This post is long. It’s about the most uncomfortable relationship topics I could think of, which people rarely talk about. I thought about separating it into multiple essays, but I wanted to give these issues the honor of being discussed together, cohesively and seriously.
Here’s a painful truth: most of the time, people who don’t want to talk about things like this are either insecure or dishonest. Or both. Not because they’re bad people, but because they haven’t been taught how to communicate about hard things, and have instead learned how to avoid what’s uncomfortable.
In diving into these topics, I hope to put into words, both for you and for me, some complicated things about human relationships that might help us all be a little easier on ourselves. So we can stop expecting our partners to be perfect and we can all have a better sense of humor.
The lady with three husbands
If you’ve ever been asked “would you remarry if I died?”, like I have… first of all, you probably laughed out loud. Because of the absurdity of the question. And secondly you probably laughed because it puts you in the all-too-common position of choosing between being a liar and being an asshole. If you’re a man, you know this feeling too well. And it’s so unfortunate and so unfair, that all we can do is laugh. And then try to avoid answering.
My grandfather was telling me last weekend about his sister. She was married until her husband died. She was 50 years old at the time of his death.
She then met another man, fell in love, and remarried. Then he died 15 years later.
Then she met another man, fell in love again, and married a third time. Then she died 15 years later. So by the time she was 80 and dead, she had been married to three husbands in about 30 years.
When people hear stories like this, they don’t think much about it. They don’t spend any time questioning the woman’s motives. Most people don’t call her a whore or label her unfaithful. They don’t look at the second two marriages as some kind of betrayal of her first husband or of God. It was just the path the woman took through life. This is just the objective story of her relationships.
She was given new circumstances, and she pursued happiness under those new circumstances.
I am a pretty dry person. It’s not often that I let emotion dictate what I do. People have called me cold before. Or asked “why is everything a ‘bet’ to you.” And it’s because I have a mind that weighs costs and benefits. Partially by nature, and partially because I’ve trained myself to think that way (hat tip, stock trading). That doesn’t mean I’m a psychopath — it means I’m honest about pros and cons. I’m honest about the nature of people and the nature of relationships. I make decisions the way I think they ought to be made: for the long term.
So when I see that someone is remarrying after the death of a spouse, I think to myself, well… she’s alone now, but she deserves to be happy. There’s really not much else to it. The costs of being alone are high, and there is no practical downside to marrying again.
Is it heartbreaking, if you’re close to the situation? Sure, of course it might be. It might feel like a betrayal or indifference or abandonment. It might feel like your picture of love is being thrown into the gutter. But that doesn’t make it unreasonable. Relationships often teach us things we don’t want to learn. That doesn’t make them untrue.
Recycling
How many of you, by show of hands, have recycled pet names from old relationships with new partners? I don’t mean anything specific like T-baby or Meatloaf… I’m just talking about “honey” or “hon” or “baby girl” or “my love” or “darling.” Names and words that are pretty generic but contain a lot of emotion.
Or how about those other, more specific nicknames? Have you recycled those? How about specific routines, interactions, or quirks? How about silly vocabulary or inside jokes? Have you recycled those?
And if you have, does that make you a terrible person?
I don’t think so. I think it is perfectly fair for us to decide what we like and to try to have it again. I mean… whatever makes us happy is what we will pursue. That’s human nature.
Does that mean it’s a good idea to talk about this with our current partner or our former partners? No, that sounds like an incredibly risky idea. That sounds like someone will be lucky to even sleep on the couch.
However.
If you’re one of the lucky few people who is with a really secure and honest partner, then I am over the moon with happiness for you and maybe you can in fact discuss these sensitive things. I think it has the potential to bring you closer. To help you understand each other better, and to better understand each other’s wants and needs.
There are a lot of men who want to be called “Daddy” now. I’m not sure if that’s a new thing, or if we’re just more willing to talk about it now because society is easing the constraints around what is “taboo.” We’re more willing to talk about our bedroom lives now, publicly, than we were 60 years ago.
And I’m not here to talk about whether the whole “Daddy” thing is appropriate or not. “Appropriate” in the bedroom is for each couple to decide on their own. I’m just stating a well-known phenomenon. That means there are a lot of men who have now been called Daddy by multiple women, in different relationships, in different contexts.
Is that a bad thing? Is that gross? What about the women who have now called multiple men Daddy? Is that wrong, or gross? Does that make them fickle or disloyal?
Doesn’t seem like it to me. That’s just people being people. People rebuilding something approximating what they want. If you want someone who can give you a brand-new, unopened relationship still in the cellophane packaging, I think you’re going to be searching for a long time. Most people are (at the very least) gently used, and so are most of their bodies and their words and actions.
If you can’t be honest about that, that’s not your partner’s fault. If you can be honest about that, your partner has a good partner.
Looking through the phone (trust)
Originally I wanted this essay to be about phones. And then I discovered that I had more things to talk about.
As far as looking through your partner's phone... I really can't think of any circumstances where this would be a healthy habit to build. To me, it screams "unhealthy relationship” at the top of its lungs.
Now let me also say the obvious: people and relationships vary. For some people, this is a perfectly natural give-and-take that keeps the relationship open and carefree. And that’s wonderful. If those people are happy, I applaud them for their communication skills, their integrity, and their security.
So let me clarify.
I do not think partners should routinely look through each other’s phones due to fear. Or as some sort of goofy preventative mechanism for cheating. That seems to me like a bad codependence ritual — a way to enable each other to binge the drugs of suspicion and fear and discomfort. That seems to me like a mutual agreement to be insecure and unhappy.
That’s not a relationship. That’s not what a relationship feels like. Not a good one, anyway.
And I’m not saying this because I have something to hide. I'm not writing this blog piece to Cover My Own Ass. When my last girlfriend asked for my phone, I handed it to her immediately. Because I had nothing to hide.
But... I also had something to say. I told her "you can look through my phone one time. Anytime you want. It can be tonight, or next week, or a year from now. You decide, and you can look through my phone one time. And after that, we're having an adult relationship."
Why? Because I’m not playing that game. I don’t want the kind of relationship that 15-year-olds who don’t trust each other have. That sounds like the opposite of a good time. I’m a man and I want to be with a woman.
Something else I’m acutely aware of is that some people have been through bad relationships. They have been conditioned to distrust the bell on their partner’s phone. Or his tendency to sit across the room every time he answers a text. Or to expect him home later than normal on Thursday nights.
I get it. Some people’s natural response going into a new relationship is to be suspicious by default. And, if she’s my girlfriend, my goal is to provide her with plenty of time and forgiveness and breathing room to work on this. I know how hard it is to overcome bad relationship habits and emotional scarring.
But there is also a line. Somewhere, there is a line.
It is that person’s job to work their ass off to heal these scars and bad habits. It is my job to work my ass off helping and being patient — and reinforcing trust by being trustworthy. But it is also my job to draw a line and say that enough is enough, if it reaches that point. If a healthy relationship is not being built, I must admit that and walk away.
Looking through the phone (individualism)
There’s a separate piece of the phones conversation that is worth discussing. The first was about trust and security; the second is about individuals being individuals.
It is perfectly healthy, even non-negotiable, for two people to have their own lives outside of a relationship. To have conversations the other isn’t involved in, to have their own friends, to have a sense of humor that is all their own. To have hobbies that don’t involve their partner. To have lives that don’t need their partner’s approval.
I think it’s perfectly normal for a person to not want his partner reading his text messages. Not because he’s hiding something, but because they are his.
I don’t want anybody reading my conversations. Not my girlfriend, not my mother or father, not my accountant. There’s something sacred about text messages: they are private. They are treated with an openness that is totally organic and personal because they are assumed to be private. When that assumption is encroached upon, it’s sacrilege against the conversation. It’s sacrilege against a relationship or friendship.
That to me is no different than if someone was to follow me around all day, listening. They would know all of my reasons for being happy and sad, all of my frustrations, all of the little things I’m struggling with, and all of the fleeting thoughts I’m having. They would also know everything that other people said to me.
Not only is that awkward, but it amounts to an offense against the integrity of personal relationships. It means that nothing I say to anyone is “just ours. Just us being us.” That removes the sacred bond that two people share.
Now you might say “well I don’t really have a sacred bond with Jill from Purchasing,” but my response is this: that’s easy to say until your privacy is taken away. Your relationship with anyone is sacred if you ever say anything to them in private. You get to say exactly what you want to say, exactly how you want to say it.
And this is also why people who can’t be themselves around their own families suffer terrible pain inside. Because they feel like they’re living a lie. They feel like they’re suppressing the very core of who they are, to please others.
And so how does that apply to relationships and phones? I mean, isn’t your partner the one person who’s supposed to know everything about you?
Well, my honest answer is no. Not even your partner should know absolutely everything. First of all because they might not be able to stand the dumb things you say, or the horrible thoughts you have, or the gross jokes you make with your best friend. But more importantly because if you lose your identity as individuals then you are worthless to each other. If you lose your ability to be separate people, you have nothing to bring home anymore.
You must trust each other enough to be individuals, and you must let each other have lives that allow each other to flourish — your desires, your needs, your humor, your sense of natural connection with others. This is not replaceable. It’s what makes you people. Looking through each other’s phones all the time threatens to take this away and make you nothing more than extensions of each other. That sounds depressing as hell. That sounds like codependence, which is something drug addicts are explicitly taught to avoid.
Here are some examples.
Imagine you look through your partner’s phone and discover that he has old text messages from his two-years-ago girlfriend, where he called her darling. But he calls you darling. Now you’re uncomfortable. That word was supposed to be yours. What the hell.
Well… people are allowed to have exes. You don’t get to make his past about you — you didn’t even exist in his past. And again, there’ll be no brand-new unopened such and such.
Or imagine that your girlfriend was expressing, last Tuesday, to her friend Tina that she feels insecure in the bedroom recently and that she feels that her boyfriend is being selfish. Well, you’re her boyfriend. Apparently you’re being selfish. Why would she not bring this up? Now you’re confused, and maybe even defensive and angry. Why would she talk bad about me to Tina? Tina knows me and now I look like a jerk.
Well… she is allowed to have friends. And part of the point of having friends in life is to be able to lean on them in very personal ways. To say things badly to them so she can learn how to say them better, to you.
You may not like what you’re reading, but too bad. You have no right to tell her she’s not allowed to say it. You have no right to tell her she can’t have perfectly healthy relationships or to talk about her very real struggles with her friends. Everybody who dates anybody gets talked about badly at some point. Unless you live in a fairy tale utopia of blameless, perfect cooperation. That doesn’t mean Tina hates you and it doesn’t mean your girlfriend hates you. It just means that she’s human and she’s looking for help. And eventually, if you’re in a good relationship, she’ll bring it up with you. So wait.
Or imagine that you look through your boyfriend’s phone and you see him making some extremely raunchy jokes with his friends. About death or rape or 9/11 or something. He doesn’t talk like this with you. Is this now a problem? Is he a bad person for finding humor in awful things? Things that turn you off?
Well… he doesn’t bring it home. You don’t have to like 100% of each other. In fact it’s guaranteed that you won’t like 100% of each other. He keeps that brand of humor where it belongs — elsewhere. And he’s just having a good time, right? The same way you spend too much money on shoes. Right?
So when we look through our partner’s phones (or try to intrude on their lives in other ways), we are taking serious risk. Not only are we encroaching upon individual relationships and an assumed sense of organic privacy, but we are putting ourselves at risk of finding things we simply don’t want to read. Or shouldn’t read, for very practical and serious reasons. We put ourselves at risk of crowbarring our way into conversations we were not meant to be a part of. And this is the kind of territory where fear, resentment, and weeks-months-years of unspoken questions enter a relationship and begin to poison it.
Text messages might not seem like a big deal, but these are the kinds of deliberate choices that can make or break a relationship.
The Ghost of Sex Past
Here’s an interesting topic: the debilitating insecurity that comes from knowing too much about your partner’s sex life. Asking too many questions about your partner’s past and letting the answers make you miserable. Haunt you.
Let’s just face it: your partner has probably had good sex before. A lot of good sex.
They have probably been called lots of nice words, and lots of filthy words, and done or been told to do things that would make their mother blush. Or weep.
Your partner has probably done a lot of things that will make you extremely jealous. Insanely, restlessly jealous. The reason I say that is because I’ve felt it before.
So it’s best not to ask too many questions. In my experience, what is most beneficial is asking questions when I have them (they can be general or specific), but not asking when I don’t have a good reason to.
Now, again, I’m a pretty dry and objective person. I am capable of hearing a lot of hard things without becoming emotional. But when it comes to my partner’s previous sex life… I feel the pain of jealousy very easily. Just being honest. I, like many men, like to imagine that my partner is giving to me things she has never given away before. Doing things she has never done before. I like to think I’m better than the others. That I take better care of her, that I provide better for her, that I know her needs better. And that I’m sexier. These are the kinds of things men want to feel (and a lot of women too).
Some of the time these things are true, and sometimes they’re not. That’s not for me to know or decide.
What’s for me to know and decide is how to best take care of her now.
And that involves asking questions when I feel it’s necessary. Asking about what she wants or likes or enjoys. I don’t want to hear about the time when Jonny Ex-Boyfriend did some brutal thing to her and she loved it — that’s just going to make me resent Jonny Ex-Boyfriend and feel inadequate and go out and drink again. I just want to know what she likes and why she likes it. I want to know the physical sensations she enjoys and the mental and emotional sensations that go along with them.
I have been asked by one too many girlfriends for one too many details on my past sex life. And, gentlemen, let me tell you this if you don’t already know: the woman in your life might seem like she’s genuinely and innocently curious (and maybe she is), but be careful. The chances are pretty good that she will end up using your past sex life against you at some point. Not because she’s a bad person, no no. But because women are much more neurotic and prone to lash out when they feel insecure. It’s not her fault. She was born to be this way.
If she’s feeling not-so-bubbly one day, she just may use some overly-specific detail of your past sex life to show you just how insecure she feels and why. “Because Missy Ex-Girlfriend just loooved to give you your favorite, didn’t she. Maybe that’s why you can’t get off with me. Because you’re thinking about her and that favorite thing she does or has. It’s okay, I know how you really feel. You don’t even love me because I can’t do that.”
And you’re just standing there wondering what inside of the hell is going on.
Don’t sweat it. Been there. Just learn from this. Only share what details are necessary to improve your current sex life. That goes both ways. Ladies, you too.
Love each other enough to be jealous and possessive. But be prudent and objective enough to know that everyone has a past sex life, and don’t let it turn into a ghost.
It can ruin you if you let it — but, it can only ruin you if you let it.
Does he still love her?
Here’s another question that has the potential to make people horribly uncomfortable.
Is it possible that my boyfriend still loves his ex?
Yes. The answer is yes.
But that love is buried and not being attended to. It’s an artifact.
As people get older, we get more and more complicated in some ways. Our neurons create more and more connections. We accumulate more and more information, more and more wisdom and experience, more and more love for more and more things and people.
We don’t have to forget algebra to learn trigonometry (in fact, we can’t). We don’t have to forget the Civil War to learn about Civil Rights (in fact, we can’t). We don’t have to remove old memories to make room for new.
And we don’t have to remove old feelings to make room for new feelings. We simply add more to what is already there. We take our current experience and then go some new, different way. We are gardens full of different plants, all of which came from different places and have different needs.
We are not limited on space inside of us — but we are limited on energy and focus. We cannot water every plant at once. We choose which relationships to water and tend to. That’s what being in a relationship here and now is. It means forgetting about our exes and focusing on the person who is now most appealing to us: our partner.
So the question isn’t really “does my boyfriend still love his ex.” Because the answer is always going to be yes.
The question, rather, is “does the version of my boyfriend that was with his ex still exist?” Is that version of him still alive? Well, yes. But think for a moment. That part of him has faded and withered. It’s not active. Is it still there? Yes, it’s in there somewhere. This isn’t something to be jealous about. He has feelings that do not simply disappear, but he is actively choosing to focus on you because you are what he wants now. You are now his life, you are now the plant he is watering.
The way I see it, when you choose a new partner, you are adopting that person and everything about them into your life. And, if you are a fully honest and secure person, that includes acknowledging and being okay with the fact that they still probably have some unresolved feelings about exes.
And, for a gold star and bonus points, that includes letting them talk to you about the resulting romantic and sexual complications inside of them. My god, what a thought. To be able to say to your partner “I’m still struggling with this feeling about my ex, even though I know I don’t want to be with her and I am 100% committed to you. I don’t want this feeling, but it hasn’t gone away yet.”
What an incredible thought. For your partner to be open to hearing that — what an overwhelmingly good sign that your partner has adopted you and your mind and emotions fully into her life. This level of transparency and security isn’t for everyone, but it sure is a nice thing to think about.
Rose DeWitt Bukater
Do you remember, at the end of Titanic, the dream Rose has where she meets Jack again at the top of the steps as she’s dying in her sleep? Well, arguably dying. It sure seems like she’s dying.
Now remember, Rose is over 100 at this point. It’s been 84 years, and she can still smell the paint. And she’s still in love with Leonardo Dicaprio. Or, more accurately, there is a part of her that is. This love story is part of what defined her entire life. Turned her into who she was, and who she would always be.
And she was married and had kids and grandkids in between this affair and her retelling 84 years later. She had an entire lifetime of other loves and priorities — none of which seem unimportant or lacking in genuine character.
Should we feel bad for Mr. Calvert, Rose’s husband? Well, maybe, but the point isn’t that he was irrelevant or worthless. The point isn’t that he came in second place. Because there is no first or second place. There is only what is being attended to now.
And it’s not that she held on to something she shouldn’t have, in some sort of betrayal or act of infidelity. It’s that we are complicated creatures with lots of confusing things inside of us. And we never really make sense of a lot of them. We just give our best selves to whoever is in front of us.
Relationships are reflections of periods in our lives. They reflect our needs, desires, struggles, and stories at a given point in time. And that doesn't have to reflect onto current circumstances — in fact it most likely doesn't very well at all. Every relationship is different. And I think one of the few refuges we find in the confusing world of relationships is trying to make them slightly similar, for comfort’s sake. To look for what makes us feel good, both because of and in spite of what we’ve had before.
To be in a relationship is not to be a fresh person, although that’s the fantasy we entertain sometimes about our partners. A fresh start? Yes. A fresh, untainted person? No. Almost never. To expect purity and novelty out of a person who has been in relationships before is to ignore the fact that he has been in relationships before. We’re all damaged goods.
To be in a relationship is to be a mostly-put-together person who is making a decision to move from the past into the present. A decision. To build something new, something that hasn’t been built before. It doesn’t matter where we get our materials from, as long as they are good materials and they are built into a sturdy foundation. A foundation of trust and respect and honor. We can handle some imperfection and discomfort as long as we build the house right.
We must trust our partners to use words and names that mean something to them… and we must allow those words and names to fully mean something to us. We must do things for our partners that we have done before for someone else, knowing that they’re probably doing the same, but all the while reminding ourselves that we wouldn’t be doing them at all if we didn’t love them or want to.
And we must give our partner the grace of ignorance. We must only dig into their past or their present as much as is healthy for both of us. We have to trust that whatever version of them we are receiving is the version of them that is most up-to-date and most appropriate for here and now. There’s no reason to put our partners on trial — especially past versions of them. What we see is what we get.
There is comfort in already knowing what we want. And there is utility in mapping that onto a new relationship and seeing what fits. That doesn’t mean we’re trying to turn our new partner into somebody else; doesn’t mean we’re trying to compare. It means we know ourselves well enough to know what makes us happiest. We want to lock some of that in again because we know it’ll be a good foundation. And the rest is a fun, exciting mystery. Because we need that too.
And we don’t hold our pasts against our partners, or against ourselves. Because we all have a past and most of the time it’s not fun to talk about.
Drink some water and be fair.
JDR
“A sense of humor is great — it goes a long, long way in a marriage.” - Chris Rock
I need a full week to chew on this. For all the right reasons.