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Advice from the Bard: Sonnet 36
Let me confess that we two must be twaine, [1]
Although our undivided loves are one: [2]
So shal those blots that do with me remaine, [3]
Without thy help, by me be borne alone. [4]
In our two loves there is but one respect, [5]
Though in our lives a separable spite, [6]
Which though it alters not love’s sole effect, [7]
Yet doth it steal sweet houres from love’s delight. [8]
I may not evermore acknowledge thee, [9]
Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, [10]
Nor thou with public kindness honour me, [11]
Unless thou take that honour from thy name. [12]
But do not so: I love thee in such sort [13]
As thou, being mine, mine is thy good report [14]
--The Bard
I do know the story behind this sonnet, or at least I know what I’ve been told by scholars. As a reflection of Shakespeare’s actual experience with his patron, it’s pathetic enough. If taken at face value----as a love sonnet--- it’s a whole different type of pathetic.
In the counseling work I’ve done, and in my personal life, I’ve talked to many women (it’s almost always a woman in these times but it could just as easily be a man) who use very similar reasoning to explain to themselves why they are willing to be in relationships where not only does the balance of power fall completely on the other side of the scales so that their needs weigh nothing and their partner’s, everything, but the partner----being aware of the inequality----is also ashamed of it. Ashamed, in other words, of the relationship.
And the person on the wrong side of the balance of power not only understands the other's shame, but actually endorses it---it proves the love is true love, an irresistible force for which the other will risk everything.
Sonnet 36 exemplifies a certain ‘romantic’ disposition of mind that not only accepts the inequality in the relationship and the other person’s shame, but at some level rejoices in both as evidence of the overpoweringness of the connection between the partners. It applies in situations in which the partner is much wealthier, better educated, or otherwise is of significantly higher status; or say that the relationship itself is one that is actually prohibited by the prevailing standards of the relevant community (e.g., your partner is your employer, your teacher, a prominent citizen, a married politician or married judge, or is of a different race or religion).
Concealment as a condition of love strikes a number of people as romantic and rather thrilling in the early stages of an unabalanced relationship. After all, if your partner is willing to risk everything for your love, despite the drawbacks of it or you----! Early on, you might focus more on the strength of the bond (lines 1-2, 5-6) which of course couldn’t exist against all the odds if you didn’t have something very, very special.
Some very eager lovers I’ve known have been quite ready at the outset to acknowledge their own inferiority to the loved one. He (or she, okay?) is wealthy, important, and an important person in the community; you’re a lowly nurse, secretary, paralegal, or personal assistant or a complete outsider who would never be acceptable to the people who (this part isn’t really acknowledged at this stage) really matter to the partner. You know that at best a public revelation of the affair would cause embarrassment and inconvenience to the partner. Do you take it personally? Not at all; you know you’re less important (lines 9-12)---i.e, not only your feelings are less important, but you are.
But it’s all good! It may be painful to know that your partner can’t (won’t) acknowledge the relationship; you may feel---and be---spurned, but you wouldn’t change anything. Really! The reason is that your own identity is totally merged in your partner’s (lines 1-2, 5-6) so that his (or her) interests are your interests and first in your mind before anything else (lines 13-14). You know it would wreck the partner’s life to acknowledge your great love publicly (lines 9-12), so you wouldn’t dream of asking him (or her) to do so. In fact, you insist that he (or she) do nothing of the kind. (lines 13-14) His comfort and standing are everything; yours weighs nothing. You love him (or her) to much to put his (or her) reputation, career, peace of mind, etc. at risk.
As for the other partner, he (or she) may genuinely buy into the notion that the mere fact that he or she is willing to carry on a secret relationship with the other is proof of the indivisibility of the bond (lines 1-2, 5-6) and proof of how very, very special the love between them is. After all, he (or she) is risking everything. And by ‘everything’, of course, I mean ‘everything that really matters to him (or her).’
Aye, as our boy would say, there’s the rub. In this sort of relationship, both partners focus, at least initially, on the intensity of the attraction that drags them into this ‘forbidden’ or, as I prefer to call it, ‘crazy-ass’ love. They do that to keep from noticing that the prudence which makes concealment a condition (imposed, tacitly or otherwise, by the more powerful partner) reflects a scale of values in which the happiness or peace of mind of the less powerful partner is ranked very low in relation to other values. Other values such as the more powerful partner’s spouse, children, job, career, standing or credibility in the community, parents’ feelings, or whatever it is that he (or she) is anxiously protecting.
How do people manage to convince themselves that this is going to change? The old story of the man who is going to leave his wife and his life eventually to be with the other woman applies to any relationship conducted under the rose. It doesn’t matter whether the reason he (or she) won’t acknowledge you is because of something in his or her life , something about the nature of the relationship, or something about you. If you are accepting a situation in which you only meet secretly and at such times as the other finds convenient, you can be absolutely certain that this is one aspect of the relationship that is never going to change.
If at the beginning of the relationship, when passion is running high the other person doesn’t think you are more valuable and more special and just generally more compelling than anything else, why on earth do you think this is going to change as time passes, passions cool, and he (or she) begins to take it for granted that you can carry on comfortably under the initial conditions.
And if the other person has already made it clear that the opinion or happiness of other people who are not you matter more than yours or that a job, money, or community or professional standing are more important than being with you, what do you think is going to happen to cause a shift in that value system? If someone who is swept away by passion still conducts himself/herself with really exemplary caution, that tells you that the interests that he or she is protecting are really important to him/her.
A friend of mine, acknowledging this, said, “But that’s exactly what I mean. He has so much more at stake than I do. He puts it at risk every time he sees me. He risks much more to be with me than I do to be with him. That’s how I know he loves me.”
Oh really? It looks from where I’m standing too as if she isn’t risking anything----but not because she has nothing to risk, but because she is willingly giving it all up right now. One thing she has given up is her freedom to find anything else, because the man in question, besides being chronically absent is also madly possessive. Another thing she has given up is career advancement. They work for the same company; and in fact, he was (though no longer is) her boss. Another thing she has given up is the three years she’s been sitting alone at home waiting for him to call/come by/email/send flowers/make her day by some other little reminder that he remembers her.
At work, he is distant but barely acknowledges her existence. Since he isn’t her boss, it isn’t a sure bet that he’d lose his job if the affair were known, but as he is very important and highly paid, neither one of them is willing to risk that. As to his marriage, his wife has evidently forgiven him for past affairs, so that’s not a sure bet either. In any case, they are right to behave professionally in the workplace---I’m not saying they shouldn’t. As for social contact, there isn’t any. She’s a well-educated college graduate, an ex-teacher, but she simply doesn’t move in the same circles as the Vice President. She doesn’t have the money or the clothes.
“Why can’t you just be happy for me?” she asked me heatedly when I didn’t show enough enthusiasm for the ‘cocktail’ ring he gave her for her birthday. I responded by showing more enthusiasm; I don’t want to make her feel worse. But I think a diamond cocktail ring is a poor exchange indeed for this woman (who is charming, intelligent, and one of the funniest people I know) dying slowly on the vine while congratulating herself on having ‘real’ love---as opposed, I guess, to the unreal and comparatively dull sort that’s at home with you all the time and forgets your birthday.
I know, just reading between the lines of this sonnet (and one of the things that makes the sonnet so great is that the latent content is always right there, only slightly behind the surface meaning) that Shakespeare knew perfectly well when he wrote this what it means if your friend or loved one acquiesces when you suggest that it's in his best interests to meet you where no one else can see and when no one else is looking. He knew without ever having read the book what it means if the other accepts this state of affairs: it means---as the authors of the book would have said---that he's just not that into you. Shakespeare was Shakespeare, after all, and on balance, if this pain produced this sonnet, it was pain spun into the world's greatest poetry. I'm really grateful to them both, Southampton and Shakespeare.
But what about my friend? She's not a poet or an artist; she spends her nights at home watching TV and obsessing about her ovaries. And she actually quoted this sonnet to me once when I asked her if she didn't feel dissed or at least dismissed when the other party to The Greatest Romance in the History of the World walked right past her in the corridor with nothing more than a pleasant nod.
She doesn't mind because she knows how he really feels. And I mind on her behalf because I know too.
RELATED POSTINGS
Toxic Love 101 and Sonnet 36: The Love that Dares You to Speak its Name.
Love in Midlife: How to Fail at Finding it
Toxic Love 101---The Perils of Present-Giving
More Help for Singles Who Don’t Want to Be: Why You’re Still Single and Some Reflections Prior to Reading It.
Look, Look! A good relationship book! Why You’re Still Single by Evan Katz and Linda Holmes [book review; relationships]
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