Reflections on Being Defensive and Secretive
This article is written differently from the others. Rather than grouping various suggestions under different headers, I'm just going to ramble on about my own experiences. Hopefully you can extract some useful info from it that's applicable to your own situation.
Pretty much every negative trait I mention on this site is something that could once be used to describe me. Let's add a few more to the list by mentioning I could also be a very closed-off, touchy, defensive, secretive person. I don't really need to explain why this is bad.
It all started when I was in high-school and people started making comments about my solidifying social ineptitude. They'd ask why I didn't dress better, or why I ate lunch alone, or why I never went out on the weekends. Sometimes they were trying to be jerks, but usually they were asking in that well-intentioned but crude way people sometimes do ("Gosh! You're so skinny!!! Don't you eat?!?"). My grandparents and my parent's friends would good-naturedly ask if I had a girlfriend yet. One reason I was defensive was because I legitimately felt I had things to be guarded about:
"Do you have a girlfriend yet?"
Honest Answer: "No, I've never even kissed a girl. There's this one girl I like at school, but I'll never have the nerve to speak to her."
"What are your friends up to this weekend?"
Honest Answer: "There are guys I have lunch with, and the odd person I do something with outside of school, but on the whole I don't have a group of friends of the type you're referring to."
Not wanting to admit these truths to anyone, I quickly came to resent these questions and became touchy and evasive whenever they came up. I got annoyed with anyone who seemed to press the issue too often. I felt like they were interrogating me. I associated discussing these topics with embarrassment, discomfort, and a fear of being found out.
In hindsight people were just benignly curious about this or that, expressing well-meaning mild concern, or trying to help, but I took it all personally. I was pretty insecure and low in self-confidence as well. Like many insecure people, I believed that people didn't like me and were out to get me in some way.
Occasionally people tried to be friendly with me in high-school by greeting me with, "What's up Chris?" I was sure they were mocking me somehow.
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In college I started hanging around people a little more, but now worried about my lack of dating experience being outed. You know how people say mutual self-disclosure is important in building relationships? Well I had a problem with that because I wouldn't be able to share anything back when it came to relationships. My roommate would be opening up and telling me a story about one of his ex-girlfriends. I'd start feeling nervous and change the subject. Sometimes people would share a piece of personal information with me then feel shafted or perplexed when I seemingly didn't want to reveal anything of my own in return.
I was uncomfortable in large groups, especially ones made up of guys, or if everyone had been drinking. Always in the back of my mind was the possibility that the conversation would turn towards girls, and I worried about how I'd come across. If those feared topics came up I always managed to find an excuse to leave at the perfect moment, keep quiet, or change the subject. I was always a little on edge though. If the other person persisted in asking about a sensitive area I'd get irritated, leaving them wondering what happened.
When I started having more success with women I kept a lot of my old secretive habits. If someone asked me about a girlfriend and naturally wanted more details I felt like they were grilling me and wanted to use the information to hurt me somehow. Eventually I relaxed my guard and realized that my mom asking me about a girl didn't mean she wanted to expose my flaws and mock me to my face.
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It was stressful to avoid talking about my lack of a dating or a social life. My defensiveness also hurt me around people in a more general way. I was defensive about people seeing me as unsociable, and all the assumptions that went along with that. I hated it when people said I needed to talk more, or that I was weird. I felt like more outgoing people were the enemy. Hell, if someone said I was creative or interesting, I took it the wrong way and thought they were euphemisms for more negative traits.
It was that classic insecurity. I felt misunderstood and like people didn't like me. Some of it had a basis in reality, I was kind of weird and awkward, but not to the extent I made it out to be in my head. I couldn't take a compliment either. Like I said, I thought 'creative' really meant 'weird'. 'Funny' meant 'laughing at you'. 'You're interesting' meant 'your eccentricity is a source of pitiful amusement for me'. 'That's a nice shirt' meant 'your shirt is weird'. Yeah, I was crazy. It didn't occur to me to just say thank you.
As I've mentioned before on this site, I was also too humorless and touchy about people poking fun at me. Someone would rib me and I'd take it seriously and get bent out of shape. I was so much fun to hang out with!!!
I wasn't able to take criticism. It just made me feel attacked and misunderstood. I'd just stew about about whatever it is the person said and raise my bitterness levels a little higher.
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I've lightened up a lot more these days. One reason is that I have a more typical amount of experience with relationships now. I can naturally chip in during a conversation about them without feeling threatened. If my dad asks how my friends are I can just relay how they're doing to him. I also got called defensive/touchy/guarded a few too many times and realized how I needed to change the way I was reacting to people. And life is going more my way now so it's easier for me to be at ease with everyone and comfortable with myself.
If I could change anything, I would have never felt like I had to hide my social shortcomings back in high school. And it's not that out there for a 16-year-old to be inexperienced with dating. Without going over the top and flaunting my awkwardness, I would have been more straightforward about where I stood socially. I would have been more comfortable with myself, while also realizing I had to work on certain aspects of my personality.
By being defensive and secretive and feeling that nobody could ever discover my flaws, I definitely prolonged my problems. I wonder what would have happened if at the start of university I just told people I was becoming friends with that I was awkward in high-school and trying to work on my self-confidence and social skills.
I used to be much more conflicted about having some unsociable traits. I looked forward to a day when that label would never apply to me. Before, if someone observed that I liked spending time by myself, I would stew about it and blacklist them. Now I have no problem joking about needing my alone time. I'm not going to lie, sometimes I still get irked if someone says something like, "Oh, well you're introverted, of course you don't want to talk to us". But on the whole I'm a lot better.
I've accepted that people are sometimes dumb asses who blurt out dumb things without thinking ("Wow, you're quiet!"), things I've heard a million times before. They don't mean any harm by it and I shouldn't take it personally. I'm sure I say stupid stereotypical things to other types of people myself without realizing it.
And that concludes my heartfelt monologue about how defensive and secretive I was.
