‘The general collapse of everything is distressing. So it can seem like an obligation of responsible citizenship to be distressed,’ writes Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Painting: Miranda and The Tempest by John William Waterhouse. Illustration: Wikimedia Commons
Instead of asking her to step away from her distress, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, could you suggest she channel it into action?
My wife is obsessed with everything that’s happening in the US. She literally spends all day sitting on the couch, watching videos and reading opinion pieces. She’s originally from America and has been living abroad for 25 years and she has family in the US, so I get that she needs to feel connected to what’s happening. But it’s constant. Whether we’re eating, watching a TV show or movie, when we’re talking about something completely unrelated – everything, every topic, either starts or ends with outrage.
I’ve told her she needs to take at least one day off all social media, but she won’t do that even for an hour. It stresses her out more and more every day, but she just keeps going back to it – and it has been really affecting me, more lately than ever. On weekends I stay up late playing games (my way of winding down after a week of work) and she’ll go to bed early. And during those times sometimes I just sit and cry. Everything that’s happening is so stressful, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I just wish I could rip away her phone and let her breathe! I don’t know what to say or do. Is there anything that could help?
Eleanor says: It’s so easy to feel that if you’re a politically engaged person you have to stay tuned in and upset. The general collapse of everything is distressing. So it can seem like an obligation of responsible citizenship to be distressed.
But a lot of thinkers say that in politically distressing times it’s also our job to cultivate hope. We have to husband our emotional resources carefully, to guard our capacity for real action. And you don’t do that by endlessly scrolling platforms that want you to stay transfixed in horror, because that’s how they get their ad dollars.
I can think of two things that might help here. One is to repeat your request for less time on social media – but this time, instead of saying she needs a day off, could you make it about how it’s affecting you?
When a partner’s choice negatively affects us it’s tempting to litigate the choice itself: “You shouldn’t elect to live like that; it’s bad for you, objectively.” But then the other person just disagrees. “It isn’t bad; I value it; who are you to tell me what I need?”
There’s one thing she can’t disagree with, though, and that’s how this affects you. Using your recreation time to weep alone is a desperately poignant place to have wound up. Asking her to put her phone away for hersake invites questions about why you’re the authority. But you’re the authority on your own needs. Could you ask again, appealing for your own sake?
The other strategy might be to meet her in – but rechannel – her distress. It’s clearly important to her to know about this stuff. It involves her home, it affects her family, and facing up to grim truths can feel like a civic imperative. I can even imagine that you asking for time away from distressing news might seem to herlike a bourgeois wish to be unperturbed: “I don’t want to be disturbed in my citadel by the knowledge of the horrors outside.” But you don’t necessarily have to ask her to step awayfrom her distress – you could suggest she do something with it, besides consuming information and looking at the screen.
Could you encourage her to act on what’s distressing her? Organise, campaign, do things in your local area, give time, with others, regularly? Otherwise she’s paying all the emotional costs of “responsible political engagement” without making much gain for causes she actually cares about. Consuming information and feeling feelings do not actually discharge the burdens of political engagement. Doing things, even small things, does. It’s also a bit of an antidote to despair. It gets you back in touch with good people. It gets you out of the house; it gets you small victories.
If you could suggest that the best use of her intelligence and empathy is not scrolling and debating but acting, that might make her feel less like you want her to not care about something important to her – while helping you feel less like you’ve lost your wife. You can be saying: “I agree this is important, so let’s make sure we have the energy to actually do things about it, and not let it eat our home and relationship too.”
