Ghosted by a Hero, Saved by a God

The Ariadne Myth Retold

Dionysus spills the wine

I met my wife, Ariadne, because she had been deserted. I think mortals now call it “ghosting,” but the act of a sudden ceasing of all communication and contact has been around since antiquity.

Ariadne woke up, only to see her then lover, Theseus, sailing off after she had sacrificed quite a bit for him. Theseus had abandoned her even though she’d given him tools to escape from the Labyrinth on her family’s ancestral island, Crete. Theseus was supposed to die there, trapped in one of those never-ending corridors. It was his duty as a sacrifice for Ariadne’s half-brother in residence—the Minotaur locked away in the Labyrinth.

There was a long-standing gentleman’s agreement between Ariadne’s father, King Minos, and Theseus’s father, King Aegeus, which required that King Aegeus send seven young men and seven young maidens every year to King Minos’ Labyrinth as tributes. These tributes were retribution for King Minos’ son, who had died during some games that were organized in King Aegeus’s kingdom years before.

One year, Theseus volunteered to go and slay the ferocious beast to put an end to the whole nasty exchange. He promised his father, King Aegeus, that should he succeed, the returning boat would sail back with white flags, and if he should fail, the boat would sail back with black flags.

To Theseus’s credit, he did manage to slay the Minotaur. Quite a feat considering the half-bull-half-man beast had, from a young age, started a diet that consisted solely of devouring humans. But Theseus would be a desiccated skeleton in that network of endless twists had it not been for Ariadne. Before he ventured in, she had given him a ball of twine to navigate out of that death trap and a sword to slay her half-sibling. Family or not, the Minotaur was a ferocious monster and, as much I hate to admit, I think Theseus gave Ariadne the fanny flutters. The things we do in the name of lust...

After the victorious Theseus escaped from the Labyrinth with the twine, the two sailed off as young lovers do without heed to things like, say, genuine commitment or long-term compatibility. On the way back to Athens, Theseus’s home, their ship made a pit stop on the island of Naxos. And instead of Theseus providing Ariadne with celebratory cunnilingus for saving his hide from the Labyrinth, he woke up early the next day and left her whilst she slept. No note, no provisions to survive.

Theseus was ruthless. Brutal. I really have to thank the scoundrel, though. If it weren’t for him marooning Ariadne there, I wouldn’t have come across her, awed by the woman’s regality of demeanor. She was hot stuff. And arctic cool despite her predicament.

Some people said that in Theseus’s haste to ghost Ariadne and quit the island, he forgot to change the sails from black to white. Or, there were some rumors that he was so enamored with another woman on the boat that he was too busy doting on her to remember to swap the sails. Regardless, King Aegeus had been waiting by the cliffs for his son’s ships to return. Upon seeing the black sails approach, despite Theseus’s victory and being alive and well, his father thought him dead and threw himself from the cliffs. Plunged to his death out of grief, unfortunately. I’m not sure if it would give him some token of peace knowing that the fatal stretch of water was later named after him—the Aegean Sea—but at least there’s that.

Anyhow, as a rule, Ariadne and I try to compartmentalize the ongoing shitstorm that is our family and keep it boxed away, safely outside the stronghold that is our marriage. That’s not for lack of trying. In the beginning of our marriage, I used to pepper her with questions about her audacious adventure with Theseus. However, I’ve never been able to get out of Ariadne what about Theseus had been so enticing that made her fall in love with him at first sight and betray both family and country, but my wife is a complicated woman, with many elaborate inner mazes…

Until next time, may your love life be less tragic than a Greek myth and your wine never run dry.

Cheers!🍷👻

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