Handling marital and intimacy issues privately is soooooooo 2005
I feel like that’s the year social media started gathering steam. It’s hard to remember my life before social media, very much akin to remembering what airport rigmarole was like before 9/11 and spinal comfort was like before I could throw out my back with a sneeze or standing up out of a chair too quickly.
The fringes of society used to only have a voice when they were being detained on the Fox Network’s COPS or interviewed after a tornado devastated their trailer park. Social media came in and was all “Looks like some things are going to change”, rolled up its sleeves, got to work, and now privacy and social restraint are, like, super passé.
It’s no coincidence that the folks in my life (young and old) who aren’t nosy, noisy, dramatic, obnoxious, insecure, argumentative, arrogant, attention/clout hounds, and who like to have a quiet, sober life without unnecessary distractions won’t touch social media with the proverbial ten foot pole we keep bringing up, even were they wearing a double layer of gloves. I make dumb jokes on my social media but do try to steer clear of the more immature descriptors mentioned above. I would still write even were I totally bereft of an audience but will cede to you the fact that you can file me under clout whore.
I would label people who air their sexual habits, activities, and marital problems as weird if it weren’t becoming so doggone commonplace. That’s including those who engage in fringe forms of sexuality. I couldn’t care less what turns you on and what you do in the bedroom, so long as you’re not hurting anyone and it’s with a consenting adult. But I won’t buy the “we have to normalize/protect/educate/etc..” argument because other peoples’ kids are not your kids. You don’t have to teach, normalize, exemplify, or do anything for them. That’s for their parents and burgeoning adulthood to accomplish. When they are adults, they can absorb and adopt what their parents taught and normalized for them or reject it. That’s one of the beauties of adulthood. New adults can leave home, enter the village, and try their hands at responsible, thoughtful independence.
I’m a former teacher and do believe the village is important. I’d buy into, adopt, and adhere to the It Takes a Village argument were that strictly confined to being taught the critical thinking, problem solving, interpersonal, honest trading, and other societal skills that translate into being a peaceful, productive, and law-abiding adult. Leave the morality, sermonizing, and normalizing to parents and legal guardians. Unfortunately, the village is dealing with new and alarming cultural developments which include:
A paternalistic nanny state
Increasing government intrusion and acceptance thereof
The human expectation of a peaceful, obstacle-free day and perfection from others and the rushed inclination to bring forth occurrences outside of that box to public view for the purposes of gossiping, condescension, judging, condemning, pontification, and piling on
Taxpayer funded programs of good intent but whose very existence belies a distrust of the public to handle its own affairs which induce an entitlement mentality that snowball into more taxpayer funded programs (which leave lives and locales in ruin when they fail) that have turned government into a bloated, wasteful, inefficient, corrupt abomination of a thing. See the link to my book below if you’d like a longer treatise on that topic.
Social media derangement accepting and proliferating the idea that everyone has earned the right to get mixed up in the lives of others, then check, correct, scold, insult, criticize (without the constructive part of it all), nitpick, and argue with everyone else no matter the factors, quality of intelligence/information, or rhetorical skill level of the participants involved
Not an exhaustive list, but you get the point. Many folks with a loud and public voice aren’t content to be left alone or leave others alone. And now just about anyone can have a loud and public voice. Problem is the dumbest, most obnoxious, loudest, most intrusive voices also wish to represent the whole so as to normalize their nonsense. The “silent majority” has never been truer. These developments have all allowed ruffians and rogues to invade the village with all manner of crazy and counterproductive ideas, methods, ways, and means. I defy theses developments and challenge them to spit wads at dawn. Now I will say good day to you, sir.
Enter Will and Jada Smith. He’s made a lot of movies, most of them good/great. She’s made a few. As is the case with many, many celebrities whose star is fading, she started a talk show, this one on the YouTubes. I don’t begrudge her the work. We humans were made for work. I begrudge her the type of the work chose.
She made headlines, got eyeballs, and I’m sure massive numbers for her show by having her husband on to talk about the particulars of their marriage, including adulterous actions she double-spoke into “an entanglement”. Words are important and betray the psychological rationalization/justifications of our atrocious behavior. Many people felt Will was embarrassed and humiliated by this show. A still shot of him with a tearful, pained face making the rounds on social media served as rather convincing evidence.
So he proceeded a little time later and described to the town square the open nature of their marriage and some of the trifling things he’s done or imagined doing. Then they both went public with some of the private and intimate details/issues they’ve faced. I can’t and don’t want to presume to know the unspoken motivations, but are these two trying to one-up each other? What is the goal? Yes, it’ll get viewers on her show, but will it lead more people to see his movies? I’d argue the celebrities who keep a reserved and private life do better at generating numbers for their art. The overexposure paradigm is still a thing, you know.
So why is this my business? My human nature craves salacious stories because it likes looking down and judging others. Why do we want to feed that inner addict? What good cause does it serve?
You know that stereotype about men being problem solvers and constantly trying to fix things? I’m an exaggeration of that stereotype. When my marriage went haywire, I went straight to the people who could help me fix it. I didn’t talk about it with my friends or social network because they weren’t a part of the problem or the solution. And I was embarrassed. It’s humiliating to have others see you aren’t running a peaceful, godly home. It’s humiliating and emasculating to have a wife doing some of the things my ex did. I wanted to keep it as quiet as possible and handle it with capable and experienced people, not my friends, family, or following. That’s a massively one-sided battle full of horribly biased people more inclined to tell me what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to hear.
I don’t need this erstwhile private information from either Will or Jada and would dare to say I’ve got my own life to worry about. Why can’t public figures just do what they do in private and handle it in private? They aren’t my moral champions, paradigms, or heroes. I pity anyone who adopts them as such.
Yes, movie and rock star confessionals detailing high levels of wild and crazy times are no new thing. But most of them make a point of not bringing names into the mix, and the rock stars usually marry and settle down in a tacit rejection of perpetual debauchery. I’d be mortified were I a groupie that took on a band sexually and then found my name in print down the road. Much more so were one of those persons to become my spouse. Label me as “just doesn’t get it”, I guess. Short of hashtags and trite niceties, the public and your following are sorely underequipped to serve as marriage counselors, psychiatrists, and mental health support systems. Chrissy Teigen, upon her (barf) canceling, said “I am nothing without my following”. File her husband, children, friends, family, and professional network as chopped liver so as to stay logically consistent with that statement.
Now, I’m no saint. I’m a terribly flawed and sinful man constantly trying to get things right; not so much on a day-to-day, more like a moment-to-moment basis. I’ve no room to judge, nor will I. My sexual history would appall and repulse my mom and her scrapbooking circle while my more liberal friends would be like “Meh. Vanilla, no sprinkles”. But I do try to keep sordid details to myself.
I am a born-again Christian raised in (and still a part of) a Baptist church. Most of my Baptist friends don’t read my stuff and might shun me if they did. I do very much believe your sexuality is the most special temporal/physical thing about you, and not to be shared, given away, or flaunted lightly. Why? Because according to the moral code most people of wildly divergent world and theological views live by, it’s the one thing that is exclusively shared with the partner or spouse you’ve chosen.
Think about it. We talk on the phone, work, eat, watch movies, and do all sorts of things with people of the opposite gender, or of the gender we are attracted to. But we have sex exclusively with that person we’ve decided to (sometimes) marry and love. And we keep it private and intimate, only seeking the help of wise friends and counselors when it starts to go off the rails.
When we have sex too early with someone we don’t love and aren’t ready to be fully open and vulnerable with, it can get kind of weird (sorry mom, I do say this from experience) and awkward. I accept that some people have willingly given themselves over to promiscuity, prostitution, and being the participants of pornography but am saddened by it without judging or getting all screeching religious harpy on them. I believe we should judge ourselves against the version of ourselves we are supposed to be, not against those who might be struggling more/differently than us.
Your sexuality is an amazing thing and a wonderful gift to that partner you choose. It’s Jada and Will’s business, not mine, and not everyone else’s. That’s all I’ll say on the matter, because other people and other peoples’ kids are not my kids.
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Image taken from:
https://www.revolt.tv/news/2021/10/27/22749500/jada-pinkett-smith-talks-about-sex-life-with-will-smith