On a random weekday last summer, I was sitting across from the person I was dating then, in the most uneventful Taco Bell. Some days are very insignificant and mundane, but there are lightbulb moments on these ever-so-mundane days that stay with us. This particular day, I was talking about myself, and somehow it turned into a discussion about his experience, which wasn’t closely related. I was telling him how I argued with my mother that day, and he ended up talking about his relationship with his mother. So I ended up consoling him – that’s particularly when I realized that I was made to carry the emotional baggage for two people.
It wasn’t always like that, though. Like most relationships, it started out well – we’d talk about things, both good and bad. However, in very little time, everything sounded heavier than it used to – every conversation turned into something bleak. And this happened on most days. If I raised a concern about the relationship, he’d talk about how THAT made him feel. Other times things would come up from nowhere. Like this one time, I was out with a friend “without telling him” exactly where I was or when I went. So, he decided to check up with a message every ten minutes. When I asked him why he did that, he said, “I get worried for you, and I overdo it at times, but I’m emotional like that (which according to him, stems from other relationships).”
Most conversations I’d start would turn into something about him. It’s an important detail here that the said person, let’s call him X, was “not a bad guy” in the bare minimum ways. There were of course other major issues in the relationship, but having to constantly help with his emotions was one. The very first signs were random calls in the middle of work days, every other day – just so he could talk about his issues with his colleagues. One time he wanted me to stay on call because he was pissed at the same colleagues and didn’t know how to confront them; in the middle of the day when I was working.
There was another similar incident, where I brought up an ill experience, and he thought it was appropriate to shut me down, because “it would make me sad”. On days when I was sad, I was asked to cheer up, on other days when I’d be ‘fine’, we had to talk about him. My problem is – I had no space to express my emotions, and I was made to deal with his – which was exhausting, sure, but also unfair. The experience also changed me at the time. I told the person, that I wouldn’t want to change in a relationship and he said that compromises are common when we date. This felt like it sounds, as if I was in a ‘marriage’ where I didn’t even know the person. My issues with most marriage set-ups is another thing, but this is something else. Because, the idea that ‘relationships MEAN compromise’ has never sit well with me.
This specific relationship was also about me being treated as the person who had to offer solution, all the time. Solutions for him. The issue with turning therapist for someone you’re dating, other than the act itself, is the fact that you almost never notice when it starts happening. You only realize this in hindsight. In looking back, I realize, when I finally decided to address the issue, he wasn’t happy that I spoke. X said, “You don’t sound like the person that you were at first, when we started talking.” He liked me better when I listened, even if that meant keeping quiet about my problems. Now that I think of it, it sounds like my worth was defined by my capacity to offer help; and when I didn’t have much of THAT, I was “selfish”.
When we ended things, he said, “It was unfair on my part to end things because I have more friends than he does. So it was like I was abandoning him, and I had other people”. Every time I shared about my relationship with other people in my life, he’d say he envies that he does not have the same with someone else – this was the case every time. Like when I told him how I share most things with my best friend, he said he was jealous. Every day would turn into something negative – where I was left to make him feel better.
The person also hardly realized that this had an impact on how I communicate my feelings or issues. Being shown that my problems matter less or I should do the listening more, internalized that I should talk less in future relationships. This also means that the person who ends up ‘therapizing’ is also the one who is made to feel less in a way – as if what THEY have to share isn’t as important. Certainly, that is meant to affect how they end up approaching relationships. It’s as if what they have to say isn’t good enough, and so they stop saying most things.
I like to think of myself as someone who understands what it means to be there for someone. I may not be perfect at it, but I get the gist. We hardly ever talk about boundaries in “being there”, though. What if a person is in a bad space themselves? What if they don’t have the energy that day? What if something triggers them? If we don’t see the person we are apparently piling up on, then that sounds like a one-sided relationship or equation. That said, wanting to talk or wanting to address negative feelings is not the issue. It’s when you treat the other person as someone solely responsible for your emotions. This also means that we minimize the importance of professional help, which is never a good thing.
If we really see it, it’s an unsaid thing to assign women the emotional responsibility of the men around them. We’re made to look after them, without clearly being told to do so. We do it so often that it becomes a habit; and nobody even talks about how emotionally draining it is, to have to do that. Yet, somehow, men think that they ‘manage’ us. On the other hand, the idea of ‘fixing a guy’ or ‘helping him get better’ is romanticized to the point that we don’t see the problem with it. As someone who has done that, it feels like losing yourself for someone else – and nothing justifies that.
