In a recent episode of Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin podcast, a couple struggles with how their relationship changes the identities of each partner. When a lesbian falls in love with a cis man, how does that shape how they see themselves and how the world views them?
In queer community in North America there’s an emphasis on embodying all of your identities and understanding how they intersect. Being in a relationship with someone, romantic or otherwise, means seeking to understand all of these identities.
Perel points out that there are other paths. There are aspects of her identity that she chose to set aside when she immigrated to the US. There are aspects of her identity that her friends here haven’t seen and wouldn’t understand. To bring outsiders into her different communities, to both literally and figuratively translate for them so they can understand, fundamentally changes the experience.
Listening made me think of the way part of the early days of dating involves trying to share our past with someone. We might bring them to our hometown and introduce them to childhood friends. We share our favorite songs and the memories they conjure. We explain the peculiarities of our family, our community, and our culture.
My ex-wife and I met in Brooklyn, but we’d grown up in the same part of New Jersey. Part of what made things so easy in the beginning was our shared background. None of our cultural references required explaining.
When I briefly dated a woman from Nigeria, she shared her past with me and practically gave me a course in the history of Nigeria. Still, I knew there were parts of her I was incapable of understanding and aspects of her life I couldn’t participate in. My own assumptions probably added to this unknowability.
I’m not sure we need to understand each other fully or that it’s ever actually possible. Did I actually understand my ex-wife’s childhood? It’s doubtful. More likely, I simply thought I knew more than I did.
I hear over and over again that ‘only another caregiver can understand.’ I wonder how often we’re overstating our common ground. So many things make each situation unique, like our personality, our background, our circumstances, our relationship to the person needing care, the other care available, and the types of care they need.
Care work responsibilities frequently mean friendships are put on the back burner. Often, they end. It’s not just shifting priorities. Often they end because ‘they just don’t get it.’ I wonder what Perel would say. Would she ask us why it’s essential for a friend to understand every aspect of our identities to deserve a place in them?
I’m sure my friends get frustrated with my absurd cluelessness about children, when I’m in that age where the majority of my friends have kids.
While my status as an immigrant is sort of questionable, since moving from the US to Canada hardly seems to count, it still leaves me adrift. I’ve tried to catch up on 1990s Canadian Content, but it’s just not the same. Half of the people in Toronto were born abroad, most of whom come from places with much broader cultural differences than how we pronounce ‘pasta.’
There are so many differences between me and the people in my life. Do I really understand any of them? Sometimes it seems like people overestimate how well I understand them. I wonder if I do the same when I feel understood.
When I was spending a few months in Germany, I discovered another friend also had parents who were divorcing. We stayed up late plenty of nights talking about it, despite the fact that his English wasn’t very good, my Arabic remains nonexistent, and neither of us spoke German very well. I was surprised by just how much it seemed like we were going through the same thing, even though my parents are in the US and his are in Yemen.
I’m obsessed with the ways legal and economic structures shape our lives, since they shape what’s possible. Perhaps that makes it all too easy for me to lose sight of the fact that the ultimate common denominator is the human condition.
Part of why I switched our pen pal program to a group chat was that so many participants wanted me to match them with someone in the exact same circumstances as them. They didn’t think they had anything in common with the wife of someone with Huntington’s disease when their husband had MS. They didn’t want to talk to someone younger than them. Spousal caregivers didn’t want to be matched with someone taking care of a disabled child.
Is that how it is to be emotionally overwhelmed? To no longer have the energy to find common ground? To require someone who is essentially our mirror image in order to relate to them? It’s true: it’s work to build rapport and get to know someone. It’s easier when you start off with a lot in common.
Peer support isn’t a good answer for someone who’s totally burnt out. Not only do they lack the capacity to give support, they often are unable to accept it.
Looking back, I realize no one wanted a match who had also been a teacher or grown up in Milwaukee or was really into gardening. Maybe that’s because we’re an organization for caregivers. Or maybe it’s because by the time people think to get any sort of support, their identity has shrunk down to the role of being a caregiver.
There’s usually a lot of bitterness by the time our role as a caregiver crowds out the rest of who we are. Rightly so, as the vast majority of caregivers make incredible sacrifices.
Still, I like the way Perel frames it. As making the choice to set aside an aspect of our identity based on our priorities. Some caregivers are compelled to set aside their identities. Others choose it freely. I imagine those are two distinctly different experiences.
Donna Thomson was also thinking about identity and choices as we start the new year.
Matt Levine walks us through the ridiculous way medical fraud is prosecuted, using the example of Elizabeth Holmes selling fake blood tests that gave nonsense diagnoses. The legal system has its own absurd logic, which I find both fascinating and infuriating.
Noah Smith explains how people’s concerns about the US government deficit could be the polite way of saying they don’t support universal access to basic services.