Relationships don't have to be this way, what the fuck is wrong with us?
My Reddit rant
Lately I have been thinking about relationships more. A few days ago, I took some of my thoughts and posted them on reddit to vent. Many people seemed to find some comfort and insight in my words, so I thought I would share them here too.
I'm so fucking tired of the way things are. I look at my relationships, the relationships of my friends, and what strangers share online (here and on every other platform). I see people suffering because they make mistakes or others betray them. People lie to you, use you, play with your mind, hide another relationship, infidelity, porn addiction, flirting and drooling at naked women online.... People end up in situationships which are just real relationships in which people are too scared to admit it and too scared or weak to take full accountability. Or people claim to be polyamorous but they're just going around using and fucking anyone they can fool while lying...the list goes on, we're all experts at fucking and ruining people. And I sit here and think: what the fuck? Like WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK is so wrong with so many people that they do this??? To someone they choose, to someone they invest their time in, to someone they claim to care about, to someone they claim to love and live with?
I mean, isn't this insane? Why would anybody do this to someone? Why would you use a person, a human being who will be wrecked by your selfishness and lies, who will be ruined and need a long time to recover, who may no longer trust anyone else and deal with trauma and low self-esteem because of you? And then if you've been ruined, you'll go around and inflict pain yourself - onto the same person who hurt you or the next one who is innocent. Oh, but you'll pay the price too, don't worry. You will know what you have done, you'll carry the guilt and shame that eats at you, that saps your self-esteem, that fucks you up and that sabotages relationships that have the potential to be great.
Isn't this insane? Are we all just selfish, childish, immature, weak people? Because here's the truth: all this pain, frustration, hurt, and trauma can be eliminated if we would all just do this one thing: always be honest with ourselves and with the other person. Both people do this and this allows both to make informed decisions and to adjust. That's it. Don't hide anything, don't lie, don't justify things you need to hide, don't pretend - just always be honest and you and the other person decide what works for you.
By the way, don't get me wrong, I'm not here to claim that I am perfect and I figured out relationships. Hell at this point I may never date anyone ever again. But I just look at my own relationships and the world I live in and I am utterly confused and disappointed. It shouldn't be this way. We should not be so fucking cruel and careless with each other.
Here's a thought I had a while ago while pondering the gravity and depth of any relationship:
The way you treat a person has the potential to impact them for a long time, maybe forever. It also has the potential to impact every future relationship they have with other people, so you are also affecting many others. How differently would we behave if we could keep this perspective in mind every single day? How much more careful would we be? How much would we try to avoid hurting each other? Wouldn't we try to heal and nurture those we love?
Anyway, sorry, I'm just so frustrated and deeply disappointed to see what a mockery people make of love, sex, and relationships. It's fucked up. And then we wonder why we feel empty and lonely, why young adults stopped having sex, why no one wants to date, get married and have children, why we're all dissociated, confused, depressed zombies? Maybe that's our punishment for the way we lie and hide, for our weakness, selfishness, and cruelty. It shouldn't be this way…
Ever since my long-term relationship ended last year, I have been more curious about romantic relationships. I have also been more disillusioned and disappointed in them. To be perfectly honest, I am skeptical that most people can fall in love, date and get married, and create relationships that are lastingly happy, satisfying, and fulfilling. It seems that most people just tolerate each other - and not happily while we’re at it. Dysfunction of one kind or another seems to be the norm. At the same time, many people try to live together happily. Does our nature work towards or against this goal? I’m not sure yet. We were shaped by the pressures of ruthless evolution that prioritized survival and reproduction above all else. Besides this, we all have selfish tendencies - a desire to get what we want, even at the cost of someone else’s happiness. If we must lie and hide to do that, shouldn’t we? Won’t we? Some people certainly do. Spend 10 minutes on reddit and you will see how many people have felt the sharp pain of betrayal… Recently everyone on twitter was talking about a man who was lying and cheating on multiple women at the same time. Rob Henderson joined the conversation and said: “It's in men's interest to simultaneously date lots of women and it's in women's interest to shame men for doing so.” Evolutionary drives at work, huh?
But it is more than pure evolution here. We evolved in small groups where members of our tribe would force us to consider others and to keep our selfishness and basic instincts in check, at least to a degree. Others applied the pressure we needed to become better. Now, thanks to the internet and our cell phones, we are capable of infinite betrayals while we bury the evidence so we feel no need to be responsible anymore. We can do this from the comfort of our homes, with very little risk and investment. The devices we carry in our hands give us god-like powers to let our basic instincts run rampant in a way that blinds us to the consequences. As long as nobody knows, there is no harm, right? Or so we whisper to silence the voice of reason in our head. Do we even believe that? Sooner or later, the truth usually comes out and trust crumbles like a house of cards.
What does this say about us? Has human nature been unleashed? Or has it been corrupted and forced to feast on steroids? And if anyone still dares to fall in love, date, and get married, must they simply accept that they will inevitably have to deal with a myriad of disappointments, betrayals, and heartbreaks? Is this the fate of love in modern times? Love in the time of technology - only the disease is artificial and self-inflicted. How stupidly selfish. How cruel we are - not just to each other, but also to ourselves. We’re injecting cancer in our own lives and then wonder why we cannot cope with life and always need some anesthetic in whatever form we can get it. We drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, buy things we don’t need, have empty conversations, binge watch Netflix, doomscroll and brainrot on social media, jerk off to porn, we’ll even use other people - anything to escape existence, even for a moment. If life sucks, maybe it’s because we have caused its erosion. If true love is dead, maybe it’s because we have killed it. Behold, man’s most monumental creation - its decay. Now isn’t there a better way? Look at yourself in the mirror, see what you’ll say. Maybe if we truly loved ourselves enough, we would stop destroying ourselves and we would stop ruining our chance at ever experiencing true, genuine, lasting love.
I’ll leave you with a song from one of my favorite bands - Sleep Token. Listen to it and then scroll down to see an interesting interpretation. But listen to it first!
This sounds like a love song, right? I think it is. But someone said that it can be a song about self-love. It could be that Vessel is singing this while he’s looking at himself in the mirror when he says “Smile back…at me”. The lyrics can be understood as a conversation he’s having with himself. He’s struggling to love himself, to smile at himself in the mirror, to receive the love that he offers. I like how the song can be about both loving oneself and loving another - the two are intertwined anyway. To feel the deepest love for another, don’t we need to love ourselves enough to think we deserve it? Aren’t we the source of love after all? Aren’t we the ones who decide if we let it live, feed it, kill it, or let it die? Maybe one day science will give us full control over love. Eh, who knows what we’ll use that for? Either way, I genuinely believe the world needs more love. But even if love comes naturally, it also fades naturally. Maybe the problem is that we’ve never really learned how to love…