Real love: when we don't reveal our true selves in relationships, we miss out on
Date: Wednesday, June 21 @ 00:00:00 UTC
Topic: Black Habits Articles


I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE: I'M A BIT OF A NERD. Have probably been one since the age of 5, when I took up bird-watching in my family's backyard with the intensity of an ornithologist--using my binoculars, bird encyclopedia and a special composition book to take copious notes.

Did I mention that I also play the violin, am utterly fascinated by cloud formations, and can spend hours researching a matter to its minute details, just for the sheer thrill of learning?

Still, for more years than I care to remember I tried to carefully conceal this part of me from the men I dated. As far as I could tell, guys liked fun party girls, not those of us who spent our downtime devouring the latest nonfiction opus. Men wanted women who swayed their hips and oozed sensuality, not the ones who were more likely to be found in the library than at the local dance club.

So I decided very early on that I should neatly pack away the geek in me and play the fun-loving party girl. I foolishly thought I could squeeze myself into some mold of what I imagined men liked. I didn't see it as frontin'--just a repackaging for marketing purposes. But at the root of it was a lack of self-confidence about who I was, a subconscious fear that someone would not love me--quirks and all.

My existence as a fractional being--at least when it came to dating--was frustrating and exhausting. Pretending to be something you're not saps your energy. You censor every response and action lest the real you slip out. You begin to feel as if a piece of you is missing. Worst of all, failing to show your authentic self can ruin your chances at finding true love, even as it strips away your spirit. "If you're a chameleon who adapts to whatever someone else wants you to be, you don't truly have a sense of self," says Audrey B. Chapman, Ph.D., a Washington, D.C., relationship therapist and author of Seven Attitude Adjustment for Finding a Loving Man (Pocket).

After a string of Mr. Wrongs and unfulfilling short-lived relationships, I finally began to understand the pitfalls of my masquerade. This was not the pathway to the love I deserved. As I stood in the middle of a midtown Manhattan nightclub with a very handsome Mr. Wrong one evening, surveying the array of gyrating dancers and watching cigarette smoke swirl above the crowd like nimbus clouds, my simmering dissatisfaction with the situation turned to anger at myself. I had had enough. This was not my scene. I was not having fun. No, Mr. Deejay, I vowed to myself, I will not wave 'em like I just don't care.

STOP PLAYING THE ROLE

In the years since my self-emancipation, I've met several men I've made a real connection with--one of them I ultimately married. But I've also come across countless other women who've been afraid to keep it real in their relationships. The posturing is sometimes subtle (pretending you're confident and fulfilled when inside you're screaming with boredom), sometimes severe (lying to your partner about your sexual history). But in every instance, the pretender is the one shortchanged. "You will never find real love if you aren't being real yourself," Chapman says. Instead you could be setting yourself up for a string of counterfeit courtships, failed marriages and an unending trail of suffocated relationships that never had a chance to truly breathe. "These relationships don't last because people eventually find out you aren't who you say you are," explains Larry E. Davis, Ph.D., author of Black and Single: Meeting and Choosing a Partner Who's Right for You (Noble Press).

Two years ago, Denise Bradford *, 26, of New York City was headed down the aisle before she eventually put the brakes on the relationship. Somewhere after the marketing executive's two engagement parties and before choosing bridesmaid dresses, she had a moment of clarity. "I didn't really love him, nor did I want the life he wanted," she recalls. "I was totally faking it." Bradford says that instead of being genuine about her relationship expectations and personal goals, she had simply said yes--to a life of white picket fences in suburbia when what she really wanted was a third-floor walk-up in the city; yes to having children soon after marriage when she dreamed of attending graduate school; yes to love when she really wasn't feeling him.

"On paper he was every woman's dream--good job, good looks, good gifts, good family stock. But I didn't love him the way he loved me," she says. "I kept hoping my feelings would catch up with my words and actions, but it didn't happen. I had to stop lying to myself." Bradford stopped dwelling on society's idea of a "good catch," admitted she was still recovering from a previous breakup, and found the courage to be true to herself. She has decided to wait until she finds what she really wants in a partnership.

Any relationship in which only half of you shows up is no relationship at all, Chapman says. "You can't blend with someone else if you don't first have a sense of who you are," she explains. That's not to say that putting your best foot forward in the early stages of dating is wrong. As my mama would say, "You can't catch nothin' without a little bait," and all relationships require compromise and some accommodation. Nor am I advising that we lay out all our baggage like an American Tourister showroom. But when you intentionally and repeatedly withhold a part of yourself--a piece critical to your central nature and character--or when you play the role of something you are not, you're the one who ultimately suffers for it.

Tonya Wright, 34, from Baltimore, is a sensitive soul, prone to gentle tears over things that probably wouldn't stir emotions in other folks. But for five years she dated, and later became engaged to, a man who didn't understand this part of her, so she kept it under wraps. "He had an, 'Oh, Lord, what now?' reaction to my tears, so I tried not to ever let him see them," she explains.

But holding back the tears led to a groundswell of internal anger (hers) and his constant accusations that she had an attitude. "All I really wanted was to come home from a rough day, lie in his lap, shed a few tears, and let him rub my head--and then I would have been okay," she says. Instead, hiding her needs and herself slowly killed their relationship.

The pretenders out there are so plentiful that relationship experts such as the late psychologist Elias H. Porter, who developed the Relationship Awareness Theory, have even coined a term to describe this phenomenon: masking. Masking, or pretending to be something you are not, they say, leads to enormous internal pain, loss of productivity and confusion. Sure, the mask may attract people to us, but perhaps not those who would be attracted to our real selves. So it becomes a vicious cycle: You have to keep up the mask or risk losing the approval of the person you're trying so hard to keep. You never feel understood or accepted for who you really are.

FREE TO BE ME

For years Sasha * battled with anxiety and depression. "I've taken every antidepressant on the market," she says, recalling how she hid her mental-health battles from the men she was dating. Somehow she knew that this was not a real existence--lying to cover up her bouts; putting her medication in a vitamin bottle so her date wouldn't know what it was. She finally sought help from support groups and friends. Slowly and methodically, she came to accept herself and to accept her illness, and she finally felt strong enough to share the truth about her situation. "Over time I got to the point where I could say, 'Here's the truth about me,'" she says, recalling the painful conversation she had with her fiance when she revealed her private battle.

Beginning and maintaining a relationship that is genuine, rich and deeply intimate, and allows for the full range of your personality--even the parts that aren't so cute--takes courage. But the results are worth it. "When you're truly ready for healthy love, it will be there for you," says Grace Cornish-Livingstone, Ph.D., a relationship consultant and author of The Band-Aid Bond: How to Uncover the Hidden Causes and Break the Pattern of Unhealthy Loving (McDonald-Livingstone). And what if a man you've been seeing doesn't like all of you or gets angry and leaves the relationship? The answer: He may not be the one for you. "We're too afraid of someone not liking us and then leaving us," Cornish-Livingstone says. "If they don't want to be with you, let them leave."

Or perhaps you'll decide, as Tonya Wright did, that you are the one who needs to do the leaving. Tonya eventually ended her five-year relationship with the man who couldn't bear her sensitive soul. Wright is now involved with someone who embraces her and her tears. "I can't tell you how happy I am to be in a relationship with someone who accepts every part of me," she says.

For Sasha, revealing her mental-health struggle opened up a new dimension in her relationship with her fiance. She was finally able to feel emotionally joined to someone who would love and accept her through everything. Sasha learned the essential rule of relationships: Never suppress yourself in an effort to influence, win or hold someone. "Now that I am at peace with who I am," she says, "I've finally found the love I've wanted all my life."

Kimberly L. Allers is a staff writer at Fortune magazine and author of the upcoming The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy (Amistad).







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