A.B.D.

Audio version now available.

 

I subscribed my wife, Sheri, to a paid Spotify account for her birthday several years ago. To help you gauge how incredibly cheap I really am, I think a Spotify account is like $10 a month. Or maybe $15. Or maybe it was $10 back then, and now it’s $15. Anyway, the point is, $10 a month took thoughtful consideration for me. “That’s $120 a year, don’t you know. Why can’t you use the free version? Do you really need to be able to create playlists? Can’t you just sit by your boombox and press the cassette record button when the radio plays your favorite songs like the seasoned Gen-Xer you are?” Generosity just oozes from my thoughtful consideration.

 

This gift for Sheri allows for three logins using the same username and password. I immediately signed my phone into her account, and within a week, I found another of my devices I could use to occupy the third loggin. Happy birthday, Sheri. I’ll be commandeering 2/3rds of your cheap-ass gift.

 

Believe it or not, that’s not the end of the Spotify story.

 

When two devices that are both connected to the internet try to use the Spotify account at the same time, calamity ensues (I bet you were wondering when this story would get interesting, and are relieved to see the word, “calamity”). If I try to play “Pink Pony Club” while Sheri is listening to something less awesome, she hears my current favorite song, and while the timer is moving on my device, I don’t hear anything.

 

Can you feel the suspense building?

 

The technical workaround is simple. One of us just needs to disconnect from the internet, and both devices can use the account independently.

 

Unless she is mad at me for something unrelated, Sheri almost always insists that I listen, and she will close her Spotify app. Even when I offer to turn off my wifi so we can both listen to our stuff, she almost always just closes Spotify in deference to my listening pleasure.

 

What this story completely lacks in interestingness, it more than makes up for by describing a critical relationship dynamic.

 

I am selfish, and Sheri is not.

 

Even my gifts are selfish. I have given Sheri a hand-carved walking stick so she’ll go on hikes with me. I have often gifted her two tickets to a show I really wanted to see. As will come as no surprise to any of our long-time readers or listeners, I have given her handmade coupon books for back rubs. In the same vein, I have given her the least comfortable garments with crotch snaps from Victoria’s Secret (or at least the Walmart equivalent–have you seen the prices at Victoria’s Secret?). Early on, I even gave her a Franklin Planner because her lack of anal-retentive organization frustrated me. A Franklin Planner! That is grounds for divorce. Or justifiable homicide. I should have been really generous that year and given her a gym membership and a vacuum cleaner along with it. The joke’s on me. If the authorities had looked in the Franklin Planner to find out where my body was buried, the only thing they would have found was tracings of her middle finger, and the sentence, “Fuck you Matt!” written over and over like a chalkboard punishment.

 

I am selfish. It is one of the defining characteristics that made me such an impactful alcoholic.

 

While I am not a 12-stepper, the Alcoholics Anonymous folks I spend time with view selfishness as a weakness to be overcome. Or at least as a fatal flaw about which to be ceaselessly aware. Just about any negative action or interaction seems to be tied back to selfishness in the recovery community in general, but especially in AA.

 

But I’m not sure I believe that. I am not sure selfishness has to be detrimental.

 

I am not downplaying or denying my fixation on self-interest. I think my penchant for selfishness is common for my gender. There is ample research that indicates both a neurological and behavioral tendency for more selfishness from men than from our more generous female counterparts. In the academic community, a lack of selfishness is referred to as being prosocial. My decisions seem to be pretty pro-Matt. Among those of us who stand up to pee, I seem to have lots of company.

 

In December, I wrote about being fired from my high school soccer coaching job because I write about sex and addiction, and a few of my team’s parents didn’t think that my writing and research career was conducive to working with teenagers. At the time, some of our readers and listeners encouraged me with their belief that something better would come my way. While the sentiment seems trite and cliche, I really grasped onto it, and found love and hope in the confidence in my abilities expressed by people who care for me. And would you believe that my encouragers were right? I now have a much better soccer coaching job and have almost completely eliminated the risk of termination from offending helicopter parents.

 

Sheri is thrilled for three reasons. First, watching my reputation be tarnished by closed-minded parents was more stressful and frustrating for her than it was for me. Second, she genuinely wants me to be happy, and while she doesn’t care much about soccer, she eagerly listens to me talk about formations, strategies, and tactics because she likes to see me light up with enthusiasm. Third, she knows the demographic diversity of my new team, and is excited for them to be influenced about adulthood beyond soccer by someone like me. Protective, generous, and prosocial. One, two, and three.

 

I am being intentionally vague about my new coaching job, not because I’m worried about retribution if I link my new organization to a blog and podcast about alcoholism and intimacy, but because details about my new gig would be nothing more than an ego stroke for me. Such specifics are not necessary to tell my story or make my point. It would just be a glutenous name-drop. At least, that’s what my friend and best-selling author, Annie Grace, would tell me.

 

And an ego stroke is exactly what you might expect from a selfish guy like me. I am demonstrating restraint from my braggadocious tendencies.

 

So, I am selfish and Sheri is generous. With those individual attributes acknowledged, how can we explain that our relationship is thriving like never before?

 

A.B.D. Always be dating. The initialism is an adjustment to Alec Baldwin’s use of A.B.C., first in the 1992 movie, Glengarry Glen Ross, where it stood for “always be closing,” but then adjusted to fit a 2005 Christmas skit on Saturday Night Live where Baldwin demanded that Santa’s elves “always be cobbling.” Attribution aside, the truth is that closing and cobbling pale in comparison to the modern romantic relationship necessity of having a mindset, especially us guys, of perpetual dating no matter how long we are married.

 

Always be dating. It is simple, really. I try quite hard to treat every interaction with Sheri as though we are those 20-something kids at Indiana University with almost no responsibilities, no financial or legal commitment to each other, and our whole individual, independent lives in front of us. I communicate with Sheri as though she could turn on her heels and walk out the door without ever uttering another word in my direction if she so chose. The last thing I might see is a middle finger protruding fearlessly from the driver’s window of her 1984 navy blue Chevy Cavalier. It’s a turn-on, really. To constantly think that nothing is holding her back, and yet she chooses to stay.

 

Wow! I must really be something.

 

And that is your first glimpse into how A.B.D. can work for a selfish guy like me.

 

For most of my adult life, I aimed my selfish endeavors toward career success. Sure, I was selfish as a drinker, and selfish in early recovery. But that was just spare, leftover selfishness. My main goal, and the recipient of most of my best, most productive hours, was work-related accomplishment to stroke my fragile, emotionally immature ego.

 

But then came the fateful day, well into my sobriety, when I learned that my wife didn’t like me. She still loved me, and our lives were so intertwined that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but without those responsibilities keeping her shackled to me, she would be cranking down her car window to wave goodbye with one particular ring-adjacent finger.

 

That realization–that awareness that my wife of decades didn’t like me–that was the wakeup call I needed to convince me to always be dating.

 

It didn’t happen overnight. We don’t live in a Lifetime Channel movie script. My evolution from selfish devotion to career, to selfish devotion to Sheri, took years. First it took significant time to strategize, then another time chunk to execute and validate. Now, I am trying to explain it to others, and despite my pithy stories full of self-deprecation and objective relationship benefits, I think this will be the greatest task of all because A.B.D. is not familiar for anyone who grew up in the patriarchy that is our Western culture. In fact, my use of that “p” word probably pisses off a bunch of guys who are lost in the relationship wilderness listening to internet masculinity gurus who are focused on a return to how things used to be as an ill-fated solution for how to move forward.

 

Here’s the thing: I didn’t become selfless or generous. I’m still the same selfish son-of-a-bitch I’ve always been. I just have a different selfish target in my crosshairs. I have adjusted my goals to achieve maximum success in emotional intimacy and sexual satisfaction. It turns out that for achieving my new selfish success, the most important action item is to always be dating.

 

A.B.D. baby!

 

I prioritize individual emotional maturation, relationship resentment processing, and consistent emotional safety. All three of those attributes are things I’ve written about and talked about extensively. Before I open my mouth–or roll my eyes or let out an exasperated sigh or yell at the politics on the TV screen or drive like I have to pee really bad or pretend I’m listening while I keep watching the game–before I do any of those traditional male-oriented things, I picture Sheri looking for her Cavalier keys. And I usually, increasingly, choose a different action.

 

I always be dating.

 

Not to make Sheri happy. But to succeed at marriage. And to ensure that I keep getting some.

 

So to my fellow members of the male gender, the next time you are complaining that you don’t feel enough support or that you aren’t being recognized for your sobriety achievement or that your wife keeps bringing up the past, picture me dancing to “Pink Pony Club” blaring simultaneously from two devices with a smirk of satisfaction on my face.

 

My selfishness in action. A.B.D.

 

Please take our five minute survey on attraction and relationship preferences. You won’t be asked to provide any identifying information, and the survey does not include questions about sensitive or embarrassing details. Existing research is outdated, and we need to understand our new, modern, attraction and relationship culture. We especially need young adult participants, so please share this survey with your adult kids. After you take it yourself, of course.

Take the Survey