The Distracting Noises of Insecurity

I DIDN' T START THINKING ABOUT MY HANG-UPS regarding intimacy until my fiancée met me in Asheville for a long weekend. I'd rented a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where I was trying to finish a book before we got married. I'd spent more than a year pursuing her, even relocating to Washington, DC to date her, but once the ring was on her finger I went back into the woods. I wanted to finish the book so she wouldn't have to marry a temperamental writer. No woman should spend her first year of marriage watching her new husband pace the floor in his boxers, mumbling to himself. The writing life is only romantic on paper. The reality is, what writers write and the way they live can be as different as a lump of coal and a diamond. The written life is shined to a deceptive gloss.

That's one of the problems with the way I'm wired. I don't trust people to accept who I am in process. I'm the kind of person who wants to present my most honest, authentic self to the world—so I hide backstage and rehearse honest and authentic lines until the curtain opens.

I only say this because the same personality trait that made me a good writer also made me terrible at relationships. You can only hide backstage for so long. To have an intimate relationship, you have to show people who you really are. I'd gotten good at reeling in a woman and then bowing to say, "Thanks, you've been a great audience," right about the time I had to let her know who I really was. I hardly knew who I really was myself, much less how to be fully known.

WHEN BETSY ARRIVED IN ASHEVILLE, I 'D HARDLY talked to another human being in weeks. I felt like a scuba diver having to come to the surface when she asked a question.

We were sitting by the pond in front of the cabin when she asked how I could spend so much time alone. She said her friends admired my ability to isolate for a book's sake but wondered whether it was healthy. I don't think she was worried. She just found the ability foreign.

I thought about it and told her something I'd learned about myself in the year I spent pursuing her. I'd learned my default mode was to perform. Even in small groups I feel like I have to be "on." But when I'm alone my energy comes back. When I'm alone I don't have to perform for anybody.

She said I didn't have to perform for her. She didn't have to say that. I knew it was true. Who else do you marry but the person who pulls you off the stage?

BETSY' S EYES WERE AS GREEN AS THE REFLECTION of the trees on the pond. And as deep, I suppose. She was slow to trust, and even with a ring on her finger I knew part of her heart was being held back.

If I'm wired to impress people with an act, then Betsy is wired to withhold trust until it's been earned. She doesn't do it consciously. It's just that beneath her strong exterior there's fragility, so she doesn't offer her heart to just anybody.

Betsy told me when we met that in order to connect she needed quantity time. By that she meant we'd have to spend countless hours together doing nothing for her to feel safe. She believed anybody could come and go with a song and dance, but only the committed would last the seasons. And her community reflected this. While I'd spent my life getting people to clap for me, Betsy had laid a foundation with trusted friends, cousins, and siblings. And to those friends she was ferociously loyal.

In our year of dating, we'd only had one argument that was truly frightening. It happened after I insulted one of her friends. Actually, I rather objectively pointed out that one of her friends could be rude and might have a better chance with men if she'd stop emasculating them. I said I'd rather not spend any more time with that one, if she didn't mind. It turns out she did.

That single comment almost cost me our relationship. Betsy folded the napkin in her lap and set it on the table. She sat silently with murder in her eyes. When the waiter came to fill our glasses with water, I swear he backed away from the table without turning around.

And it wasn't even my comment that did it. It was the idea I could see a person as disposable. To Betsy, relationships were a life's work, the sum of countless conversations and shared experiences. She'd no sooner end a relationship than she'd cut down an old-growth tree. In the heat of that argument I realized I was only a sapling in the forest of this woman's life. I never spoke an ill word about one of her friends again. If I was going to win her heart, I'd have to plant myself in the forest and slowly grow the rings that earn loyalty, just as she and her friends had done with each other.

I knew then, this relationship would have to be different. I knew I'd have to know myself and be known. These weren't only terrifying prospects, they were foreign. I didn't know how to do either. And the stakes were high. I was going to have to either learn to be healthy or I'd spend the rest of my life pretending. It was either intimacy or public isolation.

ONE OF THE MANY GOOD THINGS GOD GAVE ME IN Betsy was the motivation to change. I'd spent years isolated and alone, working up words to tell people who I was—or more accurately, who I wanted to be. But in many ways that was a dark and lonely life. I'm not saying it didn't have its perks, because people clapping for you will always be a nice thing. But it's better when you have somebody to go home to and talk about it with, somebody who is more in love with you than impressed by you.

THAT'S THE GIST OF THIS STORY, I SUPPOSE. THESE are snapshots of the year I spent learning to perform less, be myself more, and overcome a complicated fear of being known. This book is about how I realized I could have a happy life without splitting an atom or making a splash. It's true our lives can pass small and unnoticed by the masses, and we are no less dignified for having lived quietly. In fact, I've come to believe there's something noble about doing little with your life save offering love to a person who is offering it back.

Here's a thought that haunts me: What if we are designed as sensitive antennas, receptors to receive love, a longing we often mistake as a need to be impressive? What if some of the most successful people in the world got that way because their success was fueled by a misappropriated need for love? What if the people we consider to be great are actually the most broken? And what if the whole time they're seeking applause they are...