Love & War

I have been thinking about a recent falling out with a former lover.

We had not been involved romantically for a few years, and a very nice friendship seemed to be developing between us. Then a month ago he suddenly became distant and guarded.

The last time I'd seen him, he'd told me he would be in New York for a week in April, and so I believed he meant to see me. I cleared time in my schedule for him, and even attended an event he was hosting. But I did not hear from him, and beyond the first hello at the event, he not only avoided me -- he all but ran from me when I asked how he was doing.

Later, I -- along with 3000 of his closest Facebook friends -- learned that he was in a new relationship; I was absolutely stunned that he would behave so childishly. Weren't we friends, after all? Wouldn't he want to share good news like that with a good friend?

Apparently not.

I emailed him a few days later asking why he didn't simply tell me the news. Within minutes, I received a l-o-n-g email from him stating:

"My relationship with G___ is personal, private and what I will share when necessary. I was not hiding anything from anyone. I don't live in that world, either as a participant or as an observer."

Um... OK....

The letter rambled on:

"If I mean to say something, I'll say it. If I mean to share something, I share it. If I don't mean to say something please don't fill in the blanks because it matches your story. My life is just that, mine. What I choose to share I share. ...

"Your assessment of how I treated you is just that: yours. You keep holding onto that story if you need to. I suggest you not. I have no obligation to discuss with you any aspect of my life, none. No one in my life is afforded that. We had no implied agreement to hang out. None. Stop telling yourself those stories, stop creating scenarios...

"I'm not going to apologize for any of my behavior, for it's not callous or cruel. You have placed judgments on my actions, you have created stories about what you needed and wanted."

I was completely taken aback -- first by the cold, high-handed tone, and then by the sheer length and immediacy of the email. It was as though he'd had this little speech planned out for some time....

"Obviously you've been holding onto this for some time," he sneered. And then in the next breath, "A couple of years ago a similar thing happened, if I'm not mistaken."

I had no clue what he was talking about. And who was holding onto what here anyway??

As I looked over the words I started feeling sick -- not just because they were pretty damned callous and cruel -- but because they didn't quite seem directed at me.

I mean, yes, the letter was addressed to me, and seemed vaguely to respond to a few of the points I'd raised ... but it was so completely out of synch with what I had written that I couldn't even imagine the person he was speaking to ...

So I took another tack -- a kind of olive branch -- in hopes of bringing it to a personal level that might remind him of the me whose company he had enjoyed and with whom (I thought) he shared some connection.

"In this area, I admit I have some baggage," I explained, hoping to stir some compassion, "I have lost more than a few male friends to new girlfriends -- a few who were 'exes' of a sort, but most of whom were platonic -- and all of whom were dear to me -- only to be dumped unceremoniously when the new relationship came about."

"Friendship is sacred to me... I don't share myself with everyone the way I had with them, or with you."

I took a breath and hit "send."

"This ... is just another example of you and your story-telling," he shot back. "That is not the case with me, so let go of that baggage. It has nothing to do with me, and is irrelevant. You continue your pain cycle. That's your choice."

He continued parrying madly at an attack that existed only in his mind, concluding with this nonsenical pastiche of new-agey jargon,

"Whatever you need to hold onto, you hold onto it. This conversation isn't working for me. You've decided to live your life the way you live it. That's your choice."

And finally:

"I wish you peace."

That's new-age-speak for Go Fuck Yourself.

I let it go and went to dance class, feeling more confused than hurt.

Did he really not see that, even as he accused me "fill[ing] in ... blanks [to] match [my] story", he was doing precisely that to me??

Of course not.

And there is the essential blind spot in both loving and hostile relationships.

Both love and war are often the result of eros or shadow projection, respectively. In both cases, we dehumanize the other to fit our needs -- the "story" in our heads of what the world is and how we relate to it.

In a loving relationship, where we are in frequent contact with the beloved, the projection eventually falls. The beloved's humanity asserts itself, and we fall right out of erotic love. If there is a genuine connection that is based on more than erotic projection, a personal love can then develop.

In hostile relationships, however, the projection finds a more stable home because we keep the enemy at bay, so there is less chance that our enemy's humanity will mitigate our hostile projection -- forcing us to fall out of hate.

And I think that is what happened here.

My guess is that my friend may have had some lingering feeling for me based on the good experience we'd had earlier in the year. This, unfortunately, may have posed a threat to the new relationship that emerged a few weeks later.

I don't think my friend was conscious of this, and there may have been more at play than I'm aware of -- but one thing I'm sure of is that he considered me dangerous before he got off the plane in New York and intended to get rid of me entirely.

And the best way to break a personal connection is to supplant it with one's own projections -- which meant he had to avoid me, or he would risk seeing me as I am, and not as the disposable Inconvenient Woman he needed me to be.

It was the Inconvenient Woman he addressed in those emails -- spurned, angry, inconsolable, irrational, resentful, furiously vengeful -- in a word: Dangerous.

While I am certainly capable of all of those qualities and more, I am not her and she is not me -- because she is not a real person at all. She is merely a projection men form to hurl at women in their lives who have become, well, inconvenient.

(It's worth noting here that, after this email exchange, he not only unfriended me on Facebook, he blocked me altogether, as did a few of our mutual friends! And he blocked me from his public "fan" site!! So I must be very "dangerous" indeed.... Oy.)

Reflecting on all of this in dance class (shimmies are great for getting perspective!), I thought back to when he and I first met: his whole-hearted embracing of me, his intoxicating enthusiasm for just about anything I did or said.

Was I a real person to him even then? Probably not.

No. Absolutely not.

When I got home, I looked over the email thread again and decided, even though the exchange was painful, not to delete it.

I'm sure he would say it was just one more thing I -- meaning his version of me -- was holding on to.

But I -- meaning my version of me -- would say it was a stunning example of love, war and how romantic projection can unceremoniously flip into its opposite.

And that is absolutely worth keeping.