Have you ever heard of a ‘crazy ex-boyfriend’?

Spoiler alert: don’t read if you intend to read/watch “The Girl on the Train”

I just saw the film adaptation of the British bestseller “The Girl on the Train” and it made me see more clearly the utterly political aspect of the ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ trope. The film shows an alcoholic woman who is gaslighted by her (former) husband into thinking that she is prone to angry and violent outbursts during her drinking blackouts. The manipulation not only makes her doubt her sanity, but leads her to think she killed another woman. Although I do not really care for the thriller and crime story aspect of the film, I found it interesting because it resonates with the white western misogynist and racist ideal of emotional restraint that hurts so many people (the ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ trope, the ‘angry black woman’ trope, etc.). Emotions are political folks, and let’s pause for a second to thank second-wave feminists for pointing it out so clearly to us, despite all the shortcomings of their exclusionary universalism (and by ‘exclusionary universalism’ I mean that most second-wave feminists were white Western women, so hello racism, hello classism, hello lesbophobia, hello transphobia, you know the drill).

I read some study in psychology (yuk) somewhere (I might search for the exact reference later, bear with me now) explaining that success is more difficult to achieve and straining emotionally for individuals assigned female at birth (afabs, also known as ‘women’). The study asserted that afabs tend to attribute the failures they encounter in life to internal shortcomings. Conversely, they attribute their successes to outside circumstances (‘I do not really deserve this promotion, I got it just because there were no other candidates, hi hi’). Surprise surprise (noooot), amabs (individuals assigned male at birth, also ‘men’) do the opposite: when they fail, they tend to blame it on external factors such as unfortunate circumstances, incompetent colleagues, an unsupportive wife and the proverbial ‘skirt’s hem’ (if you knew Polish proverbs, you would know what I am referring to here :p). So when a relationship fails, or they cannot achieve their career goals, or if their child is sick too often, afabs will blame themselves and only themselves, and suffer identity crises thinking they are unworthy of love, or dumb, or bad mothers… The social construct of femininity in Western societies (the only ones I know) is intrinsically relational: being a woman mainly consists of centering your life around others – being sexy (for others to see), being nice (to others and preferably everyone), finding a partner, being a mother. And you are only a 'good' woman if you are sexy according to mainstream criteria of beauty (Whiteness! Thinness! Femmeness!), if your relationship is a successful long-term monogamous one with progeny, etc. 

That’s why women are particularly prone to blame themselves for failing or failed relationships. And when you add to the mix the pathologically low self-esteem and self-hate characterizing many widespread mental troubles and personality disorders (including depression, addiction, borderline personality disorder, etc.), you have a recipe for disaster, i.e. someone who will be easily manipulated into thinking they are the only ones to blame for a failed relationship and will hate themselves because of it.

The ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ trope is born out of emotionally stilted individuals leaving emotionally unstable individuals by making them think they are to blame for the failure of the relationship (and hence thinking that if they try hard enough and call enough times or show up enough times on the doorstep of a former flame, the latter might understand how committed they are to make it work and change their mind, hum hum).

Unsurprisingly, the emotionally stilted role is usually played by amabs, but it seems that the misogyny and Germanic/British upper-class ideal of emotional restraint dominating Western culture produces high numbers of emotionally constipated individuals of all genders… and the emotionally unstable individuals are usually afabs and more generally femmes. What I mean is that I (and many of the women that I know and love) were at some point those ‘crazy ex-girlfriends’ made to think that the failure of a relationship was entirely their fault (and hence pathologically adamant to show a former partner that they can change). 

It is one thing to leave someone and tell them you are leaving because you don’t love them anymore, or because the relationship is not working due to a mutual incompatibilité de caractères (en français dans le texte). It is a different story to leave someone by telling them that you leave them because of their shortcomings. It then becomes a recipe for enticing a deep and devastating identity crisis in the person you leave. And if, as in the film, that person is indeed someone with an already very low self-esteem, it is then easy to benefit from their feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. What I mean is that if an emotionally constipated individual does not want to share the responsibility for the failure of a relationship, the easiest way out is to say that their ex was crazy. And once the ex's deep feelings of self-hate and worthlessness have been stimulated in that way, said ex will most probably unwillingly play the part they have been assigned. 

On a more structural level, I think that the ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ trope enables emotionally stilted individuals who do not wish/are unable to confront their emotions (and the emotions of their (former) partners) to hurt the latter without being held accountable. The misogynistic and racist societies we live in facilitate this through producing a never-ending stream of sexist and racist cultural tropes such as the crazy ex-girlfriend, the angry black woman, the hysterical bourgeoise, the Emma Bovary... (to name only a few). Madness (often euphemised as ‘instability’) remains one of the easiest ways to discredit someone in today’s world. Have you ever heard of a ‘crazy ex-boyfriend’?