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RELATIONSHIPS
How to Call Bullshit in Your Relationships in Real-Time
Referee your relationships. Blow the whistle. Foul! Flag on the play! Strike!
A couple of weeks ago, I published an essay that briefly commemorated my twentieth month in isolation, a time that has been superbly transformative for me. During this time alone, it has become clear why so many people, women mostly, always urged me to spend time with myself before jumping into new relationships. (Although I don't think they meant nearly two years of complete isolation, absolutely no physical contact with friends and family, and moving thirty thousand miles to live in farm country.) I've always been good at being alone, and as an anxious introvert, alone is my preferred state. But, this time was different. This time would be the longest and farthest I'd gone to get away from other people and the person I used to be.
I've gone through many phases and changes during this extended period alone, and one of the most profound developments is my refusal to be presented with bullshit and pretend I don't hear or see it. Before, when my Spidey-senses were triggered, I would stifle the alarm and even second guess it. I'd think he couldn't have meant it the way it sounded, or she didn't mean to belittle me; she's just having a bad day. I would listen to twisted logic and lies and watch people spiral around me and then tangle myself up with them. But after spending nearly two years with myself, taking care of myself from the inside out, I have become re-sensitized, if you will. Before, I had become so accustomed to bullshit that it seemed normal, whether from my friends, partners, or myself. But over the past twenty months, I have detoxed from the stench, making bullshit the exception and not the rule.
The presence of bullshit in my relations and conversations began to feel like a punch in the throat. It began to sound like the high-pitched reverb of a microphone or the abrupt scratching of a record during a couples-only party in my grandparents' dimly lit basement during the lazy, crazy days of summer '69. Bullshit has become so foreign to my senses that my brain immediately sends intellectual antibodies to attack it, those once-silent alarms blare, and I call bullshit as it's happening.
