politely, much as we Constantines try to always do, and that's the only type of debate I like to engage.

#19 Only Some Shared Tastes, #20 Understands the Need for Space

We have some shared tastes in music, in TV shows, and in games.  We also have tastes we do not share: video games, Dungeons and Dragons, Holly Hobby, or thrifting.  And I think the fact that we have both significant overlap and also significant differences is very important.  It means we are empowered to both share time together and have time alone.

Just as importantly, she understands, as I do, that this is key to a good relationship.  Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet described it as "And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow."

All too often, people enter relationships not understanding the difference between sacrificing or compromising time or views versus sacrificing yourself.  It's an important distinction.  It's a mistake I made once myself in a horrible, horrible way from which it took some time to recover. 

In a good relationship, there are opportunities for evolving, often in responses to the challenges placed before you by one another, but that's not the same as "becoming who they want".  One shouldn't become a servant of the other.  One shouldn't become "just like" the other.  And that means there are things you both enjoy, and there are also times spent apart doing the things you each enjoy that the other does not.  You remain two separate selves.... who love sharing time with one another.

#1 She Tolerates Me

I know that I can be sarcastic, arrogant, dismissive, and a whole kaleidoscope of annoying in different ways.  Sure, we all have our eccentricities, and we all learn to live with the little annoyances of our partners.  But that's just it: it's key to a relationship that we are able to look past these things, I know some of mine are doozies.  Some days I'm not sure where she finds that patience, but she does.  Nearly thirteen years on, and she still does.

(Learning "let him have some caffeine and wake up first, he's intolerable when he first wakes" was a big help, I'm sure.)

I welcome appreciate love rely on that patience.

#9 She's a Great Mom

I had never wanted kids.  It was with some trepidation that I came into this relationship, and it was very long time before I felt comfortable wearing the word "parent".  But she has always and consistently been such a shining example of good parenting, I could not help but learn from her and come to a much better understanding of it myself.  In time, as was inevitable, I came to truly love Dan and to embrace my role in his life, leaving us wondering how we ever naively thought some sort of compartmentalization was possible in the first place.

#26 We Can Conquer the World Together

And for the last one I'll speak to today, one of the most important.  She's my partner.  Our relationship is not simply one of co-habitation and sex with a division of responsibilities.  Our relationship is a partnership.  Neither of us confines our thinking to "What is my part?" but rather asks "What is best for us?"  And as crazy as it might sound, I think it's entirely possible for people to be in a long term relationship without ever coming to think that way, instead living with one foot perpetually out the door in their mind.

I'm a worrier.  It's hard to be as analytical as I am and not be a worrier at times.  I work very hard to "leave the woman at the river" as much as I can, but nonetheless, it's easy sometimes for me to get worked up over small things or be unable to set aside some minor issue that's rattling around in my head.  But any time I get anxious, really worked up, I remind myself that I have Liza-Ann, and my faith in our partnership heartens me.

I have a very real, very warm sense of "We're in this Together Now".