May 21, 2002
I read Salon's advice
I read Salon's advice column today and it just got me really angry, as I saw a lot of it as evidence of attitudes that are, in my not so-humble-opinion, What Is Wrong With Society Today. So I wrote a letter to the editor:I'm concerned about the advice Cary Tennis is giving. I realize this can be written off as just one man's moralizing conflicting with another's, but there are some important points to consider.
I tend to be honest. Honest to those I love, even when it involves things they might not want to hear. And I have friends that seem bewildered about my choices sometimes. I'll have one of these "honest confrontations" and describe it later to a third party, and their reaction will often display their belief that it was unnecessarily brutal. "Did they really need to *know* that?" or "What they don't know won't hurt them..." is what I sometimes hear.
But, these third parties are not present to feel the emotional dynamics of these "confrontations" - which are never intended brutally. For me, I see them as an opportunity to learn, to come to greater understanding, to grow. And if the person I am talking to is similarly committed and not insistent on deceiving theselves, these confrontations *do* result in deeper ties and more understanding.
Cary's philosophy at first glace seems to be a liberal affirmation of self-empowerment - to control one's own situation and reduce the messiness. However, I can easily imagine cases in which this approach, while perhaps pseudo-powerful in the short term, will eat away at people and lead to secrecy, self-deception, tightness and resentment later on.
The most obvious example is the woman who is not sure of the identity of her baby's father. When someone writes in for advice about something personal, it is a big step. This issue is clearly at the forefront of her mind. Cary tells her to keep a secret forever - not only that, but to not even find out the truth of the secret. What she doesn't know won't hurt her.
It's obviously eating away at her. She's so incapable of letting it go that she is writing to an advice columnist. And if it's a reasonably sensitive relationship, her husband *will* notice something is wrong. And if she keeps the secret forever, the dynamics of the relationship will be forever altered, with the one dark imagining that may be true, may not be, serving as a wedge in between their intimacy.
What is worse is that the child will grow up with this dynamic flitting around in the background. People are sensitive and they notice these things, if only on subconscious levels. What about a child that grows up never being entirely sure of his place, of always feeling a vague sense of unconnectedness to his environment, his powers of intimacy?
What is the correct thing to do? Well, I agree that she may be worrying about something that isn't a problem. Maybe she should find out to a medical certainty who the baby's father is, and soon. It would be torture to tell the husband, "This *may* not be your son," when she has the ability to know for certain beforehand.
But to tell her to maintain a deception against herself? These are the sorts of things that teach us to feel compromised. We can all learn to live with compromises, with lessened integrity, and over time our self-image suffers and we start to act out of a reduced belief in ourselves. But when these challenges happen, we can also learn to find ways out and increase our integrity, and *that* is what she should do.
This woman was unfaithful, not only to her husband, but to herself - she had sex that was unattached to love. This is an important issue for her to address in herself - sweeping the paternity of the child under the rug also locks the unfaithfulness away, leaving it to fester and grow. And it could get in the way of her loving her child completely, without a background gnawing of shame. She should learn about the child's father, and then while she may not have to address the child being another man's child, she should address the infidelity with her husband - with loving intent, with a spoken desire to learn more and deepen her married relationship.
I am also concerned about the advice he gave to the 29-year-old experiencing discouragement problems. Cary asked insightful questions about what has changed in his life since high school. However, the rest of the response was another example of the all-too-common pattern of encouraging someone to skip past their feelings and head straight to the doctor.
There's a point at which certain experiences are supposed to be hard, challenging, dissatisfying. There is a point at which we are supposed to feel grief, fear, anger, helplessness. These are not feelings to be protected against.
The unfortunate misunderstanding here is that we see our difficult experiences as being evidence, evidence that grief, anger, fear are the emotions that are in the way. What we forget to understand is that what makes these experience especially hard is not the root emotion, but the judgements we have against them.
If I feel angry about my social life, it is a signal there is something to overcome. But if I feel angry about my social life, and also feel distraught because I see everyone else seemingly happy and feel I should be happier with what I have, but I don't, which means I'm fucked up, which gets me anxious, which makes me feel attacked by life, which gets me manic and anguished because *obviously* being manic and anguished means I'm fucked up and I shouldn't feel that way... that's a problem.
Our 29-year-old-friend is feeling that he should feel better about his life than he does, and that's where he's stumbling. He needs to be encouraged to accept that his life isn't ideal right now, and that's okay, and it doesn't mean he fucked up, and that being 20-something is difficult, and that he is allowed to feel all right with putting less pressure on himself. Let life slow down. Be patient. He's not on a schedule. Focus on finding friends for now - people that don't necessarily fit a checklist, but just feel good. Live, don't diagnose. And let himself *feel*. Life gets easier when we don't judge against our confusion. Our confusions, our stumblings, our trials - those are the *valuable* parts of life, and they should not be locked away. That is where we live intensely, those are the parts that most deserve love.
And that's the point of this letter. I am concerned about Cary's advice because he is encouraging people to adopt behaviour that in the long run, will lead to them being more confused, that could lead them to judge against their struggles, that could possibly lead them to more pain by trading against their futures.
I said no publication because this letter is far too long. If you want to publish subsections though I would be willing to approve it.
Sincerely, Curt Siffert