The last couple of days I've had the most interesting exchange with Marie. It started Friday, when she emailed me briefly to tell me how one of her relatives was weathering Hurricane Ida, and to mention (seemingly in passing) her dismay at the Supreme Court's recent decision to take no action in the case of Whole Woman's Health et al. v. Austin Reeve Jackson, Judge, et al. I didn't know anything about the decision so I googled it and read a couple of articles. Based on what those articles told me, I replied (later the same day) that it looked to me like this "decision not to decide" was at most very temporary, and that bigger cases (substantive ones, not to be decided on procedural details) appeared to be on the horizon. What I meant by this was that, if she wanted to engage in any kind of political activity around the issue, she would be well advised to keep her powder safe and dry for a time that it could make a difference.
What I got back from her late that evening was an impassioned screed that started, "You fucking sociopath!" She went on to remind me that I'm not a woman [err, … yes, that's true, was there any doubt of this?], to express gratitude that none of my children had been daughters, to explain that everyone else "in the universe" is currently "register[ing] excruciating agony" over this topic, and to excoriate me for not "giv[ing] a FUCK for anything that makes other people's, REAL OTHER PEOPLE's, lives utterly, HORRIFIC[ALLY], WORSE." Then after adding a little more juicy substantiating detail, together with some odd predictions for the local politics in my own state, she concluded:
You don't care, do you?, so long as you imagine you cannot be affected.
Go fuck yourself.
Seriously.
Fuck yourself again and again.
Fuck yourself in every orifice.
And then again.
This email was followed by a one-sentence email later the same evening in which she apologized for swearing at me.
Wow.
Kind of exciting, actually. I don't remember anyone ever accusing me of sociopathy before.
I waited a while before replying. Saturday, around noon, I asked her to double-check the articles I had read (and had previously linked for her), so she could tell me whether there was anything in my email that I had not lifted directly from them? Also, did she think those journalists were sociopaths too?
She replied in a longer email that mostly avoided capital letters, in which she explained why any decent human being would feel as helplessly, hopelessly distraught as she did right now, before closing with:
But [the word] sociopath was ill-chosen. You struck me as exhibiting a lack of empathy marked enough to feel to me like a slap in the face, but you certainly don't exhibit tendencies either to personal irresponsibility or to violence.
So sorry about that term as well.
Love, Marie
Does this mean I'm not a sociopath after all? Inquiring minds want to know.
Also I have to wonder, where does this leave us as a couple? Does it make a difference? Do we go on as before? Or do we have to do some kind of work around this? I know that in general I avoid discussing politics with Marie, because I know that she gets crazily over-invested in it. But in this case I wasn't even expressing an opinion on the issue that was different from hers. (To the extent that my political opinions are different from hers – on this issue or any other – I am even more careful to keep my silence.) But clearly avoiding disagreement isn't good enough. Even if I am "not-disagreeing," apparently I have to use exactly the right words to express that "non-disagreement" in. This could get old fast.
And of course it's not even remotely news. (For example, compare this post here, which dates from almost exactly four years ago.) That's why I don't talk politics with Marie. But I thought my remarks were totally innocuous, so I was taken by surprise.
Let me clarify that I'm not hurt, or offended, or insulted. I didn't take her outburst seriously enough for any of that. After raising two children up from birth, and after living through Wife and D as romantic partners, I'm used to handling infantile temper tantrums. (Go ahead – tell me I'm being condescending. You're not wrong.)
But I was taken by surprise. And at this point I may have to explain to her that this is part of the reason I am not about to trust her emotionally. Of course that doesn't stop us from fucking. But will she really be happy in the long term with a relationship where we fuck whenever we can travel, but where I keep large parts of myself off-limits and out-of-bounds? Where we can't even discuss the daily news, for Pete's sake, because usually the daily news involves politics and I won't discuss politics with her? What kind of relationship is that?
We have a regular, weekly phone call about an hour from now. Let's see how it goes.
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