Protecting Our Squishy Human Selves
A lesson from reality dating shows
Hello Friends and Readers,
Do you love a good reality show? I’ve never been much of a fan before. I find the conflict to be so cringey and difficult to watch. Not only that, it can be easy to put myself in a position of “Oh, I would NEVER do that!” and spend an hour casting judgement on other people’s lives, which feels yucky at best. Recently, however, I have been indulging in a few favourites, Love is Blind and The Ultimatum and Temptation Island, mostly because the people who are participate largely seem like real people doing their best to find or keep love (although I’m not sure why they’d choose Temptation Island to do that, but whatever).
As I have been watching, especially as someone who is now single, I really find myself growing curious about people’s inner worlds. Why are they reacting so strongly to something that seemed fairly trivial? Why don’t they see that their words and their actions are very different things? Why are they being so prickly? Why does it seem so hard to communicate with someone that you very clearly care about?
I find myself tempted to assign the role of villain to someone who makes it seem like their life’s work is to stir the pot. It would be nice to just say with certainty that one person is to blame for the troubles that are present. But, I really don’t believe that we exist in a binary of someone is either a good person or bad person—it’s so much more grey than that. The truth is we are all doing our best to protect the vulnerable human that we are, and those prickly characters we see on TV (or those we know personally) are really just squishy people with a lot of armour on.
Finding the place to lay blame is such a human tendency. We get close enough to see the less-than-perfect parts of someone, and we say “I knew it! I knew you were going to hurt me! You’ve confirmed all the fears I had from the start!” It’s really interesting to observe people, who have consented to being on TV, get caught in the blame spiral, because it never really resolves anything; it doesn’t even put you on the same team when each person spends more energy defending their intentions or their pain rather than looking to understand where the other person is coming from. They put so much armour on that it becomes difficult to see the real person underneath the blame, the accusations, the yelling, the anxiety, the begging.
We armour up in the attempt to protect ourselves, and usually for good reason. We’ve all been hurt before, whether we were caught in patterns we couldn’t control during childhood, or we put our trust in someone we thought wouldn’t hurt us and then were betrayed, or we lost something or someone we loved dearly. Armouring up makes sense when something so painful happens and there’s no way to make sense of it. Of course you want to prevent feeling that way again. But something I’m learning right now is that every time I armour up, I may prevent some hurt from happening, but I also put a barrier between me and another person that prevents authentic connection, too. I’m finding the process of being open to a new dating relationship to be really scary, because I want to be absolutely certain that I won’t be hurt. I end up being hypervigilant, looking out for even the smallest of red or green flags, sometimes even making them up to suit my overall narrative.
But let’s be honest, this doesn’t just happen in romance—it also happens at work or in parenting or in our family of origin. We believe that other people have control over our wellbeing, and so we try to control the way other people show up for us through begging, coercion, silent treatment, running away, and many other things. We blame others for treating us in a certain way for months, years, even decades. But…why did we stay? Why did we allow that to happen for so long? When did we learn the story that other people are responsible for our happiness? Why don’t we believe we have choices? Why don’t we believe we deserve supportive relationships? When I ask these questions, there is absolutely no judgement; I’ve had to ask myself these very questions to untangle where this story even began in the first place.
If I want to be my authentic and vulnerable self, if I want to take the armour off to reveal the squishy person I am underneath, I’m realizing that the only person I really need to trust…is me. When I really think deeply about why I put armour on, it’s not because I don’t trust the other person—not really. The person I don’t trust is myself, because I used to accept harmful treatment from other people; because I didn’t know how to speak up when a boundary was crossed; because I didn’t walk away from someone who didn’t treat me with the bare minimum of respect and consideration and consistency; because I confused love with codependency; because I didn’t believe I could tolerate painful emotions. Yes, I learned all of this when I was little, but I’m the one who is continuing these patterns as an adult now.
Being able to trust someone else requires that I have my own back, so that no matter what they may do or say, I will ask for or give myself what I need to be supported and safe. I can’t control how someone else behaves or how honest they are with me, but I can control whether or not I’ll speak up when things are not okay, or believe the feelings in my body are valid, or let someone walk away from me, even if it hurts. I can change the narrative and take responsibility for my wellbeing by choosing people that truly add love, support, and grace to my life; by creating boundaries to protect my peace, regardless of how that makes others feel; and not continuing to bring people into my life that require me to put my armour on.
I’m realizing I shouldn’t EVER have to earn good behaviour from someone else; that should just be the base-level expectation I have for the people I bring close to me. Period. And I’m free to walk away or take a sacred pause when that isn’t happening, because, ultimately, people change when they want to, not when I force them to. I’m learning to “Let Them” as Mel Robbins advocates, and I will “Let Me” feel disappointed, cry, hold myself, lean on my support system, and move on. I get to choose. What a beautiful, difficult responsibility to have.
When do you find yourself putting armour on?
When do you feel the most safe to be your squishiest, most human self?
How do you practice trusting yourself?
I've been deep-diving into the enneagram recently, so reading what you wrote about all of us just being squishy people with armor on really resonates.