and keep your frenemies closer
Sunday 26 October 2008 | 12 cookies in the jar
How much time—if any—do you spend on the Web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?
While I depend on the Web for a great deal…I think of it as a curse. I learned this again recently when a friend said I should hawk my poetry on Facebook. With trepidation I created an account, and absent-mindedly clicked OK when the site asked if it could scan my address book. After lots of flickering green lights, up came the profiles, with photos, of everyone to whom I have ever sent an e-mail: old students doing Jaeger shots at Daytona, an old colleague playing the banjo, random strangers posed with dogs, and children, and dolphins, and skateboards, and cars. Among my “Friends” were many despised enemies, to whom Facebook asked if it could send a greeting, and an invitation to be my “Friend.” I hit cancel, cancel, cancel, and ran screaming out of Facebook. There is no greater blessing for a writer, I think, than the joy of being left alone. (poet Patrick Phillips in the NYT—and I gotta quit stealing links from avoiding the muse)
[NB that you should read no further if you are completely turned off by the thought of hearing about yet another trivial-by-definition white-person-on-the-Internet non-problem. Or if you are the Brujo, who has a cold and is asleep.]
Thanks to various recovering-Buddhist connections of mine, Facebook has begun asking me doltishly if I don’t want to (be)friend the Monk: “People You May Know!” I know it’s only trying to be helpful; funnily enough, though, if I haven’t friended™ these folk, it’s almost always for a REASON. And yet I’ve found myself perilously, automatically close to inviting the Monk to my virtual collection of 60×60 pixel faces, in recent days—even gotten as far as “Add a personal message here,” when fortunately Oleoptene pinged me to chat.
So far, something has stopped me every time, even if just the ridiculous feeling of my heart beating in my throat. And why would I even think about doing this? Given the fact that, when the Monk sends me annual amends letters requesting contact, I usually have either the Brujo or the DBT open them in case they contain money, and then throw them away unread?
Reasons for friending the Monk:
1. Because I would seem so forgiving and generous and indifferent and COOL—to myself, to him, to everyone! I would be the bigger man, instead of the small blaming vindictive sulking hostile man.
2. The Brujo is Facebook friends with all HIS exes, and both his ex-wives! That makes him cooler than I am! Which is just, you know, not okay.
3. Recently I realized that I think that the Monk thinks that we took some kind of vow together, promising that no matter what, we would always be friends. —Which, actually, I mean to say, we did take a vow along these lines; but I interpreted that to mean, you know, that in the event of our painfully acrimonious breakup, we would be friends in a nice neutral separated-by-total-silence-and-several-state-lines kind of way. And I think he meant it in a more millennial literal way, as in, we will always email each other and hug those friendly cautious upper-body hugs at random Zen functions and send each other fun book recommendations and give Hatching Eggs on each other’s birthdays?
Reasons not to friend the Monk:
1. I don’t completely trust him not to get all up in my shit and send me entangling emails (the kind that blame under the occult guise of apology—”I’m sorry for all the terrible things YOU MADE ME DO”), veiled accusations which inspire me in turn to behave badly; i.e.,
2. I don’t trust me.
3. Why would I? Why? So I can stop feeling guilty because I imagine some invisible spectators tutting and shaking their heads over how stuck and rigid and controlling and unforgiving and attached to my version of reality I am? And as Miss Bovary asks usefully: “Do you want to be in touch with him? Does he want to be in touch with you? Why is this coming up now? Are you approaching a life change you want to distract yourself from? Is someone/something in your life triggering memories?” I don’t know the answers to these questions, and this alone gives me pause. He did seem to want to be in touch, with his annual requests for contact; but recently he’s blocked me on Facebook.
As I have, in fact, long blocked him. Oh God this is so MIDDLE-SCHOOL and humiliating. You never read this post. I didn’t even post it. Look over there—!
EDIT: Sitting in the backyard just now, eating leftover Thai ginger fish and rereading one of the demented journals I kept of my single year with N. (the Brujo is officially fevery and Ill and has spent most of today in bed, occasionally getting up to pee and moan crankily, “But I don’t want to feel like this!” and then collapsing again, letting me soothe him back into sleep with cool hand on forehead, which partially explains why I’ve had weekend time for all this unhealthy rumination)—I realized that I could, if I really wanted to, simply just say—all that. What I just said. Only to him.
It’s been really a hard decision, repeatedly, not to respond to your messages. I’ve worried a lot about seeming (or being) unforgiving; that you, or me, or omniscient invisible spectators, might judge me angry, or bitter, or whatever. Though I’m not, and haven’t been for a while. I just kept noticing that my primary impulse to respond usually arose from the fear that you’d judge me if I didn’t; and in the interest of freeing myself from that particular internalization, I didn’t want to let that be my motivation for getting back in touch.
Only lately has it also occurred to me that when we vowed to be dharma friends for always, we maybe did so with (unsurprisingly) different ideas of what that means. I have chosen to interpret it to mean that we could keep our most generous, best intentions alive in a separated-by-total-silence-and-several-state-lines kind of way. And now I wonder if you didn’t mean it in a more literal sense—as in, we will always link each other to cool book recommendations and hug those friendly cautious upper-body hugs at random Zen functions and send e-cards on each other’s birthdays.
Which sounds fine, if we could really pull it off. Which I just haven’t been able to imagine we could do. So now I’ve had this additional internal pressure: Not only does N. probably think I’m a hater, but he also thinks I’ve betrayed our vow. When all along I’ve been, by my lights, keeping it; that I’ve had to find the position (this position): the right distance from which to be kindest.
Maybe someday it can be a closer or anyway different position, but for now it just can’t, for me, no matter how I try (and I’ve tried) to convince myself that it should, or that I should; that surely enough time has gone by; that it would be the right thing to do; that I’m actually demonizing the situation by avoiding it; or umpteen other good and reasonable-sounding reasons. It just can’t and it isn’t and I’m not; and I’m sorry for that, and I still wish you well in this world, as I always did.
Or is this totally unnecessary? What does the internets, those of you who are still awake/not terminally irritated by my oversharing, think?
12 cookies in the jar
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Reaquainting with exes is a little like interpreting dreams, you look hard to find those little missing pieces of yourself that have come back to haunt you in new forms…. That and even though you want nothing whatsoever to do with them, to discover if they still desperately need you.
I was just about to tell you that two of my fb friends just friended Paul Guest. It was in my newsfeed. I wouldn’t have noticed or cared if it weren’t for the Crush post, which I loved and which contained wise advice (esp. in terms of not actually meeting your crushes). Advice I would never follow, but wise nonetheless.
And then I read this. I have many ex-bfriends as “friends.” I have no idea why I am there, or why I’ve friended them, but I am, and I did.
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Unwillingly interconnected narrator: It’s true—Señor G. and I have a few “friends” in common—strange how the writing world is simultaneously too large for any of us to get published, but quand même so small that you can’t move without falling over each other. Sigh.
Maybe the definition of “wise advice” is “advice I would never myself follow.” Et encore, le sigh.
And the Brujo also has, I don’t know, like FIVE exes as friends. I feel so left behind! It’s like that movie about the rapture.
This is one of those instances where I admire the Bovarian wisdom and appreciate the useful questions. Has memory been popping up here as a sort of minor subtheme lately (or do I misremember?) (that Amy Bloom thing I’ve been arguing with in my head for a week…) And I am still trying to wrap my mind around promising to be friends with somebody no matter what. Because there are circumstances under which being friends is a disastrously bad idea. Like if you don’t trust him or don’t trust yourself. You can be forgiving and generous and cool and all that without having to interact with someone who it is painful to interact with, and you don’t have to catch up with the Brujo on the ex score… I guess if I were allowed to vote, I’d vote “don’t do it.” Not that I feel all that entitled to a vote, it’s just that the reasons not to seem a little sounder than the reasons to. And once you do friend, it’s really hard to change your mind.
This is the curse of facebook, or one of them. Suddenly there’s your ex and facebook is telling you that you know each other and should be friends. Next thing you know you’re sending a friend request and after that it’s competitive Scramble playing just to prove that you’re oh so much smarter and 3:30 a.m. messaging during which you’re wondering how to work in a witty question that alludes to the fact they’re a scheming bastard all the while showing that you’re totally over it because you’re with someone who isn’t a scheming bastard and is in fact wonderful. Or does that just happen to me? [Intrusive editor: Laughing too hard to interpolate intelligently.]
I’m not sure how people are friends with their exes in real life or online. My advice would be just don’t do it. But clearly I don’t listen to my own advice.
The Monk has always seemed, to me, to be a tricky subject with you. Not only because I have actually interacted with both of you in real life, but mostly because of the vast blog reading I have done at the unreliable narrator. I think your hesitation is warranted and I think Miss Bovary’s perceptions/observations are equally warranted. Be wary. Just because the Brujo is able to friend exes, does not mean you should do the same with yours—everyone has different histories, different stories. Some are meant to be left in the past. Others are meant to be rekindled. Facebook just complicates them all. And I’m pretty sure you already know everything I just wrote.
Nor, Un, does your assumption that the Brujo must inherently be a better person because he’s friends with his exes necessarily go to follow.
Maybe the Brujo’s real talent is picking reasonably well-adjusted mates who don’t secretly want to see him turn on a spit after they break up. You see?
This isn’t a referendum on your maturity, it’s just Facebook. Where you kill a few minutes a day being HILARIOUS while you are waiting for real life to happen.
Meanwhile, remember my crazy ex(es)? And all my tail-chasing about forgiveness? And my Greek chorus of very sensible women saying, “Forget him, forgive yourself”?
Well?
XO
Teh interwebs has SPOKE. Thus it is written, inshallah! For the record, I had definitely ditched the idea of friending™ and was just going with an email explaining why I wasn’t friending™. Just because:
I have in my October nostalgia stash, you see, the vivid memory of emerging from the GRE in 1994 and having a nice curt little email from the Republican (1988-1992): “About previous offers of friendship? Sorry for any ambiguity: thanks, but no thanks.” You meant ambivalence not ambiguity you skunk I thought nastily to myself; but that was the end of that. Well, only it wasn’t, for me—because there was no closure to be had; so I wrote unbalanced revisionist poems to him for roughly half-a-dozen more years.
So I have some sympathy for what it’s like to be in your twenties and have a significant relationship end when the door of cold stony silence closes forever on your fingers. Not that closure even exists; or as I’m eternally tiresomely telling Mandarin, not that it exists in conversation with the one from whom we most want it; but that my last words unto the Monk three years ago were dour and threatening, something like Hey, I hope that unilateral decision to excise crazy ol’ me from your happy new life works out great, only I may not be hanging around when you decide you want me back in again.
Which is still, basically, you know, true. It just had a Medean edge to it I’d just as soon remove, especially since now I am completely content and in love, and don’t want to drive rusty railroad spikes into his eyesockets anymore. Well, not so much. Well, maybe small ones.
Maybe just rusty staples.
Precisely. Or push pins!
5 exes??! How did I miss that before? Wholly unnatural in my opinion.
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Incredulous narrator: RIGHT?! Even though it’s totally the Santa Fe thing to do, and I’m friends with my ex-husband too. And two of my ex-girlfriends. And—oh never mind. Clearly I haven’t an ex-leg to stand on.
Years after my first wife and I divorced, having had no contact whatsoever for a long time, I got an email at work from her. She had apparently found it through a search, but from the message she wasn’t sure it was me (or merely someone else with my same name). She seemed to seek some re-establishing of some kind of friendship.
I will admit that the last year of our marriage was far and away the worst year of my life, and that was due entirely to her behavior. I’m no saint, and I made many, many mistakes, but still, she did some hideously selfish things. I understand why she did them, but that didn’t make them any less hideously selfish.
Anyway… years had passed. I’d moved on. Really. I held no lingering ill will. I sincerely hoped that her the life had gotten better. But when I thought about it, I realized I had absolutely no interest in finding out how her life had gone since we’d lost touch. I was in a good place with my life, and that was all that mattered. Hideously selfish perhaps, but I’d certainly earned that (I thought).
I deleted the email without replying. And I don’t regret it for a second.
On a separate but related note, I have two ex-girlfriends (whom I dated after the divorce) with whom I’m still good friends, and who are friends with my current fiancee (they’ll be at our wedding). Why? Because those relationships ended on good terms. Nobody fucked over the other one, so we could stay friends.
But it’s just as likely that the difference was that with my ex-wife we were young and hadn’t figured out how to deal with such things.
In the end, it boils down to this: Don’t drag the past back into the present out of some roundabout guilt.
Crap. I should have said something snarky like “Ditch the bastard.”
@doug: Or, as Dan Savage says so wisely: DTMFA!
Hey, your blog is funny! Someone else who’s as militant about using “quotation” marks for misguided “emphasis” is always “welcome” here. ;o) More once I’ve read more entries….