Fairy Tales between the Lines

I've had the pleasure of meeting many people throughout my life, some of which I've even had deeper emotional connections to. However, in my most recent bout of introspection, I've come to the conclusion that my approach to relationships, that is,a highly compartmentalized methodology to hold advantages of psychological distance and control, is perhaps not really the best way to go about doing things. Inf act, some of the problems I allude to in earlier writings, for example the growing lack of awareness of the cohesive 'whole' world around us, directly stem from the very processes I embody as both defense and conceptual mechanisms.

But why do people fragment their lives? Why do I and by extension, others compartmentalize portions of our existence into black boxes? I suppose that the context I am speaking of has to do with social interactions.

All of us do it. We place friends in different areas of our lives, knowing that there are people we seek out for distinct benefits as compared to others. There are the confidants, the ones we go to to hang out, the ones we seek for romantic companionship, the ones we go to because we're alone. In many ways, this causes us to fragment our identities into different portions, each of which we exclusively express to specific people. But why is this? Do we feel that this is a mechanism to prevent any form of awkward turtle birthing based on common similarities? Or is it something deeper?

Personally, I do believe that fragmentation is done in order to smooth out social interactions and prevent any one person from knowing 'too much.' It is at once a defense and a coping mechanism, allowing us to effectively connect with other people without the danger of severely compromising ourselves on the basis of someone knowing too much. This reduces our investment by each individual person and thus, if we lose someone in our network, it doesn't impact us quite as emotionally as it would have been had they known more of who we are. To be more precise, it wouldn't impact as much as if we had known they know us more.

People who we connect to, we foster a bond with, and the like are those we want to somehow connect back with us. Rare is the notion that we do not seek reciprocity; in fact, I would argue that many of our interactions in terms of emotional and intellectual discourse demonstrates a huge want of just that. We want people to know us and want to know us, perhaps because it fulfills our social need to be accepted. A person curious in who we are demonstrates a want of who we are, further affirming our personalities, identity, and self-worth.

Yet, there are lines drawn in the sand marking where they cannot pass, and barriers that oftentimes cannot be broken. The investment in any one substantial person greatly increases the risk, and thus we have been wired to not disperse our full personalities to everyone we know. Those who are able to reach that limit (or at least approach) either have incredible emotional tolerance and stamina or are hurt all the time and require their social network to 'shield' them from the outside.

These two contradicting viewpoints, the need to protect ourselves and the need for social reciprocity, are the underlying cause for relationship micromanagement. We relate only with people in ways we seek for them to reciprocate in. The conflicts that arise oftentimes occur when this underlying 'similarity' between two people is challenged. One person wishes for something else, and it falls apart under strain. One person does not require reciprocity and withdraws. All the myriad of dysfunctions and breaking friendships result when our perception of what we wish from someone else changes, and to be conscious both of our own perception and others perhaps is a skill that should be cultivated.

Wouldn't it be nice to know everything about your friend, so that things will never be awkward? And wouldn't it be nice for her to know everything about you, so that she'll reciprocate as you desire? Sadly, such ideal situations are at best, a blue moon an at worse, the unattainable dream fairy tales are written of.

Today is chilly, but the temperature is rising. Therefore, I am lazy.

Cheers.