Alignment and Vulnerability
I hear plenty from women about how men don't open up, can't be vulnerable, won't share their hearts.
I cannot relate.
Men tell me their desires and thoughts. Men frequently let me in on what they consider their deepest and darkest stuff. They tell me of both their ancient and their recent shame.
One thing I hear again and again is a man who has labeled himself "avoidant."
In fact, he's taken on a label given to him by women who want something from him that he doesn't want to give. He gets on board with the idea that this is some problem or flaw in him. He wants to want to give her what she wants. But sometimes he doesn't actually want those things with her, and he doesn't know what's wrong with him, why he doesn't want to give what she's perfectly right to ask of him.
It only takes a couple moments of my curious questioning to reveal that this "problem" only happens with women he's not actually interested in pursuing.
It happens with the misaligned, the entitled, the extractive, the abstractive. It doesn't happen in his close friendships. It doesn't happen with women he's really interested in, though sometimes he hasn't yet found such a woman.
One of the biggest problems with the partnership abstraction, dating for marriage, the idea of "doing the work" of relationships, is that it has us all believing that if we do it right, any relationship might deepen and last a lifetime.
False. So false.
What this leaves us with is a high-stakes, do-or-die situation that has no graceful exit, so we make clumsy exits and pathologize ourselves for the ways we "couldn't make it work" with someone who was simply not a fit.
One thing I ask people who share their shame about how they couldn't make it work with someone is "why didn't you marry them right away?"
They blink a few times and it's as if a spell lifts.
"Why didn't I marry them right away?
"Well, because I was learning who they are. I promised myself I would walk in slowly and exercise discernment."
The point of going slowly is so that we END IT EARLY if it isn't aligned.
The point of dating is to find out who this person is and whether OR NOT we want to be with them, or, as we lower the stakes and loosen the abstraction, how, precisely, they might fit into our lives.
If any relationship could and should work, it would only make sense to get married immediately. If it makes sense to walk into relationships slowly, that's because we might not want to walk all the way in.
There is no need to eat the whole thing. The idea that it's all or nothing with someone, that it's marriage or I never see you again, this is all based in ancestral grief. Women were engineered to depend upon men materially and economically, and in exchange for a man's "provision" he got to limit all other men's access to her.
The only reason this still flies today is because we have not awoken to the new reality. Our cultural narratives and the templates of how relationships can go are in dire need of updating.
These so-called "avoidant" men might understand that they are the arbiters of their time, energy, and attention, and it is WISE for them to reserve it from those who early-on demonstrate an entitlement to those finite resources.
Women who are wishing men would "open up" more might understand that their demands on men and the high stakes they're bringing to early dating prevent the vulnerability they claim to desire.
Dating for marriage is literally absurd. I, for one, am dating for alignment. I'm dating for alignment because I wouldn't marry for anything other than alignment. I don't even call it dating anymore, that distinction has lost meaning and relevance—I allow aligned connections to flourish in my life exactly as they will. Supremely aligned connections find me and stay with me, because I honor what they are without demanding they be something else.
