About Relationship Advice and Wuthering Heights

Post 641:

            Hello brothers and sisters of this rampantly cloistered yet oddly well-adjusted and attractive YouTube channel community. Subscriptions are up. Still, tell your friends so we can be less cloistered but still have all those other things. There will be no trade-offs. There’s no such thing as trade-offs. Life taught me that.

            Today it’s conflict resolution time here at TylerHasWords, featuring Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights. I’m all about this book and Jane Eyre. For months I’ve been studying the texts to really push myself to new places in my own writing. I think it’s working. They really are both amazing works, rich in a 3D way. Maybe even 4D. 5D is reserved for Dan Brown, a man who puts Shakespeare in the shade.

Anyway, I’ve said it before, but some classics blow. Seriously, nothing to teach or show the reader about life or literature, but these books here do the deed. I’m Dude-Guy Bro-Dog from Texas and I live in Ohio; for me to be all about some Yorkshire ladies telling tales about Yorkshire stuff, it’s probably because there’s some transcendence going on. Can’t imagine I was the target audience back in the 1800s.

            I’ll be doing several videos on these two works, including comparisons to film and TV adaptations, but I wanted to do a quick hit today, maybe get into some fun relationship talk.

            I can tell this is exactly what you’ve been waiting for from me.

            First, let’s get into one of the standard moves. The old, “It’s not you, it’s me.” It has merit, despite being a cliché. I’ve used it and meant it genuinely. No, I didn’t say those exact words, but that was the heart of what I was trying to convey. Originality isn’t the most important thing when you’re looking for the door, so whatever. It’s not you it’s me can also be employed in moments of pusillanimous retreat, like a blanket covered with smallpox you cravenly toss to the other person as you run for the hills, screaming that you hope they stay warm. Come on, most of us have been wimps.

No judgment, but seriously, how could you?

Or you could go Heathcliff. He sort of does the other thing. They say honesty’s the best policy. Let’s see how that plays out. He’s not trying to make his love feel better. Not in any way I’ve seen. He says to Catherine in condemnation of her marriage to another man, “Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it—and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh God! Would you like to live your soul in the grave?”

Catherine sobs after this verbal smackdown from Heathcliff. Keep in mind, they somehow still love the crap out of each other at this point, but it ain’t really been smooth sailing.

            Let’s go over this. He says that all the forces of nature and the Divine couldn’t have kept them from each other. Just her bad choice. He seems more than eager to inform her that she is the agent of his destruction and her own, and it’s pretty important she knows it until it eats away at her soul. Oh, also, Catherine, I was better than you to start so the fall is worse for me. So feel guilty about that too. Oh also, Catherine, your death will pretty much be the cause of my own inner death, so take that to the pearly gates.

            I know. This book is so frigging intense. I love it.

            But, as far as lessons, maybe don’t go full Heathcliff when you’re sifting through relationship wreckage. I’d advise as much honesty as possible without evoking graveyard imagery or the cosmic movers. The passion is admirable here, and naked passion is probably better than some limp-wristed getaway and an It’s not you it’s me, but it could be that there’s something in-between.

            Let’s call it the honest enough approach. That way when someone asks how it went, you can say you were “honest enough.”

            Truth is, I’m still not sure the right or wrong of these things, but I do know this. Reading Wuthering Heights will make you feel like a pansy who is a professional at hiding your feelings.

            These folks ain’t messing around.

            Nor should I. The next time I’m on that Farmers dating app, straight ahead all the way. You know, unless it makes things weird.

            Cheers y’all. More crazytown from the Bronte Sisters to come.

            See you after.