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agonyaunt2022-04-15 01:18 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-04-15 01:18 pm
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Dear Prudence: Help! The Woman I’ve Been Hooking Up With Is a Lot Smarter Than I Thought.
I’m not sure I can get over this.
I am a straight man in my 30s who has been friends with benefits with “Alice” for over a year. It’s been a good, safe pandemic arrangement; Alice is fun, cute, and it’s been nice to find someone I really enjoy hanging out with and enjoy sex with and is on the same page about not being in a relationship. Uncomplicated, is what it has been, I guess, until recently.
Alice has mentioned before that she writes, and recently shared that she’d sold a story for a little bit of money, and received an honorable mention in a contest. I got a weird feeling I couldn’t place. Alice directed me to some of her work, and I read it, and ended up searching and finding a lot of more of it. She’s really, really talented, much more than I had ever stopped to consider, and I don’t know why it bothers me to find story after story that she’s written. I scribble a bit, mostly stray thoughts and RPG game worldbuilding and character stuff, but I had never thought of publishing. It shouldn’t bother me that Alice has, or that her stuff is frankly so much better than I could ever dream of producing. But it has. I am jealous and intimidated and don’t know what to do. The cute lady I eat pizza with and watch movies with and fool around with is now … someone who has done something I never could and is, let’s face it, likely smarter than I am. I mean, I had never thought she was dumb by any stretch of the imagination before, and have always thought her to be intelligent and really witty and capable of having a good argument or discussion over lots of topics, but this seems different, like the proof is solid and obvious that I don’t compare. Is there any going back from this?
— Jealous FWB
Dear Jealous FWB,
Methinks the struggle you’re having is that, whether you knew it or not, you thought of Alice as a plaything. She was just a sex friend, which meant in your world she just existed for your pleasure. Such is the nature of friends with benefits sometimes, and as long as there’s mutual understanding, that’s all well and good. But it’s creating stress for you now because the rest of her life isn’t contributing to the whole “solely created to make you happy” thing you have going on.
Here’s the thing: Maybe you’re her plaything. My friend, she probably knew this from jump, and she’s okay with it. It works for her. So you have to ask yourself if you’ll be able to enjoy yourself casually and sexually with someone who is smarter than you. If intelligence is a big part of your self-conception, this may be a hang-up. However, it doesn’t sound like it really entered the picture before. Is it easier to not catch feelings for someone you think you’re smarter than? Do you not feel as virile now that you know about her professional success? This sounds like it’s wrapped up—as all sexual relationships are—in bigger and deeper questions about who you are and how you see yourself in the world. I’d suggest, however, that you give yourself the luxury of turning your brain off when you’re hanging out with Alice. Sometimes sex can be just sex.
I am a straight man in my 30s who has been friends with benefits with “Alice” for over a year. It’s been a good, safe pandemic arrangement; Alice is fun, cute, and it’s been nice to find someone I really enjoy hanging out with and enjoy sex with and is on the same page about not being in a relationship. Uncomplicated, is what it has been, I guess, until recently.
Alice has mentioned before that she writes, and recently shared that she’d sold a story for a little bit of money, and received an honorable mention in a contest. I got a weird feeling I couldn’t place. Alice directed me to some of her work, and I read it, and ended up searching and finding a lot of more of it. She’s really, really talented, much more than I had ever stopped to consider, and I don’t know why it bothers me to find story after story that she’s written. I scribble a bit, mostly stray thoughts and RPG game worldbuilding and character stuff, but I had never thought of publishing. It shouldn’t bother me that Alice has, or that her stuff is frankly so much better than I could ever dream of producing. But it has. I am jealous and intimidated and don’t know what to do. The cute lady I eat pizza with and watch movies with and fool around with is now … someone who has done something I never could and is, let’s face it, likely smarter than I am. I mean, I had never thought she was dumb by any stretch of the imagination before, and have always thought her to be intelligent and really witty and capable of having a good argument or discussion over lots of topics, but this seems different, like the proof is solid and obvious that I don’t compare. Is there any going back from this?
— Jealous FWB
Dear Jealous FWB,
Methinks the struggle you’re having is that, whether you knew it or not, you thought of Alice as a plaything. She was just a sex friend, which meant in your world she just existed for your pleasure. Such is the nature of friends with benefits sometimes, and as long as there’s mutual understanding, that’s all well and good. But it’s creating stress for you now because the rest of her life isn’t contributing to the whole “solely created to make you happy” thing you have going on.
Here’s the thing: Maybe you’re her plaything. My friend, she probably knew this from jump, and she’s okay with it. It works for her. So you have to ask yourself if you’ll be able to enjoy yourself casually and sexually with someone who is smarter than you. If intelligence is a big part of your self-conception, this may be a hang-up. However, it doesn’t sound like it really entered the picture before. Is it easier to not catch feelings for someone you think you’re smarter than? Do you not feel as virile now that you know about her professional success? This sounds like it’s wrapped up—as all sexual relationships are—in bigger and deeper questions about who you are and how you see yourself in the world. I’d suggest, however, that you give yourself the luxury of turning your brain off when you’re hanging out with Alice. Sometimes sex can be just sex.
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2) Dude, we are humans, not Kzinti. (God that species design traumatized me. It can be hard to be a SF fangirl sometimes.)
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Dear Prudence Uncensored is already casting the movie!
R. Eric Thomas: Chau! I’m excited to talk with you about this week’s question. What did you think of our LW, Alice, and the simmering Noah Baumbach movie in the middle of their hookup relationship?
Chau Tu: Hahah! Now I can’t stop imagining Jesse Eisenberg as this LW. My first reaction to this letter was … eeks. I’m glad the LW realizes what he’s feeling is off-base enough to ask for advice, but the line “The cute lady I eat pizza with” made me cringe a billion times over. Did anything catch you right away as you were reading through this?
Eric: Oh definitely. That line, and the fact that the LW concedes he never stopped to consider that Alice might be talented. I suppose we don’t necessarily need to sketch out large inner lives for our hookups, but at the bare minimum we should acknowledge they’re human. It seems Alice has been functioning more as a character in an RPG for the LW than as a person. Do you think Alice might be cognizant of this?
Chau: Right, hookups are hookups, but there’s gotta be some base level of knowing that others operate full lives outside your world? And also, presumably they are carrying half the conversation while you’re chomping on pizza and watching movies.
I did wonder about Alice’s experience, too. I’m sensing she had no idea about this; sharing your writing work can be pretty intimate, even if it is published online, and it feels like she was sharing with him because she was thinking he would appreciate it, not get intimidated and shut down.
Eric: Yeah, that part really makes me sad. As a writer, I understand that sometimes other people’s work can hit you in a vulnerable place unexpectedly. But that’s something we all have to deal with internally. Ideally, Alice’s writing should be a source of excitement for LW.
Chau: Right. I can understand that intimidation can be a self-esteem killer, though, and thereby could make the LW feel less sexy or sexually capable, so I think your advice about shutting off his own brain in this relationship was spot-on. But if Alice is, in fact, human, she’s gonna notice a shift in the LW, right?
Eric: She might, although I wonder how much the LW was tuned in before. It was hard to tell if they had a chill, casual thing that is now getting overcomplicated in the LW’s mind or if he was misreading their whole vibe. Either way, I think you’re right that now Alice might notice something is up.
What do you think of the LW’s last question—is there going back from this?
Chau: I feel like that’s gotta be up to the LW. Maybe he can turn off his brain and keep his intellectual interactions with Alice to a minimum—though again, we don’t know how Alice might intuit or react to that. Or maybe he can learn to sit with this revelation and eventually not let it bother him so much. But it sounds like a big crossroads moment for him.
Eric: Amazing how we humans escalate even the simplest things. Well, thanks for chatting about this letter that’s soon to be a Netflix film starring Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver with me, Chau!
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Insecurity and imposter syndrome are real and tough to deal with, but the solution is probably to engage Alice more. She showed LW her writing, so she opened the door. It's time to decide whether to walk through it. FWB relationships seldom remain "uncomplicated" forever.
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1. Don't worry, LW. She can't be that smart if she's still hooking up with you.
2. Of course, she was smart enough to realize that you can't just wait for writing skill to drop in your lap, you have to actually sit down and write, and do so enough to see improvement, and then keep doing it. Anybody can become technically competent with enough practice (and, preferably, feedback), whether or not they have innate talent.
The first isn't very kind. The second isn't very helpful. I mean, it would be for somebody else, but LW doesn't need encouragement, he needs some serious self-reflection. Not-so-veiled misogyny cannot be handled with kid gloves.