Scientists Found Caves on Mars. Men Have Been Living in One for Years.
Scientists just announced they found caves on Mars.
(no really…they did… here is the article)
Their immediate reaction? “We should go live there.”
Not “let’s study this from a comfortable distance.” Not “interesting, let me think about this.”
No. Actual researchers, with PhDs, looked at a dark hole in the ground on a planet with no oxygen, no food, and an average temperature of -80 degrees Fahrenheit — and their first instinct was move in.
I need you to sit with that for a second.
Because I’ve met these men. I’ve been these men.
You could hand a man a perfectly good life — warm house, woman who loves him, children who haven’t completely given up on him yet — and somewhere in the back of his skull, a voice whispers: What if I just... went somewhere else entirely.
Not left. Not cheated. Not even consciously checked out.
Just... relocated. Psychologically. To a cave. On another planet. Where nobody can find him.
Scientists call this “astrobiology.” I call it Tuesday.
Here’s what the research actually says, and I’m not making any of this up:
Caves on Mars might be warmer and wetter underground than on the surface. More hospitable than anyone expected. Life might already be surviving down there — just microbial, just barely, just enough to technically count.
The scientists describing this? Were describing the average married man’s emotional interior.
Technically alive. Hidden from the surface. Surviving on minimal resources. Hostile to outside inspection.
One researcher literally said: “The worst place to live on Earth is actually the safest place to live on another planet.”
Brother. I’ve heard women say this about their husbands.
I was the cave.
Eighteen years of counseling other people’s marriages. Full-time translator of human dysfunction. Helped hundreds of couples find their way back to each other.
Meanwhile, at home, I was underground. Dark. Temperature-controlled. Nobody getting in, nothing getting out. Technically present. Completely inaccessible.
My ex-wife wasn’t looking for an astronaut. She was looking for a search party.
I didn’t give her one.
The scientists say they want to send robots into these caves first. Specialized equipment. Instruments designed to detect the faintest signs of life — things you couldn’t see with the naked eye. Chemical trails. Mineral residue. Biosignatures.
She already tried that. She called it asking how you’re doing.
You said “fine.”
The instruments registered nothing. The mission returned inconclusive. After enough failed attempts, you stop sending probes to places that never yield results.
This is not a metaphor I invented. This is your marriage.
The thing about planetary caves is that they’re actually full of life. The scientists were shocked. They expected nothing …harsh environment, no sunlight, no obvious reason for anything to survive.
Instead they found extraordinary biodiversity. Entire ecosystems. Things thriving in the dark that nobody knew existed.
You have feelings you’ve never named. Needs you’ve never voiced. A version of yourself that only comes out at 2 AM or after three beers or in a hospital waiting room.
The cave isn’t empty. It never was.
Your partner just doesn’t have the equipment to get down there. And you never threw down a rope.
One scientist …a woman, naturally …fell into a cave in 1994, got cave microbes in her eye, came out with pizza-sized bruises, and said she was “well and truly hooked.”
That’s a woman who tried to understand a dark, hostile environment and came back for more.
You have someone like this in your life. She keeps descending. She keeps getting hurt. She keeps coming back.
At some point, you have to ask yourself: How long do I expect her to spelunk before she decides the cave isn’t worth it?
The researchers are also investigating whether men could actually live in these Martian caves permanently. Radiation protection. Temperature regulation. Safety from the hostile surface.
The only problem: you can’t fully seal them off. Too many exits. Too much connection to the outside. You’d have to bring an inflatable habitat inside the cave …a home within the cave.
Which means: even if you go all the way to Mars, even if you find your perfect isolated subterranean fortress of solitude …you still have to build something livable. You still have to make it a home. You still have to do the interior work.
There is no planet far enough. There is no cave deep enough.
The man you’re running from came with you.
I know this because I tried every version of the cave.
Workaholic cave. Ministry cave. Achievement cave. Humor cave. The cave where you’re so busy helping everyone else that you never have to sit still long enough to feel anything.
They all have the same problem: you’re still in there. And eventually, the air runs out.
The scientists are excited. They should be. Space is extraordinary. The possibility that life finds a way in the darkest places is one of the most hopeful ideas in human history.
Apply that to yourself.
You survived things. You adapted. You found ways to keep going when the surface became uninhabitable. That’s not pathology …that’s engineering. The cave kept you alive.
But survival and living are not the same thing.
The cave was for the emergency. The cave was never supposed to be the destination.
The woman in your life isn’t asking you to abandon your defenses.
She’s asking you to let her past the entrance.
That’s it. That’s the whole request.
Not full exposure. Not every room. Not the parts that still don’t have names.
Just: let me past the entrance.
Mars will be there when you’re ready. The relationship might not.
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I love the analogy. And the humor and generosity with which you have written it. It causes me to remember my ex with some of the tenderness and understanding which I eventually, after about 20 years of standing at the mouth of the cave with all the spelunking gear many women have never possessed but still not one single thing to which to anchor it, convinced myself had been a projection of my own love and hope for him in the early years. It doesn’t cause me to want him back - he’s as deep in that cave as any man can go and has made living under those conditions such an art form, and has been down there so long, that, were he ever to be found, he would be unrecognizable and so adapted to the conditions as to no longer resemble an earthling. But I do appreciate that momentary softening your article allowed me.
Yep, I’ve sought out a caves in the past. Likely still do on occasion.
But some women also seek their own form of refuge / escape. I know one who prefers a castle with 3-foot granite walls. And a drawbridge that’s usually up.
Occasionally she’ll come out of the castle, and when she does she takes my breath away.
Anyway, males aren’t the only sex that seek isolation.
Just saying.