In A Lover’s Discourse, my boy Roland Barthes describes the miserable trap of interpreting signs:
But for me, an amorous subject, everything which is new, everything which disturbs, is received not as a fact but in the aspect of a sign which must be interpreted […] If the other has given me this new telephone number, what was that the sign of? Was it an invitation to telephone right away, for the pleasure of the call, or only should the occasion arise, out of necessity?
One month after my first confessional on love (read here), it so happens that I, a contemporary, who is also occasionally a lover, found herself once again stranded on an island of romantic ambiguity.
If the other has texted me “Happy New Year!” – what was that the sign of?
My friends and I spent the entire first week of January interpreting our perceived cues. One girl’s ex brought his new girlfriend to a party where he knew my friend would be.
Coincidence? Or an elaborate sign that he was not, in fact, over her?
Another one of us received an Instagram story reaction from yet another former romantic pursuit. A sign???
A SIGN????
I could end the article here and simply say: no, turns out none of these were signs of anything consequential. But I, a postmodern (over)thinker, have some structural complaints I need to file.
So, let me start the story from the beginning:
Some time ago, I met two men in my relatively small Alpine French town. The first one – let’s call him Male Subject N.1 (or M1 for short) – I met during my first ever caving expedition, which, unlike most caving expeditions, ended in a divine underground Alpine fondue. 10/10 recommend.
Two days later, I met Male Subject N.2 (aka M2) in a context arguably just as extreme and risky as speleology: a Hinge date.
Where the former risks your life through the potentiality of falling deep inside a hole with no rapid access to medical attention, the latter risks your heart through the potentiality of its shattering into a myriad of small therapy sessions to put it back to work.
(and as a brave girlie, I still practice both)
Soon after, M1 and I had a friendly Christmas market date. Four glasses of mulled wine, two pretzels, and one passionate High School Musical conversation later, I confirmed he was actually gay – and, more importantly, that I was about to acquire a new friend!!! After all, how often do you meet someone who wants to do a 100-meters descent down a shady rope with you, and is equally ready to dissect Zac Efron’s attachment style?
Over a final drink that same evening, we realized one more thing. My new friend – M1 – was, in fact, M2’s roommate! And as if that were not enough, it turned out our apartments were one street apart…
Oh, Grenoble, sweet capital of the French Alps, what is your grand plan for your Bulgarian daughter? I do like that instead of snow, it be raining men – but do please spread them out a little.
Though life was sweet with the 2Ms for a bit, as December unfolded, M2 slowly became the main character of the abovementioned romantic ambiguity that plagued my Christmas holiday. After all, since the flu couldn’t get me this season, a man who didn’t know what he wanted did!
What followed eventually was a rupture – but before the rupture made itself explicit, there was a polite indeterminacy. One that appeared to me as a slow accumulation of signs.
For instance, one day, I brought soup to my friend M1 who was sick and noticed my toothbrush on the living room table.
Ouch.
A beautiful material residue, which was awkwardly downgraded from the second-floor bathroom, all the way down to its lonely display on the living room table. Clearly, a sign of something… Or a sign of nothing? Maybe it wasn’t even my toothbrush.
Oh well.
A week later, the implicit sign metamorphosed into an uncertain, yet explicit wording: I’m not sure what I want, maybe we take it more slowly?
Then a month of silence.
Then “Happy New Year!”
Was it kindness? Nostalgia? Merely a calendar event acknowledged? The amorous subject found herself condemned to interpretation of signs, and of imaginary toothbrush travel scenarios…
One might have called the abovementioned holiday fiasco a situationship of a kind.
I resist.
Whenever I analyze my life through this endlessly recycled, situationship-adjacent vocabulary, I feel I am demeaning myself. By uttering the word or simply by laughing when a friend does I recognize my willing participation in a meaningless semiotic system. After all, if everything is a situationship, then nothing truly is!
The entire purpose of the word is to encompass the myriad possible arrangements in which, for myriad complex reasons, modern daters feel themselves in a practical approximation of a romantic relationship, but are ontologically, as far away as it gets from a real human partnership. And I mean it. Your partner in robbing a bank or your Party comrade would not leave you guessing – after all, y’all need to meaningfully collaborate!
What unsettles me most about romantic ambiguity is not just its emotional toll, but how, albeit with good humour, I obediently seem to inhabit it.
I continue to respond to its cues, to recognize myself within its logic. Which is to say: perhaps the issue is not merely semantic or personal, but ideological. Some years ago in uni, I wrote an essay on Louis Althusser – one of the most influential Marxists of the 20th century. Now, bear with me while I swear loyalty to me, myself and I… 🎶
…by citing my own assignment:
A few weeks ago I was outside after the pandemic-imposed curfew and a police car passed by me. The very moment when the police officer said Madame I obediently turned around. I recognized myself as subject to state authority, therefore answerable to police, because the state (acting via the police) recognized me as subject to their authority.
Althusser calls this ideological interpellation: the police hailed at me and I answered, going in accordance with the subject I am constructed as.
Similarly, whenever me and my girlfriends ask each other news of our ongoing situationships, don’t we also obediently answer to the (mostly) male call of “Wouldn’t it be fun if I could have my cake and eat it too?”
In her recent Substack essay, Great Egg-spectations, Emily Willcox describes the system most of us now operate in as:
a pandemic of half-interest […] a dating culture that rewards avoidance, withholding, and vague half-connections disguised as freedom
Yet, when somebody hails me with ambiguous messages or avoidance – I still answer.
I answer, I overinterpret and I reveal myself as the contemporary lover that I am constructed as within the postmodern late-capitalist dating culture.
In the case of being stopped by the police: the relation between me and the police officer exists regardless of whether either of us wants it or not. They call out “Madame” and I say “Oui, Monsieur.” But does that mean that no matter how I feel about the modern dating culture I also say “Yes, Sir” and play the game anyway?
Devastatingly for everyone involved: I do.
Let us take, for example, the game of texting. I often operate under the implicit assumption that, in order to appear normal, I must apply a meticulous methodology to my exchanges with a potential amorous object. I cannot believe I am saying this, but somebody please take me back to the good old days of French Political Science dissertations: two parts, two sub-parts – nothing more, nothing less. Applied correctly, the strategy guaranteed a passing grade!
But is there a School of Thought one subscribes to when it comes to boy communication? Sending fire signals seems the most efficient one (in that I can just start directly burning their houses down), but sometimes their roommates are nice and don’t deserve to get burnt.
And so, I waited. I waited an entire month for M2 to wish me happiness in the new year, convinced that if I texted first, it would amount to romantic suicide. I had learned that slow responses must be met with even slower ones, that ghosters ought to be out-ghosted.
Which only goes to show, none of it truly matters.
Sure, sometimes silence can be a healthy space-giving endeavour, but it often becomes a literal self-inflicted CIA-level torture method. As I write this, I sincerely hope they are not forcing Maduro to text twenty-something straight men while playing him TikToks that preach: “If he wanted to, he would.”
In the end, is patiently waiting your turn to slightly signal interest or lack thereof worth it?
Well, I’d say that if Roland Barthes, my favorite gay semiotician, still fell victim to his amorous object’s mixed signals… There truly is little hope for any of us mortals.
So, why not just speak truthfully and directly?
Although my writing so far could be read as a polemic against THE SIGNS, and against the foolish game they force us to play (in which there is no winning), still, I must admit that implicit hints have always been part of our vocabulary as social beings. Even if we wanted to, we would likely never be able to express ourselves faultlessly and leave no room for interpretation.
“Tell the thing as it is,” the master orders Jacques in Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Denis Diderot. After which the boy blurts out at least some of the many reasons why to do so would be incredibly difficult:
Hasn’t a man his own character, his own interests, his own tastes and passions according to which he either exaggerates or understates? […] And is the person who listens better qualified to listen than the person who speaks? No.
And indeed – fair enough. But I, just like Jacques’s master, am not on a mission to outlaw speaking and listening altogether. We just want to hear the story!
What I would like to outlaw, however, is for the complete replacement of even trying to tell the thing as it is with a meaningless semiotic system.
Ghosting or not giving clarity is not the same as imperfectly communicating.
“What the devil, Jacques!” I want to shake and scream to the male guests at the breadcrumb buffet, “yes, speaking truthfully is difficult but we do our fucking best and move on.”
So then, coming back to Monsieur Roland Barthes’s musing:
If the other has given me this new telephone number, what was that the sign of?
Who cares, I say! Just telephone right away - for the pleasure of the call. Say what you have within you to say, and who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and tell the thing as it is.
Or else, do not telephone – for the displeasure of overanalyzing the signs over the next three months.
The choice is yours.