▸ Column · Late Republic era, Star Wars galaxy — domestic relationships and social dynamics translated into the language of that world, with Qui-Gon Jinn answering and Darth Maul cutting in.
QUI-GON JINN replies.
Replied to by Qui-Gon Jinn, with a rebuttal from Darth Maul.
The letter
My partner Todd and I have been together for two years. His closest childhood companion — they've known each other since they were small, on the same world — has made it obvious from the start that she can't stand me. At his last celebration she told the whole table that his former partner "actually laughed at his jokes," then spent the night talking past me like I wasn't there. Whenever I step away she leans in and stage-whispers things to Todd, and she's twice "forgotten" to save me a place at gatherings she organizes. Todd says that's just how she is, that I should try harder to win her over. I'm the only one doing the trying. Now they've both asked me to join their annual retreat — five days at a remote homestead, one shared space, me as the uninvited presence. Do I go and hold my ground, or stay behind and let her have him for the week? How do I handle a partner's oldest friend who treats me like a piece of furniture while my partner pretends not to see it?
Qui-Gon Jinn replies
The question you're asking — how to handle her — is not the question that wants answering. Your attention has fixed on this woman as the problem, and I understand why: she has been unkind, repeatedly and deliberately. But she isn't the one asking you to try harder. Todd is. And that is where something real is happening.
The Council and I disagreed often. The harder question was never "how do I get the Council to stop being the Council?" It was whether the people I was actually accountable to were still seeing what was real. Todd is accountable to you. He has handed you his homework and described it as your shortcoming. That is where your attention belongs, not on a woman who has been consistent about exactly who she is.
The retreat: I would not frame it as holding ground or ceding territory. That language belongs to battles, and battles are usually a sign that the wrong question is being fought over. Ask the simpler thing — not in a feared future, not five days from now in a shared house — in the conversation that hasn't happened yet, with the actual person in front of you tonight. Does he see it? Not abstractly, not "that's just how she is" — does he see you, being treated like a coat rack, and does it trouble him?
She has told you exactly who she is. Your partner has not yet told you who he is. That is the door actually worth standing at.
— Qui-Gon Jinn
Darth Maul weighs in
He would have you redirect your attention, release what you cannot control. That is the counsel of a man I killed — whose serenity did not keep him from the floor of a reactor shaft. I am alive. His peace is not a template I recommend.
She announced your inadequacy to a table of his people. She took your seat. She whispers in his ear while he watches you say nothing. That is not a personality quirk — that is power claimed while you stand there being patient. Go to the retreat. Say almost nothing. Let her fill the air and reveal herself. Endure. Outlast her.
But hear me plainly, from the bottom of the only life I know: do not make this woman your whole story. I built an existence from a single wound and spent years hunting a name I could not release. That is not survival. That is a slower way to lose.
— Darth Maul
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