Baby Reindeer: Second Thoughts

We All Have A Little Martha In Us

Last column I made a pretty good argument that we who identify as love addicts don’t need to identify with sad-sack stalker Martha in the hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer. She has a whole array of mental health disorders above and beyond what you and I deal with, I said. But I’m back with a rebuttal to my own argument: Just because Martha is certifiable, doesn’t mean we don’t identify with her. I think the reason the show has been such a success is that we do identify with her. Love addicts on some level see ourselves as unloveable. That’s part of why love addiction is so confounding and destructive: The only thing I want is the thing that deep down I believe I can never have.

But surely even “normies” can identify with feeling dowdy and pathetic and hopelessly infatuated with someone who doesn’t reciprocate. It is both classic love addiction and classic seventh grade. My friends tell me I’m attractive and my resume tells me I’m successful, but my mirror all too often tells me I have a monobrow, impending zits, and a head full of split ends. Amber Smith, the supermodel whose story appears in my book LOVE ADDICT, looks like, well, a supermodel. But she felt like a Martha. And it’s a pain any human can experience, not just an addict. Baby Reindeer is a hit for many of the same reasons Carrie — an outsized sad and lonely outsider whose humiliation is still relatable — is evergreen.

What’s the difference between “ugh, middle school was awful I just wanted to kill myself all the time” and actually sporting a toe-tag in the morgue? Why do some people end up being served with a restraining order or drinking themselves into oblivion, and others become accountants? If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you know I think the relevant piece is brain chemistry. The 6%-to-10% of the population — okay, let’s call it 8% of the population — with an addict brain don’t feel the effects of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and other happy hormones as readily as regular folks. We are on some level always starving for them. Affection Deficit Disorder, you could call it. So when these neurotransmitters do come rushing in, they feel fucking amazing. This is why crazy girls are crazy good in bed (or so I’ve been told.) We’ve been parched for a lifetime and you just gave us water. And when you take it away from us, we will do anything to get them back. Even self-defeating things. Even self-destructive things. (Come to think of it, mostly self-defeating and self-destructive things.)

But here’s the thing. Neither Carrie nor Baby Reindeer would have connected like they did if the other 92% of the population didn’t also relate. My current hypothesis is that, as with most things, there’s a continuum. Anyone can see themselves as that pathetic fat girl sitting on a bus bench staring up at that window. Or that butt of the high school joke. Abandonment, betrayal, heartbreak, loneliness, humiliation - they suck. You get sad, you get angry, you get drunk… you get over it. Unless you are a love addict, in which case you might kill yourself over it. Or you are a Martha or a Carrie, in which case you might kill someone else over it.

Now, there could be a cheerleader/football hero out there who never once felt lonely, unloved and pathetic. If so, I am both jealous of and sorry for you. After all, the linguistic root of pathetic, pathos, is also the root of empathy and compassion. Life would be poorer without them.