Musings on connecting, openness, and every-day affection

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to truly connect with people and about openness. It often surprises me that sharing your feelings with someone else doesn't seem to come as naturally to most people as it does to me. In that vein though, I've had to ask myself lately why I haven't shared this blog with my friends and also why I haven't told my family yet that I'm getting divorced. It's not normal for me to keep anything a secret, but I've been finding myself putting up walls and I'm using this post to remind myself of ways to be more affectionate and connected with the people around me.

I tend to think this aversion to being open is because I've received the same feedback from a lot of people in my life over the last few years - that I get very close very fast and it can be read as intimidating by people who aren't used to me yet. I even received the nickname once upon a time (before I started really working on myself and trying to be a less surly and sarcastic version of myself) of "Hostile Kate" because of my propensity for aggressive honesty (especially under the influence of a couple glasses of wine). I've been called "problematically truthful" by my best friend more than once; it has become a bit of an inside joke between us.

I guess I wish I knew why there seems to be this negative connotation to "over-sharing". Why would we not want to know anything anyone ever wants to tell us about themselves? Why are we all so closed-off? I read a book recently which suggests that many of our more puzzling instincts can be explained by a primal tribe mentality. To belong, to blend in, to be a part of a tribe is to survive. To stand out was to be cast out which spelled disaster for our ancestors and their evolving brains. In many ways that are deeply programmed in our brains today and ingrained in our behaviors, we fear rejection. As such, we use feedback and other social cues to govern our behavior towards others.

While this explanation seems sound, and certainly resonates with me personally, I still think it's a shame. I want to live in a world where we can all be open about what we want, whom we love, how we like to be spoken to, what our darkest secrets are, and all the things that make us feel big and small in the universe. Maybe we don't want to know about the chunky booger our partner picked out of his nose on his drive to work this morning, or maybe we wish we had never heard some of the tales of friends-of-friends' bizarre sex lives before - but overall, I'd take that trade-off for a little more openness, even just from my inner circle.

This weekend I plan to rip the band-aid off and tell my family what I'm going through. As my therapist advised me, I'll need to remember that their reactions will undoubtedly be raw - this will be fresh and unexpected news to them after all - and that's going to take a certain amount of inner strength to manage. I firmly believe that secrets are barriers to intimacy and to true connection. My marriage was deeply troubled and I allowed myself to be convinced to pull away from my family, but I know that to fix my relationships I simply need to be more open. Maybe I don't need to take every comment my mother will make personally, maybe I'll need to parse out my father's terse response for a while to feel what he really wants to say to me, but I can prepare for these things ahead of time because I've looked deep inside myself and found those same qualities hiding in my subconscious behaviors. I'll know it all comes from a place of love, regardless.

I choose to believe that this lack of openness can be solved by more love. If I choose to love those around me more deeply and meaningfully, then it will come back around to me. I can't tell you the number of times I've been shocked to hear a close friend reveal something new and fascinating about themselves just because I admitted something embarrassing about myself. I think we need to remind ourselves that just because someone is closed to us, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to connect with them. It takes perseverance and strength of heart, but I believe every relationship that's important to me can be more deeply connected if I just keep the door open.

Connection doesn't happen overnight. Behaviors that encourage affection and intimacy, though, don't need to be grand affirmations of eternal love and devotion. I had a conversation the other day with a friend about what it means to be more loving and affectionate with people in general, but more specifically to people who aren't intimate partners. What does it look like to be affectionate with someone who has a partner who may be inclined toward jealousy? Unfortunately we weren't able to come up with the perfect answer to this question, but there were a few thoughts that I think bear sharing here.

Think about the last time you asked someone how their day was. Now think about their response. Was it something along the lines of "good, how was yours?" And that's probably essentially where the conversation ended or took a left turn. I think it can be powerful to ask this question like you mean it. Eye contact helps, but asking follow-up questions can make people feel the affection you want to impart. Asking specific questions and really listening to someone's answers can open a door to a deeper and more meaningful friendship without treading on the fringes of "inappropriate" behavior.

Another small experiment can be done with people in your inner circle or on complete strangers and it helps to create within yourself the kind of positive energy that people respond to with openness, honesty, and trust. Take any random person you see walking by (or, if you're too shy at first, visualize someone in your mind with whom you want to be more open) and for as long as they're in your field of vision, imagine good things happening for them and try to muster a feeling of gratitude for that. Imagine that this person just received the job offer of a lifetime, or just discovered after months of trying that they'll be having their first child, or that they finally won that competition they've been preparing for years for, and let that imagined thing fill you with warmth. Use that feeling to wish for even more wonderful things for them. You will hopefully find gratitude in this practice (maybe not the first time, but it is practice after all) and it will allow you to be more positive and open with everyone around you, which is key to receiving deep connection from them.

I think we could all benefit from a little more gratitude and affection in the world. I hope to find more of it in my daily life by remembering these practices and focusing on connecting more deeply with everyone around me.

As always, I want to hear from you if you're reading! Have you tried these practices or any others like them? How do you show affection to the people in your life? Let's chat.