Ithaca Sunk

I was reading a post on nostalgia earlier this week, and one particular quote stood out among all others:

Your nostos cannot be done, for there’s no sea, no ship, your Ithaca has sunk, and you’re not even Odysseus.

Now that is a mood.

Let me be blunt. I don’t mean to alarm you all, but I’ve thought about why so many men kill themselves far too often over last year.

I now have some semblance of understanding as to what that hopelessness is that many men experience over the course of their lives, a hopelessness that may eventually drive them to suicide.

Let me be clear: I am grateful that I am as supported as I am.

Without the knowledge or support I have had over the last year, I could have suffered a terrible fate that befalls many men who have all sorts of unresolved issues.

These unraveling individuals start abusing a given particular substance (often alcohol), may very well become incels or, in the worst case scenario, kill themselves.

As a result, I would like to talk about this volatility.

More than a decade ago, during my formative years, I got into my first serious relationship and I foolishly stuck with that relationship—for almost twelve years—until just last year.

This relationship slowly fell apart, as new responsibilities and our ever-changing personalities made co-existing increasingly more difficult.

I will take responsibility for my mistakes: I started suffering from the compounding effects of my own bad decisions, my own indecision and living an introverted lifestyle.

Now, I find myself having been in a relationship, but not one that evolved the same way most relationships around me seemed to evolve. Perhaps this was an expression of the inadequate nature of the relationship?

Sticking It Out

All around me, I have seen couples who have lived together for an extended period of time. They now own or rent an apartment, or house. They have switched jobs. They have grown in life, and taken on additional responsibilities. Some even have had kids at this point.

(Good for you. I hope you’re all doing well. I could not even imagine the responsibility, although I hear no one is ever really ready for kids.)

Because yes, I am at point almost thirty years old.

I can see the dysfunction now, but I did not want to see it before. No… I, on the other hand, have made the terrible mistake of just trying to stick it out. Things weren’t going well? Ah, if I just stick with it, it’ll work itself out.

I have made this mistake in my personal life and I have made it in my professional life, and it has caused me nothing but grief in retrospect. Being a hopeful human being, hopeful that things will get better with some effort, has made me weak. Feelings don’t change. You cannot fix people.

Combine this with the modern realities of the dating world, and you can see how I am walking towards disaster.

I am scared, folks. Scared to be rejected, time and time again. Scared I will lose hope and become jaded. I have not even attempted to date for this very reason.

(I mean, I’m also not “over” my ex. I think that’s also a good reason not to date, but still: it would be foolish to deny the fear.)

I can also predict that I will not leave a good impression upon most women.

Why? In order to find a partner, you need to be attractive. Being attractive generally means you’re either physically attractive or you’re economically attractive and you must at the very least be sociable.

I have lived like a hermit for the last few years, and my ex imprinted upon me the idea that I am a very boring and rigid person, who is unwilling to try new things. To a degree, that is true: my hyper-rational nature tends to hold me back more often than not. I would be a fool not to recognize that this factor is in play.

Equilibrium

Another thought that has popped up in my mind is this one: You are never going to do as well as you did before. You will not find someone as good, as beautiful, as wonderful as she was when she was still the greatest in your eyes. And you know what? I honestly think that’s true. I can’t time travel. Assuming I find someone worth spending my time with, she will most certainly also have a past with her own baggage. None of us are clean slates any longer.

In my eyes, the purity of a brand new relationship with two people who fall in love for the first time introduces a certain equilibrium into the relationship. There is no one else to compare to, and everything is new. One cannot hurl accusations of incompetency at another, because this is—for the both of you—a first attempt at doing something together. You ought to grow together. I think there’s a certain beauty to that, and pursuing that was something that gave my life a lot of meaning.

The only rule is simple: do not let outsiders interfere with the dynamic of the relationship. In a vacuum, this sounds great. In reality, we often compare ourselves regardless, to our peers or friends, even when we lack crucial information. So while I like this idea of purity and equilibrium, it is not real. As such, you can disregard the two preceding paragraphs, for I have just disproven them.

To me, pursuing some pathetic excuse of a watered-down relationship does not sound like a great idea. It is for this reason I am working on myself.

When I feel down, it does feel much like all that is left for me is misery, with all reasonably attractive and competent women usually taken at this age. (I know that there are plenty of single mothers out there, too. I am sorry! I hope you are all doing well. I cannot date you. I probably don’t want kids, let alone raise someone else’s. Another thing that complicates things.)

Insecurity

One of the things I find the hardest to deal with is that my ex left me after pursuing some sort of involvement with a person she described (and I interpreted) as a taller, more handsome and more outgoing version of me.

This was happening all while I was at the worst place in my life, slowly trying to lift myself out of the hole I’d found myself in.

To add insult to injury, I’d lost a bunch of confidence in myself. I had been dealing with health issues. I’d gotten fat, and I was rapidly losing hair. I know very well that I wasn’t at my most attractive, but when she was not doing so well, I stuck with her. I like to think that I was patient and considerate. There were times when I felt like there were red flags in sight, but I wanted to do right by her—so I stuck it out.

To be fair, while it was the case for her, there wasn’t another person who was really trying hard to break up the relationship and fuck me—though I think that would have mattered little if it’d happened to me. I was very much devoted to my partner, plus, I’m quite rational about these things. I know very well that the grass isn’t greener on the other side.

I guess she didn’t feel that way, though. I was strung along for a couple of weeks, heck, months, and I left that relationship because the pain of betrayal and broken trust had become too much. It was the hardest, toughest conversation I ever had.

Once it was all over and that dawned upon me, I was very angry, and very sad. I felt a monstrous anger towards the man who’d gotten in between me and the woman I’d loved so, so very much.

I felt overcome with an incredible anger. And anger, as I well know, is just an expression of insecurity. Who can blame a guy for feeling insecure after something like this happens? After life deals you a hand like this? Of course I would feel insecure. Anger is a natural reaction.

Then, there’s regret.

I do regret the immense time I have wasted: I regret that much of what shaped me from age 17 to 28 is a foundation that has crumbled under the weight of the world, and that I am back at the starting line.

It’s an immense struggle to stay hopeful under all that weight. Yet, somehow, I seem to be doing okay — and even though we’re one year later at this point I am still dealing with the fallout of the situation.

I do not seem to be able to move on (as fast as I would want to). It is hard to stop loving someone you’ve loved for such a long, long time—even though it feels like you’ve been mortally wounded on an emotional level.

Good News

You might think—oh no, he’s totally gone off the deep end! This guy needs therapy, stat. I do have some good news.

First off, while I got a taste of hopelessness and the general feeling that I suspect leads to suicidal thoughts, I quickly identified these intrusive thoughts as dangerous and decided to talk to multiple people in order to avoid a deadly feedback loop.

I’ve come to realize that it does not benefit me if I wallow in my own misery more than I already have. There were things wrong with that relationship in ways that I did not understand while I was in it.

Additionally, thanks to various talks on therapy and managing depression, I have been able to remain relatively steady over the last year. I have lost a metric ton of weight, and I have been generally moving in the right direction.

There’s a long road for me to walk before I might consider myself healed, but I genuinely believe I am doing better now than I have been the last few years.

I do very much miss the company of a person who loves me romantically. It’s like a constant melody that adds joy and balance to life, even when your person isn’t around—and right now, there’s nothing to listen to at the moment.

(I am seriously considering getting therapy as well, since I think that might kick-start additional progress. I might be making life a little bit too hard on myself. I do not think I am ready to take that step right now, however.)

For more on this process of healing, I have part one and part two of my Road to Recovery series, which goes into more detail about these matters. These are very personal and raw blog posts and they express my point of view. Relationships are very multi-faceted affairs. I can only relate my own experience.