Monday, April 29, 2024

A Little Help

“You don’t need drugs when you have a kid. You’re awake and paranoid anyway. Who needs anything else?” -- Robin Williams

***

I miss Robin Williams being in the world with us. An interview with him that first appeared in Interview (the magazine co-founded by Andy Warhol) in 1986 resurfaced this week, and it is packed with his unique brand of wisdom.

One of my favorites is this monologue on relationships : “[Women are] wonderful—they’re amazing creatures. You can never learn enough! They’re addicting in the most amazing sense. They have so many levels. There’s the physical level, which is a lot of fun. 

"There’s this emotional level, which is extremely mercurial. Every 28 days you have that massive mood swing, where nature’s going, 'Check, please.' It turns your body into an Etch-a-Sketch, and then you start over. 

"Men may have wars, but women have their period. Men go off and kill each other, but women say nasty things, which is even better. Women are incredibly intuitive. If anybody on the planet is going to evolve to the next level, that telekinetic thing, women will.”

***

Women might be surprised that when men talk among themselves about women how much of the conversation is not complaining, or 'locker room jokes' or anything of that nature.

No, a lot of times it's sharing sense of powerlessness at dealing with creatures who have more empathy and intuition than us, plus the emotional roller-coaster our relationships seem to become. Many of the men I know tell me they feel they can't compete on these levels, and they find that disorienting.

These conversations are most intense when the men are either just getting involved with a woman or just breaking up. I've had exchanges recently with men in both stages and the content was remarkably similar.

In a way they both were asking for advice and mine not especially profound — to not try and control the situation, as that can't be done. You cannot control who you are attracted to and you cannot control what happens when a woman wants you out of her life.

Either time, you're essentially powerless over the outcome, but there is one thing you can do and that is work on yourself. Honestly, the therapy business should give me a plaque for how many men I've encouraged to seek out counselors.

And some men find that women counselors are best for them, I suppose for obvious reasons. One guy told me recently that he insisted his health insurance let him return to a therapist he had seen before, because "she understands me best."

Another told me he had recently called his therapist from a previous stage when he was deeply depressed just because he wanted her to know he was doing better now.

I suppose all of this is coming up because there have been so many articles about depression, anxiety, and mental health problems during the pandemic. As we've gone over many times in these pages, isolation is flat-out bad for all human beings, regardless of gender.

We need each other, but finding one another and staying together is difficult and everyone can use just a little bit of help along the way.

(I first published this three years ago in 2021.)

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