Love cooperative

I wonder if your “Książka o miłości”, an essay in dialogue, passes the so-called Bechdel test, which is used to evaluate films. In order to pass it, at least two women must appear in the film and they have to talk, but not about men. It leads me to the conclusion that two women talking about men is something evil, shameful and inherently non-feminist.

DRENDA: But we’re not talking about men. As the old saying goes, “every Pole talks about themselves” – and that’s exactly what we’re doing. Nowadays, there is a tendency on the book market to make broad diagnoses. For example, that we live in a world of haste and we need to slow down. Or that we’ve lost our family values because we’re thinking about our careers. These books are written like horoscopes, so that everyone can find themselves in them. We tried to avoid this by writing primarily from our own experience, with full awareness of the risk that people could say that it’s personal, maybe even too personal.

That they will say that it’s exhibitionism?

HALBER: An essay is a personal form. I don’t have to pretend to be an omniscient narrator, I can admit that I myself have made the mistakes which I learned from. That the reflections which I’m sharing come from my life experiences. How do I define myself when writing this book? As a person who likes to ponder reality. And most of all, the conflict between normative and descriptive definitions or, to put it simply, between how it should be and how it is. I’m definitely a writer, too. I care about naming things my way. This is why in the book I both refer to Proust and curse. I’m 42, I’ve been through my share of rough times. It’s not that I want to explain the world to others, as I find such an approach patriarchal, but I consider myself a careful observer of reality. Olga, too. I think it’s bold of us to decide to take on love and relationships.

O.D.: It’s not an autobiographical book. The events we recall aren’t chronological, we don’t mention any names. These are examples which we prescind from. They are also not sensational stories or big confessions, and if someone treats them as such, then oh well. I think there’s nothing worse than a conspiracy of silence. It’s my philosophy of life, because if someone isn’t afraid to say who they are, what they think, what they’re experiencing, you can’t checkmate them.

The book begins with a memory of an entry on Facebook published some time ago by Małgorzata Halber. She wrote, “I want a husband”. What is behind this need?

M.H.: This entry resulted from the feeling that I spent 11 years alongside men who were not ready in various ways. “Not ready” is the keyword. “I’m sorry, but I’m not ready.” I realised that as a 39-year-old, I don’t have to put up with it any more. And that for 11 years, I was okay with it because I thought I should be “chill”. This is another keyword. I thought that if I started saying that I cared about a real relationship, one in which you could talk about marriage, it would mean that I was conservative and I wanted to turn my partner into a henpecked husband. It took me a long time to realise that I have the right to say this, that saying it is not to my discredit and if I call a spade a spade, it doesn’t mean that I’m desperate.

Olga, what did you think of the concept of “wanting a husband” as a person who had a husband but got divorced?

O.D.: If by “I want a husband” we mean being with a person who takes us seriously and for whom we are a priority, then I understand this need. Reality might verify this belief in the future, although it doesn’t have to. My motivation to get married was similar. There was a moment when I could – or maybe I wanted to – tell myself that I’m not looking any further, that this is the person I’d been looking for. In the end, my marriage didn’t last, and I think there was too much ambition and self-suggestion in my decision not to look any further, maybe I wanted to prove something to myself. But I can only say this from today’s perspective. And the scenarios may be very different, it may well turn out that you want completely different things, that you no longer understand each other, that you have become different people without common ground. I myself feel that I have put in a lot of effort and used all the possibilities, but I didn’t succeed, I came up against a brick wall. Fortunately, life isn’t a shooting range, and it’s not like we only have one bullet to hit the bull’s-eye.

What is love? Did you manage to figure it out?

M.H.: Not completely. If we had a definition, we would have written it in two sentences, we wouldn’t have deliberated about it over 360 pages.

O.D.: We don’t write from the position of omniscience, but ignorance. It’s science in progress, we learn while writing. We don’t offer a definition by which you should live – for me, this is a recipe for disaster. I’d be more likely to say that our understanding of what love is emerges from the accumulation of examples and events. But if I were to talk about my own experience, I’ve learned that for me, love is when I don’t feel afraid of another person, of their judgement, of what they might say. When I don’t feel the need for self-defence.

You mean trust?

O.D.: Trust is definitely a component of love. Proof of a mutual bond when communication is clear and full of consideration. The feeling that the other person is open to understanding us, that they aren’t plotting against us or lying.

M.H.: Communication is a difficult thing. No one teaches us that. My dream is for communication to be taught in high school. I learned it only when I went to couples therapy, i.e. at the age of 36. It’s something that no textbook, essay or interview can give you. I had to feel how easy it was for me to say something about my partner to a third party, that is, a therapist, and how difficult it was for me to turn to my partner at the therapist’s request and say the same to him.

I think that love is difficult, because many of our needs are entangled in our idea of it. The need for trust mentioned by Olga. The need for unconditional acceptance. The need to be lulled. And then we cry because we want our partner to embrace us and he doesn’t give us that, he gives us advice instead. And all we wanted was for him to nod his head and understand us without words. It’s easier to say what love isn’t than what it is.

O.D.: However, there is an element that seems indispensable to me – it’s the assumption of the goodwill of the other person. I can’t see love without it. Living with a person who you suspect of wishing you ill is hell.

M.H.: And there are a lot of people stuck in such a hell. For example, it’s a nightmare to be in a relationship with an emotionally unavailable person whose availability you’re constantly seeking. It’s one of the classic games that people play, and you can safely say that it’s not love.

One of the words that often come up in your book is respect as a component of love.

O.D.: This word is close to my heart because it implies the recognition of someone’s autonomy and freedom. Respect allows me to say: I’m not going to change you, you don’t have to be the way I want you to be. Because you’re not my property. Respect is something that prevents relationships of power and property in love.

And loyalty? This word comes out, too.

O.D.: I have a problem with loyalty. I hear “loyalty” and my brain says, “Mafia loyalty”. It’s a very ambivalent word for me. It can evoke a lot of good, because it’s associated with trust, but there’s also the other side of this coin: blackmail.

M.H.: I associate the word “loyalty” with loyalty “at all costs”, and I’m a little concerned when I hear it. We take someone as they are and when there is a conflict of values, do we have the right to object or do we have to be loyal?

Let’s use another word then: fidelity. Because in the book, there is a concept of being “someone’s favourite person”.

M.H.: I know that there are polyamorous people who have a completely different approach to this than I do, but for me, fidelity is a necessary condition. In love, in my opinion, we want to be the most important to someone in order to be able to trust each other. To know that we can rely on someone. When I say that you’re my favourite person in the world, it means that there’s only one of you. Of course, I can say that you are one of my favourite people, but then you are a member of a group and you start wondering what the selection criteria for this group are, and the situation becomes complicated. If there are more of us, it puts me in the role of a person who can be replaced. And if I can be replaced, it means that I don’t matter. That the only thing that matters is the need of the other person.

O.D.: It seems to me that the category of the “favourite person” is very fair because it is very subjective. There’s nothing more subjective than liking. Being a favourite takes no comparisons. Bertrand Russell wrote about envy that it occurs when we see objects or people in relation to each other instead of perceiving them in themselves. And choosing someone as your “favourite person” creates a certain exclusivity.

The next word you reflect upon in your little workshop is jealousy. An awful emotion?

O.D.: But what’s even worse is to pressure yourself to be absolutely understanding towards everyone. I felt so much better when I realised that I am allowed not to like someone or something. I can feel it in my heart and there won’t be any bad consequences. I don’t have to slander them publicly, but I reserve the right not to interact with them. I don’t have to strive to be understanding and forgiving towards everyone. What also appeals to me is the thesis that this feeling is a message and that it usually pertains to us.

M.H.: People often feel something and get angry at the very fact that they feel something. It’s a trap. I think jealousy is natural. Just as it is natural to question a relationship, it’s natural that from time to time I think: maybe I should break up with him? Does this mean that my relationship is bad? No. Does this mean that we’re going to break up? No. It means that sometimes my partner gets on my nerves. That’s normal. While writing this book, I had a mission that is also my mission in life – a relentless apotheosis of imperfection.

But going back to jealousy, I would add that I wasn’t jealous until I was betrayed. So jealousy can arise from our experience and then it’s not just your imagination. And in such a case it’s hard to change the situation. You can work on it, but if someone’s been betrayed, they can’t trust the other person carelessly.

For me, what your book is really about is maturing. What mistakes have you made and what have you learned?

M.H.: The most important life lesson for me is what I also described in my previous book “Najgorszy człowiek na świecie” (The Worst Man in the World), that is, that I have been confusing what I felt with what I thought my whole life. And I mistook judgements for emotions.

The second most important thing is that I have the right to have expectations. That there’s nothing wrong with that. And I have the right to voice them. Another – that even if I voice them, they will not necessarily be fulfilled. I’ve learned to argue and that there’s no point in being offended, that’s for sure. I’ve learned that it’s important to be able to admit my mistakes. This is my hardest life lesson. It’s a relief to know that making a mistake doesn’t necessarily destroy everything. Doing the wrong thing doesn’t mean that I can’t try to do the right thing. Just because I didn’t draw a line doesn’t mean that I can’t do it any more. I can say, “You know, I do feel bad when you jerk off to porn every night after all.” “But three months ago you said that it didn’t bother you.” “I changed my mind.” I used to think that if there was a conflict and a fight in a relationship, it was over. Seriously.

O.D.: As a person who knows the matter of feelings much better than I do, I think you’ve said almost everything there was to say. From my point of view I can add something that sounds childish and can be a comic relief in our conversation – that common interests and tastes are not yet a recipe for good communication. And I think there may be a temptation to confuse these things.

I used to want my partner to have a similar taste in music to me, so I could talk to him a lot about music. And then I met a man who had a great taste in music, but other than that, we couldn’t find any common ground. And then I discovered that I could satisfy such needs outside of a relationship, with my friends. The conclusion is that our partner doesn’t have to be like a 360-degree multifunctional robot that fills all the areas of our lives. They don't have to be a person that “does it all”.

And another thing – not to get attached to the worldview. The fact that a guy advertises himself as an equality distillate doesn’t have to go hand in hand with practice. Because it can be equality understood as an Excel table translated into human life, that is petty bookkeeping. Equal division of tasks is also not a recipe for success. It can arise as a result of agreement at other levels, but if it is an end in itself, it’s wrong. This is not what a cooperative is about.

Exactly, you present a successful relationship as a well-functioning cooperative.

O.D.: It was Małgorzata who proposed the term, but it resonated with me. Mostly because in the cooperative movement, the principle was that each participant made a contribution in case any of them ran into difficulties. So a cooperative is based on a common capital. We put in effort together so that there is cushioning in case of problems.

M.H.: To me, the metaphor of a cooperative means, above all, shared responsibility. And that we are two separate beings, cooperative members, but then an additional entity, a superstructure, appears above us and it depends on us whether it will function well. I’m not responsible for my partner’s emotions, but I’m responsible for keeping the cooperative going.

O.D.: This shared responsibility doesn’t consist in mutual accountability, in checking whether we are always neck and neck – it excludes competition. Cooperatives were created to protect small farmers and entrepreneurs, to make them feel stronger together, less alone. This joint work and shared responsibility are supposed to guarantee that you won’t be left alone, that you have someone to count on.

M.H.: After years of perturbation and bad relationships, I suddenly realised how a relationship is supposed to work. For a very long time I thought – and I think that it was my father who instilled this in me – that a woman is responsible for the relationship because she is “more emotional”. For me, discovering that people were responsible for it fifty-fifty was a true revelation. One of the effects of maturing and learning from mistakes is the creation of a list of conditions. It’s not like a shopping list which I take to the market with me to find everything I need and tick all the items off. This is a list to protect me from entering into a relationship that could hurt me.

This list doesn’t contradict the myth of romantic love. In my case, the way it works is that if I meet someone that I – using barnyard language – fancy, I check the list. Point one: any active addictions. If there are none or he is an addict, but he’s receiving treatment – a good candidate, peachy. Two: he can’t live with his mother, which I understand metaphorically as being independent. Three: he must earn at least as much as I do. I don’t want to be my partner’s patron. Four: he must like walks. This is an important condition that seems funny after the others which are so substantial, like financial balance or independence. But walks are important to me because they mean a willingness to be an explorer, a willingness to enjoy a little adventure, a little rapture. By default, of course, it means walks with me. And one last condition: he needs to desire spending time with me. If he has a driver’s license and knows how to dance, that’s great, but these are not necessary conditions.

This list has been developed for more than a decade. After each relationship, I would add a point. Financial balance, for example, which I used to see as completely irrelevant. It turned out to be fatal for one of my relationships, or even two. This is, of course, my list, and everyone can have their own.

Olga, you haven’t made such a list.

No, I don’t have a list, but I understand where it comes from. I see Małgorzata’s list not as wishful thinking which people sometimes resort to as if they wanted to programme a perfect life for themselves – that she must be a blonde with a doctorate and she must bake good cakes – but as a sign of knowing yourself and your own potential trouble spots. If a candidate fails to meet the requirements of the list, it doesn’t mean that he objectively sucks, it just means that we won’t find common ground with him. And that both this person and we will get along better with someone else. Of course, the perversity of life sometimes turns our expectations upside down, but there are some qualities that are so hard to negotiate that it’s better to be aware of them. In my opinion, such a list says more about its author.

In the book, we talk about, among others, being with a person who has untreated personality disorders, e.g. borderline. Such a diagnosis doesn’t mean that someone stands no chance, provided that they receive treatment. Untreated disorders are difficult and prevent communication. A disturbed person seems unpredictable to their partner until they get appropriate tools.

In a way, I do have such a list, but it’s eliminative. It’s based on my experience. I know I can’t be with someone who has a streak of pedantry or malice. I’m sure there are people who can get along with someone like that, especially if they’re alike. There are even people who like these qualities. I don’t. And I also know that they often go hand in hand with the conviction of infallibility.

In an extreme case – a true-life one, unfortunately – it took the form of a constant game of nitpicking. This guy would beef about not rolling cables properly. When I did it the way he wanted me to, he’d pick at the fact that I leave the door ajar at 30 degrees, not 45. Or he’d find yet another little thing. This is, of course, an example from the “horror” category, but on the other hand, knowing myself, I know very well that I’m not able to develop the need to pay attention to such things. I went to war with that man. These are deep-rooted habits, imprinted in our personality to the point where, in order to get rid of them, someone would have to rebuild themselves from the ground up. And why would I do that to anyone or to myself? It’s not my place to change the other person. I think we need to be aware of what could potentially make us hate each other.

I hate sarcasm just as much, and even if someone were intelligent and had other positive qualities, I wouldn’t be able to stand the fact that they are bitter. Because I can assume that sooner or later they will start directing this snarkiness at me. Is that what I want? No. Then it’s better to back off.

I think some people believe that love and good intentions can transform the other person, mutating them into someone else on a cellular level. I don’t believe that. I believe that some traits are such strong habits that at some point they will lead to a stalemate.

The book begins with the conventional “I want a husband” and inevitably leads, like in a romantic comedy, to a wedding or even two. Will there be weddings? And why is it so important?

M.H.: When I was 20, I was convinced that I didn’t need it, I didn’t understand the concept at all. I think that this need resulted from observing my friends. There is a thesis that jealousy is an emotion that allows us to see what we really want. I’d been watching friends who had been together for a long time, and I envied them. I kept thinking, “I want this too”. But I’ve had shaky relationships in which you could never know where you were. To me, getting married is a declaration: okay, let’s start a cooperative.

O.D.: It took me a long time to discover the feeling of mutual reliance. I’ve watched it in other people and wondered how they did it, how they were able to depend on each other. For example, that they could ask each other for help in something ordinary, such as assembling a piece of furniture or picking up a parcel, and the other person wouldn’t say that they were crazy or issue a bill with interest. Or that, on the other hand, one person wouldn’t assume that the other person must be at their beck and call. It’s not that obvious at all.

M.H.: When asked when I’ll get married, I say that I don’t know. But I was in no hurry to run to the registry office. It turned out that there was a new condition that I would like my partner to meet. I’ve been going to therapy for years, I’m in the process, in progress, and I thought that if he stays on a different level, we won’t be able to deal with problems. I asked him to go to therapy in the name of our marriage. And he did.

O.D.: I think that if we separate a phenomenon such as getting married from situations in which people do it for religious reasons, to fulfil the sacrament, or due to social pressure, what we’re left with is freedom of choice. And such a wedding, I think, can be a positive phenomenon, a confirmation of the desire to permanently be and build a life with that one person. A wedding, however, is not a spell that changes reality, although it does have a certain performativity. The clerk says: “I now pronounce you man and wife”, and we are in a slightly different reality, we have certain obligations and responsibilities. But these aren’t magic words that guarantee anything. My marriage didn’t work out, but I’m not discouraged. Today I’m neither for nor against it. I’m sure that someone who’s not in a hurry to get married is not a fly-by-night, evil person just because they prefer to live in an informal relationship. People have their reasons, like seeing their parents living together for 40 years, hating each other.

The last chapter of the book is entitled “Happy end” and one can get the impression that the happy ending for a woman is having a husband.

M.H.: Absolutely not! There’s nothing like that there. Happy end means being happy in a non-toxic relationship. Or being happy alone. This chapter is a constatation that previous relationships have taught us something, that they are experiences thanks to which we can now be happier.

O.D.: A happy ending can also be a breakup. A happy end is a state of feeling fine, a non-turbulent state.

Interview with Olga Drenda and Małgorzata Halber, authors of “Książka o miłości” (The Book on Love), by Paulina Reiter 

Photo: Albert Zawada. Make-up and hairstyles by Aneta Kacprzak; the session took place in Studio Chmury.

Interview published in :Wysokie Obcasy" of "Gazeta Wyborcza" from 5 December 2020.