The Tyranny of Togetherness
(Sarcasm is OFF for this post.)
I’m going to get personal here for a change. Be warned.
In the last months of my marriage, when I was struggling to understand why I was feeling traumatized, terrified, and hopeless, I came up with the term “Tyranny of Togetherness” to describe one aspect of that relationship. It’s the idea that “we must do everything together, otherwise our relationship will be harmed.” But it’s not actually a mutually agreed-upon thing, as that formulation would suggest. It’s more of power battle, where the dominant partner says (perhaps not explicitly): “You must do everything with me, otherwise I will hurt you. You must not have a life of your own.”
It’s been three years since I escaped, and I often think about why this form of tyranny develops, and how I can avoid getting trapped by it again. I believe that one cause is a fear of abandonment. If you’re constantly afraid of losing your partner, you may believe that if he goes off by himself to do something that gives him joy, he might find someone better than you, or he may decide that he likes being alone more than being with you, and he might not come back. So you’ll do everything you can to control the situation, and the easiest way to do that is to prevent your partner from doing anything without you.
This type of control is usually one-sided. It’s OK for the controlling partner to go off and do things on her own. But you must stay home and wait for her to return.
It’s also possible that this Cluster-B Personality Disorder situation isn’t the only version of the Tyranny of Togetherness. There might actually be partners who like doing everything together. Maybe they really do enjoy each other’s company so much that they can’t imagine being without each other even for a minute. Romantic movies and novels are full of these kinds of stories. I now view this is as a kind of temporary insanity that strikes you early in a romantic relationship. But when the insanity wears off, as it always does, what happens next? That’s when the hard part begins. What happened before was a hormone-induced high. Now reality has set in.
Fortunately, I’m much more immune to this temporary insanity now. The immunity shot I received by being in (and escaping) a traumatic relationship wasn’t 100% effective, but it’s pretty close. Even though it’s been three years, the idea of entering into that insanity again is becoming more and more distasteful; just thinking about the possibility make me feel ill.
I’m also immunized against such a possibility by living in a state where 95% of the people in my age group have taken an experimental mRNA injection, and thus regard me as an unclean plague rat for not having injected myself with that Glorious Goo. Sometimes, being a grumpy old contrarian has its benefits.
I like my alone time. I like living alone. I like being able to do things (like practicing the piano) that would invariably drive another person crazy. I will never be able to live up to another person’s expectations or ideals, and I don’t ever want to try to do that again. I sometimes like doing things with other people, but then I’m happy to get back to my home and be blissfully alone again. Perhaps that’s selfish, but it’s not as selfish as preventing another person from living their own life.