On Selfishness

by Audrey Ference

It can be hard to be selfish. I realize that sentiment goes against the prevailing wisdom on the subject. Some kinds of selfishness are easy and crappy: not giving up your seat on the subway to a person with kids, taking the last cup of coffee and not making a fresh pot, not putting fresh toilet paper on the roll. There are millions of examples of easy, bad selfishness.

The kind of selfishness that is difficult is more complex. When you are in a relationship with someone, especially a long-term thing, there exists a tension between what is best for you, what is best for your partner, and what is best for you jointly. Negotiating the third of those is where it gets tricky because sometimes there’s a situation where what is best for your joint lives is not the same as what’s best for each individual.

For example, for any partnership to work, each half of it needs to make sure that they are taking care of themselves, doing what they need to do to stay sane and happy. Sometimes, this can feel selfish. If Frank has promised to go to the movies with me, but realizes that unless he has some time to write he’s going to be in a bad mood all week, backing out on the movies for some alone time might seem like a selfish decision, but ultimately is for the best for both of us.

Or if I’ve promised to go to a party at Frank’s friend’s house but at the last minute back out because I’m feeling overscheduled and tired, again, it seems like I’m being a dick but actually in the long run I’m making a decision that will benefit us both.
That can be really hard to negotiate, though. If you love someone, your instinct is to want to be self-sacrificing. It takes a while to figure out that sometimes you have to make a decision that feels selfish in the short run to do the right thing in the long run.
Also, sometimes there can be more than one reason to want to do something, and if even one of them is selfish, I tend to reject that option, even if it is in reality the better one. Example: a few weeks ago, Frank’s boss invited everyone at his work to accompany him to All Tomorrow’s Parties. He invited them on Tuesday for that weekend. Frank couldn’t decide whether to accept or not.

On the one hand, I totally didn’t want him to go because I’m a selfish jerk. I didn’t want to spend the weekend alone and it was kind of late for scaring up plans, and also I was jealous that he got to go to an awesome show and I wasn’t invited. To tell him not to go would be a completely asshole move, based on those motivations. But he was hesitant also because he’d had a really busy week already and was tired, had a couple other obligations he couldn’t get out of for the rest of the week.

If he’d gone, he would’ve spent the weekend not getting enough sleep and drinking a lot, and come back Monday morning exhausted and grumpy and hung over. I know this totally makes us sound like sad old people, but when Frank gets too tired out like that he gets really unhappy. So you know, for his own sake, it was probably not the best idea ever.

I should’ve just told him not to go, because I could see that he didn’t really want to, but making that decision just felt really selfish and jerky, because I knew I had other motivations, so I told him that he should do it. He didn’t end up going, but if he had and had come back a wreck, I would’ve felt bad for basically talking him into going as a reaction against my own selfish motives.

You see what I mean? This stuff can get awfully complicated. I’m still figuring it all out.  When I was younger, I thought that a desire to do the right thing in life was all it took to do the right thing, and I assumed that people who did mean stuff were acting out of some kind of inherent assholitude.

Now I realize that even figuring out what the right choice is can be complicated as all hell. Man, being a grownup is weird.