Every now and then I have a particular sequence of thoughts and while often it just comes and goes, at other times it sticks with me for a bit. Time I wrote it out. Maybe I have done here already and I just don’t remember?

Who knows. I mean, it’s been 25 years of this thing. But let’s do it anyway.

— § —

In a sense, I’ve been lucky in my life to have had multiple serious, long-term relationships. Serious enough that I’ve had multiple engagements, multiple offers to bear my children. Strange phrase to write down now that I see it, but it is what it is.

Five years, two years, three years, a year and a half, eight years… Nearly my entire adult life until my divorce, looking back, I was rarely not in a serious relationship, as strange as it seems to realize that.

And now I don’t feel any particular need to be “with” anyone. Or to date.

But I think some of this apathy is really about what all of those relationships ultimately share, when I add them up. And what they share is that they were all lacking in the same way, and part of a larger lack.

And that lack is this: I don’t think anyone I’ve ever dated, or been engaged to, or been married to, has ever known me all that well. I haven’t felt known. Or in the end particularly cared for as me.

Now if you talk to my exes, more than one will say that’s because I’m a hard person to get to know, I’m a mystery, I’m a cipher, I’m a brick wall.

Here’s what I have to say to that: there are 25 years of my life sitting online in which I ramble endlessly as me, about things I think and things I feel. And yet nobody I ever dated cared to read more than a post or two. And several disliked the fact of its existence entirely and wanted me to kill it off, feeling threatened somehow by its existence.

(This “somehow” will emerge shortly below, if you look carefully.)

— § —

No, this is not a lament that my love life isn’t full of people who have read the 4,000 or more pages of my blog. I don’t expect anyone to do that. I haven’t done that.

But really, they generally never displayed the smallest curiosity. Quite the contrary.

The blog here, of course, is just a microcosm of what the larger picture has always been. In general, my experience of relationships has been one in which not only were the people that I was seriously involved with not all that curious to really know me, but in fact they were generally uncomfortable when I proactively tried to open up to them.

— § —

The first meeting was always the same. There is a look that women get. It’s not exactly bemusement, and it’s not exactly admiration. It’s a gleam in the eye, a particular tightening of the muscles around the mouth—just enough to suggest a smile, without actually resulting in one. Eye contact. Attention.

Every relationship eventually develops origin stories. “I saw him and he was…”

I came to dislike these origin stories. There was “something about” me that told them that I was a rock star. I was so brilliant and yet somehow so awkward and it was adorable. I took command of the room and carried the class and it was so damned attractive. I was a deep, eternal mystery, someone that was such a force of nature as to be unknowable. And so on. And they had to “get to know” me. If only.

None of those things are me. Or if they are, they’re not a particularly important dimension of me. They’re caricatures, and frankly I think they’re projections. Of peoples’ fathers? Of what people wish their fathers had been?

I don’t know. But if that’s who you are to someone, there’s not a lot of room for the things you like, for the nuances of your sense of humor, for your list of favorite bands, for your memories of childhood, for ordering Saturday noon take-out wings and watching a football game. For actual normal life.

— § —

Therein lies what has always ultimately been my experience.

Why no curiosity? Why anger, irritation, even disgust when the “real me” tries to muscle in and participate, share a thought, enthuse about a favorite in some dimension of life?

Largely because you can’t be Jack Sparrow the pirate or Indiana Jones the archaeologist or whatever other panty-wetting but rather flat role someone has cast you in when your mundane, guy-who-has-bills-to-pay and man-with-a-couple-favorite-songs personality is bleeding through the canvas and muddying the image being projected on to it.

— § —

Key stats:

Number of times I have forgotten a significant other’s birthday or anniversary in my life: zero. None. Ever.

Number of times I have spent hours or even days thinking, reflecting, working hard to make sure that I showed, on such a day, just how much I cared for—and how well I knew—the person I was in love with: Every single time.

Number of times I brought my significant other to tears with what I prepared: Nearly every single time.

Now, the flipside:

Number of times anyone asked me if I’d like to make plans for my birthday: single digits.

Number of times I received a birthday, anniversary, or other “mutual occasion” gift or card of some kind over more than two decades: single digits.

How often was I utterly bewildered by the inappropriateness or incongruity of said gift or card when I received it, thanking them while also realizing that it had utterly nothing to do with me, and more to do with them? Nearly every time.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care about birthdays as such.

In fact, if someone had just once said to me, “Hey you, I know you like to think you don’t care about birthdays, so I’m going to indulge your conceit and stroke your ego a bit and plan nothing for it” and had winked and smiled at me as they said it… I mean, just once to have felt lovingly poked right in my interior like that would have been enough to carry me for years, nothing else needed.

But I generally received oh-so-tasteful clothes or other fashion items that people wanted me to wear that didn’t resemble a single thing I had ever worn, but did in fact resemble their fantasies of me, or I received cultural objects (a sculpture, an autographed tchotchke naming some artist I’ve never heard of that somehow ended up on their desk or wall instead of mine) that I had to research to identify.

The same thing, frankly, was often true of praise. Or what I knew was intended as praise, but at the same time realized was indication of a tremendous, often catastrophic gulf.

Generally, receiving gifts, or cards, or praise in my relationships was… weird.

— § —

In the end, I did the breaking up all but once. And it was always for the same reason: because they were coming to despise me, and it was obvious, and I was tired of being despised.

Ask them and they had come to despise me because I was failing to live up to my potential or had become needlessly contrary.

Ask me and they despised me because they were stuck with me and I was proving not to be the person they idealized—the rock star, the mad genius, the pirate, the brilliant professor. Or rather, I kept overflowing the lines of the persona that they had wrapped around me, shattering the illusion, by being just me, some dude trying to live life.

— § —

This is not to blame any of them particularly. After all, I chose them in return. And the fact that in every case I hung around for years is probably for the therapy couch (though I don’t actually have one) and some future discussion of abandonment issues and why I try to stay in relationships where I don’t feel seen and all that sort of nonsense.

But the real reason for making a post like this one, and the place where the train of thought always ends up is actually this:

I don’t particularly care to date, no.

But it would be a shame for me to come to the end of my life having never been known by a significant other with the same kind depth and care as I’ve been known by my parents, my children, or my friends. Not to mention even people like co-workers, most of whom have known me far better as well. I’m not some wall of mystery or force of nature to any of these people. I’m just me, and we talk and we live.

Fascinatingly, I’ve had a couple of women friends over the years (still have, in fact), who know me damned well—better than any of my significant others have ever known me by a country mile—and who always manage to make me smile by saying just the right thing, and who have often managed to make me feel heard in my darkest moments. This sentence is for you; you know who you are.

But isn’t your significant other meant to be the person who knows you best?

By that standard, I don’t think I’ve ever had one—though I’ve been one routinely.

And at this particular moment in life, I’m afraid I’m likely to arrive at the end of life having never quite known what that’s like, despite many years in “serious” relationships.

Boy did I somehow manage to fuck that part of my life up while I was still young enough to worry about it.

— § —

N.B. There is a large part of me that very much wants to delete or not publish this, as it’s self-indulgent, unavoidably boring, and really fairly embarrassing at any number of levels. But for that reason, and because I have a particular fetish for taking my medicine when I’m able to do so (which isn’t nearly as often as I tell myself it is), I’m going to leave it up just to spite myself.

If you’re like me, growing up the whole goal was not to live the life your parents lived.

Not that my parents were inadequate or that they have lived dishonorable lives in some way. Quite the contrary—they’re hard working, have always been there for their children, really sacrificed themselves entirely to try to give us the best lives possible.

— § —

It’s that last bit that’s the problem. Growing up, I watched my parents fight time and money day in and day out, always trying to stay just a half step ahead of a reality that always threatened to catch up.

We were in that class of people that always had food to eat and a roof over our heads, but who could never afford to buy a future.

What I mean by that is that in general, there is a tradeoff at the heart of modern society: pay more today so that you can pay less tomorrow.

This is evident in:

• The buying of insurance which reduces future costs vs. paying as you go because you can’t afford insurance

• The selection of goods (the “affordable” option that will break in a month vs. the “quality” option that will hold its value or even appreciate as a collectible)

• The maintenance of key household items (repair now to prevent future costs and a shortened lifespan or merely do what you can manage to pay for now knowing that it will lead to problems that will cost more to fix “down the road”)

• How any of it is paid for (pay for everything with a credit card that you pay off every month and you get free money and goods; pay for everything using cash and you break even; pay for things using credit when you need to “make payments” and you’re in the hole, paying interest)

• “Paying yourself first” in retirement funding (rather than spending every paycheck) so that you can “have the income you need later”

These are the kinds of tradeoffs that (1) make social mobility harder to accomplish the lower on the ladder you are, simply because you can never seem to make, in practical terms, what you know to be the advantageous choice, and (2) make for a life of stress if you aren’t coming out on the winning end of those exchanges—a life in which you can always see the promised land, but the goalposts are moved a little farther out every day, so that you “can’t ever quite get ahead.”

— § —

So it was that my primary goal in life (and my parents primary goal for me) was to enable me to land farther ahead than this—to lead the kind of life in which one isn’t rich necessarily, but can afford to do the things that are advantageous:

• Buy insurance when it’s offered, rather than paying spot

• Buy the quality goods that will last, rather than the cheap goods that you’ll have to replace soon

• Keep everything in life well-maintained so that repair costs remain low and durability is high

• Take advantage of the financial economy—investing, credit card perks, and so on

• Can invest, whether in 401k savings, or in real estate, or in the market, in such a way as to generate a large and compounding return over the years

— § —

I thought I had done all the right things. Studied very hard. Got a college degree, then a masters degree, then a doctorate. Work in tech, where jobs are legendarily “good” and “plentiful.” Got married before having kids. Learned to do many maintenance things to home and car and appliances myself. Instead of being “quietly dedicated” and passive about work life (and life in general), I have been aggressive and conspicuous in trying to pursue goals and outcomes and make the right connections. I generally work such long hours that my ex-wife routinely teases me for being a workaholic. And so on.

But it hasn’t mattered. I am not “ahead.”

If anything, I’m even farther behind than my parents were. Turns out that the big mistake was college, which imposed debts that I will be paying off for the rest of my life. The second mistake (though it’s hard to call it that given my wonderful children) was marriage, which added tens of thousands of dollars in legal debt just as my student debt went into repayment.

And the irony is that I now don’t think that any of those things I mentioned actually mater. One thing matters—your social skills. As far as I can tell based on life experience, that is the only and only real predictor of success.

— § —

But aside from any of that, I ultimately find myself living exactly the life my parents led. It’s obvious which decisions are advantageous vs. where additional costs and long-term boondoggles lie.

But in the day-to-day of things, I am forced to go with what I can afford—even if I know that it will cost more in the end.

I can hear what the Wise Financial People say on the radio and on the websites. “Don’t be a fool, be money-wise; the cheaper option isn’t always cheaper; spend a little more now to avoid spending a lot later,” and so on.

It doesn’t matter that I know these things, or that I hear “expert” after “expert” offering advice that confirms my instincts.

You can only afford today what you can afford today. And contra the theoretical world of financial planning, there are a great many things that you just can’t wait on until you can “better afford it.”

This is America. You need a car. It nees to run. You need to go to the doctor when you need to go to the doctor. Your kids need clothes when they need clothes. It is what it is.

— § —

And so in midlife, here I sit, sometimes musing that I have taken a different and often much more arduous path than my parents took to arrive at exactly the same place, or maybe even a worse one, watching as the goalposts move just a little farther away every day, constantly feeling as though I’m setting money on fire and if I only had 20% more salary, I could flip the field and start coming out ahead.

But that salary history is what it is; you never get a 25% or 30% pay raise in a year or job-to-job; you get 5 percent here and 5 percent there as you move between jobs and put in your long service. You keep up with inflation and see your salary increase at a rate that provides evidence of your value—but not at a rate that really helps.

— § —

I keep hearing my dissertation adviser in my head. I know I’ve written of this before. He was in his mid-60s and saying to me, “I continue to have big plans, yes, but I’ll carry them out—I still have a lot of energy!”

And I compare to myself (and to my parents). Mid-40s and already burned out and exhausted from trying to keep up, not seeing the net worth really increase, never managing to really climb the mountain, despite climbing and climbing and climbing. Always faced with a stream of fires than often in part stem from past “disadvantageous decisions” that couldn’t be helped, and doing financial jiu-jistu to figure out how to pool and organize cash and manipulate calendars in just the right way to enable at least the fires to be put out.

I don’t know how you break out of that generational cycle, but despite having what everyone thought was the right plan, I’ve gradually come to the realization this decade that I failed to do it. I am living the life my parents lived and fondly hoping, as they once did, that I can help my kids to do better.

It’s been months.

Funny thing is, I wouldn’t have even known, except that a friend mentioned my blog and for the first time in a while, I took a look at it.

Time is flying.

And also, time is frozen.

I don’t know if that really explains it, but really that explains it.

— § —

One way to understand the job of parenthood—or rather, one way to live it intentionally—is as a matter of stopping time.

To be a parent is to stop time for a time. Time the brutal, time the destroyer. Time is loss; time is pain; time is mortality; time is human frailty.

As a parent, you first job is to protect your child from threats until they are old enough to survive on their own.

The first, last, and largest threat that any human faces—is time.

— § —

Of course, one can’t stop time worldwide, or even in one’s own life, but it is just possible to create a little bubble of semi-timelessness, of Lesser Time, around your children. To hold back some of its tidal, elemental, world-shattering force and instead limit it to a trickle for a few years.

Just how long this needs to be done isn’t really clear; it’s a sort of instinctive judgment that you make based on what you know of your children. In practice, I think most always it needs to be at least the first decade. Then, you can let just a little bit more through, and more and more each year, until sometime in their teenage years, you can finally let go.

And then, they will face the full torrent that is time, hopefully grown enough, and prepared enough by you, not to be swallowed up immediately.

— § —

This is no small task, however.

To hold back time, even just most of time, requires all of your resources as an individual. Emotional resources, intellectual resources, physical resources, financial resources… To be successful, you must dedicate your whole self, use everything that you have.

— § —

I am almost there. I am beginning, finally, to sense the time of time’s return coming. Even as an adult, it is overwhelming to think of the letting-go of the holding-back, of seeing time at full force again, washing over you and over your children—in their case, for the first time.

It is like living aside the caldera and knowing that the eruption is coming.

Because it is coming. It is simply impossible to hold off time forever. No one has enough resources to keep it up for long; a decade or more is already nearly equivalent to destruction.

— § —

And indeed, I am very aware of the dwindling of my resources.

Emotional, intellectual, physical, financial. It is, at this point, a game of holding on as long as I possibly can, trying to stretch myself, to try not to break before time’s time is come, a time that is still not here, but a few short years out.

Things are not what they were.

And they will be worse still.

But by god, there is a chance that we might just make it.

And everything after will be after.