Wednesday, August 08, 2007

If I'm Quiet, It's Because I'm Holding Back

It is so easy to forget how boring it is for other people to hear all about the warm fuzzy goodness of your new love. The truth is that, beyond the bare essentials, only your closest friend or sibling wants to know... and even they don’t want to know THAT much. It’s like elderly people talking about their physical ailments in excruciating detail, the parent of a young child explaining every remarkable thing about their child to you at length or the obsessive pet owner who tells you everything about Fluffy’s wacky hijinks of the previous afternoon. Unless the person happens to be a naturally riveting storyteller, you don’t really want to hear these stories. They are interesting to the parties involved and maybe a few select people who are seriously emotionally invested in Fluffy.

So I am trying to remember not to share my enthusiasm too much, which probably leads some people to underestimate how happy I am with life at the moment. But 90% of the people in your world just need the highlights: “Things are going well. Seems serious. Meeting the parents next weekend.”

That’s it. No one really needs to know more than that. I also think it’s easy to confuse the ability to share minutiae with the intimacy that stems from sharing more personal truths. I think closeness stems from an ability to share who we ARE with each other, not what the doctor said about your joints or how proud you are that Junior became conditioned - after only three minor burns - to leave the stove alone. Sometimes you NEED to tell someone about the little details, but right now I'm trying to remind myself that my friends will not be as riveted as I am by a detailed description of my new man's dead-sexy laugh lines or the way he spontaneously starts dancing with me when we're chatting in the kitchen. I find these things FASCINATING. But then, I'm all addle-brained by the warm fuzzy goodness.

4 comments:

  1. I always enjoy hearing about the fun relationship stuff. I wonder if it's because the majority of my friends are married (like me), so I don't get to hear serious "dishing" nearly enough these days! Feel free to share, and I'll be happy to gush appropriately!

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  2. Thank you! I am just painfully aware that, like a teenager who thinks they are The First Person Ever to feel these things, in the blush of new love one tends to lose some judgement about what does and does not qualify as interesting information. :)

    It's been hard to blog because I sit down at the computer and write about HIM instead of anything remotely related to any of the subject matter I usually tackle. Eventually I will be forced to discuss him more, if only because I have oodles of material to draw from.

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  3. I like reading about the happy stuff, too. I think there's so much negativity and cynicism on the web nowadays; blog rants are a dime a dozen. It's nice to hear a little bit of sentimentality and joy from someone who usually has a more serious sociopolitical focus to her writing. A bit of mush now and again reminds us that we're human.


    Dead-sexy laugh lines, eh?

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  4. When I first started seeing my husband, I couldn't stop thinking about him! I couldn't understand how people in relationships were able to function, how they were able to think about anything else besides their partner. It's exciting stuff! Go with it!

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