Mathematical models are a core idea in any engineering discipline, and during my education I had begun to interpret much of the world using the concept. A model is just a description of the dynamics influencing cause and effect for real world situations. With an accurate model, you can predict what will happen given certain conditions. For example, thanks to Newton’s calculus, we can predict the arc that a ball’s trajectory will follow if thrown with a given speed and angle.
Models are simplifications of the world, meaning they are technically wrong. They don’t account for all of the relevant variables. The arc that Newton describes ignores wind resistance, spin, and the changing strength of gravity with altitude. But correctness isn’t an issue, as long as the problem you are trying to solve is as simple as the model being used to solve it. Accurate is less important than accurate enough.
However, Newton’s arc doesn’t work particularly well for a badminton shuttlecock in a hurricane crosswind. Once a problem is more complicated, you need a more complicated model to achieve the required accuracy. Complicated models are often built up from simpler models. By combining two together you get a better descriptor of the world. Combine Newton’s arc with drag from the crosswind, and your predictions will be a little closer to reality.
I used the idea of built up models to make sense of paradoxes in the world. When two apparently contradictory ideas seemed to be true, but in separate circumstances, I would look for the more nuanced perspective, or more complicated model, that allowed for both. But some of those paradoxes were quite difficult to resolve.
Early on in my college experience the #MeToo movement gained significant traction on social media. Awareness of sexual assault perpetrated by men toward women in the workplace and other areas skyrocketed, which seemed like a good thing. As a victim of sexual assault myself, I was pleased to see some men, while expectably fewer, begin to speak up as well. But cancel culture swiftly attacked, accusing many of them for diminishing the plight of women by sharing their own experience. Support for male victims was not to be found. I observed virulent conversations in person and online with deep confusion while my mental models of the world tried to catch up. Women were certainly bringing attention to a major issue that needed it. But if the issue was sexual assault, why was the experience of male victims irrelevant to the conversation? What was so frightening about their voices add to the movement?
One model however became clear, underlined, and written in bold letters: as a straight, white, “successful” man in the politicized American climate, anything I did that seemed even remotely inappropriate risked the wrath of public defamation and legal action, even if I exercised extreme caution and harbored no malintent. After being told enough times that people who looked like me were responsible for everything bad in the world, I began to believe they were talking specifically about me, and subconsciously I worried that it might be true.
I became hyper sensitive to sharing any semi-private space with a woman who wasn’t my wife. For the most part I pretended that anyone who wasn’t an adult didn’t exist, unless they were the child of someone I was already close to. I gave less and less attention to the many women who had been my friends before getting married, and I avoided seeing them unless Selena was also present. After some early career success, when people would solicit my advice, I brought a reticence to mentoring women that I did not have for men.
I learned from both my secular and religious communities that getting too close to women was dangerous, because they seemed to believe I was dangerous. My opportunity to prove that society was wrong about me would eventually come. I wasn’t going to succeed.
The pair of friends I had gone camping with when my elbow first started showing symptoms were sisters. You’d be hard pressed to find better people, but they terrified me. Especially the younger of the two, who I met first.
My change in religious perspective altered the nature of every relationship I had. Most of my friends had been a part of the church, and there was now a divide between us. My local church community had many wonderful people in it, but I no longer felt comfortable being with them. Spending time with my family was already a challenge, and when Selena fell out of my life it became harder. Within a period of months I lost confidence and closeness with nearly my entire support structure. I felt very alone.
Becoming Aliza’s friend was an accident. We met circumstantially at the local climbing gym, a place I had been going to off and on for years. Provo is a university town, and most of the climbing population draws from the students. I felt I had outgrown the demographic, but I also wanted something to distract myself and people to climb with. I was willing to take what I could get.
The night we met I offered her a ride home after learning she’d be taking the bus. As a recently separated man ten years older than the college freshman sitting in my passenger seat, my defense system was in high alert and I was more than a little tense. This situation reeked of danger, but I felt like it would be wrong to leave her waiting in the dark. Her dorm was only a short detour off my own route.
As we talked, she casually mentioned the annoyance she felt at the religiosity of her new university. She had also been raised Mormon and no longer believed in the faith, but had chosen to attend my alma mater and Mormonism’s flagship university for financial reasons nonetheless. With her disclosure I felt safe enough to give a cursory overview of my own story. For some reason it seemed like the right thing to do. I was woefully insecure doing so at the time, but to my surprise, she didn’t seem to care much. Why had I been so concerned?
We began climbing together somewhat regularly. She invited me to a weekly open mic where she would sing and I started going. Aliza is a Hebrew name for happiness, and she delivered on her namesake. I had never enjoyed spending time with anyone as much as her, and it scared the shit out of me. I was afraid that any hint of romance between us would be totally inappropriate. But the more time we were together, the less I wanted to be just a friend.
My internal emotional world was a roiling sea of confusion, and I didn’t trust anything I was feeling. I thought the attraction I had to this woman must be the result of my brain circuitry going haywire in the aftermath of my marriage falling apart. I was petrified at the idea that I might make some misstep in her regard because I considered my emotions unreliable at best, immoral at worst. I simply did not trust myself. Just as terrifying was the thought that I might do nothing wrong, but be seen as a predator anyway. How could I prevent this friendship from becoming a problem?
The building sense of conflict drove me to create distance between the two of us. I started asking if she knew others who wanted to join our climbing sessions. I made a point of asking about her dating life, layering in the assumption that she’d be dating other men. I discussed the people I was dating myself, people who were definitively not her. I used the distance to run from my fear.
When I first met the woman who would become my mother-in-law, years before meeting Aliza, the woman doted on me. This was a welcome contrast with the parents of my high school love interests, who seemed not to care much about my existence. Being appreciated and accepted went a long way toward gaining my favor. Selena was still on her mission, but word had spread and connections had been made. I was flying through Boston and decided to take a longer layover to spend some time with her family.