Solitude

This weekend I visited my mother. I drove down on Saturday. When I got there, she was at her storage unit with Brother and SIL; but it wasn't long before they came back, along with a friend of Brother's. We sat around and talked a while before they all went home. Then Mother and I stayed up until 2:00 in the morning, drinking brandy and talking some more. Sunday, Mother and I drove into the Big City to go to a concert. We met Brother and SIL there, and we chatted after the concert before going home. Today (Monday), Brother and SIL came out, and we all contributed to a nice meal outside in the early evening. So it sounds like I spent the weekend socializing with family.

You'd think.

But in reality, not so much. Saturday, sure, we sat around chatting for a bit, but in a superficial way. I got to talk to Mother more after everyone else left. But then we drank enough and stayed up late enough that Sunday was pretty miserable. I mostly tried to stay out of those conversations because I was still wiped out. And today? Mother was in the kitchen cooking; Brother and SIL were in the kitchen cooking. I tried my damnedest to stay away, somewhere else, for hours.

Why? I worried about saying something thoughtless that might offend someone. I guess I was thinking particularly that I might say something to offend SIL (see especially this post and this one, for example), but at the same time I was prepared for the possibility of equal-opportunity offensiveness. Not of purpose, of course! Just because I don't trust myself a lot in social situations any more. (If I ever did.)

Maybe I worry too much. Besides, if you are weak at a particular skill, you get better by exercising it more, not by avoiding it. 

Right, whatever. Anyway, after we had our meal (where I was careful to praise every dish!) I announced that I needed to get back home. I cleared the table of dishes (see, I helped out a little bit!) and then took off. Now I'm back at home, and I feel much more at ease. So far as I can tell, I didn't offend anyone this time. And thank heavens for that! 

      

Childless cat ladies

Sometime while I was staying with the Schmidts last month, I started thinking about the trope of the "childless cat lady." Of course the phrase got a lot of attention during the last election, because the news media pointed out that some years earlier (before he was a candidate for anything, let alone an officeholder), JD Vance had used it in an interview with Fox News. So in a sense cat ladies had their moment in the sun last year, just as "bad hombres" did eight years earlier.

But what, I began to wonder, really is the distinguishing characteristic of a childless cat lady, and why do they get so much grief? 

Why do people look down on childless cat ladies?

I tried googling this question, and all I found were articles saying that childless cat ladies aren't nearly as bad as everyone thinks. Here's a collection of them:

• The Guardian, "Claws out! Why pop culture clings to the crazy cat lady," April 16, 2018
• NBC News, "JD Vance doubles down on 'childless cat ladies' dig: 'I've got nothing against cats'," July 26, 2024
• City Journal, "About Those 'Childless Cat Ladies'," September 3, 2024
• Ipsos, "Why America's childless cat ladies are more than just Taylor Swift," September 11, 2024
• The Cutprice Guignol, "On Childless Cat Ladies," September 16, 2024
• The Conversation, "‘Childless cat ladies’ have long contributed to the welfare of American children − and the nation," October 21, 2024
• The Guardian, "Fur and loathing: do America’s ‘childless cat ladies’ hold the key to the US election?" November 3, 2024

And that's great to know—don't get me wrong. I guess it's reassuring to hear that the stereotype is incorrect. But I wanted historical information on where the stereotype came from in the first place—and, more particularly, on what the image means in the popular psyche. A couple of articles waved vaguely towards the idea that the condemnation of childless cat ladies was a holdover from the ancient fear of witches. But that doesn't sound likely to me. 

Old friend

This morning I had a Zoom call with an old friend, old enough that I'm pretty sure I've never mentioned him here yet. Before last weekend, our last communication was in … I think  … 1984, so over forty years ago. The last time we saw each other in person was … now I'm not sure I can remember. I know for sure we got together for a week or so back in 1978 (or not quite fifty years ago). There might have been once more since then, a couple years later, but I can't be certain.

But wait! If I last saw him almost fifty years ago, when the hell did we meet in the first place? Oh, that's easy. We met in the fall of 1970, in fifth grade. I even remember a story about the day.

I'd better give this fellow a name. I'll call him Chris, although I reserve the right to change his name to something else if he becomes important to the story and I think of a better one later. (In real life, his name is not Chris.) At the moment, I have no idea what actor should play him, so this installment of the movie meme will have to wait.

History

Chris joined our class a few weeks after the beginning of school. I don't really know why. So the teacher assigned a student at random—I think it was Gavin—to be his "official friend" and show him around. But during recess, Chris and I started talking, and we took to each other immediately. He started explaining some kind of popular science he had recently been reading: I'm almost certain it was about capybaras. I thought it was fascinating, and doubtless started talking about whatever my enthusiasms were back then. (Fortunately I don't remember.) At one point Gavin actually objected, "Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to be showing him around!" Chris replied, "I'll talk to whoever I want to talk to." And pretty much from that first day, he and I were best friends.

Three years later, at the end of seventh grade, my family moved away. Far away. So Chris and I started writing letters. All through eighth grade and high school, we kept up a heavy correspondence. Also we arranged a couple of visits. He came to visit me twice (the second visit was the one in 1978 that I referenced above), and I went to visit him once. We even kept writing each other during university, though less often. For each of us, real life was claiming more and more of our time.

I remember getting a card from him when Wife and I got married, so I must have sent him an announcement. I remember the card from him, but I don't remember writing a letter. After that time, I lost touch with almost everyone I knew. Partly this was because Wife and I were in graduate school and time was scarce. Partly it was because I didn't understand my marriage, and didn't know how to communicate it to anyone I had known before. I had brief, sporadic communications with Schmidt, with Marie, and with Dale—and pretty much none of my other former friends (such as Fillette or Inga). This also meant that during the long years when I wished I had someone to talk to—a problem I finally addressed by starting this blog!—I had no idea how to contact anyone. From time to time I searched for Chris on the Internet, but his real-life name (like mine) is pretty common. So there was no way of finding the right needle in so large a haystack. (Try to find one specific "John Jones" and you'll get the idea.) 

Years too late … an article about infidelity

A few days ago, I stumbled across an online article from Psychology Today (March 11, 2025) that would have been really useful if I had discovered it twenty or forty years ago. (Oops, bad news, it hadn't been written yet.) The title is "3 Traits That Can Make a Partner More Likely to Cheat," and yes, I have added it to my list of articles posted at the bottom of this page on the left. The short version is that it might have helped me decode Wife's infidelities a lot earlier, though some of what it says finally (belatedly) occurred to me too.

The three traits are these:

1. Narcissistic tendencies
2. Low self-esteem
3. Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

I'll summarize how each of these is supposed to work.

Narcissistic tendencies

No surprise here. The article argues that narcissists use sex to bolster their own self-image, because they need constant validation and praise. So if the spouse falls down on the job—or gets tired, or mad, or bored, or boring—the narcissist seeks sexual validation elsewhere.

When I first married Wife, I didn't even know the word narcissism! The first time I heard about it as a psychiatric disorder was during this conversation with D. Even after that it took me a couple of years before I really understood it.

Does this explanation fit Wife? I think so. Whenever she started a new affair it always made her bubbly with New Relationship Energy, and confident enough to take on the world. I certainly saw that in her relationship with the Church Tenor, for instance. (See, for example, here or here.) Given how low she always crashed later, those highs must have been intoxicating.

Low self-esteem

Of course this explanation is the flip side of the earlier one. Desperately low self-esteem prods the sufferer to do anything to get external validation. I talked about this connection early on, in this post.

The article goes on to say that when one partner commits infidelity, that damages the relationship, which in turn gives the adulterer more to feel bad about (and even lower self-esteem). Interestingly, I caught that feature as well, in this post here. 

Fear of vulnerability and emotional intimacy

The third trait follows a slightly different tack:

For some, cheating is a way to avoid emotional closeness. They fear being vulnerable and may sabotage their own relationships by seeking external connections that require little emotional intimacy....

When they cheat, they often form external connections that demand little to no emotional investment. These brief encounters provide a temporary sense of control or detachment, allowing them to maintain a surface-level connection while avoiding the deeper emotional work required for a healthy, intimate partnership.

It took me a while to understand Wife's fear of vulnerability. I think the most extensive post I've written on it may be this one, which came some five years after the others that I've quoted. But there were certainly signs there earlier. Her willingness to be involved in the torrid BDSM fantasies of Boyfriend 5 was probably one of those signs. Or in any event I remember reading later the assertion that BDSM appeals precisely to people who are afraid of emotional intimacy, because it provides such a rigid framework for behavior that they never have to worry about not knowing where the boundaries are. And Wife regularly panicked over not knowing where the boundaries were.

I said that this article came along years too late. In some senses, I no longer need it because I ended up discovering all these same conclusions myself. But if I had had it available years ago, think how much time it might have saved me!        

           

People are funny

As I left my UU Sangha this evening, I waved to one of the women there and said, "See you next week."

She replied "Inshallah." (One look at her will tell you without doubt that her ancestors must have been English and Scandinavian.)

Then she caught up with me and explained. She has an Iranian neighbor, you see, and so she and her neighbor got in the habit of saying "Inshallah" to each other years ago. Today it's something they find totally natural.

Only she realizes that nowadays, with all the political turmoil in the Middle East, some people get very sensitive about using any conventional phrases from Arabic. So now she feels like she has to watch herself, to avoid saying something that will bother people.

I suggested that she could always just translate it to English as "God willing."

But no, she balked at that. I think it's because she's a Unitarian, and so feels squeamish talking about God.

Even though she clearly has no problem saying "Inshallah," … which is an abbreviation of "in shāʾ Allāh" … which literally means "if God wills" or "God willing."

So why is she willing to talk to God in Arabic, but not in English? (Note that she doesn't speak Arabic or Farsi, or not more than her neighbor taught her.) I think it is for the same reason that profanity never sounds as bad in a foreign language. I have known Germans who are perfectly willing to exclaim "Shit!" but who are far too inhibited to yell "Scheiße!" just as loud. And I've known Americans who feel the same way but in reverse. It's probably the same thing going on here.

People are funny.  

Thoughts on prayer

One evening while I was sitting with Ma Schmidt—I had almost a week to go before coming home, and it was maybe eight or nine days before she died—I suddenly had an idea. She had been moaning "Help me" over and over, even as she was totally unable to answer the question, "Help you do what?"

And suddenly I wondered, Is that how God (or the gods) experience human prayer? Everybody knows that the great majority of prayers seem to go unanswered. Could it be that the problem is on our end, not God's? To flesh this out a bit: Maybe it's the case that there is a limited range of things that God can do for us, but "Make It All Better" isn't one of them. Or, well, it might be one of them if we could specify exactly what we mean. But maybe (for whatever reason) we can't ask God to figure it out for us. Maybe He's willing to help if only we can spell out what we want, but remaking the Universe from scratch so that I personally am never unhappy, … well that just isn't on the menu. (And after all, what I want out of the Universe is probably different from what you want.) So the end result, so far as we can perceive, is that our prayers go unanswered. And we blame it on God. Ma Schmidt probably blamed it on us that her pleas for help fell (to all appearances) on deaf ears.

Another song for the road

A few days ago I brought the story of Ma Schmidt up to the point where she died. I don't remember quite when I wrote that part. It must have been less than a week, because I posted this one six days ago, and that was before I wrote the last few about her.

I keep thinking I "should" write some of the other posts I've been thinking about from that time, and maybe I will. I'll start with this one because it's easy.

You remember back in March I wrote about why I find country music good to listen to for long road trips. So I scanned for Country stations on the road up to see the Schmidts again, and on the road home. Most of the songs I heard were songs I had heard before—good enough to keep me awake, but nothing I felt I had to remember for later. Or they were songs that I hadn't heard before, and that I forgot again right away.

But there was one that caught my attention. I'm not sure if it hooked any of my special topics, or if it's just that the tune is compelling and the beat is relentless. But it's all of that, for sure. Apparently it's also famous, so maybe you've already heard of it. The song is "Austin," by Dasha.

P.S.: I just realized that Dasha defines her style as #cuntry, and yes it is spelled like that. I don't know what to make of that, but here's an article about it.   

In case you are tracking my posts, there are new ones about Ma Schmidt

This is just a placeholder here in May—today's actual date—that I'll be adding more posts back in April to continue the story of Ma Schmidt. So if you are following that story, you'll want to back up a bit to find the latest updates.