{"id":129709,"date":"2015-10-27T22:40:04","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T22:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/10\/27\/john-isnt-hiding-from-his-sexuality-exactly-2\/"},"modified":"2015-10-27T22:40:04","modified_gmt":"2015-10-27T22:40:04","slug":"john-isnt-hiding-from-his-sexuality-exactly-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/10\/27\/john-isnt-hiding-from-his-sexuality-exactly-2\/","title":{"rendered":"John isn\u2019t hiding from his sexuality, exactly. It\u2019s so much more complex than that."},"content":{"rendered":"

caitlinisactuallyawritersname<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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may-shepard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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monikakrasnorada<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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caitlinisactuallyawritersname<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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(I just had a conversation with Katie @therealmartinsgrrrl<\/a> that is fucking me up so hard right now.)<\/p>\n

John Watson is a man who is a study in contradictions. He\u2019s a soldier and a doctor, yes, we all know that. But he\u2019s so much more complex than that shorthand lets on.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a man who has a deep seated compulsion to care for and nurture others, yet has studiously avoid forming deep personal connections well into his forties. He\u2019s pleasant and polite on the surface, but scratch past that and he\u2019s a bit difficult, a bit salty and surly and not always a very nice person. He\u2019s a friendly person that doesn\u2019t have any friends. Not real ones.<\/p>\n

The caretaking bit is an ingenious move. It\u2019s a control thing, it\u2019s a way of being in charge of every situation, of never being at anyone else\u2019s mercy, of never being the vulnerable or needy one. I know this because I do this. I literally have made a career out of it, of never ever revealing myself yet focusing my attention and caretaking on many others. People like me, we like to see ourselves as the good ones, as the tireless givers, maybe even sometimes as martyrs.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not always good people, though. Not necessarily. What we are, are people deathly afraid of being vulnerable, of being on the other end of that equation. Because needing others is a surefire way of getting hurt, and hurt badly.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along the line, probably early in life, John Watson got badly let down by someone he depended on. Fanon often lays the blame at the feet of alcoholism running through the Watson clan (and as the adult child and grandchild of alcoholics, I personally tend towards this view.) Perhaps is was poverty, not of the grinding sort but the everyday, not-enough-money, working-two-jobs sort that tends to let kids\u2019s needs slip through the cracks. Perhaps it was just a combination of a sensitive temperament and a home life that just didn\u2019t have room for those kinds of needs.<\/p>\n

Whatever happened, it made John Watson shut down the parts of him that needed, made him sublimate that basic desire for connection into caretaking, into doctoring, into healing the wounded, and in a war theater, no less, an arena that cranked the stakes up to do-or-die and left no room for emotions or vulnerability.<\/p>\n

(Insert\u00a0\u201cAnd whatever the hell happened with John and Sholto\u201d somewhere in here.)<\/p>\n

But then\u2026Sherlock. Why Sherlock? Why anyone, honestly? Whatever the reason, something about this strange, strange man awakens something so long dormant in John that he probably thought it didn\u2019t even exist anymore. A feeling of needing. Of wanting. Of a desire for connection so deep and terrifying it hurts to much to contemplate.<\/p>\n

John dates all these women in the interim. He probably sleeps with most of them at some point. But none of them are Sherlock. None of them reach that deep place of needing, of wanting to be understood. Not even close.<\/p>\n

(And then Sherlock goes and does the worst possible thing and leaves him behind. Good God. No wonder John is traumatized and wounded and still angry as fuck three years later. Just think of the magnitude of that betrayal, of the one person you allow yourself to need wholeheartedly leaving you behind. It\u2019s hard to even think about for too long.)<\/p>\n

And even after all that, John\u2019s need for connection to Sherlock is so great he doesn\u2019t even hold out a week before he\u2019s back in his orbit.<\/p>\n

And that, I think, is what John is running from, what he can\u2019t yet deal with, why he marries Mary even after Sherlock\u2019s return. He\u2019s not hiding from his sexual attractions. Well, maybe he is, just a little, but much more than that he\u2019s hiding from the enormity of his own confusing and overwhelming emotional need, and the power it gives Sherlock over him, the way it takes away John\u2019s control and ability to keep another at remove.<\/p>\n

At the end of it all it\u2019s not his orientation, but his desire for love and acceptance and true companionship from Sherlock Holmes, that are the actual skeletons in John\u2019s closet.<\/p>\n

(Am I projecting? God yes. It\u2019s late and it\u2019s tumblr and I\u2019ll ramble if I want to.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

@may-shepard<\/a> :0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is beautiful to me, especially as someone who is right there with you on the caretaking-as-intimacy-replacement. I don\u2019t do this all the time with everyone any more, but definitely it is a pattern.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why Sherlock\u2026he\u2019s got everything, doesn\u2019t he? He\u2019s got the brilliance and the danger and the adrenal stimulation but he\u2019s also got that thorny thorny hard to get along with, needs someone to help him with the mundane stuff, uh, stuff. He\u2019s high maintenance. Speaking as someone who follows the caretaker pattern, that particular combo has, in the past, been crack cocaine to me.\u00a0\u201cI am the only one who gets you. That guarantees that I\u2019m precious to you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

And John is precious to Sherlock, just as Sherlock is precious to John.<\/p>\n

This sounds vile but it\u2019s also so, so real. For me, this pattern was the foundation of the most insanely intense relationship of my adult life. Yeah maybe it\u2019s projection but I buy it. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

AHHHHHHHHH YES THIS. THIS THIS THIS.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Honestly, what we\u2019re describing here is the classic caretaker\/borderline-slash-narcissistic codependency paradigm.<\/p>\n

They would be a Chernobyl-level disaster in real life. Thank God it\u2019s fiction, so they can get their happily ever after.<\/p>\n

Why, no, we\u2019re not working out our collective neuroses here. I don\u2019t know why anyone would think that. *snerk*<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

caitlinisactuallyawritersname: may-shepard: monikakrasnorada: caitlinisactuallyawritersname: (I just had a conversation with Katie @therealmartinsgrrrl that is fucking me up so hard right now.) John Watson is a man who is a study in contradictions. He\u2019s a soldier and a doctor, yes, we all know that. But he\u2019s so much more complex than that shorthand lets on. He\u2019s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “John isn\u2019t hiding from his sexuality, exactly. It\u2019s so much more complex than that.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[129,9665,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}