Tales from the Shark Tank

On this date in 1918, an agreement was made that was supposed to “end wars”. With the benefit of 88 years hindsight, it’s abundantly clear that not only did it not end war, it sowed the seeds of many of the conflicts that have followed. The Europeans who won the war divided up the conquered lands as they saw fit, with no regard for how the folks who lived there perceived themselves, and thought that because the lids were on and they could not see beneath them that the pots weren’t boiling. The conflicts in the Middle East and the Balkans make it abundantly clear that what they created wasn’t peace, it was a collection of nationalist, political pressure cookers.

I was taught, growing up, to honor Veteran’s Day by my parents’ personalizing of it. Every year, they told me again of my dad’s oldest cousin Jack who died in the Asian theatre in WWII, trying to persuade Japanese soldiers that their Emperor really had surrendered and that they might as well come out of the caves on Okinawa. Every year I heard about my maternal Grandfather’s gratitude that he was just barely too old to go. I heard the humorous tale of my Great-Uncle Morris’s attempts to enlist, and the response of the Indianapolis recruiter: “Thank you for coming, Mr. Pozner. If the Germans are crossing White River (not much as rivers go, I can tell you) we’ll call you.” I knew that Great-Uncle Izzy, the one who changed his first name like some men change their pants (at least 6 times over the course of his life) had fought in the WWI, the one that gave rise to this day to honor veterans; I am told he came home vowing never to father a son who might then have to go to war. I don’t know if that’s true or Great-Aunt Katie’s embroidery since everyone else I’ve asked says they never heard anything about it, but I do know that he and Aunt Sarah were childless. I never heard, in all those tales rehearsed annually for my benefit, that my father was among those to be honored, but in time I figured it out. He was involved with the “police action” in Korea, having lied about his age to enlist. He’s a mathematician; the Army trained him in intelligence work, and to this day he loves a good code, but I don’t know if those facts are related. I know he was never sent overseas, though the rest of his unit went and as I understand it for the most part didn’t come back.
But there’s a common thread I notice, among the men of my own family and those I’ve known otherwise. They’ll talk about what others did, where others went and what they left behind or came home to. My dad will talk about how the army played matchmaker, sending him to Indiana where he met my mother, so that when he got out of the Army he transferred universities to court her in earnest. But they will not talk about their own experience, nor tell any stories on others that are not funny or, very occasionally, eerie. And those that are able still gather each year to talk to each other. My cousin L., another WW II vet, says that he and the other men of his unit were and remain closer to each other than any of them ever were to their wives or their children. I saw how he took care of his wife when she was dying, and you know, I can’t imagine a closer relationship. But if I am to honor all of them, these men of my family and those whom I will never know, then I must honor their silence as well as their words, their decisions as well as their deeds.

For a while now, I’ve been telling a friend having marital problems that the name of the game being played is “Prove You Love Me.” It’s insidious, that game, it really is. Sometimes it’s minor and (relatively) harmless, sometimes supremely manipulative. It can be used as an excuse not to communicate (“If you loved me you’d know”) or as a bludgeon. But the worst of that game is that it’s most often presented as sweet reason, or reasonableness, even when the terms are communicated. Then it becomes a thing that can make the victim of the game question their own sanity, as they question the reasonableness of what is being demanded of them. But I have never seen that game played that it was not destructive, whether it happened between spouses or between parents and children or between siblings. Of all the things I used to see when I practiced family law, that was the one I most despised.

The thing is that it is inherently impossible, and it is inherently based on a lie. The one thing “prove you love me” proves is that the one playing the game does not love their partner. It’s all the game. No amount of genuine devotion, no compromise, no gestures of affection or thoughtfulness ever matter; all that matters is finding the correct counter for the score that the game player is keeping in their mind. Nor is any failure to figure out the riddle ever forgotten; it will be brought up, over and over again, cast up as proof of dereliction every time there is a disagreement. The lie told by the one setting the traps is that they love their partner. If they truly did, they wouldn’t be doubting and testing at every turn.

So where to draw the line? “If you loved me you would….let me choose your friends”? Well, that depends. Are the friends in question destructive, like guys who insist its ok to take an alcoholic out for a few beers with the guys? I’ve seen that, and did not consider it game-playing when the alcoholic’s wife said “I don’t want you to see them”. But by the same token, what of the man who tells his wife “you can’t have any male friends, because if you love me you wouldn’t want to talk to another man.” That’s absurd, cutting out half the human race because of an accident of plumbing. I would draw the line there. I have in fact done so, a bit over a quarter century ago.

But where I draw the line ultimately is when the game becomes an excuse to be vicious and destructive and cruel. “If you loved me you would have known better than to do this thing you’ve done, so you must not love me and therefore any horrid thing I say or do to you is your own fault.” That is emotional abuse, pure and simple. So of all the games people play with each other, that is, to me, the most hateful..