Women By Men Pt. 1: I'd Have Done The Same As You

I grew up a weird and serious and consistently embarrassed child. I don't have really any memories before around 9 years old aside from one nightmare of my father dying by falling off a cruise ship. I think it stems from the shame and embarrassment and anxiety that I feel I was born with. In a lot of ways, I'm still that person – weird, embarrassed, nervous.

When I was younger, the scariest outcome for my life was that I'd be in an unhappy marriage. The idea of "settling" felt so tangible to me from just about when my memory starts. Coincidentally – or maybe not – I started listening to Death Cab For Cutie when I was about that same age. In 2008, I was 10 and Death Cab For Cutie put out Narrow Stairs.

"Cath..." is, to this day, my favorite Death Cab song. It's a song about watching a woman settle in a marriage out of fear and panic and pragmatism. It's not a song about wishing this woman would have chosen our protagonist, it's a song of pity and understanding. It's a song about this woman making a choice – as many women do – for her future first. It isn't romantic and it isn't beautiful. And it's worse because everybody can see it, in a pained smile and a hand me down dress, and everybody feels bad for her. Everybody is talking about how it won't last. Everybody will ask what happened to her. It's not anybody's fault this is happening, though. It's expectation. It's horrible.

When I was young, this made sense to me in a very tangible way. Maybe I didn't really get what being really in love was, but I did understand circumstance and I did understand being uncomfortable. It felt more real to me to think of myself feeling nervous with a man's hand on the small of my back than to think of myself as, say, Audrey Hepburn making out in the rain with the blonde man in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Feeling trapped and burdened by expectation felt very real. I'd been nervous for my entire life, why would it change at my wedding?

Maybe I would hope someone was watching and saying, "I'd have done the same as you." It feels so deeply empathetic to say I get it.

For me, this is the best kind of Ben Gibbard song. He's best when he's predominantly looking 0ut and not in. In these kinds of songs, he avoids some of the saccharine tendencies of his lyricism. This song is all observation. The second best kind of Ben Gibbard song is when he's talking about the failure of love. It's why I think all of his genuinely best songs are on Narrow Stairs and the Open Door EP. The best songs on Open Door are about being unable to commit in truth – sort of the other side of "Cath.." in narrative. Not looking at someone making a choice out of pressure and panic, but instead seeing yourself as the person who – to your own detriment – struggles to be in all or maybe the person who can't help but always be looking for who might, theoretically, be better than the person in front of them. Someone who refuses to make a choice out of the fear of being that rigid, unhappy woman at the alter.

Ben Gibbard doesn't write women in a particularly interesting way usually. They're mostly objects for affection – past or present, happy or not. His most iconic songs are from inside the brain of a young man who loves women in the deep and shallow ways young men love women. I've loved many of these songs in my life, but this woman at the alter is the one I remember best because she was the woman I could see myself as in this out of body experience. She was the woman I never wanted to be, but kind of expected I would become. It felt like knowing how I'd die but not knowing when. Not a matter of how, more a matter of who.

But then I broke up with my high school boyfriend. I was freshly 18 and in my first semester of college and, upon telling my mother, she told me that there aren't that many nice guys out there. I remember thinking about "Cath.." after that conversation and landing in opposition to the woman at the alter. I didn't want to close the door on men who could love me more. Not yet.

"Cath.." captures something gross and hard about the relationships and friendships that I've had as a straight woman who is friends with a lot of straight women and that's why I like it. It understands something horrible, but it doesn't offer an alternative – the latter being one of the great feats of the song. Men love to offer an alternative to a woman they view as suffering.

There is such a heavy expectation that looms over everything I do socially and romantically, especially as I've gone through adulthood. When people flippantly say, "are the straights okay?" or whatever in a quote tweet, I know that feeling beholden – and behaving as if beholden – to the expectation is what they're talking about. When you're unwilling to break away from these norms of overlooking obvious pain because of a fear of being alone, it seems insane. When you're unwilling to tell your friends what you really think, it seems insane. Unfortunately, one of the great hallmarks of being a woman, for me, is watching beautiful, interesting, wonderful women around me end up in relationships with people who hurt them. Hurt comes in new and exciting ways for every relationship.

Maybe it's disappointment in the relationship not following the timeline that they expected. Maybe it's emotional manipulation. Maybe it's abuse. Maybe it's cheating. It's so easy on the outside. It's easy to say you have a hard boundary about whatever it may be.

I'd never stay with a man who cheated on me. I'd never stay with a man who hit me. I'd never stay with a man who wouldn't marry me by age 30. Have any of you guys ever considered just being with a man who wants you? That's what I'd do.

For the person on the outside, it's hard to watch the initial pain being inflicted. Then there's a second pain in watching the forgiveness. If you watch the fear of being alone take over, it's hard to say anything. In these situations, it's clear how difficult it is to really say anything. An opinion can be offered, but, without a great amount of tact, alienation can be around the corner so instead whispers will be had between other friends. You know they'll whisper about you when you make the same mistakes. In some ways maybe you'll be grateful for that. We're all the same, but it's hard to see it that way in the moment.

I'd have done the same as you.

The other great feat of the song is that the song doesn't necessarily absolve the woman at the alter of her choice. Our narrator is understanding, but it's not presented without judgment. That, I think, is where I see the most realism in it.

I've asked my friends to overlook a lot of things when it comes to men I've loved– a long distance relationship that ended up standing in the way of making the most of college, a man I obviously wasn't all in on, a man who obviously wasn't all in on me, a man who tried too hard to get close to my friends, a man who was nice except when I was present.

The one that haunts me now comes to us in three parts.

Part one – standing in my kitchen, halloween makeup on my face and CTA Brown Line shaking the apartment behind us, telling my roommate and her boyfriend that I'd been sexually assaulted by a man I'd dated and been friends with for years. I feel bad for that version of me – drunk and sad in my half assed costume. I knew what had happened immediately. I looked at their uncertain and shocked faces. Maybe they weren't as shocked as they are in my memory.

Part two – I find myself convinced that we just need to work through this. I had never loved anybody the way I loved him. Or at least I'd never felt pulled to someone the way I felt pulled to him. Maybe that's the same thing when you're 22. Earlier before I'd see this man again, I looked at another close female friend while we sat at a bar and she nodded as I talked about all the things I found frustrating about him – he never listened, he always made me make decisions so nothing was ever his fault, he was always manipulating his friends into doing what he wanted. I didn't tell her the big thing, so she understood the way I understood when she went back to the same guy over and over. I'd see him later that night and somehow I'd convince myself that it was fine. Sexual violence wasn't the problem, the problem was actually that we weren't communicating. Or something like that. Whatever I told myself was easier than accepting this person I trusted had hurt me, so we got back together and I pushed it down.

Part three – I tell my roommate we were getting back together. Her face in this moment, even more than when I told her about the assault initially, is imprinted on my mind. She just looked at me and said, "are you sure?" And I think about that face more. A certain sort of concern and disappointment lives in that face and I don't know that it'll ever really leave me.

They'd have done the same as you. And I'd have done the same as you.

The fortunate thing, at the end of the day, is that the relationship didn't last to an alter and this time when I told my mom I had broken up with the man she asked if she could help just like all the other women who I had asked to overlook everything that he'd done to hurt me before.

Miranda Reinert is a music adjacent writer, zine maker, podcaster and law school drop out based in Chicago. Check out PDFs of most of my zines at the link on the top of the screen. Follow me on Twitter or Instagram or Bluesky to keep up on the next time I write about songs about women: @mirandareinert.  This blog does have a paid option and I would so appreciate any money you would be willing to throw me! You may also send me small bits of money at @miranda-reinert on venmo/on Paypal if you want. As always, thanks for reading!