Introducing The Newest Member Of Our Family
“So what’d you do on Father’s Day, Ferrett?” you may ask. And the answer was this:
Yes, if you’ll recall, Gini and I needed a new television because the old one – which was perfectly good – simply had aged out. We bought it in 2003, in the days before HDMI had been invented, so we couldn’t play the PlayStation 4 on it without getting headaches from the wavery converter box.
And if we’re gonna go big, we went big. The old television, known as the Monster Penis System because I couldn’t stop talking about its size, was 55″.
This is 70″.
We did ultimately decide to get the 4K Ultra HD, because despite all the charts showing us how we could not possibly see the difference between that and the regular HD at ten feet away, we totally could. The colors on this are more vibrant, the darks darker. And maybe that was a trick of the showroom, or maybe it’s because this television attempts to interpolate pixels to give a sort of “HD-and-a-half” effect, but damn, the quality is nice.
We spent most of the day setting it up, because the installation had all sorts of problems: a large television already in place, a complex setup we didn’t want to tear down and recreate, the fact that the old TV needed no stand and this television needs a stand with, as it turned out, a mount.
Fortunately, all my days at StarCityGames had trained me how to deal with rollouts. I approached it like a programmer, ensuring we could roll back if anything went wrong with minimal fuss: first, we build the stand to put it on. Then, we’d turn it on and use its NetFlix app to ensure that wireless connectivity worked and the picture was intact. Then we hooked it up to our sound system to ensure it was compatible…
And when it was done, we had this:
It is incredibly large. Unfeasibly large. We are, sadly, getting used to its extreme width, but for now we’ll occasionally walk into the room and be surprised how this monolithic wall of black is dominating our space.
There was no doubt as to our first movie, of course.
And the thing is, watching Star Wars on Blu-Ray, we noticed details we’d never seen before – mostly in the background. The world is so delightfully dinged and scuffed that we kept pointing at wear patches on the hatches, places where the paint had rubbed off, and by God, notice how Threepio has some stray wires sticking out of his back that have pulled free? (And man, Alec Guinness in hi-def? Hot.)
And Erin brought me beer, with perhaps the sweetest card I’ve ever gotten:
So we drank Radler and moved on to the bourbon and then whooped as we watched Star Wars and then I whipped her butt at Mortal Kombat and talked to Amy via FaceTime.
It was one of the nicest days I’ve had.
I Never Said "No."
I was a great husband, early on in our relationship. Gini could be friends with whoever she wanted, no matter what manipulative shitbirds they were. Even if her friends made fun of me behind my back and quietly suggested she could do better, I wanted her to be happy.
And every time she went out with them, I’d get into an argument with her that lasted for hours. You were out too late. You didn’t call in. What’d you guys do? You went to see that movie you promised to see with me? Did they know that? They did? Why would you do that?
Thing is, I was an awesome husband, because I placed no restrictions on her! She could go out with whoever she wanted.
…as long as she was willing to endure an hour-long argument justifying her behavior.
I’ve also dated really awesome partners who never said “no” to me, either. I could flirt with whoever I wanted! And maybe I’d have to spend two hours reassuring them when I got back, handling their meltdowns because why would I want to chat with anyone else when I had them…
…But they never said “No!”
The lack of “No” is a great way to ensure plausible deniability. Because there’s this stigma in our culture: you should want to support your partner in whatever they do, no matter how much it hurts you. So much of the cultural expectation of love revolves around this fucked-up amalgam of self-sacrifice and compersion, where you should be happy about whatever your partner does.
Except healthy relationships involve saying “No.” You don’t get to thumb the “off” switch on your partner, of course – humans aren’t toys – but it’s entirely legitimate to say, “Crap, this thing you’re doing is hurting me, and it needs to stop.”
The problem with presenting dealbreakers like that, of course, is that the partner may well decide that what needs to stop is your relationship. And that would make you a bad person, because good partners don’t tell their partners to stop doing things that are wounding you. Good partners suck it up, adjust, endure. Even now, I guarantee you that you’ll see some folks complaining in the comments that they’d never place any restrictions on their partners, freedom is beautiful, how dare you be such an asshole by asking them to choose?
Who wants to be that freedom-strangling idiot?
Yet there’s a great way to split that difference: You can get your partner to stop their hurting-you behavior, and never risk them leaving, and if they do they’ll look like the jerk!
You don’t say “No.”
Instead, you quietly dissuade them from doing {$THING} by starting a big ol’ argument every time they do {$THING}.
And after months of realizing that doing {$THING} comes with the hidden cost of having to defend their actions for hours afterwards, they start doing {$THING} less! And it’s not that they’re not allowed to do {$THING}, but rather that you just need them to do {$THING} in this impossibly well-defined way, like tapdancing through a field of land mines, and while theoretically they could do it properly, realistically they’ve been trying to get {$THING} right for months now and have yet do it without triggering a shitstorm of arguments.
If they leave, you get to talk about what a great partner you were. Because you let them do whatever they wanted. They chose {$THING} and kicked you out, and what kind of jerk would do that when they could have both?
Mind you, this is rarely a conscious effort to gaslight; it’s just that internally, you don’t want to be That Person Who Says No, so to preserve your self-image you nod your head and then nitpick every last choice your partner makes.
And you get to keep them in your life. For a little while longer, anyway. A strenuous, argument-filled longer, but hey, stretching out this doomed relationship is worth it, amiright?
Yet after all this time, I’ve learned it’s better to say “No.” My wife’s friends at the time were in fact disrespectful of both me and our relationship – and despite all of my “Sure, go ahead”s, eventually it came to a drama-filled showdown anyway. My poly partners really did not like my flirtatious nature, and eventually it became clear that my relationship styles didn’t mesh with theirs.
It would have been better for them, and me, to say “Okay, I know you want this, but this is a dealbreaker; can you stop this behavior to make me happy, or do we have to split up?” But we’d all been told repeatedly that the only people who did that were controlling jerks, and none of us wanted to be a controlling jerk, so instead we became, well… a controlling jerk with plausible deniability.
What we should have been was an honest person: “Look, I have needs, and these interactions you’re having with these people are really doing damage to me. Can you stop?” And if the partner said “No,” then I would have had to reevaluate whether the benefits of being with them outweighed the pains of watching them do things that hurt my feelings.
That might have ended the relationship.
Yet the wisdom I’ve learned in the years since is that a healthy relationship can withstand a sprinkling of “Nos.” You can’t live on a constant diet of negation, hell, that’s ridiculous, but enforcing the occasional firm boundary with “I know myself well enough to realize I can’t be happy in the proximity of that behavior” is in fact a wonderful thing to be strong enough to do.
Maybe your partner will change, and you’ll come out of it stronger. Maybe your partner will go “Nah” and leave, and you’ll find someone more suited to you. In either case, the outcome is likely far better than stringing someone along, telling them “Yes” when you desire a “No” with all your heart, never quite standing behind the fullness of your convictions but nibbling them with quibbles until they give up out of exhaustion.
Me? I’d rather have someone who stays out of full-throated devotion, instead of being shackled by Pavlovian responses. So I say “No.”
The rest is up to them.
Shit Gini And I Say To Each Other
Gini usually gets up at 9:00 or so. However, she’s been sick, so she’s been sleeping in the other room, where the hard bed is easier on her back.
I am ridiculously paranoid.
She shambles out at 11:30.
ME: “I was worried you’d died in the night. But I figured the chances of you having died were low, and the chances that you needed rest were high.”
GINI: “It’s not like knowing I was dead any earlier would have done you any good.”
ME: “Are you kidding? I would have gotten the rest of the day off!”
In Which I Ask You To Share Your Gigantic TV Wisdom With Me!
So as noted, Gini and I need to buy a new television set to support Rock Band 4. And, well…
…we don’t know much about televisions.
What we do know is this:
1) We want at least a 65″ screen, preferably 70″.
2) That is in my living room by my amazing birthday on July 3rd.
3) I am mostly convinced that 4k Ultra HD isn’t worth it, because it’s a) $800 extra, and b) according to the viewing distance chart in this article, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from the roughly nine feet away that we watch our television from. Still, we intend this TV to last for many many years (we bought our current TV in 2002), and even though there’s little 4k content now, as such it might be a good idea to spend the money to futureproof it. I’m probably 85% on skipping 4k Ultra, but damn does it look nice in Best Buy.
4) We really hate most “high-def” televisions, as it takes most movies and makes them look as fake as videogame cutscenes. I know there are settings one can use to make them look more movie-like, but I have zero idea which settings those are or which televisions allow you to fiddle with them.
5) We’d like to not spend ten billion dollars on things, but we’re okay with spending quality cash for quality goods.
6) It needs at least three HDMI ports – one for the PS4, one for XBone, one for the cable.
Now. If y’all have any recommendations – ranging from “Buy this television” to “We muck with this setting” to “ZOMG, YOU NEED THIS FEATURE LIKE WHOAH” – please share, so we can partake in your awesome wisdom.
I'm Not Social Enough, I Don't Get Out
Basically, I see myself as an asocial loser. I sit at home all day, staring at either my work screen or my career screen or my play screen, and curl up and do nothing. I have these occasional waves of what a sad man you are, you’re going to die alone, you know.
Which is not at all borne out by the facts.
Let’s take a look at the last two weeks:
The weekend of the 5th: My friend Angie came to visit us for the weekend, before I went to Rebecca’s headstone unveiling on Sunday.
Monday the 8th: went to a local poly meetup.
Wednesday the 9th: Woodworking Wednesdays.
Thursday the 10th: Got my nails done by my mad manicurist and we caught up on her love life, then back to the house for a bourbon and cigar evening.
Friday the 11th: My friend Jess came to visit for the weekend. Hit the Velvet Tango Room.
Sunday the 13th: Went to see Spy with Gini.
Tuesday the 15th: Had gaming night (playing nasty Vampires slaughtering Werewolves, yeah!)
Wednesday the 16th: Woodworking Wednesdays.
Thursday the 17th: CostCo date with Karla and Anil, going out and looking at new televisions.
Friday the 18th: My friend Ananda comes to visit us for the weekend.
That’s actually a pretty damned full schedule. And yet somehow, my brain is in this constant mode of thinking I’m a loser who doesn’t get out, and even chastises me for not being social enough.
And I’m not sure why that is. By many people’s standards, including my daughters, this kind of constantly seeing people would be exhausting. Especially when you plop at least ninety minutes’ worth of writing into every day.
Like, I have friends. But at some point, a switch got triggered when I was deeply alone and fourteen, and literally no amount of evidence seems to be able to sweep away this identification I have as an asocial loser.
I mean, it’s not a terrible thing. I don’t weep and lament about my social life. But occasionally I’ll make some off-handed comment about not getting out much, and Gini will look at me and go, “Fuckin’ seriously?!?” and I’ll realize that crap, yeah, literally every weekend this summer is now taken and September is damn near gone and how is that the schedule of a man who’s got no friends?
And I’m self-aware. I think of so many other people who were, say, bullied as a child and they eternally identify as victim even when they’ve risen past that to have all the power and have, in fact, become bullies themselves. But deep down, something triggered inside of themselves where they’re always acting from scarcity no matter how much evidence they have to the contrary, and wow, is it a miracle that we humans manage to function at all.
200 Milligrams of Sanity
So I had a really shitty weekend. It involved lots of crying.
That wasn’t any one’s fault; it was just various flavors of people’s crazies interacting with mine in ways that amplified all my weakest points. Yet come Sunday, I was drained and weak, prone to hushed stammering, barely able to get out of bed.
Monday, I was having a full-fledged breakdown. I holed up in the basement for two hours, just staring at things, muttering the same phrases over and over again.
This morning, I realized I hadn’t taken my Vitamin D supplements.
It wasn’t a conscious effort; I’d dropped the pill down the sink on Saturday, Sunday I woke late and forgot, and Monday I’d been so rattled I couldn’t do anything.
But there’s a really good chance that the lack of a few hundred milligrams of a chemical was what sent me spiralling into craziness.
That’s kind of terrifying to think of; that all my mental health rests on a microscopic puddle of chemicals. A splash so small I might not notice it next to the sink is so important that I completely crash without it.
And yet it shouldn’t be terrifying. All we are is chemicals. I’m aware if I don’t get enough food, I’ll die. I know if I have too much food, I don’t feel like having sex. I know if I get too little oxygen or too much, my brain will malfunction.
Yet looking at this tiny amber capsule, realizing that all of my resilient contentedness emanates from this droplet of fluid…
It’s weird. I don’t like to think of myself as an elaborate chemistry experiment, something so fine-tuned that a dosage that could rest comfortably on my pinky fingernail is all that stands between Ferrett The Functioning Writer and Ferrett That Asshole In The Darkened Basement.
Yet there’s a good chance it is. And I don’t know why, as humans, we are so horrified by this idea – all the time I see crazy-ass motherfuckers like me looking at their pills and going, “I feel fine, I don’t need this!” and tossing it away and then crawling back when they realize for the seventieth time in their life that holy shit, I do need this, God, life sucks without it.
It shouldn’t be terrifying, staring into that little gel-capsule and muttering, “Sanity rests inside.” But it is. And it’s more horrifying that my logical brain tries to tell me this is no big deal and yet this wet biological mass of nerves recoils as reflexively as fingers from a fire, resisting this idea all the way down to the mitochondria.
It’s a rational idea that seems irrational, and my God, I am a tangled nest of crossed wires.
My God. All of us are.
A Thing I Maybe Should Be Horrified That I'm Doing
About every seven years, I become a new person. Who is usually horrified by much of by what the old person did.
Which is to say that much of what I am known for today – the jazzy hats, the vibrant fingernails, the Hawaiian shirts, the kink-blogging – simply did not exist seven years ago. Fourteen years ago, I doubt I’d even heard the word “polyamorous.” Twenty-one years ago, I was thrashing in the mosh pits and cursing the suburbs.
I keep finding new hobbies, and new wisdoms to live by, and so I keep evolving into different people.
And when I look back upon the drama that I fomented when I was nineteen, I shake my head and wonder what the hell that Ferrett was thinking. I evolved from him, yes, but spend many of my days cringing underneath a thin fog of apologies, because holy God, look at all the dumb shit I did to people.
But it’s rare that I evolve into someone who a past Ferrett would be horrified by. In general, I become a more stable and honest creature who past-Ferretts might not understand, but would admire on some level. Which makes sense: I’m what they were aspiring to be.
Yet if I prick my ears and listen to the past, I can occasionally hear old-me lecturing current-me. It is a disconcerting feeling, listening to punk-ass twenty-two-year-old me talking about how I’ve “sold out” by living in these lame-ass suburbs.
But lately, I’ve been hearing old-Ferrett talking about what a scummy, passive-aggressive bastard I am.
Because past-Ferrett believed, and believed firmly, that everything should be talked out. Every need he had should be unboxed, lovingly, like a man opening a new iPhone, and presented to his partner. And that partner, in turn, should be educated as how to use this new need, why it’s important, given a seminar on How This Fits Into The Greater Ferrett psyche.
(Similar gifts of needs are expected in return, of course. Past-Ferrett wasn’t selfish. Just… obstinate.)
And so, no matter how trivial the relationship past-Ferrett was nurturing, whether it was a silly crush or a committed partnership, Ferrett would pull a full halt and say, “OKAY, HERE IS WHAT I NEED.”
Whether that was “I NEED YOU TO BE EMOTIONALLY HONEST WITH ME AT ALL TIMES OR I WILL SELF-DESTRUCT.”
Or it was “I NEED YOU TO BE PHYSICALLY AFFECTIONATE WITH ME OR I WILL WONDER WHAT I DID WRONG.”
Or it was “I NEED YOU TO SCHEDULE VISITS FAR IN ADVANCE OR I WILL THINK YOU DO NOT WANT TO SEE ME.”
And every time – every time – someone violated one of those necessities of my life, we would pull the car over to the side of the metaphorical road, rehash why these things were necessary to my well-being, and then explain.
Because if they hadn’t done these things, then they clearly didn’t understand. And my job? Was to make them understand. Once they got how vital these bits were to me, they’d either agree to the Terms and Conditions, as it were, or they’d go “This isn’t what I can provide” and leave.
So my relationships – all my relationships, even the trivial crush-flirtations – were punctuated by these freightloads of Meaning.
These days? Not so much. At least not with my lighter relationships.
It’s not that I don’t say, “Oh, by the way, if I send you something sexy and you don’t reply, I’ll feel embarrassed all day.” I mention it, a few times.
But if I express a need to someone and they don’t fulfill it, I start thinking, “Well, either they’re not listening, or their core competencies just aren’t compatible with mine,” and I quietly start pulling up stakes.
Enough missed needs, and I’ll still be friendly – I mean, I like them – but then I quietly slot them into the “Flirt, but do not engage” box, where I’ll smooch ’em on the cheeks and express joy at their arrival, but do so stiffly, at an arm’s length, because I told them “Wow, for me, scheduling visits is critical,” and they shrugged and never brought it up again, and so they clearly want something that I do not.
It’s interesting, because it has the net effect of entangling me in a lot more flirtations. I spend less time with each individual person because, well, I don’t have to slam the gavel and go, “FOUL! This act wounded me. Let us go to the evidence lockers and haul out the offending sentence, and dissect it before your eyes…”
I just shrug and say, “Well, they don’t get me.” And I move on.
And old-Ferrett is horrified: all of them, actually. To a man, they all believe that what I’m doing is the worst kind of passive-aggression, I’m not giving these people a chance, and in fact I’m quietly rooting for these folks to fail by not instructing them properly in the Ways of the Ferrett.
Yet there’s another part of me that says, quietly, “You instructed them for thirty years, Ferrett. You pressured them into doing things they were simply not intuitively capable of doing. And your whipping them with guilt until they did the things you wanted turned out not to be terribly effective, in the long run. Why is it so bad to just let people be themselves, and find folks who naturally provide you what you need with minimal prodding?”
Old-Ferrett has lots of thoughts on the matter. He’s trying to tell me I’m wrong.
Then again, that’s mostly what he did back then, so… heck with that guy.
And yet I’m not sure I’m right here, either. Maybe I’m not giving people enough of a chance. Then again, the prize is, well, dating me, and “being without me” is a pretty lame-ass punishment, as most of the world gets by just fine without it.
And I know that many people will do what they always do in essays like this, the thing they think is helpful: They’ll say, “Have you tried ${TALKING_THIS_WAY} to tell these people what you wanted?” And yes, yes, I have, I’ve tried telling them every which way I knew how, and I’ve mastered a lot of communications, telling me Yet Another Redundant Way to educate people in my needs is useless.
What I want to know, what old-Ferrett wants to know, is whether it’s better to find someone vaguely compatible and to educate them, or to find someone tightly compatible who needs little direction.
I know that after decades of bad dating, I found Gini, and I educated her severely (as she educated me), and we managed to make each other extremely happy.
What I don’t know is whether that was a fluke, and maybe it’s just better on the whole to look for people who you don’t have to work that hard upon.
Or maybe whether everyone really is someone you have to work that hard upon when the rubber hits the road.
Old-Ferrett thinks they are. New-Ferrett is still glistening with embryonic fluids, and he is not certain of anything.