Justified

I would never give relationship advice -- I have arguably never had a successful one -- but one place where I can speak with some authority, in this season of romance, is on how to make dating more tolerable. I couldn't tell you how to date "successfully" -- in the sense of how to find a partner -- but no one can actually do that. Anyone who claims they can is a fraud.

But there is something that's been bugging me lately about The Dating Discourse. Something the seems to be causing a fair number of people a lot of unnecessary frustration and maybe even making them into entitled jerks who take actions that annoy others and cause them stress.

First, everything is presented as a binary. And kind of adversarial. Are you the problem or are they the problem? The blame cannot be equally distributed or even shared. It must be one or the other. The idea is that, if we could just identify who is the problem, that person could be prevailed upon to be different and then everything would work out fine. And it's almost always the case that it's the other person that's the problem.

But what if that isn't the case? What if both of you are the problem? What if neither of you are the problem? What if things are simply not resolvable?

A lot of this content (and the majority of relationship content) is aimed at people who identify as anxiously attached. Something you see a fair amount is someone like TherapyJeff (and no particular beef with that guy) making an impassioned speech about how "Maybe it’s not your anxious attachment -- maybe you’re just dating someone who doesn't provide reassurance, isn't affectionate, blah blah..." Like, the presumed viewer of most of this content is someone who's just so hard on themselves and who is always chasing after people who don't appreciate all the love they have to give. And this makes them so anxious.

And...okay. Maybe! But here's the thing: just because your anxiety is justified doesn’t mean it’s helpful. It doesn't mean it might not be justifiably annoying or overwhelming to your partner. Sure, maybe they're a jerk who stubbornly refuses to "meet your needs." (Did they sign a contract to do so?) But maybe you are asking for too much, too soon or just asking the wrong person. Maybe you are helping create the very push-pull dynamic you claim to abhor and then acting really put upon. Look how I suffer!

Now, just because you’re contributing to an unhealthy dynamic doesn’t mean you deserve to be mistreated. I'm just saying it's possible for both people to be acting in ways that feel totally justified and nonetheless making each other miserable. And there might not be any solution to it. Some things cannot be resolved; they can only be tolerated or discontinued.

A few years ago, when I was trying to parse how I was contributing to the unhealthy dynamics that developed in my very frustrating romantic life, the obvious answer was anxiety. Never mind that my anxiety was incredibly justified. These women weren’t responding or would respond only intermittently. They alternated between warm and affectionate and cold and remote. I was confused and miserable. Was I supposed to keep texting them? Was I supposed to fuck off? I had no idea.

But my very justified anxiety led me to act out in ways that likely made things worse, that probably only heightened their ambivalence.

So what was I supposed to do? (There is always this presumption that some kind of action should be taken. Something must be done.)

The answer is nothing. I should have done nothing. I already had all the information I needed. I should have refrained from further engagement. This would not have led to a “better” outcome but it would have prevented a disappointing experience from devolving into something more hurtful and traumatizing. There was no magical solution, no one weird trick, just the better of a menu of bad options. Sometimes things just suck.

But I think this can be hard to see when you're in the thick of it. I don't think I really came to see how futile so-called "protest" behaviors -- actions taken in an attempt to get a non-responsive person to re-engage with you -- are until I found myself on the other side of them.

In 2023, I dated someone I met on Tinder for about 2.5 months. She was a very therapy-focused person and mentioned on our first date that she was anxiously attached. I was not only trying to practice going on dates with woman who actually returned my texts, but also trying to practice being a good person to date. I was being responsive and putting in effort and mostly getting the same from her. (Anxiously attached people are, notoriously, very communicative.)

Despite this, we quickly fell into a classic anxious-avoidant dynamic, despite both of us having a healthy amount of self-awareness and therapeutic acumen. I refrained from bailing after a movie night at her apartment ended with me literally falling asleep in her arms (hated it) and I have no doubt she was, at least early on, not texting me nearly as much as she wanted to. But I was very aware of her desire for greater involvement, and she possibly of my desire for greater distance. You can play it cool or keep yourself from ghosting, but people can sense this stuff all the same. The vibe knows all.

It all came to a head when I went on vacation for a week with my family. I had been relieved to get some space from her, despite us hanging out no more than once a week. Upon my return, I had an uncharacteristically packed social calendar and a lot of work stress. She had told me she was also busy with various projects, so we agreed we wouldn’t see each other right away, which I was also relieved about. In the weeks before my departure, she had started displaying much more characteristically anxious behaviors: texting me more and for seemingly no purpose other than attention and validation, no amount of which seemed to satisfy her. At one point, I had set up another date just to get some peace. Resentment started creeping in, a sense of being subtly manipulated. Things seemed to be turning sour. Still, I recognized I was probably overreacting and this was still better than getting left on read. I planned on seeing her again and comparing who she was in reality to the needy, grasping version I had in my head.

Midweek following my return, I received a long text from her saying that she was not actually busy as she had said and that her feelings had been hurt that I had not yet set up a time to see her. She hoped we could set up a schedule going forward.

I was immediately very annoyed. How, exactly, was I responsible for failing to see she had been lying about her availability and for not reading her mind that she wanted me to make a date I did not have the bandwidth to make? Could she not have just suggested something herself if seeing me was so important? And to unload all of this on me in the middle of an already stressful work day? She did not help her case by ending the text with “You don’t have to respond right away” as though that were some huge concession. OH THANK YOU FOR THE PERMISSION. It's like dumping a pile of garbage into someone's lap and being all "No need to clean it up right now!"

Prior to this incident, I had recognized I was being kind of weird and avoidant. In the spirit of trying to be more open and have better experiences, I had wanted to hang in for a while longer. This text, meant to prompt reassurance or contrition from me, instead just precipitated the ending that was already in sight. My suspicions were confirmed, not dispelled. I wouldn’t say that this behavior made me “justified” in ending it (relationships are totally voluntary and you can peace out for any reason) but it did just really annoy me. Among other things, I felt really not considered here, as though I were just some resource to be extracted, as though she were entitled to my time no matter what else was going on. (This is a huge trigger for me.) And a schedule? Who did she think she was, my boss? It struck me as unbelievably presumptuous. People sometimes think they are "setting a boundary" but really they're just issuing a demand and may very well come to discover they don't have the leverage they thought they did. "Give me what I want." "No."

I think these were all poor choices on her part. But she was completely justified in being anxious. I was retreating. I was being distant. I was thinking of ending things, even if I was trying to hold off. I had always been less invested in her than she was in me. She was not working herself up over nothing. She was not being hysterical. Even in my initial annoyance, I recognized she had every right to do this no matter how ill-considered and poorly executed. Seen from a certain angle and in a certain state of mind, it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

But her texting me for reassurance did not get her that reassurance because there was no reassurance to be had. There was no action she could have taken that would have turned me into the person she wanted me to be, the person who would have been eager to see her again despite all that was going on. I had, despite my best efforts, never been that person. I was sorry to be disappointing but I could not give her what she wanted without compromising my own happiness, something I was no longer willing to do.

You are not entitled to the relationship that you want with someone just because you want it. Just because you are worthy of love does not mean you are entitled to it from the person of your choice. This genuinely seems to be getting lost these days. Other people are not objects! They are also seeking love, care, and respect. They also have preferences and desires. They are not vending machines for validation or personal appliances for your comfort.

In Buddhism, loss and disappointment are inevitable, but suffering is optional and something you bring on yourself. It comes when you refuse to acknowledge the loss or the disappointment and instead struggle against it. You keep searching for an elusive solution. You write a long, slightly patronizing text to someone who was already going to break up with you. You send a follow-up text to someone who has left you on read for days in the vain hope that it's all just been a misunderstanding. You obsess about healing your anxious attachment in the hopes that will fix things and get you what you want. You assign all this meaning to the things that happen that make you miserable.

There's a moment in Before Sunrise, when Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is talking about getting dumped and how it makes you think about how you've felt about someone you dumped and how humbling and humiliating that is. Like, oh god, someone is thinking about me in that same way.

I had the opposite experience here. It made me see very clearly that there was nothing I could have done with the person from the previous summer (or the ones from years past), other than to have saved myself a little misery by bowing out earlier. But I'm not sure I would have seen that if I hadn’t experienced being on the other side of things. It really undermines your capacity for self-delusion. Given my tendency to chase after emotionally unavailable people, I hadn't really experienced the other side that much. While probably more avoidant by nature, circumstances (that I chose!) meant I have spent most of my romantic life anxious, seeking, and slighted.

One thing I came to see was that, while I might always be attracted to people who were more "independent," I was never going to develop the perspective I would need to keep engaging with them by continuing to engage with only them. I was not going to get over my abandonment issues by chasing after people who ignored my texts. And until I got a handle on those, I was probably going to keep doing (pretty normal, justified) things that would lead these women to retreat or withdraw, which would only cause me more anxiety, lead me to seek reassurance, and trigger more retreat and withdrawal, and on and on until things imploded. It was a vicious circle and a pointless, miserable game.

One thing I worked on -- and that, I will admit, has drawn some skepticism -- was hanging back a bit more. Not as a means of making the other person insecure or anxious (I hate that manipulative bullshit), but to get out of that habit of pursuit -- of taking action -- when pursuit had historically gone so poorly for me. To not try to bring about any outcome, but to let things unfold. To hang on a little less tightly.

And, guess what? Things went less terribly. They weren't amazing but they were perfectly pleasant, which was a huge improvement.

Things do seem rough out there (I am retired, at least for the moment), but there's nothing to do but consider the ways you are contributing to the overall malaise and hold out for something truly reciprocal.