This post really isn't about singing. It's about me, my partner, our relationship, and the choices I made long ago that seem so at odds with the priorities of the younger generation (I mean the "older" younger generation; women who are now between the ages of 35 and 45).
I addressed some of it here.
This weekend, I had a mini-showdown with my partner. I was very proud of myself because I didn't lose my temper, which was one of my New Year's resolutions. I did, however, say something that she found very hurtful. I don't regret it, because I didn't say it to be hurtful; I said it because it is true and needed to be said.
Several months ago, I finally was able to unravel an emotional mystery that had had me stumped for almost four decades; namely, how could my partner and I love each other so much and yet have so many ugly screaming fights? What I realized, was that although we had been many things to each other - lovers, sweethearts, cuddles, mutual children, mutual mommies, and, more recently, caregiver and patient - I don't think that we had ever been friends.
Over the weekend, for the umpteenth time, she tried to shut me up when I was talking about how I was feeling. Not about anything "loaded" that had to do with "us", just something I was feeling, which I felt entitled to mention as she had just mentioned a situation in which she had had feelings that I perceived to be similar.
So I said to her, more or less what I have written here. That although I loved her, we were not friends. I also said that everything that was wrong with our relationship, even though we have adored each other in one sense or another for almost 40 years, is that our relationship started out as a romance, not a friendship, so that secure base was never there. Yes, of course we have interests in common, not just an aesthetic attraction to each other (which runs much deeper than just a sexual attraction), but we can't seem to talk, about anything in a comfortable relaxed way. Or when we do, it's a pleasant surprise. Then she got into a "state" about how I had hurt her feelings, so I said "I am proud of myself that I didn't lose my temper. But what I said is true. And in fact, another problem with our relationship is that there are just too many emotions in it, good and bad."
Although it seems a stretch, there is a throughline between that interchange, that knowledge, and the flawed basis for our relationship (not that it is necessarily a more flawed relationship that many others, just that it never had a secure base) and all of my envy of this bevy of superachievers, mostly women born after 1970, that I feel subsumed by and diminished by.
When I was growing up, the most important thing for a girl (or young woman) to have was a boyfriend/lover/fiance, or whatever. In my case, because I have always been a girly girl who nonethless seemed to prefer women, it was a butch-beau. Part and parcel of that was not just sex and lust (acted out or not), but sturm and drang. I would say that between the ages of 14 and 30, whether I was drunk or sober, "virgin" or sexually active, probably 75% of my emotional energy went into the vagaries of whatever relationship I was involved in. And that was true of most of my female friends as well, Lesbian or straight. School was something to be suffered through, for the most part. Most of us planned to go to college, but in New York, with a certain GPA and SAT score, you could go to one of the City Colleges, no questions asked. There was not this mad scramble to add things (school orchestra or newspaper, volunteer work, or advanced placement immersion classes) to a college admissions resume, and really no one thought about "careers". Being a teacher was about it. Or if not a teacher, some kind of secretary or administrative assistant in an "interesting" industry until, well, what, we got married? Even if we didn't plan to get married, we didn't plan all that much else, really.
This new breed of women are completely different. First of all, they were the first generation to transition from adolescence to adulthood with certain feminist assumptions in place. They wanted to be doctors, lawyers, MBAs. They probably had as much sex (or as little) as the women of my generation but the vocabulary of limerence played very little role in their interactions, thoughts, or fantasies. Hence their emotions were not constantly engaged. And when they got older, situated in these careers (or ones they designed themselves, which required several additional decades of formal or informal schooling - on whose money?) it was much of the same. They married a "partner" not a "lover" and certainly not anyone who kept them on the kind of emotional roller coaster that, for women of my generation, was in some ways the whole point of relationships to begin with.
In Sundays' TIMES, there was this article.
One thing I will say about myself, is that I would prefer to withstand a fair amount of physical and mental discomfort rather than "take something". (I am not talking about symptoms that might be life threatening - for example I take blood pressure medicine.) And I am very very grateful that my therapist has never offered me any psychotropic medication, even when I am down in the dumps or distraught. (She - and an online quiz - have assured me that I am not depressed in the clinical sense.)
But after reading the article, I started wondering: are all these superachievers medicated to stay "perky", energetic, ambitious, and, well, "strictly business, nothing personal", not just in how they handle high power careers, but how this carries over into the kinds of relationships they choose or don't choose? It's the right demographic. Women who are approaching or in prime middle age. The article said that one out of four women in this age group are taking something. (Actually it included the age group that is slightly older as well, but I see these behaviors more in women born after 1970).
I mean this is not a new concern. this seems to have been around for quite some time.
Hmmm....
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