#here:)

Hmm. Okay. I’m just going to come right out and admit that I do not admire Yoko the way many people here do. That said, I think she’s a fascinating character and tbh I relate to her quite a bit. However, I’ve done a fuck ton of work on myself to move away from the very qualities she seems to lean into. As is true for all of us, our traumas shape the coping strategies we develop to survive, and those strategies often become deeply ingrained defense mechanisms. These defense mechanisms can be incredibly effective at protecting the self from fear, shame, and vulnerability in the short term, which is exactly why we hold onto them even when they become maladaptive. I’m not saying anything that you wouldn’t learn in an introductory psychology course, but I want to make it clear that my opinion comes from a place of empathy rather than contempt.

I’m first going to touch on Yoko’s approach to art bc I think it is both really interesting and really informative. I am of the opinion that art should make you think, and Yoko’s most certainly accomplishes this. Her work operates by setting up a situation and requiring the viewer to engage with it on her terms— you can’t just passively absorb it, you have to participate in the structure she’s created. In that sense, her art feels less like straightforward self-expression and more like the careful construction of a controlled environment in which other people are compelled to confront an idea. Of course, she can’t *actually* control how anyone responds to that idea, and I think that tension — between constructing a situation and the reality that she cannot control the outcome — is a very curious mirror of her relationship with John. Is this a coincidence, or is it The Whole Point of the performance art piece that is JohnandYoko?

That same impulse toward imposing structure on an unpredictable world appears more explicitly in Yoko’s writing. Yoko has been pretty up front about her belief that men and women possess fundamentally different qualities, a kind of spiritualized gender essentialism that was fairly common in certain corners of second-wave feminism (and it’s frankly a plague on us all). These ideals grow from a desire to make sense of one’s role in society, BUT they often slide into territory that’s reductive and harmful. And, of course, the beliefs we hold about the world inevitably shape how we relate to the people in it— Yoko’s most definitely inform how she shows up in her relationship with John (and vice versa).

In that context, the dynamic between them makes a lot of sense. I do not think either of them are Bad People (we as humans love to shove others into categories like “bad” and “good” to cope with a complex and contradictory reality, but such black and white thinking is both imprecise and harmful), but I DO think they were quite bad *for each other*. John and Yoko were attracted to the very qualities in one another that ultimately made their dynamic so unsustainable. John wanted a mommy and Yoko wanted a baby; the dynamic gave her a sense of control in an uncontrollable world and made him feel safe amidst profound insecurity. And, at least at first, it worked. Their respective vulnerabilities slotted neatly into the roles the other was unconsciously casting.

As I mentioned earlier, our defense mechanisms exist to protect the ego, and both of their egos were being actively reinforced within this relationship (certainly at the beginning of it). But the problem with ego defenses is that the very structures that protect us from fear are often the same ones that prevent real growth; we cling to what reassures us even when it limits us. So it comes as no great surprise to me that, under the influence of known ego-killer LSD and in the midst of personal crisis, John called Yoko and together they “rebuilt his ego,” which goes a long way toward explaining the intensity of their attachment. The relationship as we know it was born out of that moment of psychological reconstruction.

The thing is, I do believe they “loved” each other, the way it is easy to “love” what affirms us (and reject what makes us question ourselves). But the attachment between them formed very quickly and under unusual psychological circumstances. It seems to have been an ego-driven love built around affirmation rather than shared experience. And without a solid foundation, relationships struggle to withstand the ordinary pressures of time and change. In that sense, I think the whole thing was kind of doomed from the start. Not in spite of that intense mutual attachment, but bc of it.

I think this might explain some of the more abhorrent behavior that we see from both of them as the years go by. Just as John resented Julia for failing to embody the idealized mother he imagined, and just as he resented Mimi for her authority, he grew to resent Yoko. I do think he intentionally humiliated her as a means of expressing this resentment and disappointment, much the way a child lashes out at a parent who no longer matches the ideal they once relied on, while simultaneously asserting independence from that parent’s control. And Yoko seems to have resented John bc she *couldn’t* actually control him. If control was the mechanism through which the relationship made her world feel manageable, his resistance would have been deeply destabilizing, so she doubled down. The dynamic that once sustained them eventually became a source of frustration for both. Neither were able to live up to the roles they had cast each other in, and that kind of disillusionment is deeply painful and difficult to accept. There is a reason many people stay in unhealthy relationships for a long time— fear.

In spite of this likely wildly unfulfilling dynamic, the egos that drew them together kept them together. The public presentation of JohnandYoko was so insistent, and so central to how they positioned themselves in the world, that abandoning it would have meant admitting a kind of personal and artistic failure. Their relationship had become more than a private bond— it was a myth that they constructed together and performed for the world. To dismantle it would have been humiliating, an enormous blow to both of their egos. And yet, ironically, that moment of ego collapse might have created the conditions for real personal growth.