There’s a thing called love languages and it’s horse shit. The end. I’m just kidding. Not about it being horse shit, but I can’t really say that because I haven’t read the whole book. I know it’s heavily Christian and has rigid gender roles, which is pretty much all these books. Like The Rules back in the day. I actually read it and laughed out loud because it was so ridiclous. It was even funnier that by the time it got published (or the second edition or something) there was a note that one of the authors had gotten divorced. It was a bunch of really restrictive ‘rules’ that a woman (and, yes, it was targeted at women–of course) had to follow to get a man. Including not excepting a date for Saturday after Wednesday and not calling the guy back to make him chase you. It was really regressive and, as I said, funny as hell if you did not take it seriously. The last line was an ominous, “The rules don’t change once you get engaged” and there was a sequel to it for a married woman.
I got a lot of guffaws out of it, but there was no way on earth I would actually follow the dicta to get a date. Because, as I said at the time, the problem with using The Rules to get a guy is that you then have a The Rules guy as a boyfriend.
Back to the Love Languages. They are, to paraphrase, words, acts of service, touch, ah, gifts, and time. Which, fine. All of those are fine to a certain extent. But for me, my impulse is similar to why I didn’t want kids–space and silence. Shut the fuck up and get the fuck away from me. This mentality is a big reason I didn’t want children–because I knew I would shout that at them when I was fed up. Which would be every other day. I often joked that if I had kids, I would have to pay thousands in therapy for them so they could unpack why their parent didn’t love them.
There are very few people I can be around constantly and not want to run screaming from the room. Ian and K are two such people. Being in the same room and not talking is my idea of heaven. Parallel activity is important to me. When Ian and I visit each other, the bulk of our time is both of us being on our respective computers and doing our individual thing. One of us might bring something up, but then we’d go back to our own thing.
Here’s the problem, and I fully admit it’s on me. I have poured so much energy in showing empathy for other people that I’ve run dry. Let me be more specific. I have had to be the emotional repository for my mother since I was eleven. I was parentified before I even knew that word or concept existed. My mother had a daughter in order to mold her (me) into her (my mother’s) image. She has rigid ideas of what women and men should be, even if she doesn’t fit into that herself. Which is exactly like her mother–and she pushed back against her own mother’s rigidity (my grandmother).
It’s another reason I didn’t have kids. I knew that I would have went in the opposite direction and hate on my daughter if she liked traditionally feminine things. I hate much of that, more because of the social implications than the actual things themselves. The color pink, makeup, fashion, cooking, sewing, etc. It doesn’t help that I have so many sensory issues so makeup and clothing are a no-go. Right now, I’m wearing a tank top and booty shorts. That’s it. I wear as little clothing as possible because it all annoys me. Well, almost all. Cotton and microfibers are the least annoying. That’s what I’m wearing right now. Plus, I have my hair up in a high pony which is then braided.
The thing I’ve heard about the love language book is that it’s mostly aimed at women as to how to please their men. Which is usually the case. And fucking annoying. Maybe once in a while, there could be a book for het cis men to peruse in how to please their women? Nope. That is actually asking too much. Apparently. Let’s not even get into the fact that it’s assuming that there are only straight people in the world, and only binary genders.
Again, I understand how difficult it is to take into account every permutation, but we could expand our horizons from just two categories. Even with heuristics, that’s an awfully limited range. It’s mind-boggling to me. It’s fucking 2023, not 1923. Can we act like we’re in this current millennium? But, no. We have to keep going backwards. That’s what is enraging me ever since I came back from the dead.
One of the biggest reasons I don’t want to be in a romantic relationship is because, and I’ll be brutally honest with you, I just can’t deal with someone else’s emotions 24/7. that’s part of the problem with being highhly empathetic. Yes, I can blunt it to a certain extent, but I can’t turn it off completely. There was a letter at Slate (Dear Prudence, I think) that was written by someone who was raised to be a caretaker of their mother. Emotional caretaker, I mean. And they said that because of it, when their friends came to them with big news, they could not summon up any emotions. They had no problems doing things for that person, practical things like bringing food and such, or even listening. But they could not summon up the emotions that they felt they needed to show.
I could totally relate. There was a time in my twenties when I simply could not summon up the emotions that were required for a situation. I had been told to stifle my emotions so often and so consistently that i just stuffed them completely down. When a friend would tell me some big news, this would be my reaction:
Wait. They said they are engaged. That is big news. It is usually a good thing, but is it in this case?
*feels out friend for how I should feel in general*
Ok, they are excited about the news. I should act excited.
“Oh, that’s great news! I’m so excited for you.”
*watches them closely to see how that is being received.*
*relieved when it seems to go down well*
I had to do that with every declaration because I had internal gauge. I’m not sure if it was ever sensed by my friends, but I felt like a fraud for a long time. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel happy for them (or sad if it was a terrible event), but that I didn’t have immediate access to that feeling.
Because of this, I prefer quiet and space. I like to be alone with just my cat. If I had a partner, I’m not sure I’d want to live with them because I wolud always be attuned to their emotions. That’s not their fault, but mine. It doesn’t change that it’s exhausting and I would not want to live like that all the time.