In an age of Instagram filters and carefully curated newsfeeds, it seems rather incongruous that there be greater and greater cries for “genuine authenticity”. We live in an era of constructed realities, and as such we present our “selves” to the world at large, thinking carefully, all the while, about the stories we wish to portray. We use labels to ascribe meaning to the self. Labels themselves are, of course, for better or worse, imbued with identity. But while labels provide neat (and not-so-neat) categories to define us, rarely are they the sum of the self or our best representation. (Feminists and other social theorists would make a nod to the concept of intersectionality here. But, I digress…)

For years I struggled to self-identify. My blog, my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds – all of them are equally guilty representations of an effort to define who I was, am, and want to be. One liners and careful single-word modifiers highlight the version of the self that I want(ed) to portray, though try as I might, all of it fell short of describing me at my core. It is, perhaps, because of my effort to confine myself to these little boxes that I’ve had such a difficult time really understanding who I am, and why all the pieces don’t seemingly fit together. Little hats, and all that.

The authentic self is more than a catch phrase

The struggle for authenticity requires us to peel back the shallow layers of meaning we use to ascribe identity and instead look to the very heart of us. Authenticity is soul-deep. It is our truest self at our very core. And it is this very core of us that struggles, against all odds, to cultivate true meaningful connections with other human beings.  Deep within the majority of us lies a profound need for human connection. Sometimes romantic, sometimes platonic, most of us crave a particular kind of interaction with others of our species. But, far too often, our genuine self is shrouded by masks that protect us from being vulnerable. We craft for ourselves protections that would safeguard the most tender parts of us but, in the process, hide our true selves from that which might hurt.

Brene Brown, in a TED Talk on Vulnerability states that “in order to for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen…” Human connection is a gift predicated on exposing our innermost selves to the world in the hopes that it will be appreciated, celebrated, and adored. But frequently, we diminish our true selves and, rather than make ourselves vulnerable, seek to protect.  This, according to Brown, is born of a deep seated fear that we will be seen as not good enough.

Adaptive Mechanisms and Failed Biologies

Shame and fear are learned traits. Fear and anxiety do, of course, serve a long-standing biological function as both are meant to trigger fight or flight adaptive mechanisms necessary for survival. In the modern context however, fear may well work against us, stunting honest and true human connection by preventing us from revealing our authentic self.

In the process of courtship this is how games begin. How often are we told not to appear too eager? How frequently are we told to “play it cool” or “play hard to get”? Playing at that which we are not hides what we truly are.

Brown argues that in order to forge true connections with other human beings, the desire and ability to be vulnerable must supersede our fear or shame mechanisms. To connect, to belong, and to develop intimate, loving relationships necessitates exposing ourselves and living fearlessly with the belief that we are good enough for the very thing that we seek.

But how do we get there when fears have been so deeply ingrained in us? When our behaviours have been policed by parenting and socialization? How do we erase decades of programming and celebrate our vulnerability?

Love and Vulnerability

As a method of self-reflection, I’ve taken a lot of time over the past few months to think about my personality, the parts I’ve let out, the parts I’ve kept hidden, and the parts that I so desperately want to reveal. At my core, the self that wants to love, loves freely in return. It is a self that expresses love in abundance, in tokens such as hand made cards or surprise gifts, and gestures, such as meals shared cooking and eating together in celebration of nothing more than a day. It is a self that longs to love without hesitation, a self that without qualm will pick up a phone to call or text, a gesture that exists simply to remind another that someone cares for you today.

But the self that I reveal is rarely that side of me. Instead, the self that comes out is plagued by fear that I’ll be seen as needy or wanting, desperate or clingy. It is a self that was told for decades, “Let boys call you first”, “Know your place”, and, more recently, “Some crazy girl showed up at my place and threw me a surprise party for my birthday. Don’t be that girl! I dumped that girl!” This self doesn’t know what to trust and is so unsure of who and how to be that it fails to be at all. This self so desperately wants to be liked by others, it forgets to like itself. It is this self that needs to be rewritten, to be allowed to be vulnerable.

It is this very heart of me that wishes to know the very heart of you.

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My heart, or whatever fanciful thing the ‘heart’ supposedly represents, terrifies me.

 

Always second-guessing.

I want so much to be able to reach out to you without fear, but I’m scared. Scared that you’ll reject me. Or worse, that you won’t respond at all.

 

I realize now that in thinking this I’ve already rejected myself.

I want so much to be loved by you, but need so much to first be loved by me.

 

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Connection is why we’re here, she says. But in her effort to unpack connection, belonging, and love, she was faced with countless stories of disconnect, lack of belonging and heartbreak. Rooted in all of this, she discovered, was a profound sense of shame. Shame, she suggests, is the fear of being seen as not good enough.

Jokingly, she touches on the ways in which shame penetrates all aspects of the self. Imposter syndrome, felt by many academics, is one aspect of shame, and it fuels the feeling of not being “good enough” in the professional landscape as profoundly as shame destroys our romantic relationships.

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Whether an ancient idea of self-actualization or evocative of new-age “enlightened” mumbo jumbo, the idea of authenticity, of being our most authentic selves, has endured. Every day in my journey through the internet, I’ll come across posts on Pinterest or Instagram encouraging us to find and live our most authentic truth. It is, I understand, a pathway to an ideal life, and nowhere has this idea been more powerful than in the realm of relationships where the notion of authenticity lies at the foundation of good, happy, and enduring human interaction. Not just for romantic endeavours, authenticity, ideally, is the bedrock of all kinds of relationships.  The trouble is, too many of us wear masks that prevent our truest selves from simply being, let alone being witnessed by anyone else.

Again, I harken back to a decade-and-a half-old relationship which, by all accounts, was (and is) an enduring one. So much of it worked well, so well, in fact, that for years it was impossible to find within it a fissure. But how many years of that, I wonder in retrospect, had I walked on eggshells? How many years of that had I simply just masked my disappointment because to reveal hurt or frustration would have hurt someone else, namely the partner I loved? In moments of desperation and sheer exhaustion, I’d yell my anger only to be met most frequently with bewilderment. “I didn’t know you felt like that,” he said. All along I thought I’d been a communicator par excellence. Had I masked the truth of my pain too effectively? Seemingly so.

As I moved through grad school similar sorts of comments had plagued my experience. “You always have a smile on your face,” I was told by one supervisor. “It’s hard to think you’re struggling when you always look pleasant.” (The lack of my visible struggle would mean none but my closest friends took seriously my cries for help…)

PEOPLE PLEASING

Where had this come from, this desire to people please in such a way?  Why had it become the foundation of my existence? What damage was I inflicting upon myself in the process of attempting to appear perpetually happy or, at very least, not unhappy?

Feminism would argue that women, millennia over, have been told that they should always be smiling. There are ways of being, in professional environments as elsewhere, that police female bodies in insidious ways. Female professors, for instance, are critiqued for their classroom behaviour. This is based, in part, on their ability to appear approachable which includes the degree to which one smiles.   Pleasantry and passivity are traits we still ascribe to idealized women, lest they wish to appear as demanding shrews or unrelenting harpies in either the workplace or at home. Or so say the men in our lives.

I am a Daddy’s girl at heart and the eldest granddaughter of a wonderfully doting man. My dad has always followed the path of least resistance, preferring emotional upheaval to be kept at bay. My grandfather, bless his departed soul, had always imparted one piece of recurring wisdom on his five granddaughters: “Always have a smile on your face.” In both cases, the “female” penchant for emotional turmoil was, and is, a huge turn-off.

And yet, this seemingly well-intentioned advice may well be our downfall.

Because at the very core of this, born of a desire to be everything like the father I so admire, who, even now in reluctantly providing relationship advice has told me to be pleasant and relaxed about everything, is a lack of authenticity. Born from this is fear, fear of how others will perceive me if I appear fragile, fear of what others will think if I request for myself anything other than the bare minimum.

Perhaps most damaging of all is that to mask from others your pain, hurt, frustration causes within us such turmoil that it chips away at our truest selves, leaving us broken and unsure. To mask any part of ourselves, whether tumultuous, exuberant, in pain, or in love, is to steal from us the very heart of who we are.

But it doesn’t have to be this way…

(Part 2:  In Progress).

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We’re all so very good at giving advice we don’t follow.

As I’ve watched other women – friends, cousins, colleagues etc. – all beautiful, intelligent, compassionate women in their own right, struggle with relationships, I’ve doled out my fair share of advice and observations from the peanut gallery. I don’t claim to be any sort of expert (how could I?), but I do think my analytical skills are up to par, and as a female in heterosexual relationships from time to time, I think I’m qualified enough to make casual observations.

One such observation was made recently, as I recounted to a younger cousin a conversation I’d had with an older female relative. My aunt, a self-proclaimed relationship expert, had stated quite adamantly that modern women were, categorically, “what was wrong with relationships today”. Women, in her account, were the sole reason for the failure of relationships today as now, more than ever, they bailed out of relationships en masse, with nary a thought to the beleaguered soul they left behind. “Young women just don’t make an effort to make things work…” she claimed. And on went the argument.

I pondered that for some time, unsure for a bit, but after a while, in considerable disagreement having maintained my half a partnership that was going on for over a decade and a half (and would eventually come to its own end).  “Why would you want to stay in something that wasn’t working?” I asked. “Why would you want your daughter to?” Do you earn some sort of merit badge for having stuck it out in the face of misery and discontent?

Women were not, in my estimation, deserting perfectly good relationships out of laziness. Women, if we were suddenly leaving more than we ever had before, were leaving because they could. Because we’re a generation of women, unlike any other, educated en masse, and more than capable of bringing our own to the table. While we once had to make a relationship work and where we bent over backward to make it happen, we no longer had to do so. Relationships in the modern sense are no longer about security or protection. They’re about emotional integrity and compatibility, traits I would argue that are much more difficult to nurture or maintain.

“Leave”, I told my cousin (though she wasn’t asking at the time). “Leave because you can. Because you’ll find someone who actually wants to make it work, and for whom the relationship will be a two-way street. Leave because you are fully capable of providing for yourself, so any partner of yours will be incidental, not necessary.  Leave because modern relationships are about love, not obligation. Leave because you are worthy of so much better.”

If only I were capable of heeding my own advice.

I dated someone recently that has supplied a plethora of stupid, hurtful comments, one after the other. A stronger version of me has already tired of this bullshit and long-laid this experience to rest alongside all the other tired souls with whom I remain incompatible. Apparently the version of me that exists in this dimension has yet to get the memo.

I’ve been privy to a laundry-list of “perfectly reasonable explanations” as to why commitment is difficult, nay impossible, on anything but his terms, but “Hey, status quo isn’t terrible, right?” and was told, half-jokingly, that maybe, at some point, in the far-off future, “when his teeth are gone and he’s totally bald”, that “I could see myself choosing you.”

HAHAHAHAHA

Da fuq?  Are you hearing the shit that just came out of your mouth?  Don’t do me any favours by choosing me when you’ve run out of options.

Here’s the thing about fully independent, willingly childless people: We want relationships for one reason only…because they’re adding something of value to our life. This is true of friendships and platonic relationships, but especially true of the romantic relationships we pursue. We don’t need your house, your car, or your bank account. We’re not sitting here like tragic heroines in a Victorian saga waiting for someone, anyone, to come along and put a baby in us. What we do want is your time, your effort, your integrity, your ability to acknowledge that something is important to us, and, God-forbid, your love and affection without pulling teeth.  What else do you have to give us that we can’t already give ourselves? If we’re not worth effort, we’re not worth anything (to you) at all.

Apparently I didn’t learn this stupid lesson the first time around because I’m spinning it on repeat like an old-school DJ.

Wait on “maybe”?

Been there, done that. “Maybe” is off vacationing with a girlfriend.

GTFO.

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There came a point in my life, not all that recently, where the pain of simply being was so profound, it became physical. A daily throb of awareness throughout my entire body that told me in no uncertain terms that something was very wrong with the existence I had chosen for myself. Everything hurt, and no matter what I tried, the hurt was inescapable, omnipresent. I was at a loss as to what it was or what had caused it, but it lived with me daily, like a splinter under the skin. I’ve heard that unacknowledged grief manifests in a physical way, and this was, I would eventually conclude, grief, naked and in the raw. It was not, however, until today, that I was able to see it in that way.

The reality is, everything dies. And the death of most things necessitates a period of mourning, one in which you shut out the world and right yourself again.

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“A deadness occurs in relationships when people are no longer willing to tell each other how they really feel.”
~ Shakti Gawain

Here’s the really fucked up reality of dating as “one of the guys”…

It is, absolutely, utterly depressing bullshit.

It doesn’t start off that way, of course. At the beginning there’s a sense of privilege, of uniqueness having been brought into a special fold, of being thought of as the rare girl who’s okay to hang with (most of the time, anyway) on a boys’ night. It’s nice, truly, if only for a moment. See, as a hetero female, the line you straddle is very, very delicate.  On the one hand, you gain a more intimate understanding of men. On the other, you gain a more intimate understanding of men. Unfortunately, unlike the fodder that is easily, albeit problematically, dismissed as “locker room talk”, the conversations you’re privy to as a woman who’s one of the guys is just, well, a little bit depressing.

There are two different things at play here:

The first is the conversation that revolves around women (in general). There’s a sort of discomfort among many men, particularly the ones in long term “things”. There’s a boredom to them, an ennui. If they’re married, they’re a bit listless. If they’re dating/engaged, they’re a whole lot sarcastic. Women are burdensome; relationships like nooses ever-tightening around their necks.  Sure, they’re coupled up, but they’re rarely happy about it. Because why would they be? They’re in it because society told them to be, because their friends were doing it, and they were a bit, however differently, bored, at some point in their past. And for just a little while, while emotions and hormones were flying high, the coupling felt okay.  Now, it no longer does. But being in it is easier than not most days. Because holding shit down on your own is exhausting.  And so, here we collectively are. “The truth” is rarely what a single girl wants to hear. But they’ve forgotten you’re there, “hanging” and listening, because you’re “one of the guys”…and now it’s out there anyway.

The second is much more personal, intimate, and differently heartbreaking. When you’re the girl friend (sometimes turned girlfriend) that’s “one of the guys”, you’re privy to a different kind of conversation: a discussion of the beautiful women they’ve encountered, they women they’ve loved, the women they were (and, in some cases still are) in love with, the women they’ve fucked, the women they’ve wished they fucked…and on and on it goes. Strong women should take all this in stride, but, while it’s doable, it’s no easy feat. But let’s just say you’re strong enough to surpass all of that, or, at very least, to fake it with smiles and courtesy. The worst part, the absolute worst part, is the forgetting. The forgetting that you’re not just one of the guys. The forgetting that you are, in fact, a woman, who, every once in a while, likes to be reminded of her femininity. That you’re a woman who wants to be regarded as one of those women you one day won’t forget because you were, in your own way, beguiling, sensual, and special. The forgetting cuts like the other edge of an already poisonous blade…

The shining light at the end of this tunnel, however, are the few men who love openly.  The ones who, for all of the jokes, sarcasm, and other nonsense, embody actual love for another.  Rarer still are the few who, while all jokes and sarcasm about everything else, love with nothing less than seriousness, passion, and honesty. It’s beautiful and elusive, but you are the few who give tattered hearts hope.

With hope,

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“I need you to know there are still good guys left,” he said, as he held the taxi door open. She blinked, puzzled. It sounded like a pick-up line, an unnecessary one if the chemistry between them was any indication. She’d never lost faith in the quality of men she attracted for friendship or otherwise. But later, much later, his words would echo in her mind.

He hugged her gently as she lowered herself into the car. What was happening, she wondered? Was he actually  about to send her away without inviting her back to his room, not even a kiss between them?

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A thousand different ways I was swept away by promise.

A hundred different ways I dared hope.

A handful of moments in which I dreamed.

A singular moment in which I fell.

Tension, measured in hours, exploding and contracting as the seconds ticked away.

A hundred ways in which I hurt.

A thousand cuts, minuscule but exacting.

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“a tendency to wear my mind on my sleeve…”

I’ve been told, more than once, that I need to learn to be a bit more opaque, that my tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve was likely to get me into trouble at some point. Like many Geminis, if you read anything into such things, I tend to communicate a lot. (It’s no wonder that I write as much as I do and that I halfheartedly attempted a career that indulged my love of communication).  Though I am introverted, I welcome conversation more often than not, and alongside, I have the troubling tendency to be a bit too forthcoming with truths about myself. Ask me virtually anything and I’m likely to tell you (though it’s unlikely that I’ll volunteer information off the bat).

Well-meaning friends have told me that I need to hold parts of myself back. Some family members have suggested that I outright lie. “People don’t need to know everything about you,” they’d say. And, of course, to a point, that’s true. But when I think about what it means to get to know someone, I realize that there’s a certain degree of trust involved in sharing intimate truths. In some respects, sharing who we are as people is more intimate (and assumes more risk) than sexual intimacy, and, while I’m not an advocate of sharing everything with another person upon first meeting, I truly believe that the only way to know another person is to be open to them. I’m not sure I’d be happy being anything else.

There’s a certain danger in trusting, in being open with people, and on some issues I’m guarded to the point of frustration. What comes across, perhaps infuriatingly, as a tendency to speak in riddles, is very much the result of a hesitation to divulge. But the truth of the matter is, if I’m comfortable with you, and only if I’m comfortable with you, that hesitation rarely lasts for very long. Comfort me and give me solace and I’ll be as open a book as you’d like. I’d like to hope that people are as open and as honest with me as I am with them, but of course I know this isn’t the case. I know, too, that being open is likely to land you in a whole lot of hurt, if not immediately then certainly down the road when you think you’ve opened up to the right people only to find that you’ve misread people entirely. Despite these risks, being open is something I tend toward repeatedly, no matter how many times I should have learned to do otherwise.  I suspect it’s a trait I’m unlikely to grow out of, no matter how much time passes. Still, there’s something to be said for building walls…and for those who work hard to breach them.

In the last year or so as I’ve watched friends and family navigate the ups and downs of their interpersonal relationships and as I’ve done some of the same navigating myself, I’ve become increasingly fond of the adage: “hurt people hurt people”. I’ve come to understand that although we might not intend to hurt, we transmit damage like radiant sources of heat, forever burning the people we come close to. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking out our frustration, say, for example, with work, on friends or family. We lash out in anger because rage has left such an indelible mark upon us that this energy needs to go somewhere. Sometimes we hurt through omission, through silence so deafening, it’s as though we’ve written someone off. But other times, that hurt is far more insidious.  The child that watches his family split apart at a young age takes that baggage into adulthood.  If it’s never reconciled, all potential partners are left to cope with the latent effects of the divorce he bore in his youth.  Many people also take their relationship baggage from one partner to another. Hope intermingles with distrust because it’s the only way to save ourselves from being burned yet again. But if I’m honest with myself, being distrustful of others isn’t who I want to be. Perhaps it’s naïveté, perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but my unwavering desire to hope follows the unrelenting desire to repeatedly put my trust in others.

But oh how that hurts.

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