In So I Married An Axe Murderer, Nancy Travis brings up a good point. She is next to Mike Meyers in bed talking about how they really don’t know each other. She says, “You’re lying on your side, totally asleep. I could just… stick a needle in your ear.” How well do we know the people we let into our lives? Our roommates, significant others, and friends. Do we truly know these people? We think we do. I mean, I am pretty confident my wife isn’t going to shove an ice pick into my brain while I sleep tonight.
How well do you really know the people you are vulnerable to? Of course, the flip side of that question is how well do you WANT to know them?
In Pacific Rim the pilots of the Jaegers, the giant robots, have to link minds in a process called drifting. While drifting each pilot is in the other’s head. They see everything about the other pilot. Their memories, their thoughts, and their emotions become an open book. Would being in your significant other’s mind make your relationship stronger? My wife thinks it would make the relationship that much more intimate. Of course she would say that. She’s a girl.
To argue her point, you would know your love’s every need and desire. You could anticipate every want before it was even expressed. How many times have you had to dig and pry to find out what’s really wrong? That would be a thing of the past. You would know what was wrong, because you would know what they are thinking.
On the other hand… you would know every stinking thing they were thinking. Everything. They really were checking out that guy. They really do think you’re fat. Those really are pity laughs. You really aren’t that good in bed. They really do sometimes wonder what it would have been like if this or that hadn’t happened.
What about all those doubts you have about yourself? Can you imagine if you ever saw even the hint of a sliver of a shadow of any of those doubts in your lover’s mind? To think that they may think those same things about you to even the slightest of degrees would be crippling. And what about the doubts your significant other has about themselves? Would knowing them help you sympathize, or would it just make them stand out more? Like that spot on the wall you never noticed until someone else pointed it out to you, and now it looks like the size of Texas.
However, for a bunch of you, you don’t need to weigh any of those pros and cons. Trust me when I say that if you’re dating a dude, you really don’t want to know what is going on in his head. From thoughts mundane to down right dirty, there is nothing you need to see here. We can truly waste our time thinking about things like Battlestar Galactica or box scores, and we can come up with some pretty dirty things, from weird sex stuff to poop jokes. It doesn’t mean we’re bad guys. We’re just guys.
Every relationship comes with a bit of the unknown. Maybe it’s better that way.
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