Often we feel frustrated, angry, and bewildered when the person we want to connect with does not respond. They seem to be hiding behind some kind of facade or mask, which can seem difficult to penetrate.  Or perhaps they seem to be avoiding our company. Our longing can propell us into a way of engaging with people that creates a kind of pressure on them—we want to break through their pretensions and get to something real and authentic. The challenge, whenever we find ourselves in this kind of situation, is to learn how to honour ourselves and the other person at exactly the same time.

I honour and respect myself by allowing myself to feel the frustration, and also the longing for connection. Feeling the longing lets my heart soften—it reminds me that there is love at the bottom of all this, a deep and simple caring for the other person and our relationship.

I can honour the other person by realizing that they have a perfect right to be exactly the way they are. If they are not being real with me, if I cannot find their authentic self, it is often because they themselves do not know where or what that is. Or because they feel threatened by me in some way.
If I have an agenda, any kind of agenda with this person, I am imposing something on the openness and freedom of their being, and they will feel it, even if I don’t speak it out loud. These are the silent conversations that go on all the time, especially in families and intimate relationships. I can be having a verbal exchange with someone, and on another level, there is a silent conversation going on that is very different than the verbal one.

So if I am thinking, “I want you to be more authentic, or more open with me, “ I am not accepting you the way you are, and you will feel this, in your body, or in your mind and heart.

There is this possibility of working with the longing for authenticity and deep connection, in such a way that we are not putting that kind of pressure or demand on the other person.

How do I create an environment that nourishes and supports a genuine connection with this person I care about? First of all, I have to be willing to listen to them without any judgment or defensiveness.  If this person says to me, “I feel small and clumsy around you, “ we can really receive that, instead of saying, “No, that’s not how I relate to you.”

We want to give that person the experience of being fully heard, seen, and acknowledged, just as they are. On the deepest level, this is what every human being needs in order to grow into wholeness and freedom. Our core wounds are all about this lack of attunement, the times in our lives when we were not met, not received just as we were. 

Instead of saying, “No, I’m not like that, “ we can say allow ourselves to really receive what that person is saying about us. We don’t have to agree with them, we just need to acknowledge that this is the way they experience us. We could respond by saying, “Oh I see, that’s how you experience me. Thank you for telling me—I had no idea. That is not how I want you to feel when we are together. How could I be with you, so that you feel freer and more open in my presence? Is there anything you could tell me that would make it easier for you to be yourself with me?”

These are not the kind of questions we usually ask each other, and asking them may bring up feeling of vulnerability, awkwardness or anxiety. These feelings do not mean that something is wrong! Often they mean just the opposite: that we are moving in a good direction, trying out new ways of being, willing to take risks and look more deeply at the part we are playing, in any relationship that is feeling like a challenge.

Sometimes it may not feel appropriate to ask these questions out loud. The other person may feel threatened by such questions, or bewildered. In that case, we can ask these questions silently, just holding them in our heart, and listening to see what arises, as we move through our life. It can be very surprising to notice that the other person changes, sometimes quite a lot, when we are willing to allow this kind of inner shift inside ourselves. We are connected to each other in many ways, and the silent conversations and invisible threads that join us together can support us in ways that our mental understanding knows nothing about.