‘Am I a Snob Or Is He a Simpleton?’

Sometimes our subconscious mind demands a fantasy of perfection in order to ward off grief and despair.

The Butlers (1950) by Dorothea Tanning

Dear Polly,

I’ve been seeing someone for nearly a year, and most of that year I have been vacillating between: I really like and enjoy him. and He is a bumbling simpleton, what am I doing?

For context, I’m in my early 40s, with several varieties of short/long term relationships in my past. I live in a very small college town and a lot of the single men in my age range are (for lack of better term) Peter Pan-ish. I have tended to alternate between anxious and avoidant attachment (to use the parlance of our times). Further, it seems like I tend to choose men in two categories: those who are really into me (and I am kind of into them) or those who are indifferent to me (and I REALLY want them to change their minds). I took a break from dating after my last long-term relationship to deal with grief (from that relationship and from losing both of my parents within a year and a half in different but equally horrifying ways).

When I first met my boyfriend, we had amazing and fun conversations. He lives about an hour away from me, he was finalizing a second divorce, has two kids, and works at a community college an hour away from where he lives (and two hours from where I live), so I was skeptical of how it would work. I was hesitant to get involved, but he seemed very present and available, and I liked him, so I proceeded with caution. As time went on, we got closer, and I started to believe we could have a serious relationship. He was thoughtful, interested, kind, and patient. Our sex life was great, he liked hearing about my dreams, etc.

And then things kind of went off the rails. I started noting and analyzing certain aspects of his behavior, unsure if I was being a snob or making something out of nothing. It was certain comments he would make (e.g., using the term "pussy" as an insult, and then immediately chastising himself for doing it, following with, "I should have remembered who I was talking to"). Or the way it seems that he often, if not always, thinks his opinion or perspective needs to be shared, even when he has no expertise or knowledge, and is oftentimes wrong. He regularly says, "I made an educated guess" and I’m like "But where was the education?"

Also, it seems that some of his ideas are more performative than reflective and internalized. He works in an academic environment, so he knows what you're not "supposed" to say. I’m just not convinced that it’s how he actually feels, based on things that seem to slip out. He often defends when I push back about it and says that he just "said the wrong thing," or "wasn't paying super close attention and just used a generalization" but I can't help but wonder if the way he talks in these instances are indications of his truer feelings about the world. For example, he was talking about secondary teachers and he said, "They're not really as smart as you would think they'd be. They’re really not interested in learning or critical thought. They're just blue collar, simple people." I asked how "blue collar" applied in this case and reminded him that I was raised by blue collar people, and he said, "You're right, I used the wrong word. I was conflating things that were not related."

But it niggled at me: What sort of entrenched ideas does he have about blue-collar people? Also he laments people who aren't interested in challenging themselves, who like simple, predictable things, and who never want out of their comfort zones...but I am beginning to think this is an act of self-hatred. He seems to want simple, predictable things, and to not be very interested in challenging himself.

When we met, we talked about writing and reading, and it was great. He gave me the impression that he was really into reading and interested in various types of writing (he is a composition teacher). I made some assumptions about him, but he also wasn't necessarily forthright. It took months before I realized (based on a comment a friend of his made when we were all together), that his main literary and film interests are true crime and horror, written by men.

He works at a college, so I assumed a level of intellectualism that I probably shouldn't have. It’s not that he isn't intellectual, but he spends most of his time pontificating incorrectly about things instead of learning about them. It seems like he thinks he's really smart and thus doesn't try to learn or engage much beyond his limited interests. I think he wants to, and he aspires to, but he can't generate the interest. He doesn't want to read complicated things. He wants to read about murders and grisly crimes and deviant human behavior.

In some ways, I get it. He has kids, he has a job, he's got a lot of things going on. Most of the time, he just wants to relax. And most people's idea of relaxation is not to challenge themselves with difficult themes or thoughts. But also: BE BETTER!??!

My conflict is here because he has also been very patient and kind and generous while I have been dealing with a very long series of physical and mental health issues. He’s bumbled with me through several incredibly difficult months. We get into weird fights, but we always see them to the end where we see each other's side and resolve the conflict. It’s kind of amazing and something I’ve never experienced. He is thoughtful in a lot of ways. and some days I think oh my gosh, I think I could really be falling in love with him. And then he says something ridiculous, or he pushes his opinion into something he knows nothing about, or he gets pee all over my toilet (honestly, he's the only dude I’ve met who does this, or at least doesn't notice and clean it off?), and I think: What the fuck am I doing?

I don't think I’ve ever swung from affection to disgust like this before. It's not completely bi-polar (that is, I don't think I LOVE HIM HE'S PERFECT! and then, I HATE HIM, HE'S AN IDIOT!), but my feelings about him have definitely not stabilized over time.

Is this just what it's like to be with another human, or should I give up and search for someone with whom my feelings are more stable and consistent? Or am I just a snob who should be more gracious about where people are?

A Vacillating Snob

Dear Vacillating Snob,

I feel like you’ve never dated a man before?

Many of the men I know love to talk about things they know nothing about. My husband, who is a tenured professor, never breaks his stride conversationally, no matter the context. Even if everyone is discussing astrophysics, or the lesser-known songbirds of Sub-Saharan Africa, he will venture a few guesses. Worst of all, he will stop and say things like:

“Growing up, I never knew a thing about the songbirds of Sub-Saharan Africa. No one ever talked about them at all!”

“Not knowing a thing about a subject is generally not worth mentioning!” I have told him, over and over. “Venturing your own random guesses about a thing that others know a great deal about is often not that interesting or useful to the group!”

Nothing changes. Because my husband is very handsome and he is a man and he has a PhD, everyone just shuts up and listens to him prattle away. And when I say “DUDE” they look at me and think “Ew, how does he put up with her?”

The other crimes you mention are similarly mundane and routine among the finer husbands and boyfriends I’ve observed over several decades. The peeing all over the toilet thing? I don’t like that part. That would truly bother me. But everything else sounds like your standard STRAIGHT MAN TAX.

There are many humans who claim that defending such common tariffs makes you an apologist for the patriarchy. I say that it makes you a realist living in a patriarchal world. I’ve been a feminist since high school and that will never change. But I have gathered a pretty wide swath of data over the years, as a human and as an advice columnist who reads 10-20 emails from strangers per week, and countless married and dating women list the exact same complaints about conversational cluelessness, lack of curiosity, casual stupidity, and crime novels. The older a straight woman is, the more directly she will tell you that the most intellectual men she knows are also simpletons. And the absolute cream of the crop — creative, curious, wildly inventive men — are Peter Pan-ish in the extreme, holding forth endlessly on their big ideas, surrounded by adorable Tinkerbells and careless pirates all the way to the grave.

I don’t think this means we’re all fucked or that every man alive is the same person or that being a straight woman is an unbearable slog. I just think that when you hold yourself to high standards intellectually, feeding your brain and your imagination nutritious fare, sharing your big ideas, revising them, asking curiously about other people’s perspectives, engaging in the universe with delight and wonder? Well, you’re bound to be disappointed over and over again. And you will be JUST AS DISAPPOINTED among the academics, artists, novelists, musicians, poets — okay, maybe not the poets — but MOST of the creatives and thinkers out there. Because humans just don’t want to use their brains in new ways every day. Many academics love to pick one idea when they’re 32 and then hold forth on it for five decades straight. Many musicians love strong liquor a tiny bit more than they love trying to write a song as good as the one they wrote when they were 25. Many novelists sit around mimicking the hefty tone of the best novel they’ve ever read without bringing a single new idea into the world.

Some of the most passionate, rigorous thinkers I’ve met, of all genders, are surprisingly lazy in what they read, how they talk, how they listen, and how they spend their time. Many humans just want good cheese and bad TV. Many humans want to watch TikTok and do the fucking Wordle.

Moreover, almost everyone is classist and sexist and racist and homophobic and a million other shitty things in ways they don’t notice. As unfortunate as it is that your boyfriend has lazily come to conflate the category “blue collar” with the category “concrete” or “simple,” he agrees that this is an embarrassing mistake. In fact, he seems to take your corrections and pledges to learn from them often. You can slice and dice what he truly believes under the surface as much as you want, but the sad truth is that we’re all guided by all kinds of stupid prejudices without knowing it. You have your own treasure trove of ignorant reactions to the world, too. It’s nice that you’re so vigilant, but ultimately, verbal vigilance is worth much, much less than messy, imprecise action for a worthy cause.

What’s ironic (as you accurately point out) is that your boyfriend is sloppy with his words in ways that suggest that he never had his feet held to the fire intellectually. So he’s casually writing off people who are just like him – not simple, but less anxious to slice up the world with extreme precision.

But he’s also less self-conscious than you are, which is a quality that you might learn a lot from. He’s playful and he takes leaps, sometimes without looking. I relate to that. I don’t want to study something old, I want to invent something new. I would rather cut a brand new, mosquito-infested, muddy path through the forest than take someone else’s smooth, efficient freeway.

So here’s a brand new, puddle-and-pothole-riddled path I’ve cut just for you: Thoughtful, attractive straight men who listen closely, support you for who you are, love to talk about the interesting stuff you bring to the table, have a sense of humor about themselves, and take critical feedback to heart are not all that common. These motherfuckers are hunted to extinction for a good reason. They make excellent lovers for smart, exacting, imperious women like you and me.

And 80% of them read crime thrillers.

They also say thoughtless shit out of the blue because no matter what they say, they are still admired and treasured and adored by our society. This is true because our society loves a confident, handsome white man more than it loves deep fried cheese. (I know your boyfriend is white, because only a white man could pee all over the toilet repeatedly without noticing it.)

I get that he is aggravating. I am aggravated on your behalf! But it’s also true that when your culture loves the fuck out of you, it’s harder to be sensitive. We can all say that this is bad and wrong over and over again. But as long as he’s listening closely and trying harder when you point these things out, I think you’ve got to take a deep breath and remind yourself that this is good, this is rare, and this is what you need.

NO ONE CAN GIVE YOU EVERYTHING. No one. I’ve had repeated conversations this week with friends about the very specific voids or flaws their partners have, and each time I tell them that they need to keep asking for exactly what they want, but they also need to recognize that this flaw or void is unlikely to disappear. If you love someone deeply and you want to be happy and you also want to support their quest for joy and peace, you have to learn how to tolerate and accept and even celebrate who they are. The worst flaws are welded to the best qualities. You can’t pry them apart. You have to love the whole person.

My husband is flawed in ways that many other humans would never tolerate. So am I. We are both sloppy and we call each other out and also forgive each other, inside our cone of silence/shame/marriage, which is like a humid tent full of old crumbs and ants and one oversized TV blaring “Love Island Australia.”

So whenever I consider the notion that someone else might be more intellectually curious and passionate and creative than my golfer husband (yes GOLFER, HE GOLFS), I revisit the reasons why I’m not with someone like that, namely: THAT TYPE OF PERSON WOULD NEVER PUT UP WITH MY SHIT.

I also wouldn’t put up with their shit. I wouldn’t want to be corrected by someone like you constantly, just for example! I have not read all of the books and I refuse to try to read them all, there are just too many, I will not be tested on this later, and I like watching “Love Island” A LOT. Not only that, but whenever I’m using my gigantic brain, I like to talk out of my ass, too. Talking out of your ass is a hazard of the writing trade. It’s also a hazard of the blowhard trade, the exuberant weirdo trade, and the impulsive brainiac-improviser trade.

But that’s not the only reason I probably couldn’t be that happy around an extremely intellectual, creative man with a lot of huge, pointy opinions. Conversationally, I want to be that guy. I like a safe space to be arrogant and grandiose. I like to test out epic pronouncements that are a little overreaching. And I prefer to draw sweeping conclusions without my soulmate calling for a line edit or a fact check every time. I like someone who listens closely and challenges me, but favors enthusiasm and lively debate over nitpicking and undercurrents of “You made a big mistake and my respect for you has fallen considerably.”

Quite honestly, I am getting the distinct vibe that you’re like this, too. You thrive when you have a forgiving but fully engaged partner who doesn’t relitigate his love for you constantly.

So the question is not whether or not it’s okay that he’s flawed. Everyone is flawed. The question is, can you tolerate a human with these particular flaws?

My gut tells me that you’re very agitated in this case because your boyfriend is so much like you, therefore he embodies your fears about yourself more than anyone you’ve ever dated. In other words, this guy just might be your soulmate. When you’re with a true soulmate (my belief is we all have lots of soulmates!), the traits and behaviors you freak out about are reflections of stubborn areas where you still need to open up and grow. Your irritation at this guy is a message that you need to come down off your high horse and really understand why a person with a long commute and two kids doesn’t want to read great literature when he’s in bed at night.

You’re struggling with ambivalence in part because you just lost your parents. It’s hard to be soft when you’re panicked about how much you’ve lost. Mourning huge losses will warp your understanding of everything around you. Sometimes trauma makes a big thinker like you raise their expectations beyond what is reasonable or rational. You’re grappling with so much buried pain that you believe that you need perfection, you require a fantasy, to make up for how much you’ve lost. You’re running away from this pain, and building big stories to keep yourself safe from your sadness and your love — for you parents, for him, for yourself, for the world.

Snobbery serves its occasional purpose. Who doesn’t love knowing people who hate some of the stuff you hate, and look down on the dumb shit you look down on? It’s ironic, though, that you’re the most snobby about your boyfriend’s snobbery. You want the snobs around you to use socially unimpeachable, precise terms for what amounts to the same sentiments, which boil down to something like fuck bad taste and fuck ignorance and why does everyone have to be so stupid?

Meanwhile, when you look at him, you’re always looking in the mirror. His flaws make you much more aware of your own flaws. That’s why you’re so critical of him.

When I met my husband, he was a big nerd who didn’t know how to dress and was slightly sexist without knowing it. At the time, I was a big nerd who didn’t know how to dress and was slightly sexist without knowing it. But I had no idea. All I saw was the stuff that he was getting wrong. I couldn’t recognize how beautifully we matched.

I didn’t want to be who I was. I wanted to be more perfect than me. I wanted to be more lovable and more cool and more beautiful. So I pretended I was all of those things, and I set out to fix him so he would match me. I also found it very unnerving to be loved completely. It made me self-conscious. I wanted to chase someone instead, so I didn’t have to think about myself at all. My self-hatred made it very hard to be loved.

Don’t do that. Look in the mirror. You’re battling shame, self-hatred, and grief right now. You want to be right because you feel like shit about your parents and you want the world to be made of magic so you don’t have to live in reality.

Be a person instead. Admit your flaws. Grow.

Maybe you’ve found your person. That’s what I think. But only you know for sure, and you won’t trust yourself until you love yourself. So learn how to love yourself. Slow down and be vulnerable and be open and see if you can love yourself. Then look around, and see how you feel.

Now that you feel small and humble, who do you feel drawn to?

Now that you’ve let go of fantasies and mirages, who do you treasure the most?

Now that you realize that you will never be perfect, who do you love?

Once you stop living behind a veil of sadness and shame, you’ll be able to put down your defenses and let him in. That’s where a solid love starts: on undefended territory, where you can both admit that you are just imperfect humans who make bad choices over and over and there’s no real way around it.

True love thrives in a humid tent. You are both the absolute worst, and you are both the most beautiful beings in the whole galaxy. Your tent is a nightmare, and it’s also cozy and romantic and glorious.

Nothing is more embarrassing. Nothing is better.

Polly

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For more about love and compromise, read my memoir Foreverland, which positive thinkers call “too negative” and negative thinkers call “just what I needed to read.” To keep Ask Polly alive and kicking for another year, please consider a paid subscription!

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