Happiness in Slavery

Nine Inch Nails did a song by that name, and the video was so obscene that they never showed it. I’m not here to talk about music videos though. Today’s topic of discussion centers on those situations and dynamics where we become enslaved to the machinations of someone else. You know the old story; you meet someone that initially you get along with well enough to spend more time with them and eventually your association reaches a point where you’re mutually detracting from and destroying each other.

To further illustrate the point consider a woman that is beaten near constantly. The kind of woman that is always missing teeth, sporting black eyes, swollen lips and gums, broken bones, swaths of hair missing from her scalp, and of course a myriad of cuts and bruises. She knows she’s miserable. She feels the sting of every strike, and the humiliation from lying about the cause of each injury, but it’s not enough to get away. She stays with the abusive asshole because she “loves him” or she “deserved it”. But what point does your self esteem reach a point where you’re willing to forego true happiness in favor of misery?

That example speaks directly to physical abuse, which is abhorrent, but it’s nothing compared to emotional abuse. Staying with someone that doesn’t understand you, doesn’t take the time to get to know the real you, or is dependent on you to the point of not being able to function. They guilt you into remaining there all to avoid having blood on your hands from that failed relationship. Endless promises of things changing, spending more time together, anything to keep you from leaving. The truth is that people don’t change unless they want to, and certainly not to keep what they already have. Their behavior got them what they have in the first place, so walking away is an empty threat.

But we all do it. Friendships, romantic liaisons, even our parents all find ways to manipulate us into doing things we don’t feel comfortable doing. We are so afraid of being alone, of being unable to form any kind of lasting connection with another human being that we become ferociously protective of the meager connections we do form. Fair weather friends, sycophantic acquaintances and abusive lovers all serve to keep us enslaved in some way or another. We don’t want to be alone, to stand in isolation or admit any kind of failure so we deride the shortcomings in our relationships and press on, secure in the delusion that things will get better.

I have been chastised by every woman I’ve been involved with for the past five years for being too zealous, too passionate, too overwhelming in the way I handle myself. But I don’t take it as a bad thing because the comments are always in the context of how I’m so remarkably different from the other guys they’ve been involved with. But ultimately the question has to be asked, why you would want to be associated with someone that isn’t engaged. Someone who is blind to their surroundings or so unwilling to see what is going on that they don’t even rationalize it away they just ignore it completely.

My best friend told Nicole’s husband about her affair and after they fought about it for one night, everything was fine and he went back to existing in his ignorance. He found contentment in his blindness. That’s just one example though because it happens all the time. We make excuses, turn blind eyes, ignore massive warning signs, rationalize away a cascade of things, and all to prevent the inevitable acknowledgment of just how miserable we really are. As long as we make someone else happy we find some kind of nobility in our misery. While I champion the idea of Cosmic Balance and all that is encompassed in that, why should we willingly subject ourselves to being unhappy, even in the slightest, simply to make someone else happy? Doing that is detracting from our own happiness and subsequently we don’t really live. We exist to serve another and isn’t that really just a form of slavery?

There’s always that compromise of things that you look past in order to find the bliss and elation of being with someone, but at what point does it become too much? Is a heroin addiction worse than a man that is incapable of being able to find confidence in his own merit? What makes a drug shooting junkie worse than a man that will do anything and everything to make the woman he loves happy? It’s a subjective thing, but ultimately my take is that if you’re so blinded by your devotion and apparent need for someone else, you’re addicted, in the same way that the heroin addled junkie screams for his fix. It’s obsession, and take it from someone that knows, it’s dangerous. It crosses the line from love into obsession when your entire life threatens to crumble and implode by that person leaving. I said goodbye to Nicole and guess what, my world changed, it didn’t implode. I know it was love. But there are those that have had the objects of their affection become discontented and thus seek to find the happiness they’re being denied, and in the aftermath of one human being making a decision that is best for them, the guilt, rage, and manipulation that arises serves only to further the selfish goals of the one engendering that unhappiness.

You suffer in silence to keep from writhing in abject agony. Consider this, you meet someone, you get along, things go well and before long you’re entertaining the idea of being more than friends. So the fateful day comes when you take the plunge and things go well. Fast forward a couple years. You’ve lived together, broken up a few times, seen other people, tried to see what else the world has to offer but you keep coming back. The romantic version of the story tells that it’s fate, you’re meant to be together. But the reality is most likely that one of you is able to goad, manipulate, or guilt the other into continuing the charade of compatibility by capitalizing on the good and forcibly ignoring the bad. Do me a favor, the next time you go to the dentist and have a tooth drilled, pulled, or crowned refuse anesthesia. It’s the same thing. You’re willing your mind to ignore and forget the negative in order to acknowledge only the positive.

Relationships are about mutual growth. Friendships, romantic relationships, even family, it’s about growing and getting better because of how the people around you bring out the best in you. But too often lately I’ve heard stories of people being pulled down into an emotional abyss simply because they cling to the delusion of what they once had. If your relationship ran a year or more and you clearly contemplated leaving them at any point that didn’t directly stem from a fight, odds are you’re just biding time. Sitting around idly waiting for life to make the decision for you while you indoctrinate yourself to believe that there is some measure of redemption and due respect or adulation for your ludicrous endurance of that misery.

We are all given a limited time here. For most it’s seventy, eighty, or ninety plus years. For some our time here is much shorted for a modicum of reasons. But to spend even five minutes being wretchedly unhappy is five minutes of your life wasted. It’s an intrinsic facet of human nature that we avoid pain and pursue pleasure, but for most of us we let the despicable situation that develops continue to propagate while we continue suckling away at the opiate we receive and the whole time we’re completely unaware of how much of ourselves we lost on a daily basis in the situation and worse, how much of life is passing us by while we toil away praying for an organic change to something that is too irrevocably damaged. In the end, perhaps it’s not just happiness in slavery, but self imposed slavery to prevent happiness.