My ex-boyfriend called me emotionally withholding. I didn’t dispute him.
“Maybe you can tell someone everything about yourself in three months,” I retorted. “I can not.”
I always wondered what he wanted to find out[?].
Would he have been satisfied if I had let him in on my secret life as a David-Letterman-guest-as-i-sit-in-the-shower?
Did he want to know that I once read “How To Make Love Like A Porn Star” and finished it feeling deflated because it didn’t tell me how to make love like a porn star?
Or was he curious about the deep, dark and often secret twitches that make me (read: all of us) tick?
Whether we let people in on it or not, we are all three dimensional creatures. Technically, to get to know all dimensions, it takes a life time. We don’t even know them ourselves for a significant portion of our existence. Intead, we choose the parts that we know/are comfortable with and wrap it in to a sweet little package that results in Social Interaction.
For example, when you are trying to pick up a guy/girl, you don’t talk about your much-thought-out-theory on the economic reforms of corn farmers. And, if you do…hopefully you enjoy stretching out in a bed while you sleep. Alone.
Similarly, if you are trying to get a job reforming the economic climate of corn farmers, you don’t tell Old McDonald about the time you skipped the bill on a Thai prostitute. And, if you do…hopefully you enjoying stretching out on a bed of nails. As it will be all you will be able to afford to sleep on as unemployment sinks in.
My point is that as honest as we want (or try) to be, we all (should) understand the social construct of what is appropriate to talk about and what isn’t.
I didn’t feel that it was appropriate to tell my then-boyfriend that my biggest fear is decpetion by ignorance.
Similarly, he didn’t feel that it was appropriate to tell me that he had another girlfriend.
Which is ironic, really.
Instead, we each put out a two-dimensional version of ourselves – which was enough to serve the immediate purpose we individually had, and we both got what we wanted.
Me: Sex.
Him: Lots of sex with different people.
The actual and realistic premise isn’t negative. If everyone just offered everything of themselves initially, Social Interaction would be boring. And ignorant. Because people are complex. And it is impossible to get a perfect interpretation of an individual in any graspable amount of time. I firmly believe that there are two types of people in the world: those who ignore their complexities and those whoindulge them. The latter have the benefit of being aware of how far They need to dig when in contact with anyone else.
This whole concept makes all initial contact a clean slate.
I once sat in a bar and talked to a middle-aged man who eventually revealed that he had done time for murder.
“An exboyfriend?” I inquired.
FYI: Don’t make inappropriate jokes to someone who has admitted to having no issue with ending life.
Going into the conversation – which started with each of us sitting in the bar alone and then discovering a common interest of laughing at drunk people trying to walk – I had no idea that He had killed a human. Evidently, he didn’t come with a warning. I had no pretense that he may have killed a man. And it was never in my reality to think of it until he said it.
After I found out the piece of trivia, I [politely] ended the conversation and run to the hills flapping my arms (Read: Caught a cab home and stretched across my bed. Alone). I don’t know if that was a right or a wrong reaction. But I do know that as soon as I found out that He was a three-dimensional person, I decided that the third dimension wasn’t for me.
And this is why we hold ourselves back: for fear of rejection over who we really are. We test people, sometimes for years, before Really letting them in and allowing them to discover who we are.
Some people, like, apparently murderers, work on a different time frame. But every killers thirty minutes is a commitment-phobes three months. Right?
I encourage honesty because I think that it will eradicate judgement and instigate real discussions, perceptions and relationships. But I also encourage mystery. It is the weird paradox that probably helps make me into athree dimensional human being. Because complex things don’t always make sense. And we don’t always embrace them. But to ignore the complexities of human nature makes us ignorant by deception.
I stood in a bar drinking a scotch by myself, waiting for the next Blues & Roots band to begin.
“I saw you from across the grass,” a boy approached, “and I looked at you wearing your aviator sunglasses and I thought ‘she looks like Tom Cruise’.”
“Oh.” I had no reply. I have never been compared to a scientologist before.
“Tell me something about yourself,” he insisted.
“I sit in my shower pretending to be interviewed by David Letterman,” I offered.
“Really?” He seemed satisfied. “I watch porn seven times a day. At least.”
Maybe I didn’t give him enough information. Apparently, it takes a lot to satisfy him.
But, in reality, it should take a lot to satisfy any complex person.
You just have to choose who to let into round three.
20nothing.com 