You deserve to be heard
I feel like we’ve unconsciously been taught that the less you share about yourself in a relationship, the more selfless it makes you. we’ve somehow been made to believe that talking less and listening more makes you an ideal friend. a better person. you don’t burden anyone with your problems. you don’t take up space. you don’t waste anyone’s time. you’re just always being referred to as a good listener. so that’s what you do. you listen. and you get addicted to listening that you no longer know how to open up.
Well, that has nothing to do with selflessness. Not at all.
Opening up to someone is an extremely courageous act, one of the hardest too. but we all need it. we all need to be heard. every single one of us. we need to be able to pour our hearts out to someone from time to time. we need to shush everyone at some point and allow ourselves to listen to those voices inside our heads speaking out loud. we need to randomly pick up the phone and start ranting about that one thing that’s been annoying us. we need to record extremely long voice notes and talk about things we can’t look anyone in the eye and speak about. and we need to see those blue ticks confirming that someone on the other side has heard them. we need to let someone know how heavy our hearts feel. we need to share those extremely dark secrets of our lives. we need to share the completely irrelevant details about our days likewise. and we deserve that.
Taking that away from someone does not make us selfless. especially if it’s intentional. it takes away their chance to satisfy our needs. to be there. to give us a hug in between our tears. to learn how to be good listeners themselves. to be exposed to those sides of us we keep hiding. to get access to who we really are beyond what we like and dislike. to feel the warmth of the relationship. with both sides taking up as much space of it as they wish.
If you’re in a relationship where you don’t get to experience that, no matter how much you’d like to believe otherwise, it’s doomed to fail. someone will always run out of energy. someone will always feel left out. someone will always end up walking away. and no one would really be able to understand why.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t listen. it just can’t be the only thing we do.
That’s also not to say we should be opening up to every single person in our lives. we still need to choose wisely.
It’s just to say that we should stop taking pride in our ability to keep our mouths shut, for it actually ends up hurting us more than anything else.
