I wish my life was like Skins

I wrote this YEARS ago; back then it was more applicable to my peer group (I think these points are most relevant to 16-21 year olds) and the popular culture references were more contemporary. Still, this makes for a nice warm up to next week's piece on the DSM-5, and I really wanted to use the Charlie Brown cartoon.

It seems common for people to be frustrated that their partner won’t open up to them about their demons. One friend of mine was threatened with break-up if she didn’t share more, and another was actually broken up with because he didn’t talk about his ‘feelings’.

Does this mean that we can’t grow close to someone who is happy-go-lucky? My friend grew up middle class with lovely parents in a stable marriage. He went to a good school and is popular. If asked to talk about his ‘feelings’ he can’t say much other than ‘I’m quite happy’.

Yet it seems that isn’t good enough. Are we so spoilt in our idyllic Australian climate, economy and culture that we must necessarily indulge only in dramatic relationships fraught with emotions?

Underlying this fad for offering psychotherapy to your partner is the belief that everyone’s ‘real’ identity is constituted by their demons. We often think that we will only know someone if we are familiar with their childhood traumas.

This attitude is a little off-target. In the case of psychologically healthy people the demons will already have been dealt with. Their place in the person’s identity is occupied by principles derived from their experiences dealing with those demons. For example, the children of alcoholics are typically disinclined to binge drink. If you ask them why they don’t binge they might mention their family history, and you will know more about them. But you won’t get any additional knowledge by continuing to pester them about their parents.

Many of us assume that the child of the alcoholic must be hiding feelings of rage and depression that they want to share if only someone would ask them. So instead of focusing on the person’s principles or current problems we accuse them of being a repressed neurotic. We invent an entire ‘real’ identity for them derived entirely from our own morbid desire to see everyone as dark, conflicted and repressed.

My impression is that modern youth culture thinks meaningfulness can only come from the dark side of the emotional spectrum. Happiness and lightness are shallow, banal and boring, even if they derive from meaningful endeavour. To be deep you need to cut yourself and watch Skins. Only loneliness, depression and anxiety are ‘real’.

Ironically this quest for depth is often an extension of our vacuousness. When seeking skeletons people are often actually looking for a faux-problem. A popular one is: ‘my mum is overbearing’. How intimate. When someone’s girlfriend tells them her father abused her and was then killed by her unhinged mother things get ‘a bit too fucked-up’. We don’t actually want darkness; just a little spice to make our emotional life trendier; more like Skins.

By all means criticise the bourgeois for being vapid hipsters—I do. But don’t go making or searching for drama just because you think your life can’t be deep like the ocean without baggage and damage.