Self-absorption and self-pity – two phrases that appeared in reviews in the gay press in England about me book this week. Of course, the other, nice things that were said about it haven’t sunk in, it’s the niggles that rankle, that don’t get forgotten. But it’s better to be talked about than not talked about. And it’s good to know that I didn’t spend 12 years writing about my experiences of the London gay scene without it being acknowledged by the press there.
I’m used to the first accusation, of course. I’m going to live up to it by writing about my response to it. (It’s like a hall of mirrors, reflections going back and forth to dizzying infinity.) It’s an epithet that is often hurled at people who look within for answers, and especially those who have been through therapy. People who skim through life avoiding the depths, all too easily dismiss those of us who tend to melancholy introspection with the tag self-absorbed. (Or, of course, the colloquial: up our own arses.) It’s a comforting collective conceit, that if we’re all very nice and polite and talk about wholesome things and get plenty of exercise and try not to frighten the horses with our narcissistic laments, then life will bubble along nicely, everyone will get on, and the badness will just go away. That sort of attitude evokes a feeling in me that’s a mixture of a cringe and a hurl – a crurl.
The curious thing about this column is that it’s not an accurate reflection of me. By nature, I tend to be someone who can be utterly absorbed in everyone and everything else around me – it’s my default setting. I get transported almost viscerally by a piece of music, and I attune myself to an inordinate degree to what is going on in other people’s emotional lives. It’s why I became a therapist, or at least why I think I’m good at it: other people fascinate me.
But when I’m not connected with others, then I can, indeed, lose a sense of who I am, and wonder what I’m about. (Pisces, for anyone who wonders. Very.) In my struggles to make emotional connections with men in London, perhaps I became too desperate, perhaps I was too unhappy, perhaps I looked in all the wrong places, and sent out all the wrong signals. But what kept me writing about it, absorbing myself in my emotional reaction to the strange, cold world around me, was the knowledge that I wasn’t the only one feeling like that. I knew my experiences were also true for a certain subset of men. I know that my being male, intensely emotional, dramatically expressive, perhaps still wrestling with shame around sexuality, and at the same time being highly sexed, bring with it certain drawbacks when attempting to forge relationships. People like me are a handful, we’re “high maintenance”, in that we are emotionally literate; we demand the same, or at least a modicum of emotional candour, in return for our affections.
Men rarely enjoy high maintenance men. I know I’m being unkind to myself here with this description, but it’s to make a point – that’s the accumulated reflected sense of myself I’ve got, from all those years in London, from all those men. For those men with similar traits looking to women to be partners, I imagine it’s less problematic, or at least brings with it a different set of problems. Those traits are eminently desirable qualities in a man – for many women.
Even though I’m fascinated by other people, I can’t write about them here – or at least, I choose not to be the sort of writer who analyses and dissects the people I’ve befriended or slept with, without their consent. It could be very entertaining, but after a few months I would have no friends left. I certainly love doing interviews, but those who consent to be interviewed for the media are usually very guarded and won’t talk about personal stuff. I have written about other people here on rare occasions, but I like to think I’ve done it for the right reasons. But, as a fundamental principle, I try as best as I can to avoid projection – the attributing of qualities or motives to other people that are reflections of that same quality or motive in me. My outer world reflects my inner world, and vice versa. As for my clients – their stories are fascinating, and I get to hear things that are rarely spoken to anyone. But however absorbed I am in their lives, writing about them is, of course, out of the question. There are therapists who write about their clients – the wonderful Irvin Yalom, for one. But he’s a special case – he has people come to him from far and wide because they know (or hope) he’ll write about them, which of course brings with it its own set of challenges.
And as for the charge of self-pitying... I suppose I am guilty as charged. Sometimes. But look around you. The world is full of self-pitying men, and I’m trying to think of a self-pitying woman. I’m sure there are a few. But, in my experience, men corner that market. Germaine Greer talks of the “solipsism that is man” and who am I to disagree?