Existential pain tolerance

January 13, 2023 12:46 PM

I'm going through a divorce and am having some serious trouble answering the following basic human question: since all relationships end in separation or death, what's the use in investing in relationships with others? If the pain of loss can't be mitigated and must be survived, how do we build resilience?

Personal thoughts, referrals to philosophers and artists, and pretty much anything but theism is welcome.

Some more context: having lost this major relationship, I feel terrified of losing more relationships (aging parents, friends drifting apart, future romantic events). Keeping people at arm's length is awful and (my therapist assures me) doesn't work, but the pain of loss will come eventually and I'm living in fear of it. Surely people figure out how to exist this way, right? How did you do it?

posted by fast ein Maedchen to Human Relations (46 answers total)

Best answer: Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus" offers a pithy take that resonates with me: what happens if we imagine Sisyphus happy with his task?

Suffering is real, but we remind ourselves that it isn't something that exists on its own, a monolith in a void of other life textures. That suffering is part of a great spectrum that includes suffering just as it includes tremendous joys, discoveries, endings, beginnings, serendipities, blessings, laughs, surprises, gut punches, impossibilities, improbabilities, on and on and on. When we are in our deepest grief it can be very, very difficult to see anything other than that grief. I encourage you to lean on your friends and family and loved ones right now, because they are guideposts who can remind you that you could see beyond the suffering before, just as they are seeing beyond the suffering now, because you will see beyond the suffering again.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 12:58 PM on January 13, 2023 [33 favorites]

It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

I do think living a completely isolated existence (if that's not what a person truly wants) is usually far more painful than having many close and loving relationships that end in death or separation.
posted by bearette at 1:02 PM on January 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Maybe its counter intuitive but reminding myself (and accepting) that I WILL die someday helps me enjoy each day for what it is.

Maybe see if there is a Death Cafe near you. I think our removal from death and dying and the societal taboo makes death (and loss) more scary than it should be. Destigamatizing it might help. Attending a death cafe helps me recenter and realize death is just a part of life as much as birth . As an extension of this loss is also part of life and that's okay.

Also, I know you already know this, but being told the obvious helps sometimes. Pushing people away doesnt prevent the hurt and loneliness it just extends it.
posted by CleverClover at 1:04 PM on January 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

This isn't necessarily inevitable, but sometimes you find someone you don't want to keep at arm's length anymore. Then you have to navigate hope and vulnerability again.

Anyway, what I did was move halfway across the country and make new friends. And I've been lucky enough to meet a few people I haven't wanted to keep at arm's length.

A year after I moved, the pandemic happened, and in the last three years, I found a lot of reasons to invest in relationships with others—because they needed me, and we all needed each other, and we navigated loss and change and became resilient together.

How does anyone meet anyone or decide anyone is important in their life? Often, it's just proximity, plus whatever other factors enter into the equation to help specific people connect. That doesn't mean the relationships that result are any less valid.
posted by limeonaire at 1:05 PM on January 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

A good relationship's value outweighs the loss. A good relationship often comes with additional connections - extended family and friends - who help cushion the loss and are their own reward. A good relationship helps/ allows us to grow, expands our world, both external and private. Good relationships can be lovers, friends, family; they don't have to be just 1 person who fulfills a large array of roles.
posted by theora55 at 1:05 PM on January 13, 2023 [9 favorites]

I think eventually because you just know you can survive it.

It was the most excruciating pain when I was going through a divorce from my ex-husband. I started walking a lot (so much so that I developed bleeding blisters, and I was fine with it because the physical pain helped me forget my emotional pain) and I listened to music and I let my friends be there for me, and then one day I came out on the other side, stronger and happier.

I also had examples of people in my life who had survived devastating things (way worse than a divorce)and were still living and able to be happy.

I'm sorry you're suffering. You will get through this.
posted by poppunkcat at 1:07 PM on January 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Also, you might find the work of existential therapist Irvin Yalom useful.
posted by bearette at 1:08 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh gosh, this is really tough. But a life without love or close connections sounds miserable.

Maybe it would be better to think of life as a mosaic of relationships? We invest so much in our generally culturally-subscribed monogamous relationships that we don't always have a full range of different relationships that enrich our life. Certainly this was a big problem for me when I was married and my kids are younger.

Post-marriage, I have a much better balance in my life between romantic and non-romantic connections. It takes time and intention to develop those friendships, but they start with developing some looser connections with a range of people. And what delight we have in that! I am still learning and growing so much here on the cusp of 50.

Also, I think it's important to remember that we have well-worn neural pathways in our brains, and when we are feeling sadness and loss, we are more likely to be in that pit and not remember the happy happy joy joy times.

The best recipe for this loss isn't avoiding people, but embracing more people. Instead of a scarcity mindset, can you try to embrace an abundancy mindset?
posted by bluedaisy at 1:24 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

In the case of someone dying the pain that is caused isn't from anything that the other person did but that you no longer have them in your life. It's pain from the absence of something that you took pleasure from. If you stopped making relationships because you didn't want to deal with this pain at the end then why would you do anything that was pleasurable? Please note that this isn't intended to be an argument to strip all that is pleasurable from your life in order to protect yourself from their inevitable loss.

Even in the case where people are actively trying to hurt each other during the breakdown of a relationship in most cases that intentional pain is still a lot less than the pleasure that was created during the relationship so the big thing is still the loss of that pleasure.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:28 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mitch Hedburg yet again with the answer: "I like to drink red wine. This girl says "Doesn't red wine give you a headache?" "Yeah, eventually! But the first and the middle part are amazing." I'm not gonna stop doing something 'cause of what's gonna happen at the end. "Mitch, you want an apple?" "No, eventually it'll be a core.""

Relationships are the same. The first and middle parts are amazing, even if they eventually become a core.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:31 PM on January 13, 2023 [36 favorites]

since all relationships end in separation or death

I avoided/didn't pursue relationships I now realize I could have had, in my younger years, because of notions like this -- and now, I deal with a lot of regret.
posted by Rash at 1:31 PM on January 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

We are here, we did not ask to be here. Since we are, then, and we have the capacity to experience great joy, we should do so. Sorrow, and suffering, and death will come for us all. All the more reason to smell the roses, pet the dog, kiss the lover, hug the child, while we are able.

Cherry blossoms fall, why ignore their beauty?
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:35 PM on January 13, 2023 [10 favorites]

Best answer: I really like this Rumi poem:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Emotions have a shelf life. Eventually, they will leave your guest house and be replaced with others. Having connection with others generally leads to a fuller house, mostly with good feelings. We are wired to seek those out.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 1:36 PM on January 13, 2023 [25 favorites]

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
posted by heatherlogan at 1:37 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

A gaming metaphor: a friend divorcing said he had thought life was a two-player game but he realized life was a one-player game. Then another friend noted that no, life is a massive multiplayer game.

I know you're in a tough place, but perhaps that metaphor will help.
posted by bluedaisy at 1:39 PM on January 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

I recommend The Course of Love, a book by Alain de Botton. It was a salve to me during my own divorce…
posted by u2604ab at 1:43 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is one of those things you can look to your own experience to try. It is possible to take a month away from all human relationships, pull back, rely only on yourself, trust no one, expect nothing, aim to avoid hurt and loss at all costs. At the end of the month, how was it? Was it fulfilling? Was it better? Did it hurt less? Did it mean more? The answer can guide what you choose to do next.
posted by shadygrove at 2:32 PM on January 13, 2023

In the past when I was feeling similarly I read a lot of Kierkegaard, in particular Fear and Trembling looks at what it means to derive meaning from a relationship and how to reconcile that relationship's end. As a warning, he is quite devout and heavily uses the allegory of Isaac and Abraham.

In more modern approach, Everything Everywhere All at Once grapples with similar existential nihilism and ends in a place that consistently brings me to tears with it's compassion. One of the members of the main couple is contemplating a divorce and the paperwork becomes a major plot point, so it may not be for you depending on how much distance you feel from your former partner.
posted by crossswords at 2:36 PM on January 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Of the options, "investing in relationships with others" is the one with the most return on that investment.
Despite the known costs (pain, grief, divorce, death) of personal relationships, going it alone still takes more out of you.

I'm sorry your marriage didn't work out. Divorcing doesn't equal failure, because falling in love, building trust, making commitments, being optimistic (about people, about the future) are all successes. Past success feeds new success. It's terrible at present; it won't always be. Please be gentle with yourself, you're grieving.
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:37 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

It's not a zero sum game. The joy far outweighs the pain. And the mourning doesn't have to destroy you, either: it is possible to come out the other side richer and wiser.

<3
posted by billjings at 3:00 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

There's a James Baldwin quote that always stops me in my tracks: "I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So I'm forced to be an optimist, I am forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive." You can see from his face during this interview that it is not an empty statement -- he was gay and black in 1963 and it is clear from his mien that this attitude is deliberate, a commitment, a choice. A choice I struggle to make on some days, which is why I find this so striking.

The interview itself was about race, and about the costs to white people of the deliberate distancing from others that white supremacy represents (link). Although your question was about connection and disconnection on a more personal level, it's still possible that some of Baldwin's writing might be good for what ails you: his biographer notes, "[His writing] emphasizes the dire consequences, for individuals and racial groups, of the refusal to love."

I'm sorry for your loss. I hope you find your way back to connection and to love.
posted by eirias at 3:01 PM on January 13, 2023 [12 favorites]

Why paint a picture if you can't gaze at it all the time?
posted by amtho at 3:07 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you push people who are close to you now away because you fear loss, you still have loss it just happens sooner and might feel more painful since the loss is due to your own actions.

If you decide you don't want to get close to new people, well some people are more like hermits who don't want close relationships. It's a valid choice to make. Like many choices there are downsides and tradeoffs. But you don't have to form new close relationships in the future just because that's a common thing other people do. It's also possible to make different choices about this at different times in life, but it can be hard to start over with developing close relationships after a time without them.
posted by yohko at 3:10 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

I lost my dad a year and a half ago, too young. His death was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. But my relationship with him was, and continues to be, one of the BEST things that ever happened to me. Now enough time has passed that, as my Jewish friends say, his memory is a blessing to me. The idea that if I’d never known him I wouldn’t have had to experience that pain just makes no sense to me at all as an appealing option.

I think what you’re feeling right now isn’t just grief for the relationship, it’s a sense of betrayal. You didn’t just “lose” your husband, the relationship broke in some way that’s obviously very painful. But not all losses will feel that way.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:17 PM on January 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: As a divorced person myself, I recognize the solitary self-reflection and existential grief reflected here in your post. Like many (perhaps most?), I have been there, too. As you quite clearly pointed out, divorce is the worst and can feel like and is in fact a death, one that makes you feel like you are falling off a precipice into blank and black void. In fact, it is a bit harder because you haven't fallen into that void and are still here, feeling all the pain, knowing the person you have lost and that has lost you is still there, hurting, and you are not able to fix it. I am sorry for all the difficulties and challenges you must have faced leading up to this decision. I am sorry you had to experience the absolutely gut-wrenching resignation that is a required emotional step toward abandoning all hope of reconciliation. I am so sorry you’re so sad right now.

I want to suggest to you that what you are feeling most in terms of your existential despair is not, in fact, a fear of loss, although of course loss is inevitable and real. I want to suggest to you that what you are feeling most is existential exhaustion because you have actually made an exhausting decision that has cut you to the core: you decided to abandon hope of reconciliation in one specific relationship.

What I can assure you, having once thought I could simply not go on knowing all things might end, is that all things don't have to end. Love, for example, doesn't have to end. Empathy, including self-empathy, doesn't have to end. Understanding, for example, doesn't have to end. Evolution of feeling and knowledge, for example, doesn't have to end. Kindness and care, for example, don't have to end. Perhaps one thing you can do is realize that your love, for yourself and your lost partner, is still there, although your relationship is not, and so can all the other things listed here continue. They can change. And in so changing remain constant, and even grow.

Further, this change, this growth, can -- if you embrace it -- itself be the very thing that ensures your other and future relationships are rooted, firmly, in joy. And that when they end naturally, or when you choose to end them, those roots will continue to flower in unexpected ways.

Foreclosing yourself to love, joy, empathy, kindness, understanding, change, growth, and evolution is itself an act that destroys and ends and damages hope, rather than nurtures hope.

Honey your hope in this one relationship died. But you are alive, and life is for the living and for the loving.

Change.
posted by desert exile at 3:19 PM on January 13, 2023 [18 favorites]

You want to be the person playing the violin on the titanic; to plant a tree in whose shade you’ll never sit.

We’re here for a good time. Not a long time. So have a good time!
The sun can’t shine every day.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:37 PM on January 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

My last boyfriend broke up with me while my dad was dying. Given that my having relationships and a dying dad at the same time HAD NOT GONE WELL my entire young adult life, I realized that at that point I had to give up having relationships until he was dead. I only meant to give that up until he died (three more years after that resolution, FYI). But frankly, I haven't had the opportunity to get into a relationship with someone I wanted to ever again and I probably never will. So that's a thing that can happen to you if you shut down. You may not be able to turn it back on. I tried, that didn't work. The giant voice of NO from the universe has continued even though frankly, I'd like to get back on the train again. So if you shut down like that, that's what happens to you.

I can't speak for a divorce because obviously I don't get to have relationships again, I'm sure that's worse. But you will eventually learn to stop loving someone, at least. People will perpetually come and go from your life and will leave in various ways. Slow fade, friend dump, ghosting, whatever. That will happen regardless of whether or not you ever have another relationship. Life just...keeps going on, when you lose people, when you stop loving them. Move 'em in, move 'em out. That will happen inevitably unless you cut off all humans and move to an island, which you can't do anyway.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:59 PM on January 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: since all relationships end in separation or death, what's the use in investing in relationships with others?

good luck. I'm so sorry you're going through this. this is a totally reasonable thing for you to ask in your position.

this may sound like flippant dime store pop song philosophy but I am 100% real here: the destination is not the point of the journey. We all arrive at the same place, dead and alone and eventually forgotten, so that's the least interesting part. the stuff before is the stuff that matters.

my previous marriage ended in a semi-acrimonious divorce. leaving that relationship was a great decision for me; we were a bad match and we were too inexperienced and too badly programmed to understand that without a bunch of heartache and hurt feelings.

but there was a lot to like about that relationship. my ex brought a lot of joy into my life and changed me for the better in a lot of ways. we had good times right up until the end. I hope she feels the same way about me. we're social-media friendly now.

we broke up twenty years ago and I was fucking heartbroken at the failure of this relationship that we both had poured a ton of energy into.

I was asking the same questions you asked.

and if I had answered your question above with "there's no use, stop trying" then I would have missed out on so so so so much in the twenty years since. because I have had a pretty freaking amazing life since (though there's been plenty of heartbreak and some terror in those twenty years too, but what can you do?)

my dog is elderly. she is going to die soon. my grief is going to be howling ugly-crying epic. but until that day I have her snoogling up against me every morning and being goofy in her own weird/special elder chihuahua way. Protecting myself against the hurt of losing her would mean losing those snoogles.

I will take snoogles over avoidance of future hurt 100000 times out of 1000000.
posted by Sauce Trough at 4:03 PM on January 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

"Every relationship you'll ever have will end in heartbreak." -- David Whyte

You might find David Whyte's work of use. My favorite is What to Remember When Waking.
posted by dobbs at 4:19 PM on January 13, 2023 [1 favorite]

Because it is impossible to lose happiness: anything good that happens *will always* have happened, no matter what comes after. Because fearing pain *is* pain already. Because I will die, and I don’t believe anything will happen after that - like the beautiful, beautiful James Baldwin quote eirias shared above, there is no way to fight death but living.

I’m so sorry for this painful time you’re going through.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 4:35 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

what's the use in investing in relationships with others?

I can confirm that not connecting enough with people is a great way to find yourself in a whole different type of existential pain, eventually.
posted by BungaDunga at 4:40 PM on January 13, 2023 [11 favorites]

I'm absolutely not a good person to give mental health advice. . . but, that's kind of what we sign up for when we become involved with people, either romantically or otherwise. It more or less always ends in tears. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile or worth celebrating. Very few things last forever in every context. Sympathy and best wishes.
posted by eotvos at 5:16 PM on January 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!

--Edna St Vincent Millay

Yes, everything ends. But all the more reason to love people while they are here.

You will love messily and wrongly and sometimes rightly and well.

Saying yes to love means saying yes to pain.

Giving your trust includes the possibility of being let down.

Hope includes the possibility of disappointment.

DO IT ANYWAY. Give your trust, love and suffer, hope and be dashed. In this short life, what the hell else is going to keep you amused?
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:55 PM on January 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: My spouse of 46 years passed away in September. He was a pain in the butt for various reasons most of our married life, and I really mean that. Very annoying man. I miss him terribly, and I mean that too. If I could go back in time, I'd still marry him. Part of having relationships is to have someone to tell things to. Another reason is to needle them unmercifully. A third reason is you can take turns having mid-life crises so it gets spread out. He told me he'd take care of me when we were first going out, and I ended up takingi care of him, but it was a pretty good deal.

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” ― William Goldman.

But the only way out of pain is through the pain. If you try to run from pain, you meet more pain, and the new pain is worse.
posted by Peach at 6:07 PM on January 13, 2023 [20 favorites]

I'm in the middle of it right now and it's too painful to address some of what you're asking but I can address the question of "what's the use in investing in relationships with others?" by talking about pets. They always end in pain. It's like Louis CK said once, you bring home a puppy and what you're really bringing home is all of you crying in ten or twelve years. But the alternative is not to adopt a puppy and rob yourself of ten or twelve years of one of the best kinds of happiness. That it ends doesn't devalue it.

Oh, you know, there's a passage in the novel Less that's sort of relevant here and at times makes me feel better about things ending, but it's too long to type the whole thing. I'll cut/paste an out of context, with minor subplot spoilers:

"...And I thought, Well, that was nice. That was a nice marriage.”
“But you broke up with him. Something’s wrong. Something failed.”
“No! No, Arthur, no, it’s the opposite! I’m saying that it’s a success. Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun...."
posted by less-of-course at 7:41 PM on January 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

I would gently suggest to you that looking at the inevitable end of relationships as being a bad thing is not the only possible interpretation, and that the way you feel now is not necessarily the way you will always see it. Every time we choose one person (or job, or town, or house, etc) we close the doors on all the others. And every time we lose one of those things, the doors open back up again. Yes, loss is inevitable. But so is its companion, possibility.
posted by HotToddy at 8:47 PM on January 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I do not mean this flippantly: I can tell from this question that you have never been, for a serious period of time, totally isolated and lonely and desperately in need of human companionship, even a whisper of it, that doesn’t come. I have, and I would not wish it on anyone.

I’ve been though terrible loss through breakup and deaths, too, and the pain of that was deep but ultimately bearable. The pain of severe loneliness is unbearable. This is why you keep seeking some form of connection. Most people can’t survive without any.
posted by kapers at 10:49 PM on January 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

Desire is suffering,
Attachment is pain.

Note that it’s not that one leads to another, it’s that they are the same thing. To ask for one without the other is to ask for heads without tails.

Choose your pain wisely.

While my divorce went relatively smoothly, it was preceded by a grueling five year marriage. It’s been 19 years and I haven’t even been tempted to stick my foot into those waters again. It’s not worth it to me.

However in that time I’ve made and lost new friends, raised and lost a dog, and invested my time in causes and seen them fail. All of them were worth the pain endured. And I think I’m more resilient for it — the stakes were not nearly as personal. Losing my pup was by far the hardest thing I’ve had to endure and it was not nearly as hard as dealing with the sense of personal failure and loss that I still carry from my marriage.

So I think that’s the answer to your resilience question. Start with small things and small losses, and slowly accept more attachment (which once again is the same as pain) into your life.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:24 AM on January 14, 2023

Best answer: Seconding the commenter who suggested that this may be exhaustion, not (just) pain. I’ve never been through divorce, but there have been times for me when shorter relationships ended when I couldn’t yet imagine ever dating again. Certainly don’t force yourself to when you’re not feeling ready - honor all of your feelings, both positive and negative. By that same token, you do yourself a disservice to cut off possibilities for your future feelings.

In Simone de Beouvoir’s existentialist ethics (“The Ethics of Ambiguity”, in English translation), she talks about the ethical imperative of respecting or honoring what makes us self-aware and human. In her context, she argues that if we don’t respect other people’s autonomy, then we are disrespecting that which makes us us, as a general principle, and are therefor disrespecting ourselves or our own humanity. I think a similar principle applies here. Feeling all of the emotions is a large part of what makes us human. Arguably, emotions as a form of internalized stimulus response are the basis for consciousness and self-awareness. Cutting yourself off from a large chunk of emotions would then be partly a denial of your existence as a human. (Not quite the same type of existential argument you were talking about, but perhaps relevant?)
posted by eviemath at 8:53 AM on January 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

the pain of loss will come eventually and I'm living in fear of it. Surely people figure out how to exist this way, right? How did you do it?

The thing is you just keep waking up, unless you do [redacted] to stop that. If you're still waking up in the mornings you're existing. It happens virtually without you trying. Again, this sounds flippant because truths often do. But the answer to "how to keep existing in the face of [X]" is actually always just, you breathe in, you breathe out, repeat indefinitely.

You feel right now that if you live in fear you can stave off the pain -- if every day of your life is pain and fear you create, you won't even notice the actual pain and fear of the loss, right? WRONGO, boy howdy! You just ensure that there are no good days between the bad. And the bad are still fucking epic.

The other thing that happens kind of without you doing anything is, this all starts to feel different. It's that Aeschylus quote: In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

I mean look I don't believe in god but I believe in grace, for whatever that's worth, and I've lost enough in my life (most of the things you're afraid of have happened to me) to know that there is something that transforms in you without you doing anything in particular, save breathing in, breathing out. Is that resilience? Maybe? It is enough, is all.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:37 AM on January 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

But a life without love or close connections sounds miserable.

Yeah, it is, but I get by. Mostly, I think about the good I've done, the lives I've improved because of my existence. I think I've added more joy to the world than misery. Looking over my patch of strawberries, their broad green leaves spread before the Sun, I reflect that if I can give these happy little plants hope, maybe I'm not all that bad.
posted by SPrintF at 11:52 AM on January 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

A bad marriage is a cruel parody of what we marry for. Usually a divorce comes at the end of a long living demonstration against marrying in the first place.

I’m happy in my marriage and see every good day I get as gravy. I wish the same for you, because that experience is the answer to your question.
posted by argybarg at 3:14 PM on January 14, 2023

Many people said what I would have, so I leave you with this quote I carry with me:

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

—Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
posted by canine epigram at 9:43 PM on January 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

From an anonymous member:

Despite your therapist's insistence, keeping people at arms' length can work quite well. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but it's the best solution for some people, including me. I'm autistic, which I'm sure plays into it, but OK at passing (cis woman heavily punished as a kid for "being weird").

My relationships are my family (all a generation older than me, no new members) and one long-distance real friend. Despite trying for decades, I've never had an actual romantic relationship, just guys who wanted to fuck me with no strings or abuse me, so I stopped trying. Luckily I never wanted kids. I don't have pets anymore for multiple reasons, but the grief is certainly one of them.

To the extent I have friends now, I think of them more as activity partners. We can go to each other's houses, make dinner together, even vacation together, but those connections are only good for enjoyment in the moment. I can like them for that, but I need to accept that is their absolute limit. I can help (if I can and I feel like it) when they have emergencies or major life changes, but if the situation is reversed, they won't be there for me. I used to believe I had friends and buy into the "chosen family" thing, but the opposite has been proven repeatedly. An analogy is if after 10 years of friendship with one group, I had serious cancer, or a parent died, and I told them. The best response would be "omg bummer! Feel better soon, hope to see you back at events before long!" And then I never heard from any of them again. After that's happened several times with different situations and groups, I need to accept that that is what to expect. I certainly have never gotten and can't expect any "return on investment." That's what I mean by keeping them at arms' length -- not that I'm chilly or mean, but just that I fully expect them to disappear at any moment while I handle everything alone. I understand things are different for some people, but that's just how it is for me, so better to expect it.

My family and I mostly relate by doing each other favors and reminiscing. They're mostly relatively conservative (think pre-Trump R); they would disown me for being queer if they knew, and they don't believe autism exists. So we don't actually discuss my life or anything, but it's nice to have people care about me even if they don't know the real me. They would also help to the extent possible in an emergency, but at this age it's going in the other direction more often.

I wouldn't suggest cutting off existing relationships; I really value my one real long-distance friend (although she has a ton of relationships and I totally accept ours isn't as major in her life as it is in mine). But I'm not expecting or trying to make any more. That was lightning that struck 15 years ago and hasn't been replicable since.

My life isn't as miserable as everyone is assuming it must be. I mostly just do everyday stuff. I can have a friendly chat with coworkers who approach me, and I do little favors back-and-forth with neighbors. Maybe once every year or two, I get stupidly horny and hook up with someone from a dating app who inevitably ghosts. I watch TV. I have a variety of hobbies I really enjoy and I'm good at. One hobby requires other people, which is my main source of the activity partners above. The other hobbies are solitary, but there are forums and discords for talking about it and showing off work. I can always talk about my day there and someone will usually respond. There are plenty of good days when I do well at a hobby, make myself a nice dinner, succeed at work, teach or take a hobby class, do a stranger a favor on a local Buy Nothing group, etc.

I'm like this because I don't have a choice, but I don't see why people couldn't choose it if it seems like it'd suit them. I think one's life would really be a lot harder without having even surface-level connections, like literally not having anyone to speak to or borrow a cup of sugar from. I wouldn't recommend that. But if you have those connections, and even "arms' length" people to occupy time with, then not having deeper "real" relationships doesn't seem like unbearable agony. It seems pretty OK to me, certainly better than continuing to run into a brick wall.

posted by taz at 1:30 AM on January 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Its a bit out there but you could explore how you relate to time? Is it like a line where everything that exists behind you is gone? Could it be more like a spiral or other repeating metaphor?
posted by mosswinter at 10:19 AM on January 15, 2023

Over the years, I have found a great deal of comfort in the Buddhist concept that "the glass is already broken." When I can start off remembering that everything is impermanent, it helps me deal with the inevitable losses.

Most of the time.
posted by rpfields at 11:08 AM on January 15, 2023