Miss Understand
I’ve never enjoyed wintertime. Twinkling lights, soft sugar cookies, warm cocoa — these are delightful things. For me, they could be just as delightful in May or in August.
In the springtime, and all through the summer, there are plenty of opportunities to have fun, particularly by spending hours and hours outside. But as fall turns to wintertime, and as the days grow dark and cold, everything moves indoors. The nights are too long, and I hate feeling trapped inside, where I’m often on my own.
I wouldn’t describe myself as touch-starved at all. I’ve never been a “physical touch”-type of person and, while the idea of a strict love language isn’t without its flaws, I know that I have my own ways of showing affection. I would rather fall back on acts of service than give out cuddles or hugs.
In spite of this non-reliance on physical affection, I start to feel lonely this time of year. It’s a feeling that lasts from the day the clocks are set back until the middle of March, when the nights will finally seem less long — and less dreary.
During the winter, I don’t need someone to spoon me, or to hold my hand while I’m trying not to slip on ice in the Walmart parking lot. But I feel like I need someone to recognize the inner parts of me, the parts that desperately clamor to be understood. I guess I’d like someone to be able to mesh with these parts of me, during the wintertime. This time of year, the longing for that intensifies. I feel like I don’t need “just someone” — I need someone who understands me on a deeper level. Likewise, I’d like to understand them on a deeper level. Deeper than the snowdrifts, deeper than the ever-growing pile of leaves in the backyard. I long for the trappings of companionship, but I really want to find someone who wants to understand, who wants to be understood.
At this point in my life, the day-to-day experience feels rewarding in many ways — but there’s an occasional longing for something greater. Over time, I came to realize that my great longing isn’t for a husband, for a family, or for a relationship worth bragging about. My great longing is to be understood by someone else — for someone outside of me to see my inner self and, instead of running away in horror, to want to share their inner self with me.
In the past, I’ve struggled to understand myself. I could feel myself doing the wrong thing, or saying the wrong thing, or letting my face slip into the wrong expression. I would realize as I did it that I needed to change, to do something different. In the moment, I knew I was too awkward, too shy, too nervous —but I didn’t know a version of myself that wasn’t awkward, shy, or nervous. I wasn’t hiding my anxiety. I was showcasing it.
But, as awkward as my behavior was, I knew what I enjoyed. I was in tune with my insides. I’ve always been aware of what I like and dislike. I know what my interests are, what my hobbies are, what my favorite things to cook and eat are. I know my favorite places to travel, my favorite movies, my favorite people. This is the stuff that I would share with someone else on a cold winter’s night — after I got to know them. Knowing them first is most important. But it’s so hard to know someone fully, because of our need to file down the edges of our true selves to fit within the confines of branding.
We’re often told to sell or brand ourselves by shining a spotlight on our accomplishments and our physical traits — our sexiest selves. And while that can tell us things worth knowing — who wouldn’t appreciate/applaud a friend or a partner who can cook Ethiopian food, who can speak four languages, who runs four marathons a year? — I feel like it doesn’t always get to the marrow of the person. I don’t get a handle on their quirks, their true feelings, their moods, their motivations. Sanitized branding doesn’t give me a true idea of our mutual compatibility.
From his photos or his bio, I can see that this man might be desirable, or romantic, or handsome — but I still don’t know if he would be a good companion. I don’t know if he would be too silly or too serious. I don’t know if he would be able to peel back the layers of my feelings — to peel them back gently, not to turn them into onion rings.
If I’m looking at a dating profile, I can guess at potential compatibility — whether or not someone seems to be in simpatico. But it’s a lot harder to do when I’m having to look not at the person himself, but to examine what’s essentially his resume. On a personal level, I find romance similar to friendship: I’ve always wanted to get to know the personality and the man behind the list, first.
Learning about someone’s college degree, about the big fish they caught off the coast of Florida, or about the time they bumped into Jack White in Nashville? For me, all of that falls under a different category — a category that comes secondary to learning about their personality, about the way they see the world.
I know you have to start somewhere — but I’m usually left with only a surface-level understanding of these people, even after poring over their profiles. The fishing photo — and the two-hundred-dollar fishing rod — isn’t going to hook me. The good conversation, and the mutual intelligibility, is ultimately what reels me in.
In terms of making (and keeping) friends, I’ve always gravitated to people who care about the same things I care about. Instead of scrolling through an endless list of people who I’d probably never like to meet, I’d like to do something different. I’ve made both in-person and online friends by showing up somewhere where I know we’ll both care about the same thing, where we’ll have at least one thing in common.
At times, that shared hobby or favorite musical artist is the only thing we have in common. But I find that, among my greatest friends, we have similar hobbies, similar politics, and similar worldviews. It helps to know this from the start — that there’s at least one thing we’ll understand about each other. That there’s at least one bigger goal that we share. Even if that goal is just having fun or feeling appreciated.
I’ve found lots of things that I can enjoy with non-partners: my friends, some acquaintances, and even friends-of-friends. I have good friends, of course, and I love them. But I don’t go home to them at night, and I can’t wake up in the middle of the night and ask them for warm waffles or frank advice. They have their own husbands, wives, fiancé(e)s for that sort of thing. And I’m not about to intrude, to wake someone at 1:00 A.M., just to have a quick chat about what we should have for breakfast tomorrow, or what we want to do on Saturday. I wouldn’t wake up a married couple just to have a chat. I’m eccentric, but I’m not that eccentric.
My own eccentricities occasionally make me feel too difficult to truly understand. And it makes me feel uncomfortable, to feel like I’ll never find someone who understands me on that deeper level, because the apps and the algorithms don’t offer a way to meet someone in a more slow, thoughtful, organic way. Instead of jumping straight into a relationship, I want to find mutual understanding, first — or someone who’s willing to work towards it.
In time, I think that I will either find someone — or find no one. And if I find no one, then I hope that I can find myself.
Either way, I hope I can find myself.
(This is an essay that I almost didn’t post — but as winter approaches, loneliness often looms in the background. If anyone can relate to this, please know that there are plenty of other people who have similar feelings!)
