The suffocating door: narratives, relationships, desire, and identity
jouissance and sublimation with 'A'
I've got a personal story for this essay. I was still in university. There was this woman (I'll call her A). We became good friends. She was kind-hearted, yet outspoken and assertive in her expression. She had an infectious laugh. She had an uncanny ability to see through the veil of people and sense their emotional state. She would listen with her entire being, and as the years have passed I've realized this is something rare. It's rare to find people who leave you feeling understood and validated, 'A' did that for me, and I hope I managed to offer her something similar in return.
"The specificity of the subject's desire is hence confounding, making it impossible for it to understand why it falls in love with a particular person rather than some other, or why, once in love, it finds it difficult to transfer its affections elsewhere...."
"Conversely, it may well be that the subject is intrigued by objects it experiences as somehow opaque or impenetrable because such objects provide a perfect screen for its narcissistic projections; they, in a sense, explicitly "invite" the subject to idealize (or even idolize) them by raising them to the dignity of the Thing." -- Mari Ruti, The Singularity of Being
Reader Note: While reading, keep in mind, I attempted to look at this situation through the lens of Jacques Lacan, psychoanalysis, and some Deleuze as well. So, keep in mind Lacan's concept of the Thing: a complex and multifaceted concept that relates to the fundamental lack or void at the core of human existence and the subject's perpetual struggle to fill this lack through the pursuit of various objects of desire.
The lost object: The Thing represents the primordial, lost object of desire, which is forever sought but never fully attained. It is the object that the subject believes will bring ultimate satisfaction and wholeness, but which always remains elusive and beyond reach.
The Real: The Thing is closely associated with the Lacanian concept of the Real, the unsymbolizable and unrepresentable dimension of experience that lies beyond the limits of language and meaning. The Real is the traumatic kernel of existence that resists integration into the symbolic order and perpetually haunts the subject's psychic life.
Jouissance: The pursuit of the Thing is driven by the promise of jouissance, the intense, transgressive pleasure that arises from the transgression of the limits of the symbolic order. However, the attainment of jouissance is always fleeting and ultimately impossible, as it is predicated on the very lack that constitutes the subject's being.
Sublimation: The Thing is related to the process of sublimation, whereby the subject's libidinal energies are channeled into socially acceptable or culturally valued activities, such as art, religion, or intellectual pursuits. Sublimation allows the subject to find a measure of satisfaction in the face of the impossible demands of the Thing.
Anyway, I hope this reader’s note provides some understanding of my attempt to understand my own experience around this.
Now, back to 'A'. As you might gather from my description: I harbored feelings for her.
However, she was in a relationship. (No, this story is not going where you think)
I was respectful of this. There's an essence of what this essay attempts to explore: it became about self-respect and my own understanding of expected societal narratives, and how those might influence my decisions and desires. Also, how this intertwined deeply with my own sense of identity and my understanding of how experience influences the becoming of said identity.
As our friendship deepened, I felt this pull into a narrative, one that me, as an early 20s heterosexual male was still unsure of, I could hear the narrative of man and a woman could never be "just friends" loomed around me. As events unfolded, I was put into countless situations that tested my resolve, my rebellion against some narrative to be the "other" guy. I was presented with countless opportunities to cross the line. In a sense, I felt this need to refuse a transgression against the boyfriend, despite the temptation and opportunity, and I think part of me had this recognition of the necessary function that the structuring of social relations played.
This is where I found some encounter with the Lacanian concept of jouissance, the paradoxical pleasure that arises from the very prohibition of desire. I wonder, if by resisting the temptation to act on this tension, in some form, did I sublimate my own desire? At the very least, I attempted to channel the relationship into something that my subjective understanding deemed a more acceptable form of friendship.
Anyway...some more background. 'A' would drive from out of town to study with me. She would visit me during the week. She would visit me on weekends. We would stay up talking. She would confide in me about her unfulfilling current relationship. Now, mind you, I liked her boyfriend. I met him through her. I would listen to her talk about him, but I would never talk poorly of him.
Although, our conversations rarely revolved around her boyfriend; instead, we lost ourselves in discussions of shared interests... thoughts, feelings, and dreams. I was determined to treat 'A' as a true friend, not give into the pull of the narrative of her being some conquest to be won.
I think we both became addicted to temptation. Despite the magnetic pull of attraction, I resisted the temptation to become anything more than a friend. I was acutely aware of my role as an object of desire in 'A's eyes, a potential escape route from her current relationship. She was silently willing me to take the lead, to provide her with the justification she needed to leave her boyfriend and explore the possibility of us. I was indulging in the attention and the unspoken intimacy that hung heavy in the air between us.
Reflecting on this more now... I think we were (inter-subjectively) creating more desire and my attempt was to make the tension into something else, something that could avoid becoming some form of excess (deeper intimacy).
As I write this now, I question whether I'll even share it, given the deeply personal nature of my reflections. Yet, exploring these thoughts has proven enlightening for me. It was a period during which I witnessed my identity striving to reassess, recalibrate, and comprehend itself, as well as its desires.
'A' became a symbol of new nodes of being.
This unspoken temptation came fully to the forefront one night, she had come to visit, to study, and as our study sessions always seemed to go, we would end up staying up talking about anything and everything that had been occupying our minds, including our ideas on friendships, including our own. On this night, we stayed up later than we had planned and she asked to stay over, as she was to tired to drive home. I of course offered my couch.
When the words came out of her mouth, a shift occurred. It was as though we were both staring a temptation of this narrative we were playing out in the face. She could see it in my eyes and I could see it in hers. Yet, the narrative I had built around our friendship, this moment became another act of rebellion, when I looked at her, it felt as though I was looking at a symbolic representation of my desire right in front of me.
In that moment, it felt as though I'd become a symbolic force of destruction for her, a manifestation of some death drive that was seeking to undermine the stability of her own relationship. She became the object of desire for me and I for her. I'm obviously armchair psychoanalyzing here, so take this with its limits, but it felt as though her actions had realized into a form of self-sabotage, a way of exposing the fragility she felt in her own relationship and the illusory nature of the security it provided her (including in her identity regulation). By creating this situation, in which the transgression of the relationship becomes possible, she effectively stages her own encounter with the (Lacanian) Real, which becomes the traumatic realization of the lack that lies at the core of her (all) being.
We are always trying to fill this void of lack, as am I.
For those wondering, this was the 'movie script' moment where I pull her in, kiss her, she stays the night, drama ensues, the script probably frames me as an aloof bad guy, she realizes she needs to make changes in her life, blah blah blah. I get written out of the script. She realizes maybe I wasn't so great. Our narrative falls apart.
Or I pull her in, kiss her, she stays the night, some drama ensues, we stay together and live happily ever after, blah blah blah.
Neither of these things happened. Sorry readers. The plot here goes flat. For now.
I pulled away. I grabbed her a blanket and pillow. I said goodnight. I went to my room, closed the door, and proceeded to stare at the ceiling of my room over analyzing my desire and emotions for the next few hours (while also routinely looking at my door feeling as though this door was suffocating me with the tension it was creating). After this night, we stayed friends, yet the unspoken Thing had transferred into being something more, as we both pulled away. It was as though we had become aware of the fantasy we created around each other and we retracted. We began to hang out less, talk on the phone less, and I began moving around the country a bit.
Now, since I want this to still be an essay on some ideas I've been exploring, allow me to break some of the tension. The tension I spoke of between her and I was not merely a fantasy I'm conjuring up to cope with being friend-zoned, as a few years after college, I happened to be visiting the same city she was in. Her relationship had ended. We spent the night together. I brought up that night, let's call it the 'night of the suffocating door' and asked if she was feeling what I had been feeling. I expressed how it was taking every fiber of my being not to burst back through that door and invite her in, she expressed the same feeling (including about the door).
However, walking through that doorway felt as though I'd be walking into some predetermined and expected path. By refusing to walk through the door, it felt as though I had effectively created a new path, a new story, as though I'd escaped something that society had expected and predetermined. A symbolic identity from society that I could allow to self-destruct. This might sound stupid to some, but these are the thoughts that overthinking these situations after the fact and in the moment brings me. It's peaceful in some sense.
I also recognize that, in many ways, my entire process through this experience was me doing my own self-mythologizing, where I created some Honorable and heroic identity that stands in opposition to some perceived expected identity and/or narrative. Essentially, I had attempted to hold on to my own created ego-ideal (even though I recognize that ideal is never and will never be purely my own).
Anyway, the experience became something important to me to contemplate about myself, how I view relationships, women, and my own sense of identity. Including how these things, perceptions, and desires can change over time, and within important moments. I felt forced to confront a complex interplay with both myself, and the external--around desire, morality, and identity.
"Lacan does not regard singularity (or authenticity) as a matter of self-possession or self-ownership. Whether Lacanian singularity expresses itself through a miraculous interpellation beyond ideological interpellation, an ethical/divine act of absolute defiance, an uncompromising faithfulness to a truth-event, or the destabilizing jouissance of the signifier, its defining attribute is existential bewilderment rather than reassurance: There is always something about it that wars against the self-help quest for unruffled lives." -- Mari Ruti, The Singularity of Being
Stay curious.