“Vulnerability minus boundaries is not vulnerability.” ~Brené Brown
It’s ten at night, and I’m sprawled on the couch at the end of a long day, messaging an old friend from grad school. My wife is already in the slow process of heading to bed, the kids are asleep, and the house is quiet enough for a conversation to feel easy.
This isn’t something that happens often, but it isn’t unusual either.
The beginning is fun, like it always is. What’s going on with my family, how work is treating me, how life is in general. Then the same from her side.
I’ve always liked her. If we lived closer, we’d probably be much better friends, but distance does what distance does.
We run out of routine updates and arrive
Then we run out of routine updates and arrive at the familiar fork in the road. You can share something personal, or you can close with a standard goodnight.
So do I tell her about my health and about the last year? Something chronic. Not exactly the glamorous kind.
I run into this decision a lot. On one hand, I’m embarrassed by it. On the other hand, I know there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, since none of it is my fault.
We’re both psychologists, for heaven’s sake
And we’re both psychologists, for heaven’s sake. If we can’t trust ourselves with this, then what are we doing here?
And then they show up. My wonderful defense mechanisms, rising to protect my delicate soul, each of them arriving with an excellent reason.
The first one: it’s late, and who has the energy for something this heavy right now?
The second one: she just told me she’s
The second one: she just told me she’s tired, so what am I going to do, dump something else on her?
The third one: and it’s not like she tells me about every illness she’s dealing with, right?
And I’m sitting there listening to myself. How considerate I am. Really looking out for her.
How generous of me not to burden an exhausted woman at a late hour.
Classic avoidance, dressed up as consideration
Classic avoidance, dressed up as consideration. Yes, I know. I even know the clinical term for it.
And that’s the part that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been there. That I can see it happening in real time, and that seeing it doesn’t help at all.
Knowing stops nothing. It only makes the whole thing more embarrassing.
Look at that third excuse, by the way. It’s the only one that gives itself away. The first two at least pretend to be about her.
The third one isn’t consideration anymore; it’s accounting
The third one isn’t consideration anymore; it’s accounting. She doesn’t give, so why should I.
But then something else comes up, and that one isn’t an excuse.
Because my close friends know. I don’t hide this. I’m not someone who avoids telling the people who are close to me.
What I don’t want is for it to turn into a conversation about me in a room I’m not in. Someone tells someone, in words that aren’t mine, and I’m not there to shape how it sounds.
And then they’ll feel sorry for me.
In the middle of that thought, a question
In the middle of that thought, a question surfaces. A question I once asked someone else, years ago. Something along the lines of: and how does it feel to imagine people talking about you, maybe pitying you?
I sit there with my own question turned on me, and I don’t answer it.
Because there is a difference between people who are close and people who are far, and the difference isn’t only distance.
With someone close, this piece of information joins
With someone close, this piece of information joins a hundred other things they already know about me. It sits in proportion.
With someone far away, someone who sees me once in a long while, it might become the most prominent thing they know. My label from that day forward.
And there’s logic in that. I have a right to privacy. I’m not supposed to walk around with a sign announcing my medical status.
Avoiding the loss of control over my own
Avoiding the loss of control over my own story isn’t cowardice. It’s a consideration.
And yes, I care what people think of me. What can I say.
So that’s what’s on the table. Three bad excuses, and one thing that’s genuinely a consideration. And the difference between them matters.
Except I don’t get to decide.
Because right as my head starts to hurt from all the back and forth, my daughter wakes up from a bad dream.
A lifeline. Thank God, the deliberation is over
A lifeline. Thank God, the deliberation is over. I’m going to take care of my daughter. Lucky me.
So I walk to her room, still half inside my own head.
But she’s a kid who enjoys talking whenever she wakes up, so it doesn’t take long for me to let the whole thing go. We talk about her bad dream. We talk about monsters.
Subjects that suit me much better right now.
The next morning came. Coffee, school run, inbox. Routine carried me forward.
A small thought stayed behind about the whole thing, but by then it already felt artificial to go back to it.
To write to her now, a day later,
To write to her now, a day later, just to close something that was only ever open on my end.
And here I have to be honest with myself.
The deliberation wasn’t resolved. It was interrupted. A five-year-old woke up from a nightmare and put an end to it, and I called that postponing it until I’m ready.
As though it had been a decision.
I don’t think every avoidance needs to be solved. There are things you don’t tell, and there are people you don’t tell them to, and that’s completely fine.
The right not to share is a real right.
There’s a difference between choosing to avoid
But there’s a difference between choosing to avoid and drifting into avoidance. And that night I didn’t choose.
I just ran out of time before I had to decide, and the excuses did their job until the lifeline arrived.
I still haven’t told her. Maybe I never will, and maybe that will turn out to be a perfectly reasonable decision. The only difference is that this time I know I didn’t choose.
I’ve thought about those three excuses since.
Two of them were about the hour
Two of them were about the hour. It was late, she was tired. Both of those expired by morning, and I still didn’t write to her, so clearly that wasn’t what stopped me.
The third one was keeping score, and I’m not proud of it.
The one that wasn’t an excuse is still here days later. I don’t want to become a story told in a room I’m not in. That one I think I get to keep.
That’s the difference I’d watch for. Not whether you end up telling someone, but what’s motivating you not to.
What I want isn’t to finally tell
What I want isn’t to finally tell her. It’s to reach that fork and actually decide something, instead of letting whatever’s lying around at ten at night decide for me.
About Roi Haber
Roi Haber is a licensed psychologist who helps people prepare for the conversations they’ve been putting off. He built StayIn, where you can practice a difficult conversation—with a partner, a parent, a boss—before you actually have it. You can also try the free Custom Practice.
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