Via Amber, a blog post at the Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Steve McNair story. The comments selection is particularly remarkable, and Amber notes that at one point, Coates asks:
I have an open question for readers: the person who broke your hearts the hardest, whom it took you the longest to get over, were they higher on social and economic ladders than you? Or were they lower?
Amber follows up with a question of her own:
Part of the trauma of losing a relationship is the trauma of losing the imagined future with that person. One can mourn that miscarried future, and whatever security it might have brought, without reducing the beloved to a meal ticket or a leg up the social ladder. Does this reflect your experiences?
And it’s got me thinking: not about the sad McNair story, but about the ways in which heterosexual romance in this culture is so wrapped up in aspirations and dreams, in issues of class and status. I’ve touched on this before; I’m hardly the only person to point out that we train aging men to seek out younger women as evidence of continued virility and prowess. But this sense that a particular romance opens a door to previously unattainable possibilities seems more widespread than just the older man/younger woman dynamic. It may not be universal, but it’s common enough to be nearly so. For a great many of us, a serious relationship serves to provide security, opportunity, and hope for what could not otherwise be achieved. And indeed, as Amber suggests, the grief we often feel at the end of a relationship is less over what was actually lost and more over the loss of the great cavalry of dreams we had (often unconsciously) marshalled. In other words, we mourn for what might have been at least as much as we do for what actually was.
In each of my three previous marriages, my wife and I had detailed plans for our futures and how it was we were to meet those goals. The women I’ve married over the years have little in common, save for three things: they were all undergraduate psychology majors, they were all passionate about animals, and each was in her own way intensely ambitious and driven. Though each of these marriages was shortlived, they lasted long enough to compile a formidable set of goals and plans; each time, these hoped-for-tomorrows were discusssed with family and friends. As a result, with each divorce came the sting not only of losing the particular spouse, not only of losing a set of friends and in-laws, not only of losing (invariably) a great deal of things and money, but of losing a precise set of hopes for a joint future. And of course, perhaps the greatest loss was a particular vision of myself in the years ahead. Marriages and other monogamous relationships give us a chance to define ourselves (some would say to “straitjacket” ourselves); when my first three marriages ended — I’m not counting other long-term monogamous relationships — I felt keenly that loss of a stable and enduring self-image.
If we’re honest about it, most of us recognize that our personalities are not fixed and static. Some of us are more mercurial than others, of course, but few among us fail to be shaped in significant ways by the relationships we have with loved ones. In a marriage or other enduring romantic relationship, that “shaping process” takes on a unique form based on the individual personalities of the folks involved; while every enduring relationship is a crucible (to borrow the image used by the great Dr. David Schnarch), the melted liquid in each crucible is slightly different. Each of my marriages pushed me, and in each of my marriages I found similar patterns emerging — and yet, at the same time, each marriage had a slightly different set of challenges to overcome (or not) which corresponded to a slightly different set of mutual hopes and dreams. So each marriage gave me a brief and different vision of who it was I could be and would be.
My first wife was extremely close to her family; I was very fond of her parents and siblings as well. Our “vision” included living near to them, perhaps literally next door, and taking trips with them as we all aged together. My first wife was an urban girl to her core; she had never camped and had no desire to sleep on anything other than high thread count sheets for the rest of her days. With my far more independent second wife, our vision was of finding a way to get to nature; #2 and I shared a longing to escape the city, and we spent as much time as we could in wilderness. Our shared dream was a simple life lived in a remote area of Inyo County. #3 and I were Christians together; our vision was of a home, open to all, where we lived and ate and shared as much as possible. My third wife pushed me towards simplicity and intentionality and service. In each marriage — and in this, my fourth and final one — plans were made and dreams were shared as we lay in bed before falling asleep. In each marriage, hopes for a shared future served as a glue — and with each divorce, high on the list of the greatest causes of post-separation pain was the sense that those shared hopes were dashed forever.
It seems to me that so much of the rage we experience in breakups and divorces is tied to this sense of losing that vision of what might have been with this particular person. The phenomenon of stalking one’s exes, or — as in the McNair case — murdering a partner who seemed on the verge of ending things — are extreme examples of what people choose to do when the basket in which all of their eggs of future joy were placed falls to the ground. It’s neither possible nor desirable to inoculate oneself completely against this sort of risk; building a life with another human being requires planning and vision and hope. And when we plan and envision and hope with someone else, we expose ourselves to being devastated when the relationship through which the plans were made falls apart. The goal, of course, is to have a private sense of self and purpose that exists alongside of what is shared with one’s partner; this is what it means to be interdependent rather than merely dependent.
Interdependence is hard (and a topic for other posts). Losing what Amber calls “the imagined future” with a partner is indeed among the bitterest aspects of the end of a relationship, and probably a catalyst for much of the rage and hurt we experience when things don’t work out. We do well to honor the reality of that loss, even as we do better still to remind folks that one’s sense of the future needs to be both flexible and to some extent independent from any one other person. That’s not easy, but if I’ve learned anything after three divorces and four marriages, it’s that it can be done.
I find it unusual someone would even have that as a question; I’ve never even dated anyone of a different socioeconomic status, let alone had a relationship with any eye on the future with someone of different economic background or means. Neither, come to think of it, has anyone else I’ve known. I mean, there have been people I’ve known who’ve married young, and because of different choices of careers and/or studies now take home different incomes—but I’d hesitate to call that a difference on the socioeconomic “ladder”. Social class is more than one’s paycheck.
I like Amber’s reworking of the question to reflect the loss of a shared future that isn’t necessarily tied to financial gain. Any dreams of shared futures I’ve had in my two serious relationships (one married, one not) weren’t anywhere near as concrete as Hugo’s—I inherited a certain Sicilian fatalism from my mother, sort of a “people plan, God laughs” thing. I’ve never even planned out where I’d live. But the loss of a relationship does mean the loss of a future-that-could-have-been (even if the details weren’t diligently laid out), as well as a companion.
But that makes me think of another question—is the level or detail of that future dreaming tied to an extended feeling of loss? I mean, is the loss of a specific imagined future perceived to be greater than the loss of a general future? For me, my pain in the loss of those relationships was intimately tied to the actions that caused the breakups—the future wasn’t even a thought, as the breakups themselves were such that—-the breakup was an infinitely better alternative than trying to remain in the relationship. Y’know, by the time the breakup rolled around, the only way I could even imagine having a future was by getting out. ‘Nother words, for me, it was the loss of a past I mourned.
I find it unusual someone would even have that as a question; I’ve never even dated anyone of a different socioeconomic status, let alone had a relationship with any eye on the future with someone of different economic background or means.
When I tried mentally answering that question, I found that the only operational definition I had for it was to contrast the probable family incomes of my college exes. But, in practical terms, “at Stanford as a scholarship student from a working class family” just doesn’t make that big a difference from “at Stanford as a preppie from a better off family” when it comes to what it feels like to break up with the person. I suppose other people’s mileage may vary.
The relationship ending that hurt hardest and for the longest was the one where the guy died suddenly in an accident; social class didn’t have anything to do with it.
As someone who married really early in life, I have found that my spouse and I have had *no Choice* but to reimagine our “shared future” many times. We have lost those dreams though we have remained together. What has been really difficult is losing that vision because of the other person- sometimes him and sometimes me, and then trying to make new sense of “our” future.
A shared vision sometimes expires and I wonder if it is in some ways easier to let the relationship expire with it. i wonder that, but i don’t opt to find out.
I liked the original framing of the question, but disliked the idea that differences in impact were based on the relationship being merely or mostly instrumental for the “lesser” partner.
While it might be the case that “‘at Stanford as a scholarship student from a working class family’ just doesn’t make that big a difference from ‘at Stanford as a preppie from a better off family,’†it can make a subjective difference with respect to the shared dreams lost with a breakup. I’ve dated men of higher familial SES than mine, and part of the future we lost was my aspiration of making a family that was more like theirs than my own. (On the flip side, one relationship broke off after my refusal to embrace my part in the class role a boyfriend imagined for himself; he later found his Jackie Bouvier.) Experience indicates that I’m better suited for relationships with persons with backgrounds more like my own, but even those carry the more generalized expectations that Hugo describes.
I guess I can see how it could work that way (and I thought the original framing of the question was a reasonable one to ask); it’s just that I can’t recall family SES as being all that big a factor in how well I took a break up. The worst heartbreak was having someone die while I was still resolving how things were going to work out between us, and next to that, the break ups where I thought I’d been deceived were worse than the ones where I felt I’d at least gotten honesty. Those differences dwarfed any social class differences (of which there were at least some, as far as family backgrounds were concerned).
On the other hand, the people who came from absolutely the richest and best connected families I didn’t happen to wind up getting romantically involved with – friends, sometimes, flirting sometimes, but not an actual romantic relationship. Also, I kind of assumed that I couldn’t place too much confidence in any shared dreams until everyone involved was actually out of school and employed. I don’t have any ex-spouses or ex-fiances or ex-lived-together-and-mingled-finances relationships. Maybe one or another of these factors makes the familial SES thing less salient for me than for other people.
In my most recent relationship (and the longest I’ve had to date), we both came from backgrounds that could be called “middle-class,” but it was obvious that we’d been raised with very different economic expectations. As a slightly older man with a “real” job, he made much more money than I did as a graduate student, and he used it in ways that frankly appalled me (no savings, buying high-end items he didn’t really need, etc.). And one of the considerations in our breakup was indeed that I wouldn’t have his support, financial and otherwise, when I left graduate school. I don’t think it would have been less painful if I’d been his financial equal, but it certainly didn’t help.
I think more of the pain caused in a break up is due to the rejection one feels. Basically, a break up is saying hay, your not good enough for me anymore in whatever area(s) and I want to find a better or newer model.
The other points you made did give me some food for thought that I will have to digest on more.
What has been really difficult is losing that vision because of the other person- sometimes him and sometimes me, and then trying to make new sense of “our†future.
Wonderful, insightful comment, Erica. I’m not married myself, but I think you’ve captured beautifully one of the challenges of commitment … in this very independent, modern climate especially.