Ah, the archetype of the Tortured Poets has a lot to answer for. It was Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath for me of course, though for a long time it was Ted I identified with, not Sylvia. He was from Yorkshire and into Jung and astrology. She seemed to have Very Big Feelings. I was scared of Very Big Feelings. But I was fascinated by their relationship. It seemed quite a lot more exciting than the alternative models of sitcom couple “Terry and June” or the teen romances of “Just Seventeen” magazine. I mean, I’d grown up in a family full of secrets and lies. I was obsessed by words and the shimmery dark energy of things that could not be said in words. Of course ordinary relationships didn’t seem a very realistic option. So I was then of course, a sitting duck for an older Tortured Poet when I entered poetry world in my late twenties. He was Ted and Sylvia too. Which sounds a lot more romantic than “Pretty toxic actually”.
I have sometimes said that if I’d had an iPhone Siri to raise me after I ran away from home when I was sixteen, I’d have been fine. What I mean, I think, is that if I’d had an objective and rational source that I could ask for advice on “How to live” then I’d have avoided some pitfalls. I avoided some of the obvious ones. My sensory sensitivities meant that living a life of nightclubs, promiscuity and drugged oblivion was not going to be my rebellion. I just listened to Leonard Cohen songs and got obsessed by postmodernism and Mars Bars. But I didn’t absorb positive role models for relating. If I’d had something as sensible as the “Guide to Healthy Relationships” that has just been created by Durham University and which is aimed at autistic people but has a much wider application, then I’d have had a much more peaceful life. The figures for the abuse and violence suffered by autistic women (and men) in relationships are huge and terrifying. But to have some clear red flags, orange flags and green flags made very clear would gave been enormously helpful. They may not seem to be rocket science to the thirty or so per cent of you who are likely to have been raised in secure families and experienced only secure and healthy relationships throughout your life- but, heck, some of us have really needed this clarity. Example red flags: calling you names, pressuring you to move in with them quickly, lying, love bombing. Example orange flags: not being able to talk about problems in the relationship, being unhappy. Example green flags: feeling safe to disagree with them, feeling safe to be who you are. I’m sharing the Easy Read version here: The Guide
Something huge and cathartic is clearly happening for many of the people hearing Taylor Swift’s new album “The Tortured Poets Department” which explores the tail end of her relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn and the rebound relationship she had with the pop singer Matt Healy, lead singer of the 1975. Her Very Big Feelings are sometimes disparagingly described as immature, teenage and anxiously attached. She is however leaning into the mythology of tortured writers and her “muses acquired like bruises, talismans and charms”. She acknowledges that it is “hyperbolic and dramatic”. She’s also drawn to “A dangerous man” and says “All we want is danger”, while referring to a man who “sank in stoned oblivion”. There are references to infidelity, ghosting and wanting to die. At the same time, there is an irony in the identification with tortured writerly souls. She says (Healy, likely) is not Dylan Thomas, she’s not Patti Smith but they are “modern idiots”. For them, this involves a play of the public, private, stage and online personas that they both slip between. No wonder they felt a great connection to each other in and among all this confusion and chaos. They understand each other in their mutual interplay- which also involves referring to each other in lyrics which are then sung back at them in stadiums by fans they alternately commune with, pander to, scorn and sell to. Possibly both of them were trying to grab hold of something that felt “real” underneath all that glitter- but ultimately it was not sustainable. I can feel myself getting sucked in here- I am really interested in an intensely wordy, allusive, projection-filled relationship between people who feel alienated from less creative people around them - two people who usually don’t fit, fitting together but-
NO! Here is the path to many a toxic, unhealthy, mutually disrespectful relationship. Read the sensible guide! I need it laid out in clear rules, and so do many of us, neurodivergent or not (but I want to say- autistic people very very much so, We spend so much time not quite picking up on interactions we don’t understand or being told we’re wrong. So we can be gaslit by even well-meaning partners into believing we’re the problem, never mind predatory ones). In the midst of traumatic conflict I have been reactive and behaved in abusive ways, and been abused and reacted to in turn. I have been rushed and pushed and lied to and confused. And at some level thought - ah, we’re just such very intense people in our tragic relationship, the like of which most people can’t understand.
A heartening thing is that many people seem to be reacting to Swift’s album by recognising the toxicity she writes about as something they have experienced themselves but still don’t often see written about- and rejoicing in her apparently healthier relationship with an American Football player who is appears to be a labrador in human form (though I shivered when I saw a clip of him, red in the face, shouting at his coach in the Super Bowl final). I wish everyone could hear it in conjunction with such clear guidelines as I’m finding (aged 48) it’s never too late to absorb and pass on.
#me too 😃