Love this whole thread of conversation based on Ms. Washington’s ‘Seventeen” piece. You and your various conversation partners have spoken volumes to the layers of societal expectation that is dumped into us from early age, as well as the immutable fact that NONE of us fits neatly inside societal expectation — that there is no way for us to know each other without precise communication. In order for me to tell you about myself, I have to know myself. Well, there’s MY first stumbling block!
And then there’s the trust needed to be honest and transparent. We tell men to be go-getters, in charge, we expect them to know stuff — in fact, they BETTER know stuff, since they are in charge. And you, as a child (not a man yet), were tasked with knowing that which you could not know. But you could not say, ‘I am a virgin, too.’
When will it be okay for men to say, ‘I don’t know,’ or just ‘I’ve never done this before, I’m nervous,’ without freaking everyone out? (Remember the old deodorant commercial “Never let ’em see you sweat.”) When will it be okay for a woman to say, ‘I DO know, let me do that,’ or ‘Me neither, let’s learn together.’ One exchange at a time.
Every communication, starting small and growing, is a chance to expose our need, and it is scary. Fear is probably the largest barrier.
The book, Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg is an excellent place to start if you are interested in getting past the unreasonable societal burdens of “we don’t talk about that,” “not at the dinner-table, please,” etc. Everyone knows, and accepts, a certain amount of elephant-in-the-living-room in the name of getting along, just learning to accept and be kind without knowing ‘why.’
I am sure of a few things. One is that everyone has a story. Another is that I don’t have to know the story to know there IS one. The times I have found myself really irritated by someone’s behavior, then heard their story, I have ALWAYS been ashamed of being so critical. The times I didn’t learn the story, when I fed and groomed my resentment, I ended up making love to a gorilla; thing about making love to a gorilla is that you’re not done until the gorilla says you are…
