On Trust & Vulnerability
“Make new friends, but keep the old
One is silver and the other gold.
A circle is round, but never ends
That’s how long we should keep our friends.”-Girl Scout song
I’ve been reading a lot of Dr. Brene Brown’s work lately, and one of the things that hit me the hardest is her assertion that not everyone has earned the right to hear my story. She puts a lot of emphasis on vulnerability, and in the main, I’m here for it. Until I read her works, though, I never realized exactly what vulnerability is.
I spent 4 years of my life in a dating relationship that failed. Our relationship failed for many reasons, but one of the biggest issues, generally speaking, was that I didn’t trust him. While I was in the relationship, I regularly blamed myself for my lack of willingness to open up. I tried hard to push past my feelings of discomfort with sharing with this person, telling myself that maybe the trust wasn’t manifesting because I wasn’t opening up as much as he wanted me to. When he pressed for greater access to me emotionally, I would berate myself for feeling resistance to true vulnerability with him.
Through that relationship, I never stopped to question whether this was a person who had, to use Brene Brown’s phrasing, earned the right to hear my story. Yes, vulnerability is a crucial part of relationships, whether romantic or platonic. Yes, I truly believe in the power of vulnerability to engender trust between two people. But what struck me most was that not everyone is deserving of that level of vulnerability. Not everyone has earned my trust. We have our innate intuition for a reason, and to quote a friend of mine’s Instagram bio (lol), “my love is too rich to be planted in bad soil.”
What I know now, from many years of painful experience within that relationship and with others, is that I don’t owe space in my life to anyone. Period. I don’t owe it to anyone to let them walk beside me if they haven’t earned a place in my life, and I can say that honestly without malice or bitterness. Just before I graduated college, a friend of mine asked me in passing which friends of mine from college I actually planned to keep in touch with. I bristled with righteous indignation. How could he ask me that? I planned to keep in touch with every last one of my college friends, and I wasn’t going to preemptively terminate friendships with anyone. I informed him, in all my indignant innocence, that my friendships meant too much to me to pick and choose ahead of time which friends to let go of.
Well, I said that… and then, life happened. I certainly do not keep in touch with every single one of my college friends, and it’s not because I don’t love them or like them anymore. I was blessed enough to form many close friendships in college. However, after going through a messy best friend breakup a few years out of college, I decided to take 6 months to pause all but my most serious, dedicated friendships. (Like, legit. You had to have had tenure with me for me to even SPEAK to you. I was #inmyfeels.) I was so hurt from the dreadful falling out I had with one of my closest friends that I decided I wasn’t going to reach out to anyone for 6 months. My real friends, I concluded somewhat melodramatically, would show me that they cared about me enough to reach out to me first.
I tried that experiment, and I learned a lot. I certainly didn’t cut off all the old friends who didn’t reach out to me within that particular 6 month window, but it did illuminate to me that I was the one initiating all of the conversation with some friends. I was surprised by which of my friends took the initiative to reach out to me, and equally surprised by those who did not. At the same time, I also went through my Facebook and deleted ~200 “friends” who were vague acquaintances, people I didn’t like, exes, or random people who I hadn’t spoken to in so long that I doubted they would even notice I unfriended them. My social media definitely isn’t reflective of who I consider my closest friends, but it was a proactive step in the direction I wanted to go in.
These days, I have a much tighter circle around me than I used to. I am working to deeply internalize that access to me, in any capacity, is precious. Friendship is not a label I assign (or wear) lightly. I care deeply about my friends, near and far, and I make lots and lots of sincere effort to maintain strong relationships. What I’ve realized, though, is that while commitment to my friends is incredibly precious, some people have not yet earned the right to wear that label of friend or have not kept the right to continue to journey with me. Friendship is not a label anyone can assign to me, and vice versa; we earn our place in each other’s lives through mutual connection, caring, and vulnerability. I hold plenty of space in my life for my network, acquaintances, clients, coworkers, and more. But for me, none of those spots are as dear as the spots held in my heart by my friends, the people who walk by my side and hold me up daily.
I no longer think it is a bad thing that some people just aren’t equipped with the tools to love me — me specifically, me particularly. I choose not to see that as a personal failing on their part, or even a willful act of neglect. It just means that they aren’t the right person for me to continue on my journey with. Our paths have just diverged, and that leaves me freer to wander the path of life with people who pour right back into me. To me, that’s what earning the right to hear my story looks like.