Trusting Those Closest

There are things in life that frighten me.

There are things inside of myself that frighten me.

I am intimately aware of my brokenness and my rougher edges.

Because I am so aware of my faults and failings and because I want to be better than I currently am, I work tirelessly to deal with my stuff. I still have stuff.

The stuff I carry inside of myself doesn’t frighten me. Rather, it is the way I judge my stuff that does. Unacceptable is how I often feel about anger, bitterness, jealousy, resentment. Unacceptable is how I often feel about my tendency to withdraw or lash out when I am frightened or hurting.

I find other ways to sort through things and once I have everything clarified and polished, I bring it to the light in an effort to share myself with those I love.

Sometimes, sorting through things requires another voice.

This might be the biggest struggle and most damaging habit I have. Before I present my thoughts to the person who has the most right to know them, I often share them with someone else. I choose someone who can challenge me and ask good questions, questions that make me think about things in a new light or which clarify some of the fuzzy bits that are floating in the background. Sometimes, talking to an uninvolved party doesn’t even touch on the core of the issue that’s hidden behind the fog of feelings that are big and scary and unclear. But in talking about some of the feelings, I sort through them and the light of truth shines through – and this I will eventually share with the person who needs to know.

Before I met Doc, there was Ichthy. And before I met Ichthy, there was Mustache.

Mustache promised I could have what I wanted, told me explicitly he would give it to me, and then insisted I ask for it. Though it was the biggest relationship risk I could have taken with him, I did ask. And he turned me away instantly.

I could not tell Mustache either the truth that this was an enormous risk nor could I tell him why it was such an enormous risk.

Then, Ichthy called. I told him. I told him about Mustache and how Mustache had handled that situation; I told him what a huge risk it was and exactly why it had been a huge risk. It was scary and hard and painful to tell my biggest, deepest, scariest secret to anyone. Ichthy was great about it, even seeking more information and though it made me cry he tried to make something good of a very bad situation.

When I met Doc, even before we had decided to commit to a mutually monogamous relationship, I was able to share with him this secret that had become a bit smaller, less deep, and slightly less scary. I was able to tell him the whole of it, from the very beginning through all of the experiences that layered and layered and layered worse and more terrible facets of body loathing underneath and on top of my already fragile attempts at body acceptance and self-love.

I was also able to this secret to my best friend in all the world and share with her the reality of the resentments and jealousies I have felt over the years when the topic came up – because she didn’t know she was touching on some seriously broken areas or that doing so reminded me of awful experiences no one should ever have to endure.

Because of this, Ichthy has become my go-to for processing anything BDSM related before I approach Doc.

Last week, I wrote about penal substitutionary atonement. This is a conversation I had with Ichthy before I spoke to Doc. It helped me to clarify several things, which was good. Ichthy asked if I’d spoken with Doc about it and when I told him I hadn’t, he strongly encouraged me to do so. I had been planning to, but something in Ichthy’s tone made me think I had perhaps erred in my decision to process with him before bringing it to Doc.

This week, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Ichthy has said some things recently that led me to believe I may have misinterpreted his level of interest in me when our friendship first started.

A month or so ago, a friend told me that one of our former co-workers had the biggest crush on me when he worked with us, but never pursued it because he knew I was way out of his league.

I recently went out to dinner with a different co-worker I occasionally socialize with who informed me that I am not even remotely average; I am, he said, completely atypical and this is a good thing. This is a really good thing. The way he said it led me to believe that if I were not with Doc, he would be interested in pursuing me romantically.

All of this is confusing because men have never pursued me. At all. Ever. In my entire life. This does not particularly bother me because there are very few men who pique my interest and I’d rather not have to navigate the muddy waters of rejecting men I know when I’m intimately familiar with the danger of rejecting the street harassment of strangers.

Confusion regarding men aside, the real issue, as I see it, is the way I choose to engage with people. I want to tell myself that I am motivated to give Doc the best, so I work through uncertainties of my own ideas and feelings with someone else before I present him the polished work. This is unfair to him. It’s also untrue.

I do want to Doc to have the best of everything in life. He deserves the best. Doc is the single most amazing man I know. Doc is open and honest; trusting and completely trustworthy. Doc is more willing to risk than anyone I’ve ever met and he really, truly, deeply believes that it’s okay to fail; it’s not okay to give up. When Doc encourages me to pursue my dreams in spite of my fears, he does so with an air of support that assures me success or failure, he’ll be there; his opinion of me isn’t predicated upon my success or perfection.

Here’s the thing – I’ve completely bought into my relationship with Doc. I’m all in. I’m committed to, excited about, and fully engaged (head and heart) in this relationship. And that is a terrifying thing.

I’ve come to realize that the reason I only share fully formed polished product with Doc isn’t because I think he deserves the best (though I do), but rather because I’m afraid that Doc will be as frustrated and confused by my initial attempts at understanding as I am. I am afraid that Doc will not want to invest as much energy in understanding me and my thoughts and feel as I want to invest in understanding myself and in understanding him.

Doc has done nothing to elicit this fear.

Ichthy has done nothing to engender this trust.

Except…. I am in an intimate, mutually monogamous, committed relationship with Doc and Ichthy is a friend. It's all about me.

I have invested rather a great deal of my heart in my relationship with Doc. I have invested much in my relationship with Ichthy, but not in the same way and certainly not to the same degree.

If all of my frustrating, unclear, confusing feelings and thoughts rooted in the unresolved stuff of my past freaks out Ichthy and he decides he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, it will hurt, certainly; but I will have lost a friend and a friend who probably wasn’t all that much of a friend in the first place if my darker secrets and sharper edges can frighten so easily.

If all of my frustrating, unclear, confusing feelings and thoughts rooted in the unresolved stuff of my past freaks out Doc and he decides he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore, it will hurt; I will have lost a friend, companion, lover. The stakes are much, much higher. The risk is much, much bigger. The potential loss is much, much scarier.

But the reality is, as things currently stand, I am robbing Doc of an opportunity to know me in ways that he, more than anyone else, has a right to know me. That is unfair to him. I am denying him an intimacy I want to give him while offering that intimacy to someone else. I am not okay with that.

So from this point forward, while I will still be friends with Ichthy and we will still talk about our lives and our jobs and our beliefs and our theologies and our struggles and our joys, I may not share the real deep me-ness with him in the same way; and I certainly will not share it with him first.

Doc will be the first to get the me-ness, the mess, the confusion, the feelings that I cannot yet identify or understand. Doc will be the first to hear about the stuff inside of me that scares me. Doc will be the first to hear my insecurities and my worries that what scares me might also scare him – and scare him away.

Doc will be the first and probably at times the only one who gets to see those parts of me that aren’t polished and pretty and perfect; but they are the parts that are real and important and lovely in their own way, if for no other reason than that I would choose to share them with him in an act of sacred trust – believing that Doc is the single most amazing man I know, believing that Doc is open and honest, trusting and completely trustworthy.

It is time to translate those beliefs into actions and begin actively, rather than passively, trusting Doc because I want to continue building and deepening intimacy with Doc. Doing so means being real and open and honest and trusting with all of the me-ness that is me, including the unpolished, unpretty, darker, scarier, sharper parts.

Letting Doc see and know all of me is an act of love and trust. And no matter what happens, it will be worth it.