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walkingstackofbooks · 6 months ago

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Julian + Loneliness + Love: an essay

BASHIR: Wait. Quark, did you really mean all that? About Dax being my one last chance for true happiness?

In Change of Heart, Season 6, Julian really latches onto these words from Quark, leading us to half-a-season of having to painfully watch him become re-obsessed with Jadzia. Here, I’m going to examine how Julian perceives love – particularly romantic love -- as being that one, impossible-to-get thing that could actually make him happy, and why he might think that way about it.

First: a couple of things I learnt about in therapy that I think are pretty relevant to how Julian does life.

(Please note I am not a professional – my therapist is wonderful and I’ve tried to re-research this too, but I might well have misunderstood or forgotten something, so please don’t just take my word on it! The descriptions of the concepts are also rather simplistic in the interests of time.)

Drive, threat, and self-soothing systems

In ideal conditions: we will be seeking out satisfaction from our lives through our drive system. There will be things we want in life that will give us purpose and make us happy, and we’ll move towards our goals because we *want* to.

At times, we’ll face things that are difficult, and when we are in danger, our threat system kicks in to warn us of it and get us away. The old fight-flight-freeze-fawn thing; our limbic system takes control, so that we don’t waste time *processing* things and thinking through everything logically -- we need to get away from that sabre-toothed tiger automatically, not stand there thinking about it!

Once the threat has gone away, our soothing system kicks in to neutralise the threat system. As we go through life, we learn from our experiences how to better self-soothe, and gradually add to that system.

However, it doesn’t always work out that way and my best guess is that Julian’s system is going to be heavily threat-based with very little soothing.

I imagine that post-enhancements as a kid, he did manage to develop his drive system, finding things he enjoyed doing and chasing after them just because he wanted to. However, his parents’ very high expectations probably meant that even then, his threat system was conditioned to think of *failure* as a threat, and so even from a young age, Julian’s threat system has been highly active in being a driving force behind his ambition - undermining his *actual* drive system.

Then, of course, he learnt about his enhancements, meaning that he becomes preoccupied with not being discovered -- and from this moment on, his threat system is pretty permanently activated. He seems to find some relief in distraction: escapism through books, in his work, in tennis -- but he doesn’t have a way to soothe this threat, only ignore it.

By the time he arrives on DS9, I believe he has a few things in his actual drive system, including wanting to help people and seeking adventure. But he is also so used to his threat system being engaged that he doesn’t even notice how driven by fear he is -- and his soothing system is an absolute wreck, with minimal coping mechanisms.

Attachment style

There are four different attachment styles, as pictured above. These influence how you form and manage the relationships in your life -- in the image it says “partner”, but it’s also involved in your friendships and families.

As warned, this is a little simplistic, but basically your attachment style is formed by having a warm, consistent and loving relationship with your primary caregiver in infancy. Julian very much didn’t have that, and we know that from when he was very young he “knew he was a great disappointment to his parents” -- so I think it’s very likely he would fall into having a fearful attachment style, with both low self-esteem, and low trust in other people.

(Having a secure attachment with your caregiver also helps you develop good soothing strategies for your threat system! Another reason why his is so depleted…)

Attachment styles can change and improve, so I think that during his time at DS9 (maybe even during the Academy) as he begins to gain experiences of friends who do consistently choose him and with whom he is safe, he probably moves more towards the preoccupied category. But I do not think this man has ever made a *really* secure attachment in his life. 💔

I also don’t think he has ever examined this too deeply? Maybe after DBIP, hopefully some of his friends might have gone “that was a super fucked-up childhood you had there”, but I figure he probably attributes the way he approaches social situations to his autism (which due to his parents’ ableism, means he thinks “I’m doing socialising wrong and everyone else is doing it right so I should listen to everyone else and do it their way regardless of how I feel about it”) and so he doesn’t realise that actually his fear of being rejected and his craving for validation through meaningful relationships -- if he even recognises those feelings for what they are -- are unhealthy coping mechanisms that he could learn to shift into something more positive if he had the time and space and help of a professional.

His relationship with Palis was almost definitely a victim of this, imo. Even if he doesn’t realise it, he’s terrified that she will inevitably reject him (having a ridiculously catastrophic secret doesn’t help with this assumption, but being fearful-preoccupied also just lends him to believe that people are inevitably going to reject him) and so he makes his excuses and leaves her first.

Amatonormativity

Even if I hope that the 24th century is less amatonormative than now, I don’t think Julian has necessarily been able to benefit from that. Given how ableist his parents are, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think that they might be queerphobic too, or at the very least dismissive of any lifestyle that isn’t the same as theirs.

In addition, on DS9, his best friends are Miles O’Brien (who has always been very vocal about how happily married he is) and Jadzia Dax (who had been as happy as he was to be flirty and single and not tied down, until she found her One True Love, and got married), which wouldn’t exactly help discourage the notion of “romantic love = marriage = happiness”. So I think that Julian has definitely internalised all this, and – especially since he’s been taking cues from those around him how to act and what to think about social situations his entire life – he accepts this whole “you need to have a partner” thing as true for him, just because it’s been true for his friends.

I headcanon Julian as being somewhere on the aromantic spectrum, too (hovering around WTFromantic) -- but crucially, he has no idea. He genuinely struggles to tell the difference between platonic and romantic feelings and guesses how he feels a lot of the time, but since he doesn’t know that he's guessing, he really believes he's in love. And because he has never connected the dots that he’s aro, he assumes the disconnect between *his* experience of love and everyone else’s is just down to his autism, and therefore everyone else is right and he needs to follow their lead in finding happiness through romantic love.

We also know that he really likes old books like James Bond. (I headcanon that he finds pre-1990s fiction safer, because there is no chance that the villain is secretly going to be an augment all along, or any other anti-augment prejudice or micro-aggression in them.) So despite being a 24th century guy, he becomes steeped in these 20th century views -- and with him trying to figure out all the time what’s a “normal” way to act, both in a “not-an-augment” sense and a “not-autistic” sense, he’s internalised a fair amount of “what love really is” from these books which, like, isn’t always great to say the least.

Season 6

QUARK: You know what's really sad, what really keeps me awake at night? She's out of reach because we let her go. BASHIR: I suppose so. But some things just weren't meant to be. Evade. O'BRIEN: Julian, are you sure you want to-- QUARK: Chief, please. You know the rules. No coaching during a round. You're probably right. But what if that's a convenient rationalisation? What if deep down in our heart of hearts we both know she's something unique, something we may never see again. A chance at true happiness and we let her slip through our fingers.

And so we come back to this conversation. Quark is manipulating Julian to win the game of tongo, but whether or not he knows how deeply his words will cut, they leave a lasting impression upon Julian.

Quark calls Jadzia “a chance at true happiness”, but when Julian repeats those words later -- despite his perfect recall -- he describes Dax as being his “one last chance for true happiness”. And this, I think, is what really gets to him.

We’re deep into Season 6 -- Julian is not “happy”. He’s become depressed, despondent, weighted down by the war. It’s not been long since Statistical Probabilities -- is he watching the casualty count grow, the war continuing exactly as they had predicted for the time being? At this point in time, “happiness” feels like a pipe dream for him.

How long has it been since he has truly had a long stretch of contentment? Most people put it at pre-Dominion-camp, right? So he had a pretty long stretch of being happy and (incidentally) in a relationship with Leeta from the end of Season 3 until s05e07, and then a few months later, he was kidnapped – which makes me think that if he’s thinking back on the “good old days” of DS9, it’s quite likely he’s thinking of a time when he was in a relationship.

Julian comes from a background of believing that no-one would accept him for who he is. Even in Statistical Probabilities, among his friends, O’Brien and Sisko and Worf all openly discuss how augments should have restricted access to general society. And that’s just the augmentations: he also knows that his personality can be annoying and off-putting to many people. So he thinks that it would take an extraordinary person to actually like him and want him.

> Back in Season 2, when he was talking about Palis, he said “Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I think to myself, will I ever find anyone that wonderful again?” Quark describes Dax as similarly unique -- and I think that strikes a chord with Julian, causing him to think “I lost Palis, I’ve lost Leeta, I’ve lost Dax -- how many more extraordinary people can there be? Dax really was my last chance.”

Julian doesn’t properly understand his feelings. He’s used to relying on other people to help him figure out what they are and how he should react.So Quark asserting that Julian does still feel attracted to Jadzia and does resent Worf and that he should have tried harder with Jadzia is something he accepts. (Just like later on, when Vic tells him he should be moving on, he accepts that very easily, too.)

> His preoccupied attachment style and fear of loneliness also means that he gravitates towards social interaction and people being friendly to him. After this, and particularly after Jadzia’s death, he starts having a bit more time for Quark: Quark’s inclusion of him in this “we both like Jadzia and resent Worf” club does provide him with some of that relationship-ness he needs, and even though he isn’t quite on the same wavelength as him, Quark is making him feel seen and understood, so if he’s lonely and there’s no-one else, he’ll probably seek Quark out that bit more.

>> And come to think of it, we’ve definitely seen Miles leaving Julian behind at the bar (with no-one to talk to but Quark) to go home to his wife and kids, just reinforcing the people-with-relationships-get-to-be-happy thing.

So yeah: Julian’s actually feeling some really big feelings about his loneliness and unhappiness and wanting to feel better, but he ends up projecting all of this onto his lack of a relationship, and more specifically, that Dax is probably the last person he’s going to come across who would accept him so completely.

Which sucks, and is a really toxic attitude. We don’t see it change the way he treats Dax on-screen, but even so, there is a sense of misplaced entitlement: he’s entitled to be happy and therefore he should have been entitled to have Dax. And I hate that for him. But he really is deeply, deeply afraid that without being in a relationship with her, he’s never going to feel genuinely happy again.

(Yes, he has friends, and he enjoyed spending time with them, like in Take Me Out To The Holosuite. But remember -- his threat system is constantly on with his fear of loneliness, and he doesn’t have the skills to actually soothe that fear and put it to rest. What he can do is use his malformed coping mechanism of distraction -- distracting himself with his friends and holosuite games and so forth. And no doubt they do give him some true satisfaction and validation -- but since he doesn’t have an internal source of validation, he’s lost when they can’t provide.

And additionally, when they can’t provide it’s often because they’re in a relationship. In the beginning of Chrysalis this is made super obvious, when Miles can’t hang out, and Kira and Odo are going to Vic’s together, alone, and he just ends up in bed working. Until 3am. I can’t help thinking he was somewhat trying to avoid being alone with his thoughts.)

And then Jadzia dies. And he has to refind his footing in a Daxless world and I can only imagine that he just accepts the depression is here to stay forever now.

Season 7

And now Chrysalis happens and firstly: I’m not here to make excuses for him. Chrysalis was pretty fucked-up, and irl I don’t think I could be friends with him after what he did. (But also irl I’d have given him a real talking to and not just accepted his bs like everyone else did in this episode and I think with that he might have realised earlier what he was doing so idk. I think if you’re gonna judge Bashir for this episode you also have to judge everyone else for standing by…)

Anyway, Sarina appears, appearing to be his dream woman, and Julian’s just lost.

It doesn’t happen immediately. When Sarina shows up on his doorstep and falls asleep on him, he is so awkward and uncertain what to do. And in the morning he’s still unsure and hesitant as to what this all means.

I’m certainly nor blaming Sarina -- she’s figuring everything out even more than Julian is! -- but when she makes breakfast for him and sends him off with it, I figure that is a massive romance-cue for Julian, who’s given up on his dreams of domesticity. If his feelings are just platonic at this point, he figures out they must actually be romantic, because people who are in love live together and make breakfast for each other. And if he has already started falling for her, it’s a confirmation that he’s allowed to fall for her, because they’re already acting romantically, and she started it. (Again, not an excuse -- he should have known that she is in no position to make a move to start a relationship.)

He’s not thinking logically and pursuing a relationship with his drive system, he’s still being driven by his threat system and fear of loneliness, and being in a relationship is the only thing that he can imagine will soothe him. (I mean tbh this has been his problem all along -- possibly even back to Palis -- and ugh, it sucks, because even though in a way he kind of can’t help it and he’s clueless to why he wants a relationship so much, it’s also kind of on him that he’s never done some serious self-reflection, and the fact that his trauma has led to him acting like this doesn’t negate the fact that he’s taking advantage of a very vulnerable woman and hurting her.)

It’s been implied by a) Quark, b) Vic, c) Bond-type books and d) most recently, Ezri, that he wasn’t quick enough to get Jadzia and should have tried harder. So of course, once he starts thinking he’s in love with her and that a romantic relationship is what they need, he’s desperate to start as soon as possible so that he doesn’t lose his chance. Because if he thought Dax had been his last chance, how much more is he going to be thinking that Sarina is his real last chance?

Sarina is pretty similar to him, and he can empathise a lot with her. And he knows how augments are treated by the world. And he knows how difficult it’s been for him, finding someone to love. And so he projects his own loneliness and fears onto her, and figures that being in a relationship is what they both need, because she’s unlikely to be given many chances either (which is kind of a contradiction to “I need to act now in case I lose her”, but hey, limbic system. Rational brain has long been taken out.)

And then as soon as he realises she’s only gone along with him because she feels like she owes him, it clicks and it’s over. It doesn’t make up for what he’s done but it genuinely never occurred to him -- and what’s more, he knows it should have occurred to him, and he still can’t figure out why he wasn’t more rational about this all.

> Which is also why none of the other characters were allowed to have a proper talk with him this episode because I think that would have made him realise what he was doing. (I know Miles kind of tried with “Julian, she’s your patient”, but when Julian came back with his excuses, Miles didn’t exactly argue against them.)

> And also, how much do you think that her telling him “I don't even understand what love is. I don't understand anything… What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to feel? Tell me. I want to make you happy” resonates with him. Does he realise that these are the things he’s been asking himself his whole life, that this is actually how he’s been living his life and doing relationships this whole time. Are these actually a direct reflection of his thoughts about her: meeting with his friends, showing her off at dabo (he was always so proud of Leeta, remember?), that whole cliche of a romantic dinner… Are these all things he felt he was meant to do to make her happy and to show her what a romantic relationship is like?

And the thing is -- he does learn from this experience, and we see that he doesn’t try to rush in with Ezri when he starts getting feelings for her. (Yes, his learning shouldn’t have come at the cost of Sarina’s wellbeing, but it did, and I’m just going to accept that because he’s a fictional character and also I love him.) I don’t know if he got to the bottom of figuring out why he went so off-the-rails with Sarina. But clearly, it’s a mistake he doesn’t want to repeat. And I do want to give him some credit for that.

So let’s go on to Ezri.

BASHIR: Funny, I was just starting to... O'BRIEN: Starting to what? BASHIR: I don't know. But there was something-- something about her, wasn't there? Something that made me happy, anyway. She was this old soul and yet so young at heart, and… and-- I don't know what I'm saying.

I read this as a sort of admission that he doesn’t know what romantic love is. He knows he felt something, but I don’t know if he found something in what Sarina said that makes him doubt and wonder if it is love that he’s been feeling, or something else. But also, he leaves before O’Brien and Quark can comment, not asking for anyone to help figure out what he’s feeling. (Particularly as Quark’s made it obvious he thinks Julian must be in love with Dax, even if he doesn’t want Julian to be in love with Dax.)

And then when she returns, they begin their whole awkward dance around each other: though interestingly, as he’s talking about his inability to talk to her about his feelings in their eventual conversation, he sounds genuinely confused, and even distressed, when he says “I mean, I'm not usually like this. If I find someone attractive, I just-- I just tell them. I don't play these ridiculous games.” It seems he’s been experiencing some subconscious barrier whenever he’s wanted to bring his feelings up -- probably not dissimilar to most people’s hesitation to ask out a crush, but like he said, that’s not usually his style at all.

Presumably, this is because he’s worried that he could lose Ezri altogether if he makes a move and his feelings are unrequited, along with the knowledge that pursuing Sarina had been the complete wrong thing to do. Although again, maybe more subconsciously than not: when Ezri suggests they’ve both been hesitating because of their friendship, it seems to click for Julian as something that he’d not properly registered before.

Additionally, at this point in the show, losing people to the war seems inevitable. There’s been a long period with very little hope that either Ezri or Worf are alive, Kira, Odo and Garak are all off on Cardassia doing goodness-knows-what, until Odo returns with the Founders’ disease and again, there’s very little hope that he’ll survive. So it’s not really surprising that Julian finds himself unable to speak to Ezri about his feelings, given that this is the time least suited to losing friends to stupid mistakes like telling them you love them.

I definitely think there’s more to say about Ezri and Julian, but I feel like I’m losing the plot of what I’m saying a bit, so I’m going to stop there.

In summary:

Julian’s driven by his threat system: his fear-of-failure, fear-of-loneliness and fear-of-discovery/fear-of-rejection-for-being-an-augment. He doesn’t realise how much this affects him.

Julian thinks that other people/pre-90s media know about romance and love more than him and he should try to emulate them rather than figure out what he wants from them.

Julian doesn’t really understand his own feelings – his upbringing never gave him the chance to, and it hasn’t occurred to him to explore them and figure out what makes him tick and what doesn’t.

He’s deeply unhappy by season 6 and relying on easy but short-lasting waves of happiness to get by (e.g.holosuite adventures)

Because of all these things, when it is presented to him that there is a way to get lasting happiness, and that one way is to be in a relationship, he buys into it completely – falling for that idea probably far more than he actually falls for any of the ladies in question.

#Looooooong post #But worth the read I hope!#Julian Bashir #Julian Bashir meta #autistic julian bashir #aromantic julian bashir #genetically enhanced julian bashir #god this man needs therapy 😅#andi writes #my trek musings #wsb

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