pinkfloydpsw's Blog

Every now and then I find myself falling victim to an acute case of melancholy. I am, of course as most are, a quite reflective soul, given to assessing my life and summarising it up to this point; trying to find a reason to believe, and maybe we all need to, that I am valid, that I matter in some way. This is not a space we find ourselves in in our youth where an abundance of confidence grips our every act and thought, no, it is my forties that have yielded these ruminations and I worry about their presence as much as I worry about what strange thoughts they conjure.

I am, as I am well aware, an insignificant man, I have no problem with that for the most part. I am neither ambitious nor greedy and have never particularly needed the validation or false comfort of a crowd. I do however need to be loved; I think maybe we all do, apart from the strongest most independent of us it seems intuitive to think of loving relations as a fundamental part of being human. The problem is that I am not loved, I am instead appreciated, and although this may not seem too problematic a position for you to consider – we all like having people in our lives who think well of us and are pleased by us so as they honestly recognise the fact that we enhance their existence – I would contend that this is the friend rather than lover position. It’s not position enough for love, love is something more than that, it exists beyond appreciation, it has even the capacity to be so in the absence of appreciation; you can love someone yet think that they are no good, that they are ugly, stupid and worthless, that they bring nothing to the table but you cannot help but love them anyway. I love my wife, there is no doubt of that even though I am not loved by her and I think I resent her for that, I love her in spite of knowing that it is not good for me, in spite of being made melancholy by that knowledge.

I struggle to be merely appreciated, I struggle with random acts of passion that are themselves, I must suspect, merely motivated by some ill thought out sense of duty; I imagine having not made love for a while she may consider it about time to steel herself for that coming act. The mental preparation that must precede the somewhat loathsome, the dirtying and cheapening of the body that is this false passion (this is a performance of love, like a theatre production with actors), we all know it and summon it easily so that we may act convincingly when we praise or encourage children, but in this circumstance it’s a little more that she is sacrificing. I might even be given to admire such a will if it were not masking what can only be assumed to be naturally disgust and revulsion, for if it is me that is the focus of such then I must illicit those, temporarily masked, emotions as the default position and, I don’t want that. I don’t want to be considered deserving of a little but not the all, I want to be passionately wanted, I want her to love me rather than appreciate what I have done for her. I wish not to be a necessary evil, I do not wish to be deserving of anything in some sort of cost benefit analysis; I wish not to be disgust or revolt.

Lacan postulated that desire could only exist for the other, the unattained, what has been attained has only qualities that we can appreciate rather than desire; I’m not sure about that, I still feel great passion for my wife, this may be because I don’t see her as a possession. Maybe it is because it is too easy to replace, for a woman, that it is never really assimilated in the psyche as a lasting emotional attachment; possibly the ease at which she can reach out and grab a new partner at any time means that not as much emotional commitment is necessary.

It may be enough for some, it has never been enough for me, I have tried convince myself that it matters not, that if I love her and if that makes me feel part of something then it might suffice, but I am haunted by my thoughts. I’m too smart to play tricks on my own mind, I lack the ability for cognitive dissonance that is necessary to perform such a mental leap. It’s okay, she doesn’t have to love me back – this standpoint that suits love unfulfilled or from afar, but cannot work in close proximity with feelings laid bare. This is what can do the most damage, the vulnerability of having no more to give, nothing undiscovered, no trumping card in a game that is already lost. I am as I am found – disgusting to, rejected by, and mildly deserving of the appreciation of the woman I adore. I can’t make her love me and I can’t turn my love for her off like a light switch, but I can try to chip away at it instead, maybe then I would find myself alone, it probably will never work. Who wants to be merely appreciated anyway? If I do maybe I can live with that. I love my wife.

This was written in 2016 but not uploaded until 2017, at the time I wrote it I was struggling to cope with my wife’s behaviour, when I published it I was in the midst of divorce.

Paul Simon Wilson