Explain Myself? No, Thank You.
A person truly interested in understanding you will never demand an explanation.
They are watchful, easy, looking for what's there to love.
If they don't find anything, they look elsewhere, quietly, serene, you'll hardly notice them drift away, attentionally or relationally.
A person who wants to understand and love you is holding that responsibility themselves, not asking you to prove that you're worthy first.
The people who belong in your life are seeking to be worthy of relationship with you based on how exquisitely they can love you for exactly who you are. They look with loving eyes and craft loving narratives about you and your interactions with them.
They do not want you to justify yourself, they supply justification to themselves and for you, and on your behalf to others.
When you decide to explain, they agree and add in. They trust you to reveal yourself, and they treat what you reveal as true, even as they draw more from you with their craving for what is true.
When you say how you're feeling, they're present and interested, curious, sweet, receptive. (when you actually say how you are FEELING and not what you are thinking...) They share how they are feeling.
None of the feelings are wrong. Nobody's feelings are more important than anyone else's—they're all important to everyone involved.
If you find yourself explaining, or, god forbid, justifying, you may be in the presence of someone who is in the practice of argument, criticism, and complaint rather than the practice of understanding and loving reflection.
This is NOT a moral issue. These practices genuinely feel like the most loving approach, to the person who enacts them. These practices don't make anyone a bad person.
The question to ask is "Is this how I want to spend the finite time, energy, and attention allotted to me in my one and only life?"
Do these practices nourish me and generate energy and momentum in my life toward the things that are important to me?
Those of us with exquisite boundaries based in personal responsibility don't relate with others based on how good of a person the other is. We don't boot people from our lives because they're "bad" or "too bad." We don't keep people in our lives because they (or their treatment of us) are not quite bad enough to warrant expulsion.
We relate based on what we are choosing to serve ourselves in this one and only life.
And we can only serve ourselves what we know is available, what we know how to receive.