Don’t Wait Until the Door Is Shut!
What our tweens taught me about relationships
It’s Thursday evening and I just told the boys to get ready for bed. My eldest bonus tween (so that’s my partner’s 12yo son who lives with us part-time) Adam is running a bath — Thursday nights are his bath nights while his younger brother Ben (almost 11yo) usually spends the time reading comic books in bed before going to sleep. But 15 minutes after the boys leave for the bathroom, Adam comes out, scowling: “Ben won’t leave the bathroom, he hasn’t brushed his teeth yet.” Of course, he hasn’t… What’s more fun than procrastinating, anyway?
In the bathroom, I tell Ben he has 5 minutes to brush his teeth — afterward the bathroom is Adam’s domain and he can no longer enter. Ben nods and finally grabs his toothbrush. 3 minutes later, I find him absentmindedly brushing his teeth while reading comics in his bedroom. Deciding to be smart about picking my battles I don’t try to force him to the bathroom and simply warn him: “Hey, you’ve got 2 minutes left — after this, you really can’t enter the bathroom anymore, Adam wants his privacy while he’s taking a bath.” Ben nods and mumbles “Yeah, okay.” Somewhat later I hear Adam’s voice in the bedroom: “Ben, 45 seconds left!” Silence.
Several minutes pass and then Ben is banging on a closed bathroom door: “Let me in, I have to put away my toothbrush.” The door doesn’t open. I approach Ben and tell him his time is up and now he’ll have to put away his toothbrush in his bedroom for the night. Ben is in tears — he doesn’t understand why Adam won’t open the door.
Now for you, this might be a story about terrible parenting or about brothers fighting, but to me — this is a story that echoes many relationships I’ve seen over the years.
Doors don’t stay open
Intimacy requires vulnerability. If you’re busy shielding yourself from your partner (or the other way around) it’s very hard to be truly open and loving with each other. So when we fall in love, we open the door — to ourselves, our hearts, and the parts of us that we do not always show to others. Intimacy comes from Latin intimus: innermost. We give access to parts that are soft and unprotected. And with this, we give power — the power to hold us or to hurt us.
But with power comes responsibility and the power is not unconditional. I remember how my husband would drink too much and get behind the wheel. Tell me he’d be home by midnight and then stay at the pub until 5 AM without a heads up. Promising to do something fun together and then disappearing behind his computer. At first, we’d fight. I’d try to tell him how he made me feel. How I was terrified he’d crash with his car, or get into a fight — how I couldn’t sleep wondering if he’s alright. How I felt abandoned as he wouldn’t show any inclination to spend actual quality time with me. We would argue, there would be tears, there would be promises, and then it would repeat over, and over, and over.
Then, one night (or I should say — morning), after another time he’d arrive smelling of too much alcohol for someone to drive responsibly, I felt something shift inside of me. I no longer felt sad, disappointed, or scared. I felt… indifferent. Angry at his irresponsible behavior that might make other victims — yes. But no longer hurt by his behavior. And no longer feeling attraction or intimacy.
The indifference didn’t last — my feelings came back later that day. Still, it was a clear sign that the door I opened to my heart was slowly closing. I told him — he didn’t take it seriously. We kept going as we did, but a process had started.
Slowly, day by day, week by week, any new fight would be a confirmation: this relationship isn’t honoring who I am, isn’t what I deserve. More and more, I began closing myself off, until a few months later, the door shut permanently — too much had happened and I simply wasn’t going to allow him access to that innermost part of myself that got bruised badly over the course of our relationship. We got a divorce. Like Ben, my ex-husband had waited too long — the door closed and I wouldn’t reopen it again.
Once it’s too late… it’s too late.
While the door to intimacy is open, there is love and compassion. There is trust, even if this trust is bruised. There is occasional self-sacrifice and a willingness to work hard to make it work. Your partner might cry, scream or plead — but they are still emotionally involved. So many people struggle to understand why the same partner who was begging them to see a couple’s counselor just a few months earlier suddenly is set on ending the relationship without as much as a serious attempt at saving it. Why are they giving up, now that you’re finally willing to put in the work?
That’s because the door is closed, and once it’s finally closed — it’s too late. You can bang on the door and ask to be let in once more, just once — just for a bit, but behind the closed door, the partner is no longer receptive to pleas. The connection is gone, and with the connection gone one simply no longer has the incentive to give the relationship another shot.
Ben ended up storing his toothbrush on his desk for the night and put it in the bathroom in the morning. But for relationships, it doesn’t work that way. Doors that are shut and locked very rarely get reopened. So if you’re in a relationship right now… pay attention to the opening still left, the connection still flowing. And don’t keep waiting, thinking the door will be there tomorrow and the next day as well. Because if you take it for granted… the odds are you’ll one day discover yourself being locked out.
