emotional darwinism

In two weeks, we went from the architecture of almost, the possibility of never speaking again, to a holiday text:

“Happy Thanksgiving”

“I hate all this back-and-forth shit”

“I just want to be next to you”

“Let's do Christmas”

Outside looking in, it's ridiculous. Inside? Still ridiculous. Just significantly more exhausting. This connection is not grand enough to be tragic, not stable enough to be romantic, but just significant enough to write about, which is probably its own indictment.

He and I don't exist in reality. We exist in memory, text threads, tone shifts, nostalgia, and unresolved tension. A bond stitched together from repetition and possibility. It's not a relationship. It never was. But it's not nothing either. It's the kind of thing that makes my friends ask reasonable questions. What do you get out of this? Why are you so invested?

The answer is embarrassingly simple. I’ve known him for hella long. I care about him. He makes me laugh. I like him. And I have learned a lot from him, even when the lesson isn't the one he's trying to teach.

Whenever we disagree, a familiar sequence unfolds. We butt heads. We run our mouths just enough to irritate each other, and then, right before that irritation turns into something bigger, immediate distance. Then, eventually, his return. Not with an apology. Not with vulnerability. With a thesis. A constructed explanation of what happened, and why.

Usually, I am the subject. I pushed him away. I don't see other perspectives. Being wrong makes me uncomfortable. I can be genuine one day and selfish the next. My backpedaling is triggering. A lot of words that often seem to circle the same hidden conclusion: I’m not doing this again. You remind me of someone who hurt me.

The thing is, sometimes he's right. Painfully right. Sometimes he identifies something about me that I haven't fully seen yet. Something uncomfortable and true. Other times, I think he's completely full of shit. The frustrating part is that I never know which one it's going to be.

I'd never admit this to him out loud, mostly out of stubbornness, but his words stay with me. Far longer than he realizes. I sit with them. I turn them over. I examine the parts that sting because they're true and the parts that sting because they aren't. I grow from it. Not because he's some all-knowing authority, but because I've always believed reflection is a form of self-respect.

I am willing to hold a mirror. What frustrates me is that he rarely seems willing to stand in front of one.

At one point, he proposed a system. An actual system. I tell him my grievances. He sits with them for forty-eight hours. Then it's his turn.A scheduled exchange of emotional processing. Like conflict had somehow been converted into a shared calendar invite.

I remember staring at my phone and laughing. Not because it was malicious. Because it was so profoundly him. Most people have feelings. He builds infrastructure around them.

The more we talked, the more I started noticing the pattern. Whenever something emotional entered the room, something analytical arrived right behind it. If I felt hurt, we'd end up discussing psychology. If I felt frustrated, we'd somehow land on evolutionary biology. A simple disappointment could become a lecture on adaptation, resilience, or environmental pressures. I would walk into the conversation carrying an emotion and leave carrying a theory.

It was impressive. Genuinely impressive. And also deeply annoying. Because beneath all that intelligence, I often found myself wanting something much smaller. Something embarrassingly ordinary. Not a framework. Not a model. Not an explanation.

Just: Yeah. I can see why that hurt your feelings.

But then again, I understand the impulse because I do it too. Maybe that's why I recognize it so easily. The instinct to observe instead of feel. To understand instead of experience. To intellectualize instead of risk being moved. Analysis creates distance. Distance creates safety. Nothing can touch us when we're busy explaining it.

That's the trap. He dissects. I narrate. He theorizes. I contextualize. Both of us are trying, in our own way, to stay one step ahead of vulnerability. Nothing can touch us when we’re performing brilliance.

And yet the predicament remains.

Here we are.

Touched.