If I Believe in You This Much

I recently watched a YouTube analysis of who the villain is in The Last Five Years. For those who are not familiar, The Last Five Years is a two-person musical by Jason Robert Brown about a failed five-year marriage between a young writer whose career takes off almost immediately, and Cathy, an aspiring actress whose career does not. The analysis is (surprisingly) very grounded for a question that invites such a black-and-white answer, and (unsurprisingly) the proposed thesis is that both of them are problems.

But I do not think the analysis traced the problem back to its trigger. I think the trigger is this, and I am sure many of you agree: Jamie’s sudden and overwhelming success gives him the damning confidence of “Moving Too Fast” on all fronts in life. If they had moved more slowly, they might have discovered that they were not that compatible.

But the more alarming question underneath all of this is whether Jamie ever really fell in love with Cathy at all. At the beginning, Jamie is thrilled by the novelty of dating a “shiksa.” Not long after they marry, he is already singing about resisting temptation. Later come the increasingly desperate “I will” promises, and eventually, the affair. It is easy to read the whole relationship as Jamie confusing momentum with love: his career is accelerating, his confidence is accelerating, his life is accelerating, so why shouldn’t love accelerate too?

Reading between the lines, I believe Jamie did love Cathy. In “The Schmuel Song,” he is as supportive as the epitome of a good boyfriend could be. I think he is genuine. Otherwise, the marriage, if at all, would have ended much sooner. But Jamie has another misconception, and it is this misconception that turns encouragement into a curse and drags what could have been a quick pain into a prolonged, five-year suffocation. That misconception is that he seemed to be convinced that belief should lead to results.

Let’s revisit the magical Christmas night. Cathy returns home after another rejection, when charismatic Jamie sings a fable he has written about an old tailor who has always been too frightened to make the dress he dreams, until a magical clock grants him extra hours and he finally sews it. After his lively performance earns a laugh, Jamie turns the story toward Cathy: you are the tailor; you are not too late; you still have time. Then he hands her a watch.

Jamie thinks he has handed her a magical clock. At the time, that is also how Cathy perceives it. Until, gradually, she begins to see it as a timer. As Jamie becomes more and more successful, Cathy becomes more and more insecure, and she already knows this when Jamie proposes. Before accepting, she gives a speech about “don’t expect me to be on time” and “if you can just wait, I will make it eventually.”

Jamie believes he can. More importantly, he believes she will.

But things do not always go as one hopes. It is a blow to Cathy, but it is also a blow, and perhaps an even more destabilizing one, to Jamie.

Let’s take a step back and think about why Jamie believes in Cathy in the first place. And then we realize: we don’t know, because the show never tells us. We never watch Jamie see something extraordinary in her. He never explains what she does onstage that other actors cannot. Depending on the production, different casts convey different degrees of tragedy in the first few verses of “Climbing Uphill”. The audience can never tell whether it is because Cathy is afraid or Cathy is truly deprived of talent.

So maybe it’s not an artistic judgement at all. Maybe Jamie believes this simply because he thinks a good boyfriend should be supportive.

That’s true. But there is an important difference between I will support you even if this never works out and I believe in you, therefore eventually this must work out. Jamie never seems to learn that distinction. You can support your partner’s dream whether or not it is practical. You can listen, encourage them, help them prepare, make introductions, give advice, celebrate small victories, and comfort them after rejection. You can even sincerely believe that they are talented. But none of that guarantees an outcome. Everyone knows this in theory. But if your own life has gone unusually smoothly, perhaps it becomes easier to forget.

Jamie has exactly that kind of life. He is twenty-three and being chased by Random House. Soon he is surrounded by applause, reviews, parties, admirers, opportunities. Of course he works hard, and the musical never suggests otherwise. But his hard work also keeps producing results. He wants something, works toward it, and receives evidence that the world agrees with him. Success gradually becomes not merely something Jamie experiences, but part of his understanding of how reality works. So when Jamie believes in Cathy, he does not merely support her. Somewhere along the way, he begins to expect her success. He believes she will make it, especially with his help.

And Cathy did not succeed. For someone who has built part of his identity around believing in her, that failure confronts Jamie with something his career rarely does: the limits of his own power. He cannot make her career run on his timeline. He cannot give her his confidence. More importantly, he cannot make her happy.

Failure is particularly difficult for someone who has become accustomed to winning.

Jamie keeps trying for a long time. He continues to encourage Cathy, but he has already emotionally checked out. He kept making “I will” promises while not being there. He said he believes in Cathy, while he chooses not to be there because, partially, if he has no expectations, he won’t get hurt.

With more and more “Summer in Ohio”, Jamie’s frustration finally erupts into the line that gives “If I Didn’t Believe in You” its cruelty:

“I will not fail so you can be comfortable, Cathy
I will not lose because you can’t win.”

And Cathy, on the other side, has spent those same years living beneath Jamie’s belief. At first that belief is comforting. Then it becomes a comparison. Then it becomes pressure. The kinder Jamie tries to be, the more humiliating the discrepancy can become. The watch becomes a timer, because, fortunately or unfortunately, it was given lovingly.

Jamie means: you still have time.

Cathy eventually hears: how much time do you need?

Jamie’s story ends on “I could never rescue you”. He gives himself the title of a rescuer in order to, internally, reconcile the person who cheats on Cathy and the person who loved Cathy well. He’s lying to himself to make himself feel more comfortable, and this lie blinds him. He never realizes that he was never handed a job to rescue his wife after all. Cathy did not need Jamie to make her successful. She needed him to remain her husband in a life where she might never become successful at all.

Cathy’s story ends with her taking off her jewelry piece by piece: the rings, the bracelet, and finally the watch. She gives back the time Jamie gave her. She never did work out what she was supposed to do with it.