Identity

Recently, I got into a very interesting discussion about the nature of identity with a good friend of mine. She's in the process of apartment hunting in a new city and took her ex-boyfriend along for the ride with her. Somewhere during the myriad apartment visits through the day, he comments on how she's weak because she's changing how she presents herself to the renters. If they're scholarly, she'd discuss her education endeavors, if they're pet owners she talked proudly about her dog, and so on. He ended up getting so far under her skin, that she texted me about it, knowing I'd be up for a good discussion and the chance to give her ex a verbal bitchslapping he'd never seen the likes of before.

So what is identity? Really, it can be anything that has meaning to us. Myself, I'm male, educated, Caucasian, middle class, dominant, athletic, overweight, intellectual, academic... the list could go on and on and on if I let it. However, what really gives any of these identities meaning? That meaning comes from the fact that there are people that are not these identities. Being male would not matter if there were no females. Or perhaps, more salient for this blog, being dominant would not matter if there were no submissives.

So, building off the assumption that identity is as much about who we aren't as who we are, I want to take a look at how identity is performed. From a theoretical perspective, every social interaction we have is a performance, everyone is playing a role. Our success at playing that role, essentially managing other's perspectives of ourselves, is determined by our ability to gauge what others want to see from us and our ability to give it to them. So my friend the apartment hunter was not being weak, but rather doing her best to gain a place to live. She was performing and presenting different aspects of herself in order to maximize the chance of finding housing. Simply because she chose to emphasize her scholarly side to one couple and not her love for her dog, does not lessen any of the other identities she has, rather it shows shrewd use of them to manage her surroundings. Sadly, her ex did not see it that way. The most he contributed to the rest of the discussion from this point was a half-grunted "huh?".

This discussion got me thinking about how I perform my own identities. If I had an evil bone in my body, I would make a good con artist. I'm an excellent liar and love the thrill of the game, yet those pesky morals get in the way. Over the years though, I wonder if I've gotten too good at managing my identity because I often struggle to really define which ones represent my core. I get so wrapped up in managing other's expectations of me, that I started to feel that I was giving up parts of myself.

My relationship with laerie is a perfect example. When I first met her, I was fresh from my initial forays into research on BDSM and was debating whether it was a lifestyle for me or not. However, she was so innocent, so naive, I knew that I could not expose that side of me to her, at least not yet. Rather, I played up my dominant side through confidence and charisma. But even that waned in the face of her love for her ex - in retrospect, she was far from ready to be moving on. Regardless, I knew that she had the potential to be everything I wanted in a partner and I was not willing to give up on her just because the road ahead was filled with obstacles. So I adapted again. I stressed my sweet, caring, patient nature. I hid my dominant urges deep inside and found Zen calmness that I never knew I was capable of.

Despite my ability to give her what she seemed to want, something was missing from our relationship. We just never had that spark. Even after four years, when we finally got around to having that brutally honest conversation about desires, it was still hard to find that passion. I was trying to be the dominant she wanted, not the dominant I was. Only in the last month, have I truly been able to begin stripping away all the filters and get out of my own head and actually be myself, in all my glory. And it's been amazing. So there is a middle ground out there somewhere between what I preach - managing your identities to make the most out of social performances - and the reticence of my friend's ex to change his identity at all. The moral of the story: don't let anyone strip you of your core identities, even yourself.