The Vulnerability of an Open-faced Request
(relational hope continued)
So this is what I am ‘buying’ when I buy a coffee;
a responsive other who tends to my needs without flinching…
So what is it that we cannot do? Open expressions of need are the moments we cannot live through. At the heart of this pattern is an avoidance of a particular type of exposure: we cannot tolerate the risk of being rejected in our moments of need. We do not allow ourselves to make open-faced requests of others, because we cannot bear the milliseconds in which we may catch a reluctance, an aversion, an expression that may indicate we are about to be let down. We do not want to feel this again, it is too raw.
Experiences of this kind are likely a place of subtle, cumulative dismay; fractals of memory from the point of origin; memories of tiny, invisible devastating relational hurt, of the small but gathering failures of our need and hope. So this incredibly simple human function – which ‘should’ be easily within our reach with those we are close to – is fairly foreign to us, subliminally impossible.
(As I write this I realize that this open faced request is one of the things – perhaps the thing I treasure at restaurants or coffee shops. I ask, with warmth, for something that I want. I receive a smile, a ‘yes’, and find that thing, minutes later in my hands. Seeing this brings tears of recognition: This is what I am ‘buying’ when I buy a coffee; a responsive other who tends to my needs without flinching; an other to whom I do not have to apologize for my wanting something. Such moments bring peculiar levels of buoyancy, pleasure and relief into many lives.
old rhythms seem to repeat in our closest relationships
It is no coincidence that this quality of open request is hardest to bring forth in our intimate relationships. These are the ones most likely to echo our early life, in which a ‘no’, or even a reluctance may feel enraging, catastrophic or unbearable. To feel this ‘no’ brings us back to the moments when our hope broke, the original moment(s) of wounding that formed us, surfacing the pain we do not wish to feel.
So, though many of us have rich relationships, and may even be ‘great’ communicators, there are some things we find extraordinarily hard to express. Simple needs, hopes and hurts elude us. Our vulnerability goes only so far. We cannot live in the nakedness of requests, our gently hoping eyes landing on the face of a treasured, necessary other who might say ‘no’ to us.
Our dilemma - Owning our hope, need, longing
‘they say the soul unfolds in the chambers of its longing…’
LC
For the most part, we often make some kind of resilient but reluctant peace with the failure of our hope. This may be a blend of pride, resignation and despair, a type of swallowing. We identify, most of the time, with our capacity rather than our victim-hood. Yet somewhere we are affronted by the unfairness, a sense that we have been unlucky, that certain relational comforts are not for us. We are fated, largely, to be the carers and not the cared for. Fated to live among our fellow martyred ones as allies.
Lonely Strength
Our most reliable sources of comfort do not come from other humans. They are treats outsourced, hobbies enjoyed alone, side-effects of our social world. We struggle to rely on particular others. Resiliently, reluctantly, we endure, and fade a little here in our lonely strength. Others – the lucky ones, the cared for – are felt to be ensconced in a holding world of love, embedded in the living hearts of humans who tend to them. In contrast, the lives of others will never form their rhythms around us.
Internally, we may grow resigned to carry a certain loneliness as an inevitability, to withdraw our vulnerability and need. Such is our impulse to be soothed by our own soothing, relieved by our own contribution, it may be many decades before we notice the toll this takes on us. But when we do see it, there is often a great sadness, a dismay that we somehow lulled ourselves into a limited, partial world in which we genuinely convinced ourselves there was no one on whom we could depend.
Becoming Pliable - a return to need and hope
For as long as we find comfort in pride or martyrdom, I am not sure much can alter. But if we can find the courage to acknowledge our needs, and identify some human(s) capable of receiving us, this territory slowly becomes pliable. There we can begin to lean, to express our needs and hopes. We grow slowly more willing to risk of moments of failure; we seek out those with the capacity respond to us; a self-care begins to form that wants more for us than before - more humanness, more warmth.