Your Jealous Boyfriend Is Obsessed with the DSA

In 2010, Barack Obama was signing the Affordable Care Act into law, and I was losing my virginity. Crybaby– my boyfriend, not Obama– was twenty-one. I was seventeen and was his first girlfriend, but not his first time. He liked everything about me as a static concept, which was inconvenient since I wasn’t done figuring out who I wanted to be.

We had an immediate connection, but I was just starting university in a different city. Crybaby called me every morning and blew kisses over the phone to wake me up. He held me and cried the first time he said he loved me. Feeling everything so deeply was part of what I loved about him, but his depth wasn’t limited to love. While we were together, I was going through the existential crisis of trying to find my life’s purpose and was unhappy in every one of my classes. After my first semester, I told him I wanted to drop out entirely, write songs, and sing on a stage. His reaction was more visceral than my parents’.

This year has been great year for the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America. Always, always, always a bridesmaid and never a serious political threat, they’ve known how to strategically rise to a moment that mainstream Democrats haven’t known how to face. It’s never been enough for a candidate to just not be Trump. You’d think the Democrats would have learned that lesson ten years ago.

Crybaby hadn’t had many lessons before me. Neither had I. Possessiveness can feel like a demonstration of love when you’re young. One of the worst fights we ever had was about what our economic future would look like if I changed careers. I remember thinking, “at least he sees a future with me.” It was as if he could see a clear path ahead of us and all the bad guys waiting to sabotage it along the way. All I had to do was trust him.

Though 2010 was a great year for the advancement of American healthcare (depending on who you ask), the DSA claimed it was the first year of significant growth for them in over a decade– a response to the Obama administration’s moderation. Funny how what was viewed as the Democratic party’s success could be spun into the dissatisfaction needed to fuel an opposition’s growth. It would still be a few years before Bernie would create some wiggle room for the Squad, though mainstream Democrats would still consider them an exception.

Back then, I was considerably more concerned with my boyfriend’s anger management than with the ideological fissures of the American left. I became closer with a musician friend, and we’d spend time adding instruments to whatever lyrics I had scribbled in the margins of my notebooks. Crybaby wasn’t musically inclined and couldn’t imagine a world in which I’d do anything without him.

Jealousy is seductive. It turns uncertainty into certainty. You don’t have to wonder why something hurts when there’s something to blame. What was more frustrating was that sometimes there was danger. Men did flirt with me. I did eventually leave him. His fears weren’t invented, but he was incapable of distinguishing between a threat and my own free will.

Years later, as Israel became the DSA’s only clear foreign policy issue, I started recognizing something familiar: the comfort of knowing who the bad guy was. That’s the real danger of the DSA. Inequality is real. Billionaires do have more power than most citizens. Palestinians really do suffer, and yes, that suffering is avoidable. That doesn’t mean every explanation of these problems is correct. Crybaby’s thesis was that if I really loved him, I wouldn’t need anything outside of him. Similarly, if you really care about justice, you should accept the DSA’s definition of justice.

I left Crybaby after a year. I loved him, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make him see it. That was the part his theory couldn’t explain. We broke up not because I didn’t love him, but because the person I wanted to become couldn’t grow inside that relationship. When I started dating a mutual friend years later, I imagine Crybaby thought he’d been right all along.