Dating and Sex

The Theory of Mutual Self-Destruction

Amir Said

• Publisher: Superchamp Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781644040034
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is a fitting analogy and guide for dating and sex and the types of bonds that we form from these interpersonal relationships. Why some couples stay together (or why some bonds last) and why others ultimately split up (and why some bonds crash), often speaks to self-preservation. People in relationships - serious or casual - stay in or leave those relationships based on what Said calls the "theory of mutual self-destruction" (TMSD). As an umbrella term, TMSD serves as an excellent pathway to exploring the nature of dating and sexual relationships.

Dating & Sex: The Theory of Mutual Self-Destruction is an anthology of essays written by a number of different writers from all walks a life, from around the world. Edited by Amir Said, this profound and in-depth collection offers a great deal of insight into relationships, modern dating, and sex.

The Nuclear Option

by Meaghann Ande

Nine years ago, my husband called me. He was at the apartment of one of his close college friends. “So.”

“So?” Oh lord, here we go, I thought. We had been married for a little more than a year at this point – I could hear the tone of intrepid glee in his voice.

“Mason needs a place to stay temporarily.” Crap, what the hell am I going to say when Andy asks… “What do you think about him staying with us for a month? Two, max.”

Do I have a choice in the matter? “I mean… I really don’t know him. And how would he feel about living with a kid?” My eyes flicked up to the pretty little boy lining cars up on the floor. In my mind I tried to conjure a picture of this surly weirdo that could have been one of our groomsmen. Had he been willing.

“It’s fine. He knows the deal.”

“All right, I guess? Where are we going to put him?” We were only 24: what was I to expect when we were the only ones in a stable living situation?

“In the office. He doesn’t need a lot of space.” The glee became more pronounced.

“There’s not a lot of space – and then there’s that office.” The room in question was about seven feet by nine feet. There was a reason that it was being used as an office in our tiny home.

“It’ll be fine.”

I sighed silently and then asked, “when is he moving in?”

***

Three months later, Andy was on his third consecutive twelve-hour workday at the campaign office. “I really need you to come home.” I said, looking down at the pregnancy test.

“I can’t right now. I’m in meetings until 4:30. Can it wait?”

I looked at the clock. 9:13. “I guess.”

“I’ll see you then,” he said and hung up.

“Seven hours…”

Mason walked into the kitchen and looked at me. “Everything okay?” he asked gently. This kindness was a side of him that was mostly new to me.

“I don’t know.” I looked up at those big brown eyes that were surrounded by dark hair and a beard pointing in every direction.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I can’t. I need to tell him first.”

“Okay.” He got a glass of milk from a fresh gallon.

“Do you really have to open another gallon of milk when the one in the fridge isn’t empty?”

“That is purely Andy’s backwash.”

I gagged mildly and followed him into the living room. Glancing around, I studied the small but open space.

“What’s the matter?” He remained kind but was as direct as always.

I slumped down onto the arm of the couch, giving in because the nerves were making me feel sick. “I’m pregnant.”

“Isn’t that what you guys wanted?” He asked cautiously.

“Yeah. But we just had a conversation yesterday about giving up. Living life with just one kid. I mean, Michael is five and a half! He’s just going to be too old to tolerate a sibling soon.”

“Michael will be fine. And Andy is going to be happy.”

“He’s not going to be home until 4:30… I think I started the conversation about giving up yesterday because I suspected.” I was studying his untied boot laces as I said this, but looked up at him to ask, “Help me stay distracted?”

He studied my face for a moment, before saying, “I think I need colored lightbulbs for my room, so I don’t have to use white light. It’s so irritating! I’m thinking red and green.”

“Where would you even find that?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.” He said this as the knots in my stomach started to loosen.

When Andy got home that afternoon, I met him in the yard. “Are you pregnant?” He asked as he got out of the car.

I held up the pregnancy test. YES, it said, clear as day.

He shouted and grabbed me. “I knew it!”

I wrapped my legs around his waist so he could swing me around. “It’s okay?” I asked in his ear.

“It’s amazing.”

That weekend, Mason accompanied our little family to a picnic across town. The democrats were having a party for one thing or another. I sat on a picnic bench across from him. “So.”

“So?”

“Do you want to stay with us permanently?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He blew out a big breath. “Then yes.”

***

It was the summer of 2014, and Andy had been working 70 hours a week, trying to get a good man elected to congress. While this would ultimately prove to be fruitless, he was killing himself to make it happen. Meanwhile I was at home with an autistic third grader and a busy toddler, while working full time.

Through all of this, Mason had my back – picking up a crying baby and distracting a bored seven-year-old when I was exhausted. He kept me occupied in the evenings, watching dumb tv shows, arguing over the ridiculous, and attempting to play board games that I had never heard of. We laughed, I cried, and the summer passed at a nauseatingly slow pace.

That August, Brooks was eighteen months old, and I was eighteen months into being completely overwhelmed by him. I did not realize yet that I was neck deep in the mire of post-partum depression. Andy was two counties over, on a multi-day excursion for the congressional campaign he was running.

Mason was pacing the living room, twirling his beard with his fingertips. He looked positively maniacal. “Would you please tie your shoes? You’re going to fall down,” I begged for the third time that morning alone.

“It’s fine,” he said, without so much as glancing down.

“I am absolutely not going to help you up when you finally fall on your face.”

“I haven’t yet.”

I sighed. His pacing picked up speed. Any faster and he would be jogging. “If you keep clomping this path in my old house, you’re going to fall through the floor.”

“Newtown is terrible. Connecticut is terrible. It’s shitty people surrounding a series of strip malls. It’s ugly and grey.”

“They’re your parents and it’s only ten days.”

“It’s going to be completely absent of absurdity.” His packed suitcase was by the front door.

“We need to leave soon.”

“Let’s just go. If I wait any longer, I’m just going to get angrier.”

“All right,” I said and picked up the now shouting toddler. I did not say, “I’m going to miss you.” He would not have had the first clue how to respond.

During his absence, we messaged on Facebook daily. I shared the ongoing shenanigans of our kids, and he kept me posted on the goings on in his corner of the northeast. I had heard at least monthly how completely he despised his hometown, and he made it clear that nothing had changed on that front.

“My sister is being awful – last night she stormed into my parents’ room while they were sleeping and screamed at my mom.”

“About what?!” Even then, I adored his mother. With her teaching career and crafting and constant nagging, she was the kind of mom I had always wished for. When his sister went off like this, I wanted to shout at her that she did not know what it was to have a difficult mother. My own being at a cross-section of bipolar and borderline personality disorders had made her difficult and abusive.

Andy and I were sitting on the couch watching Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives on one of his rare evenings at home. He looked over my shoulder at the screen of my laptop, “who are you talking to?”

“Mason. His sister is being a bitch again, so he’s complaining to me rather than his mom.”

“That’s funny, I haven’t heard from him at all since he left.” Andy harrumphed and looked back to the TV.

“Huh, I’ve talked to him every day.” I muttered as I typed. “This thing with Bea has him irate.”

“She usually does,” Andy said and glanced over at me while I continued to study my laptop screen.

Another message popped up, “You’re keeping me from throttling her.” I was so sad and angry for he and his mom.

“That’s bullshit!” I shouted. “The need for musicians and story tellers has not somehow abated in the last five hundred years!”

“There may very well still be troubadours,” he replied loudly, referring to my previous statement about George Strait, “but there are not traveling bards.”

This was minute 48 of this argument.

Three nights later, I send him a video of a Peter Mulvey show at a small theatre in Portland. My message read, “Traveling. Bard.”

“It’s really not like having his best friend around. It’s more like having 1.5 husbands and 2.5 children.” I said for maybe the thousandth time in the six years he had been living within arm’s reach. “There’s no romantic relationship of anything, but I take care of him and he helps with the kids. He does have a really great smile though.”

“I really don’t understand the conversations you two have.”

“Yeah. I know,” I replied.

A year later he walked into my bedroom and handed me a knit turtle. “One of my mom’s projects.” He laughed, “since the turtle is your spirit animal.”

This had come to light while Brooks and I were taking an online quiz a few nights before. Brooks’s spirit animal, unsurprisingly, was a hummingbird.

“Something to keep watch when I’m gone.” The year his parents had given him to finally get his shit together was nearly up. My heart started to pound, and my throat tightened. I looked up at him when the first tear fell. “It’s going to be okay,” he said and gently punched me on the shoulder.

I hung my head, unconvinced.

Over the next few days, I touched the small turtle on my dresser any time I walked by it. “It’s going to be okay,” I would whisper to myself.

A week later, Andy and I were having our twentieth tense conversation about the topic of Mason leaving while we were out one evening. “I’m just so tired of trying to help him. It never gets anywhere.” He said tightly, “this is going to be good for him.”

Another panic attack began to tighten my chest. “I really can’t talk about this anymore.” I said, and once again tears slid down my face.

“Fine.” He replied and took a drink of his gin and tonic.

After we had left the restaurant, we ran to our favorite liquor store. Strolling through the parking lot, I joked to Andy, “I know the only things I could do to get you to leave me would be to sleep with Mason or vote for Trump.”

“I don’t care who you vote for,” he feigned shock, “but you haven’t slept with Mason?!”

“I know – weird, right?” I asked lightly. His hand tightened on mine and he frowned, so I said, “I’ve only been with one man since the summer of 2008.” He pulled me closer and leaned his head on my shoulder when we stepped through the door of the store.

The next night, Mason and I were once again shouting at each other. This time, it was about the “OK Boomer” language that was circulating around the internet. Despite both being millennials, we had distinct and opposing views on this.

“I was raised by old people! It’s d...