I know I am going to anger a lot of my readers by writing this, but sometimes things have just got to be said. So here goes.
Richard Friedman, a Cornell psychiatrist, pens one of those weird opinion pieces that the New York Times runs from time to time in its Health section. I think these pieces are supposed to pass for a blend of commentary on the human condition and medical advice all at once. Not sure what you'd call the form.
Anyhow, today Friedman takes up the yawningly familiar subject of the midlife crisis, pointing out that perhaps there is nothing natural at all about the dynamic and pegging it as a convenient excuse for misbehavior. He writes of two men in their 40s, both accomplished who both ditched their wives under the panic of a midlife crisis.
"[Y}ou have to admit that 'I’m having a midlife crisis' sounds a lot better than 'I’m a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown.'"
The guys do smell like narcissistic jerks in Friedman's telling, but what stopped me in my tracks wasn't that the doctor blamed "our youth-obsessed culture" for this dynamic, but that he only singled out men for criticism.
Does Friedman not have any insight into how disastrously and selfishly women behave in relationships? Has he never seen women unaccountably walk from an LTR to pursue a flavor of the month and try to somehow recapture something they feared they'd lost in the process of having a normal relationship (the one they'd presumably wanted at some point)? Has he never read of women lying about who they are and what they want out of life in order to tie a man down only to do an about face once the relationship gets comfortable? Are men always the culprits in the easy mythology of sex, relationship and gender as told to America in the pages of the Times or on "Oprah?"
The reason I ask is that, in recent months, I have watched as women in LTRs with men I know have ended or sabotaged relationships because of the same loose dynamic as what Friedman calls a mythic midlife crisis. I'm talking grown women behaving narcissistically here. In one case, I know a woman whose partner has been raising her daughter from a previous marriage for five years, has been paying the rent and so on the whole time. Now, the woman is doing everything she can do to force him out of the relationship because she's apparently bored. Wow, there's some gratitude.
The others involving friends I won't get into because they are too Seattle-centric and could result in a permanent downgrading of my social status in town (modest as it is already).
But here's a recent example from my own life, offered with much trepidation. This woman I know and I had always had an attraction for one another over several years. Thing was she was in an LTR and when she made a pass at me one evening at a social engagement a few years ago, I made it clear to her that I don't mess around with other men's girlfriends. Bad karma and honor and all that. The guy she was in a relationship with was a classic narcissistic jerk of the musician variety (women always seem to tolerate musician jerks more than other jerks, I've noticed, except wealthy jerks, of course) and pretty much everyone who knew the pair felt she deserved far better.
So a year or so ago, the guy starts cheating on her and she catches him and kicks him out of the house. They'd had an open relationship in the past but at that point it was supposed to be closed. She waits six months and officially ends the relationship. Not long after she and I go out for drinks, a friendly get-together (not a date) and wind up later at my apartment. It's obvious she's damn interested in me and I am in her, but I've gotten a bit timid about the headlong rush into affairs and dating and such over the years (too many awful experiences and misjudged characters and wasted money), so I take things carefully and leave her to pass out on my couch (she was drunk and so was I). In the morning, we agree to get together over the weekend. The weekend comes and I call (and call) but she won't answer her phone or return messages. Monday comes and I decide to shoot her an email.
She answers the email that Monday night. Turns out she'd spent the entire weekend all bummed out and locked up in her house (so typically Seattle that I cannot get into it), and now she was on the road at a business conference. "Ah, didn't know about that," I write back. "Have fun."
She replies that she will and, in fact, since it's 11 p.m. she's going to go to a liquor store, buy a fifth of vodka and drag whatever guy she can find from the conference in the hotel bar back up to her room and fuck the beejesus out of them. I figure she's kidding, so I email her back: "Funny joke."
She emails me back that it's no joke and indeed she's been doing this kind of thing at out-of-town conferences for years, sometimes behind her ex's back, sometimes not. She's an attractive woman and I guess she can get away with it, although in her email she whines that she's just hit 40 and isn't feeling very attractive and men don't understand her and support her and so on. In other words, complete narcissism, midlife crisis BS. She writes that she hopes I understand. The subtext of her messages was: While I'm getting laid on the road, I want you to be ready for me when I get back to town and we can have some fun.
I quickly write her back that not only do I not understand, but that I don't want her contacting me ever again. Seriously. I cut her off just like that because why would I even remotely be interested in having such a manipulative character in my intimate life (believe me, I knew none of this about her before). Over the next three days she writes me several emails claiming that she now feels guilty and begging me to be friends with her again.
I don't even bother replying because there is nothing to say, except that women in my generation (that'd be Gen X, more or less) have turned out to be an epic disappointment from where I sit. I'm a long way from being a member of the Tom Leykis women hating/abusing club (I had to listen to his show once for an assignment. Dumbest show ever), but I've really found that I've had to back the hell off from the dating world the last two years because it is a disaster out there and, in my opinion, there are some very damaged women running about who think they own men. And this isn't even remotely the fault of men, as some feminist theory and the Dr. Friedmans of the world would lead you to believe.
They don't own this cowboy.
Two years ago, I ran into a woman I'd gone out with a few times while walking in the neighborhood one afternoon. I was very interested in her. Anyway, we're talking and she hits me up with the proverbial, "Can I tell you something?" When those words come out of a woman's mouth, they either spell ecstasy or doom for the guy on the other end of the conversation.
"Sure," I answer, already sensing that it wasn't going to be the ecstasy version.
"Look, I'll just be honest," she says. "I'm not interested in you romantically or sexually. Can we just be friends?"
"Ummmmm," I say, fishing for an answer. "You don't want to date me?"
"Right," she says.
"You don't want to have sex with me?"
"Right."
"Do you have any single friends you plan to hook me up with?"
"No, I don't. I'm sorry."
"Then your utility to me as a friend is extremely limited."
I knew how things would play out had I decided to be "friends." There would be a string of irregular meetings for coffee and drinks and such where she would sit there and cry to me about how whomever she was dating or fucking at the moment was an idiot, and I'd be expected to do the friendly thing and just sit there and take it. I've been there before, and didn't like it. So I just walked off, knowing full well that what I'd just said and done was likely very narcissistic (I'm sure Friedman and Oprah would say so), but if knowing what one wants out of another human is narcissism, then I plead guilty. Hell, I'm 45-years-old, as midlife as it gets, so perhaps I am entitled.
I could offer many, many more examples of women being idiots in relationships, and in the even-dicier pre-relationship period. But my main point here isn't that women are bad or evil or whatever, it's that they are as big a disappointment to men as men are to women.
And from what I understand of human psychology and the DSM, they are just as narcissistic.
