My Wife's Enemies Are Now My Enemies, Too (2019)
thecut.com
thecut.com
It challenges us to figure out, to what extent can we deny these things about ourselves? Surely the entirety is an exaggeration, so which parts are untrue, and to what extent? If you don't approach it in that spirit, you waste your time reading it. And no, you don't have to be a genius about marriage to write something like this, but you would have to be a genius at marriage to read it and not feel in any way implicated.
The specific problem as I understand it: marrying/dating a narcissist will spiral into utter toxicity 100% of the time. In that case the protagonist's difficulty separating reality from their own subject experience isn't something abstract to reflect upon. It's instead something akin to an evil demon charming them to butter them up for abuse which is made permanent through eternal gaslighting.
> Am I just lucky? Or just super non-confrontational?
Questions I've been asking myself for a long time now. And recently I learned that, apparently, these days my flavor of "super non-confrontational" might be indicative of being on the spectrum. I'm having a hard time accepting this - but then it sure would explain a lot of fiction (and journalism) to me.
Characters having enemies, whom they just hate for nondescript or flimsy reasons, seems like a basic building block of fiction. I always assumed it's an exaggeration, a kind of literary super-stimulus - but maybe this is how most people think? Wouldn't be the first for me - it took me until ~30yo to discover that aphantasia is a thing, and that I have it, and that all those people in my life who insisted that long scenery descriptions are the best (because "they let imagination bring fictional words to life", or sth.) weren't just screwing with me.
I see that it's humor.
But what is the joke?
1. Light-hearted: A struggling people-pleaser exaggerates his wife's little foibles-- which seem big to him-- for comic effect.
2. Dark: Struggling people-pleaser unwittingly married a bona fide narcissist who has nearly completed molding him in her image.
Either one would be humor. But the piece never really sets the tone (is she really badmouthing people at parties? Is he?) and so it comes off as wishy-washy.
The piece is ridiculous. It's ridiculous because it's an exaggeration. But it's also ridiculous because we're ridiculous.
Nice that he believes(?) it worked out well for him.
But I've know people who married enemy-collecting spouses - and that usually wasn't so happy. Plus, if the marriage hits a rocky patch, be ready for a really ugly divorce.
But also nobody's grabbing my ass in the workplace, making catty comments about my Jeff-Bezos-like appearance, or treating me like a secretary.
If my partner reported being disrespected like that, though, you can guarantee I'd be on her side.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems that being the man in a relationship has taken a nosedive in value in recent times.
(It's an interesting question whether that's by selection or just an effect the group projects onto each member; the distinction being, whether the character similarities would persist after the group dissolves and everyone goes on with their lives. There's likely plenty of studies done about this; if anyone knows of some reliable work there, I'd be interested to read it.)
You know, there’s a lot to be said about modern gender roles that isn’t total crap, but I imagine people read comments like this and start thinking the opposite
… Eh? I’m genuinely not sure how to parse this. Are you expecting free bonus points for being male or something?
You’re not really entitled to have anyone like you; that’s up to them. Even if you’re a man.
No, it’s all of the “manosphere” trash on YouTube/TikTok, too. It ain’t good company, but it’s certainly company.
Bars.
(It's also not very well written.)
If that was meant to be a comedy piece, the author accidentally wrote a factual article.
I have found that advice paradoxical, confounding & frustrating, in turns, but ultimately very effective.
I usually don't mind a bit of self-deprecation but this makes it hard to want to read the rest of the article.
Now, I take the different approach. My wife can have enemies. My friends can have enemies. But I stay out of gossip (which gossipers hate) and off social media. I can listen to my wife vent, I don't have the luxury of hating people or cutting people out of my life for trivial reasons.
I thought this article was meant to be a sarcastic take on the emotional toxicity pervading most of society today. It reads like the diary of a codependent sociopath, which makes for entertaining television, but a miserable life.
Not everyone does.
If this is not satire, it's not very good.
I can’t think of anything you could’ve said that would have had less value and belonged more on X or reddit. This is essentially the “yup, he wrote that in English” of comments.
For better or worse, I seem to never have developed the ability to hate people. I understand the concept of an enemy in the abstract, I can even emphasize with someone when they're talking about their enemies (but only if we're talking life or death, or comparable degree of trauma, and then only if I don't start thinking too much about it) - but I can't really classify anyone in my life as one. I might not like someone, feel threatened by them, but I can't bring myself to hate them - instead, I'll invent 20 different rationalizations for their behavior and hypothetical mutually-beneficial compromises.
I'm not bragging here - at this point in life, I'm not even convinced this is healthy[0], and it sure makes me struggle with being assertive as an adult.
Now, connect that with what the article says. I too, along with my lovely wife, inherited a set of enemies-in-law, and developed deep feelings of desire and obligation to hate the people she hates. Except at the same time, I can't. Josh Gondelman in the TFA wrote:
> My wife’s enemies are now mine, and the rationale behind why doesn’t really matter. Reasons great and small both count, not equally but heavily.
Unfortunately, for me, the reasons still matter. It took me a while to stop instinctively jumping to defend the enemies-in-law whenever she mentioned them, even those I never met. It took me even longer to accept that this is one of those "your partner needs you to listen, not to solve the problem" case - here, she isn't looking for conflict resolution, but rather to vent frustration. And while I still ain't gonna badmouth anyone for anything, I do accept the silent compromise of "if I can't say something mean about them, I won't say anything at all".
It still feels like emulating hatred, though. I'm not sure if I'm in a good place, or denying myself some healthy part of humanity, but I can't imagine the mindset the author has:
> Swearing to hate my wife’s enemies has made me a better, more rounded person. Not only does it give me a benchmark for measuring my loyalty to her, but it’s made me more resolute in my own beliefs. Because all the spiting and snubbing of her foes has shown me how much colder I could be to the people I already didn’t like.
I mean, like why? Why people want to have enemies?
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[0] - I'm pretty sure it's the result of me developing my moral compass as a kid from two "role models" simultaneously: fundamentalist Christianity and Star Trek: TNG. I bet it's about as healthy as it sounds. But then, I mostly like what I got out from it, and it could've been worse.
I hate to sound callous, but I don't like to normalize that the problem is "you just want to fix things" - it's a huge mental burden on the listener and not respectful to people who get a lot of stress hearing these things. "Fixing something" is how they deal with stress.
Everybody has to vent sometimes/infrequently and we should listen, but I've also been around a lot of people who want to "vent", but then march repeatedly right back into the same patterns and situations that cause the problems, and don't want to hear that they can often avoid this. I don't want people to feel better temporarily and end up prolonging their bad situation.
> I've also been around a lot of people who want to "vent", but then march repeatedly right back into the same patterns and situations that cause the problems, and don't want to hear that they can often avoid this.
I've dealt with such people too, but "the society" kept beating me with the "listen, don't fix" reminder so much that I gave up. I started to think, maybe I'm not listening enough, maybe what to me looks like being stuck in a loop out of their own volition, is just me not hearing the critical details that changed, or something?
I had one or two cases when someone like that caught me in a bad moment, and I've said something along the lines of, "look; we've been going over this exact same conversation, same complaints, same feelings, roughly every couple days for the past few months now; why is this still a thing?", and it just got received as me blocking the other person from opening up when they need it. And those are the "go-getter" kind of people who normally just plow through obstacles (including other people) without much thought - except the few things that, to me, seem like easily solvable problems, but they get stuck on them forever.
Then again, who am I to judge. I too have my own loops, a class of problems that elicit the usual "can't you just do X?" advice from onlookers, that I nevertheless don't seem to make progress on, despite a good decade of trying and failing to "just do X". But then, my problems are of executive function kind. The ones that irk me about others are the kinds like from this article: "someone was (intentionally or unknowingly) mean to me, I can't stop reliving it".
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Circling back:
> I don't like to normalize that the problem is "you just want to fix things" - it's a huge mental burden on the listener and not respectful to people who get a lot of stress hearing these things. "Fixing something" is how they deal with stress.
It is a burden, and I'm very much of this type. Unless I get emotionally overwhelmed myself (common for my own problems, rare for those of people close to me), my natural way of dealing with stress is to aggressively make the underlying problem go away. My instinct is always to drop everything and go fix the issue, or help someone fix their problem, because otherwise the problem (or my emphasizing with the person who has the problem) will keep gnawing at me, and I'll be spending 90% of my cognitive capacity trying to stop myself from thinking about it.
(This drive to drop everything and fix someone else's problems has led me to some bad places; I'm happy to report that, through years of effort, I'm now just losing 50-60% of focus instead of 90%, and thus prioritize better.)
Might be selfish, but this is how I've always dealt with stress, and learning to suppress this is a big burden, as I am really effective in this mode - if I feel like the problem needs to go away, and I have a shot at it, I will solve it, solve it well, and solve it fast, hell or high water. So stopping myself feels like lighting up a rocket engine while the launchpad clamps are still engaged. It's a huge waste of high-energy fuel, and I might even explode.
There’s been people I’ve held mild disdain towards, but I’m not sure if there’s ever been anybody I’ve hated. The only person I’ve considered an enemy and made a point of getting away from I did so because they were hurtful towards my friends and I which at one point involved a shouting match, but even that’s more of a self-defense thing than hatred. Did this person make me angry? Sure, but that’s not hate.
Also don’t know if it’s healthy, but it’s how I am.
FWIW, I ended up having a crisis of faith - part of which was realizing that the value alignment of TNG and Christianity was only superficial (tl;dr: instrumental vs. terminal goals - being non-violent and compassionate because it's right, vs. being such because God will reward it and because it's good marketing for God (and His Chosen Faith)). At this point, I'm more of an atheist - I stopped being agnostic after I realized my hedging isn't coming from my own reasoning, but is just deeply ingrained fear instilled by religious beliefs I grew up with.
If you're going to betray a friend just like that, you're a mentally ill asshole rather than a loving family man.
Your spouse is your partner. This is your primary relationship. If someone you know is treating them poorly, and you choose to retain that friendship because, you know "gee, they've always been cool to me," then you're being grievously disloyal to the person who should matter more than anyone else in your life.
That's the thing though, re-read what the author said very carefully:
"that person is your enemy, even if that person has always been cool to you in the past, ... or your partner has never actually met the person."
If your spouse decides for any or no reason to hate your friend that they never even met, you're just an asshole if you then decide to mirror that sentiment just because.