On love and unhappiness

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1. Happiness: People versus places

When N and I became lovers, her husband asked her: why doesn't he move here in order to be near you?

This amused me, the here in question being Houston, Texas, and thus about the last place on earth I would ever set my foot in (except perhaps for Khabarovsk, Siberia, and Borkou, N'Djamena); let alone live there.

You see, my life where I was then -- living on the beach within the confines of a national park -- was simply too good to compromise for a day in order to be close to any woman: it is my considered opinion that we can derive much more pleasure from agreeable surroundings -- a nice apartment, a beautiful city -- than we ever can from the presence of another person in our lives, however wonderful. (Proof: when we find ourselves in nice surroundings, other people suddenly matter to us less: just consider how often we forget to send that post card).

For this reason, it is the first requirement of happiness to find a beautiful, agreeable place to live.

(And, indeed, I might add, the second requirement may well be to limit our dependence on other people, other people having several nasty habits, among the nastiest being the tendency to turn out to be less than we had thought them, to betray us, to leave us, and -- in the end -- to die).

2. How our lovers cannibalize our own happiness to assure their own

In time, the husband's question became symbolic of our whole relationship: N lived a life she hated, in a place she hated, surrounded by people she hated and filled with duties which made her dull and at times suicidal, while I lived an interesting life of leisure and adventure, not without its risks, and certainly not easy, but definitely not dull and definitely not unhappy. I liked meeting her, when we did -- she usually came to see me -- but I did not like being with her enough to want to compromise my interesting and beautiful life; it was always understood that she would have to go back to her miserable life at the end of each visit; I made it clear that I would never follow her there.

In time our partings became tiresomely tragic: about 48 hours before her departure she'd begin to grow somber and the pitch of her emotions gradually rose to tearful despair. I will miss you so much, she would say, sobbing; but that was, of course, only part of the truth; the rest, the thing she did not say, was that having tried my life, she simply could not bear thinking about going back to hers. Perhaps she didn't see it, either: perhaps she really did believe that if only she could have me in her life in her dull, vulgar, ugly and hostile Houston, everything would be fine: the city would seem prettier, more cultured, more interesting, and even the duties of her everyday life lighter.

And maybe so they would, but, of course, at what cost to me! And, importantly, they would only seem that way: that would still be the same hopeless, helpless life she's always lived, only that I would be miserable by her side.

3. How unhappiness is often the result of sloth

Now, on occasion, sadly affected by the story of her misery, I offered her some advice from my perspective; and good advice, too, because, after all, it was not very difficult to see what she needed to change in her life to improve it: move, if you can, redecorate, change the nature of your duties, do less of x and more of y, take more time off, etc.

Pretty much all my advice she deftly deflected: x was going to be impossible, y too difficult, z too tiresome and t -- well -- t was simply not done. If ever I tried to press the point, she bristled. Attempting any changes in her life seemed to her simply too formidable a challenge; to think about it alone was distressing. Her standard line was: I am in such a bad way, I have no energy left to change it.

I have since observed this phenomenon in my other lovers: unhappy with their miserable life, yet they would not only do nothing to change it but whenever our conversation turned to the topic they would go on and on and on about how there was nothing they could do and how all attempts to change it would be in vain, or naive, or impossible.

I don't quite understand this psychological mechanism; it strikes me as sloth; perhaps it is really a disease, a kind of mild depression. (The Matthew's effect?)

4. The usual

These other lovers have ever done as N has: doing nothing to change their lot, they instead launched onto affairs with me, seeking to find in love a balm for their misery. But this was always problematic: I will simply never sacrifice my own happiness in order to make someone else's life less miserable for the simple reason that the math does not make sense; and because I know that if I do, the sacrifice will only be temporary -- unlike most people, it would seem, I am not made to suffer a miserable life for any stretch of time, and sooner or later, usually sooner, rebel; and, finally, because I know that as a result of taking such a sacrifice I will only come to resent the object of such self-sacrificing love; and why would I knowingly want to do that?

So this is how it has ever gone since: the lovers reach out to me in the hope of improving their lives; I do offer them a chance to do so by giving them good advice and offering help if they follow it; but they don't, instead expecting me to make them happy by sharing more of their crap life, instead. And when I don't, they are bitterly disappointed, call me selfish, and worse; invariably, things come to an end in the usual recriminations, so well known to me that I know exactly every next word that is about to issue from their lips.

Come to think about it, every woman I have met these twenty years has been unhappy and miserable. I should wonder, perhaps, if there is something wrong with the way I pick them; or perhaps with the market: perhaps only unhappy women make themselves available for affairs. Or perhaps that is simply the way life is: perhaps with the few exceptions like myself, people really are by definition living dull, miserable, hopeless, unhappy lives.

Think about it.