Lately I’ve been obsessed with the phrase “we just want different things.” It’s a justification for separation, mainly. But it’s also a fact of humanity. Every individual, definitively, wants different things.
For example, in my marriage:
I want to go on a vacation. A cabin in Vermont, a Ghibli-themed tour of Japan, or even an all-inclusive vacation anywhere remotely tropical. My husband, Joe, prefers to travel where he is. Down Court Street to pick up some fresh focaccia.
Joe wants to only fuck me. I would like to find a girlfriend sometime. Maybe this year. Maybe in ten years.
I like ice cream. Joe doesn’t. But he buys me ice cream and sometimes has far more than a non-ice cream eater ought to take.
On each of these varyingly contentious points, we’ve communicated and come to another cliched relationship expression: “it’s all about compromise.”
I’m a master of making it work. Whatever the ‘it’ may be. Give me a budget, and I’ll stretch it. Give me an impossible timeline, and I’ll meet it, with a cold sparkling beverage in hand at deadline, despite a sweaty back (I wish I were lying; this is my sweatiest location (my husband finds it hot)).
When it comes to relationships, making ‘it’ work is complicated. In some ways, it’s a fundamental necessity for longevity. We won’t grow old together if we don’t. In other ways, it’s a recipe for self-abandonment and/or resentment.
In the past, I’ve lost myself amidst the busywork of making it work. My compulsion to problem-solve and fear of failure (even the interpersonal variety)1 have led me to stick it out longer than I ought to have, and kept me seeing the rosy, serendipitous side of things when the codependent (and all-out toxic) were slapping me in the face.2 After two relationships went this way, I resolved to address this tendency in myself. As I said, I like to problem-solve.
So, I’d not be myself if I didn’t sit here, nearly a decade into a happy marriage, and wonder — where is the line between wanting different things (expected) and wanting different things (separative)? When does making the relationship work come at the cost of oneself?
In Famesick, we can read about Lena Dunham’s inability to let her ex, a musician, go. Her deep-seated desire to be wanted overrode her self-preservation because, as her heart developed, she conflated being lovable with safety and held that belief despite mounting contradictions. Then we see the singer’s next lover, Margaret Qualley, step out in heels after a tenure in flats to accommodate the comfort of the musician.
It can make us wonder — why would they hold on to something that hurt? But I can understand these tendencies. I once made myself small, too. I think it’s a rite of passage. We love. We try. We find that sticking it out, and even choosing to exclusively wear flats, is the wrong side of the line.
From that cycle of sticking it out through loss of self, I’ve hard-won this lesson. But more importantly, I’m not naive enough to believe the issue will stay in my past.
Even in my marriage with Joe, I’ve had seasons of self-loss. For a couple of years, I wore a lot of my former indie-sleaze English husband’s clothing — his heavyweight LA Apparel cotton shirts, even his tight jean shorts (sigh). I was postpartum and becoming someone new altogether. For convenience, and to avoid extraneous milk vomit stains on my favorite fabrics, I wore his. It was not ideal. But in hindsight, it was a useful visual cue for something I could’ve fallen further into. With the aid of photos, I could see that, even if it were a passive choice in the name of sanity, convenience, or protecting my prized feather-weight fabric collection, it was still me slipping away from my own idea of self.
Now, I remember to prod at my true desires, my own fantasies, and dreams. I see the result in how dreadfully painful it was to accept Joe’s preferred apartment when we recently relocated. I see it in my journaling habit. This Substack. And, yes, even in the new heeled boots I asked for for Christmas despite already being an inch taller than my husband.
Wanting different things (expected) is only possible if you remember to listen to yourself and want, period.
In my never-ending quest to over-prepare, I find myself wondering whether couples who want different things (separative) stopped wanting to consider their partner’s preferences because they hadn’t cared about their own for far too long. To me, this resentment is inexcusable.3 To me, ‘making it work’ means checking in on myself to ensure this doesn’t occur.
But some couples grow apart because their differing wants evolve. Wanting different things is as expected as the fact that individuals will change. And not always in ways that complement their partners.
When Gweneth consciously uncoupled from her musical British ex-husband, their joint statement said they’d tried to make it work but found it wasn’t worth their happiness. When Joe and I had our first pregnancy ‘scare,’ I asked him how he’d want to handle this potential future predicament. Would we get bitter and stick it out? Or would we accept what was best for us, individually? I appreciated knowing we were on the same page, but I also look back at younger me, attempting to pre-navigate pain and sigh.
Perhaps Gweneth and her musician ex could’ve predicted their future division — Was there a schism in their evolving ambitions? Did their cross-cultural differences grow burdensome? (He is now dating a nice English woman, Sophie Turner, after yet another breakup with an American lady) — but why?
Every time Joe and I confront a major compromise —
Our decision to live in New York — halfway between our families’ homes, neither of us where we feel we ‘belong,’ but also, in a new place we can build belonging together.
Our decision to be open to being open one day. Perhaps this year, perhaps in a decade.
Our decision to parent by divide-and-conquer, giving authority to the parent with dirty hands.
— we found through the conversations, as painful as they may have been, that not only did our love grow more potent, but we each knew more about ourselves. Through this love and partnership, I’ve found more growth, more self-knowledge, than I know I could’ve mustered on my own.
I suppose that's why I find “just wanting different things” so compelling. It’s justification for separation, but it’s also exactly what brings us together, and makes us who we are.
With practice, Joe and I have navigated these gaps in desire more deftly. Naturally, crisis will come, and old habits of people-pleasing may slip in and amount to much more than a molehill. But I hope when the time comes, I won’t see that division as the fault of the one who ‘got what they wanted.’
What I worry about more is what I may only ever have blind faith in — what will happen on Joe’s end.
One day Joe may decide he doesn’t want a partner who writes about her sex life online. Or perhaps he’ll develop bi-resentment. He may decide he wants a life in London or even further from an airport. Or he’ll tire of my American ways and realize he’d prefer a nice English woman with great banter. What if he wants something I’m not able to compromise on? Or something I’m not? Maybe one day he will grow so tired of his compromises, he’ll not even find my sweaty back charming.
I could listen to online influencers and become a high vibration woman. Or I could try to get ahead of it — to forecast our desires, chart our compromises in spreadsheets, and collaboratively journal to maintain mutual self-reflection and internal accountability. But what do they say about the things you hold on to too tightly? And what is fine-tooth-combed fairness but fascism? And what is life but a perpetual navigation of our present? And what is love but unending noticing?
To end with one last trite relationship phrase — it’s complicated. But it’s also not. Because when you sit with yourself and really listen deep down in your guts and bones, we all know what we want. Like how, despite major surgery, where part of her literal gut was removed, Lena knew it was time to separate.
If we’re listening (internally), we all know what we want. And if we’re listening (externally), we know that what we want is different. And if it isn’t, at least sometimes, that’s when we really ought to worry.
Enough about me, what do you think?
I’m sharing reflections on love in culture, and my marriage, every Monday.
Like this one about ‘how to be a good man’
And this one about how MILFs are having a moment
Once per month, this post is an extra-intimate story, paywalled for an ounce of privacy.
Like this story about what my husband did to me while blindfolded
And this one about how I milked him
I’m also sharing practices to improve your own intimate world every other Thursday.
Like this one about how to get out of your head when you’re not really feeling yourself
And this one with inspiration on how to foster your horniness
It makes me so happy to have you in the Happy Endings universe. I hope all your endings are satisfying this week. I’m sending you love — literally.
And what caused these tendencies — the whole ‘if I’m just good enough, nobody will ever leave me again (like how cancer took my mom (I never said it was logical))
This may or may not be the plot of my debut novel (agents, hit me up; I already have one interested, but I’d love a party)
I even developed my own meditation on the matter
unending noticing 🫶🏻
Dating (after you've become single after a very long time especially) has become so difficult. People just don't seem to want to be vulnerable, want to put themselves out there. It just feels like a product of not just the pandemic but also living in a digital age. People seem to have stopped being able to properly communicate, let alone communicate with rawness and real honesty. People seem to be obsessed with what look like happy relationships in the media and social media all around them but you never know what's going on in other people's lives. Relationships are fraught if you can't or won't communicate your needs and desires.