▸ Column · Modern surveillance-and-spectacle age — the manufactured-icon present where being watched is mistaken for being loved.
HOMELANDER replies.
Replied to by Homelander, with a rebuttal from Omni-Man.
The letter
Two years in with my boyfriend Marcus, and for the last eight months he's appointed himself the screener of my phone — every text that comes in, he reads before I'm allowed to answer it. It started after his company's holiday party, where I spent maybe twelve minutes talking fantasy football with a guy named Derek, which in Marcus's retelling has become evidence I was "too friendly." Last week my old roommate Priya messaged about a yoga class, and Marcus hovered over my shoulder interrogating me about why she'd put a laughing emoji before I'd typed a single word back. When I say that checking isn't trust, it's surveillance, he flips it: now I'm "defensive," now I'm "obviously hiding something." I've done nothing. And still I hear myself apologizing just to make the questioning stop. Can I draw a hard line without detonating the whole relationship — or is it already too late for that?
Homelander replies
Here's the thing nobody's going to say to you as plainly as I will: the phone isn't the problem. The apology is. Every time you say sorry to make the questioning stop, you hand him the leash a little further. He's learned the math. Distress in, compliance out. That's not love — that's a vending machine, and you taught it the price.
And listen, I know the man on his side of this. The one who reads the messages, who needs to know who put the little laughing face. That's not strength. That's terror wearing a badge. He checks because he's certain that the second he looks away, you'll find someone better — and people can smell that kind of fear on you. I've smelled it on myself. I've watched a room screaming my name and still wondered who in it was about to leave.
So: stop apologizing. Not loudly. Just — stop. Be calm, be unbothered, type your reply to Priya while he's mid-sentence. Don't argue the surveillance; arguing tells him it works. The real question is the only one that matters — would you still want him if he never once needed you afraid? Answer that honestly. Then you'll know whether there's a relationship here or just a guard and a fence.
— Homelander
Omni-Man weighs in
John, you almost said it, and then you flinched — because you'd have been describing yourself. You called the man "terror wearing a badge" and counseled her to stay calm and outlast him. Think. This is not a bond. It is a cage with a frightened jailer, and your advice teaches her to be a quieter prisoner.
I do not tell people to leave those they love. I learned the cost of the clean cut over my own son. But Marcus is not her blood, and what he calls love is a man training her to fear him. I nearly taught my Debbie that lesson. Walk out. That door is the strong thing — not the weak one wearing strength's coat. You'd know the difference, John, if you'd ever once stood on the loving side of it.
— Omni-Man
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