Letting Our Guard Down

I don’t understand why so much advice about meeting people tells us to act less interested than we are.

Wait before replying. Don’t seem too eager. Make sure the other person cares more. Somewhere in the middle of trying to get closer to someone, we start following instructions for keeping our distance.

I understand the fear behind it. Nobody enjoys feeling foolish or discovering that they care more than the other person does. But I wonder what happens when avoiding that feeling becomes the main objective. How much connection can happen while both people are trying to reveal as little as possible?

I want conversations to have more room than that. Room to be awkward at first. Room for someone to say something imperfectly without that sentence becoming the entire impression of who they are. Room for a friendship to start, or for there to be some possibility of romance, before everyone decides exactly what the interaction means.

That doesn’t require knowing everything about each other. Sometimes you can talk about something that matters before you know much of someone’s biography. A conversation becomes personal because someone listens, shares something of their own, and gives you a reason to keep going.

That possibility interests me more than most of the rules about how to make people like you.

Still, I have to be careful about what I’m asking for. Wanting a conversation to become meaningful doesn’t mean the other person wants it to become meaningful at the same pace.

I can be intense. When something seems obvious or important to me, I want to talk about it. I may think I’m being candid while someone else is wondering why the conversation suddenly became so serious. They might have meant something different from what I heard. They might simply not want to have that conversation with me.

I haven’t always left enough room for those possibilities.

It is easy to interpret an uncomfortable reaction as evidence that someone cannot handle honesty. But that explanation can become too convenient. If their disagreement proves that I was right, what reaction would ever convince me I had misunderstood them?

I can notice a change in someone’s mood without knowing what caused it. I can feel dismissed without knowing whether dismissal was their intention. Even an accurate observation might arrive at the wrong time or in a way the other person doesn’t welcome.

I’m still working out how to be direct without assuming that sincerity makes my interpretation correct.

Part of what makes this difficult is that I know how much generosity can matter. I’ve been nervous and said something badly. There have been people who gave me a little room, understood that I was trying, and helped the conversation become easier.

Those experiences complicate my frustration. I can’t remember receiving that patience and then confidently declare that nobody offers it anymore.

The harder question is whether I extend it as readily as I want to receive it. When someone seems distant, how quickly do I decide what that says about them? When somebody else has an experience I wish I were having, can I be happy for them without immediately comparing it with my own life?

I know what that comparison feels like. I’ve felt envy when I would have preferred to feel uncomplicated happiness for someone else. I’ve also found it easier to admit uncomfortable things in some conversations than in others. The setting matters. The relationship matters. So does what I’m afraid will happen once I say something plainly.

That makes “people should let their guard down” sound less simple than it did when I was only thinking about other people’s hesitation.

I still want more openness. I just think I need to understand what makes it possible.

One part of it seems to be what happens after the personal conversation. Do we check in? Do we remember what someone told us? Do we show interest when there isn’t an exciting story or a difficult confession to draw us in?

Sharing something private can feel like an immediate connection. Being dependable asks something different of us. It involves ordinary attention, often at moments when there is nothing especially dramatic happening.

That is the kind of care I want more of. I want easier conversation and more opportunities for people to discover that they enjoy each other. I want romantic possibility to feel less like a contest over who can appear least affected. But I also want the small signs that someone’s interest continues after the moment has passed.

I wonder how much of this depends on the attention we have available in the first place.

There is always another explanation to consume: another rule, another warning, another label for someone’s behavior. Some of it may be useful. But I worry about collecting so many interpretations that I stop looking closely at the person in front of me.

An uncertain moment happens, and I already have a name for it. Have I understood anything, or have I just found a familiar category?

This is part of why I want more time away from my phone, especially in the morning. I want a little time to notice what is already on my mind before adding more to it. I can have several thoughts forming at once, some of them contradicting each other. Immediately filling that space with other people’s opinions doesn’t necessarily help me understand my own.

My thoughts about sleep come from a similar place. I don’t understand the pride attached to getting by on very little rest. I’m drawn to the idea that sleep gives the mind time to work through what it has been carrying. I have questions about dreams and what they do, but I don’t need to settle all of them before treating rest as something worth protecting.

I want to make room for experiences to mean something before rushing to the next one.

That is also why I’m writing these essays.

At first, I worried about whether my thoughts were deep enough to put out into the world. Some of them are probably familiar. Some may be wrong. I don’t think making them sound more certain would improve them.

Writing gives me a way to see what happens when I put my opinions next to each other. I can believe in openness and discover how guarded I am. I can want people to be less judgmental and notice how quickly I explain their behavior. I can want to build something that matters to the world and still find value in a journal that mainly helps me understand my own life.

Those tensions are part of what I want to examine. I can be clear about one thing and chaotic about another. Having a place to work through that feels worthwhile even if the audience stays small.

If someone reads this, I want them to get to know my mind a little. That includes the questions I haven’t answered.

I still want people to take more chances on conversation, friendship, and one another. I want to take those chances too. What I’m beginning to ask is how to make an invitation that gives the other person room—and whether I can stay open when their response isn’t the one I hoped for.