I am writing about an encounter that not only made me realize how disconnected from myself and lost I was at that time but also provided me with all the clues to become my sharpest self.
Setting some context first
I had secured a job in the US again after eight months of being laid off from my tech job in NYC in April ‘23. While I now recognize this setback wasn’t as significant as I initially perceived, losing my job in the US felt like the loss of my biggest achievement. My loss of income and the layoff-mood in the US tech market left me feeling powerless and like a lone sufferer because even though many got laid-off, it didn’t happen to most of my friends. I moved to India in August as there seemed no hope in the US and I wasn’t sleeping, eating or thinking well. Post my return I started working at a startup in Bangalore. I was going through the motions but I neither connected with my work nor with my team as I still was obsessed with finding a way to go back. My days were me working my job, preparing for interviews and applying for jobs. I did not socialize with anyone, let alone talking to a girl I am into. I was just not in that headspace. It indeed was an unbalanced life and therefore an unsustainable one. Come January I found myself a job in NYC again. After that, creating a profile on a matrimonial website was one of the ways I resumed my long paused normal life. So that’s all the context and now back to the meeting. The girl I met is a mental health therapist practicing in New York. I met her on a video call. The first contact was made by me. I had sent her a request but having her self-written profile description, I quickly revamped my own, because I got a sense that there is someone who will appreciate that much clarity in my self-awareness. I still maintained its vibe though to be expressing, not impressing.
An excerpt of my description on shaadi.com
Not bragging ahead, just trying to paint an accurate picture of myself. I take interest in somebody’s likes but I also don’t throw too many question at them about it pre-maturely. I like to do things at a brisk pace when I am by myself but I also don’t rush things when working as a team because team > task, long-term happiness > short-term happiness, always. I prefer silent ambience but I will also use music to change my mood. I do my research thoroughly but I also don’t try to optimize too much when there are a lot of options. I am fun-loving but I can also sacrifice the little joys when pursuing something important. I will not care how good your pictures look, what would matter more to me is how good you feel about them. If you feel good that you captured yourself in that moment, great, suggests that you have an ability to learn from just about any event. If you don’t feel food good about it, toss it, it’s just a picture. I regard loyalty over morality (partner in crime). Therefore, I might question you to check if you are being wise when spending, but I will never question you on discarding something that is definitely a liability. This also means that if there’s a bug in our room, I am killing it before we go to sleep. This also means that if we need to rush somewhere and it is raining and we need to buy an umbrella from a shop but there’s a 10 min long queue and I know that I can shoplift from there with no one noticing, I will. Of course, there’s more but I hope you get the vibe
I hope you have an easy-going personality and a caring heart. I try to meet people half-way, and it would be amazing if you do too. We’ll get along if you know what you’re capable of and are also willing to build on it and grow from there
————
I am slightly proud of my confident & principled self, that manifests itself at least in private, for penning down a description so authentic & fresh that it got me the opportunity to meet this girl. Following our meeting, she messaged that she didn’t feel a connection, and that admission stung and through that pain I found myself.
How I was?
After mulling over it, I realized that I really had failed to connect with her. Even during the meeting I had become acutely aware that I am doing poorly on the communication front. Yes, I was stressed and there were two interconnected reasons for it that turned out to be excellent clues to begin the process of my rediscovery with. In hindsight while talking to her I shamefully saw myself doing the waiting-to-speak instead of listening-to-understand thing, knowing full well how cringe it feels to the speaker. As a result, I wasn’t connecting with her. At most, I was talking about something related to what she mentioned. I failed to sense or even ask about the emotions behind her connections with the things and people in her world.
I have now realized that the strongest connections of that person form that person. Almost like, if one chooses to have no connection to anyone or anything, not even to themselves, they too can exist but we will never understand their existence. Therefore, to understand one’s existence we must understand their connections.
So why did I fail in connecting with her?
-I had not only forgotten how to connect with people but also stopped seeing any value in it (I was quite far down this slope)
-Disconnected from a lot of things around me, I had lost touch with my true self resulting in not feeling comfortable with being my bold & outspoken self in front of anyone outside of family. Circumstances that also led to this were:
1 - The first one was that I had lost my ability to connect with people. I doubt I ever really demonstrated it after my undergrad. So, back when I had that job with Amazon in NY, when it came to conversing with strangers or me needing to speak communicably, I only did it for 10 minutes a day to give my team an update on my work. Upon pondering more, I realized that I had unintentionally conditioned myself this way since May ’22 when I started living alone in a studio in Manhattan. I had forgotten how to connect with people. Moreover, my work being completely remote never put me in an easy position to connect with my teammates. Of course, since the layoff, I withdrew into solitude, leaving me with few chances to connect with others. She on the other hand connected with new people everyday as part of her profession. Interestingly, despite my failure to connect with her, she managed to connect with me, and that’s what led to a significant change within me. During our call, I asked her if any of her clients ever came back to thank her for “unlocking their life” for them and even though our meeting was obviously not a therapy session she unlocked my life too.
2 - The second reason is that not connecting with anyone caused me to slip down a metaphorical slope ultimately making me lose the connection with myself. I had forgotten how to be with people or actually just how to be. So whenever I was by myself I was in my true element but when interacting with anyone I unconsciously adopted an easy and safe way to be which was to become an agreeable person. Almost a people-pleaser. I could always sense that something was off because I wondered why I was only able to utter platitudes like “interesting”, “wow”, “nice” and only rarely ever a witty, cutting or a genuine yes-but..? response during a conversation. More meaningful replies did come to my mind but not until I was by myself which is when I relaxed. The reason for this and why my date noticed a stark difference between my described self and my embodied self will emerge now and it is that I self-impose an intimidation whenever I am interacting with anyone non-family. As soon as I am by myself again that intimidation is lifted all the creative things to say or playful responses come to me as I relax. This is probably what staying connected with oneself means i.e. to stay relaxed no matter what is that you are facing.
Why was I this way?
As I contemplate this in a more generic sense, I gradually realize that the situation that intimidates you prevents you from being your authentic or best self. Your sharp, wise, discerning, and resolute self remains inaccessible until you overcome this intimidation. This in simple words or rather in a harmfully subtle way is what being ‘disconnected with oneself’ refers to. Consequently, no one can effectively collaborate with such individuals because they don’t feel empowered enough to be their true selves. A manager or any senior may seek the same self-empowerment in their subordinates, as it indicates their ability to think for themselves and communicate without hesitation whether their view is for or against what the manager is expecting. A woman also seeks for the same as she assesses any man. She is instinctively discerning whether he possesses the qualities of someone with a strong character or one who is connected with themselves as she is essentially selecting a leader for the relationship. That’s why she gets reflexively aversed by men who don’t have that connection or get intimidated and lose that connection easily indicating a weak character. Returning to my story, it was January (2024) and 8 months had passed since my layoff. Given that I got only 4 proper interview opportunities during that time and an on-going recession in tech, I had felt absolutely powerless for all that time. That’s what begging for a job 24/7 does, or at least, that’s what it did to an inexperienced me. This explains why I felt an exceptional empathy for the poor in India this time. It was because having lost my job, my friends and any control over my life, I had begun to identify with them the most. Honestly, it felt inevitable that I would soon be in their place. This explains why I defaulted to act as a people-pleaser on that date because I had started to unconsciously feel that that was the only position I am fit for, i.e. at the lowest. Reflecting on this, being a people-pleaser isn’t all bad, especially for one’s career or socially, to get by at least. But there’s one context where one’s unapologetic self must come forth, that is when meeting a woman who has come to see exactly that, an unyielding and principled man.
What can guide me?
I think there is something automatic about how nature intends us to act in the dynamic of a man meeting a woman. I think that even if one of them is being their unapologetic self, it probably summons upon the core self of the other and any hesitation to reveal it by the other, which might be because they feel intimidated subconsciously, will result in both parties feeling a disconnect. So, because nature-wise it is ideal that a man is in his core element when meeting a woman, if he’s not, her verbal or non-verbal responses will be summoning upon the true self of the man to come forth. This is what I experienced, I just couldn’t recognize it in real-time. Going over the meeting repeatedly, I could discern that all the signals indicating how short I fell of her expectations were present in her spoken and unspoken responses. Surprisingly, yet naturally, they were incredibly fine tuned and devoid of any pretense. Even when her words faltered, her facial expressions spoke volumes, instantly revealing any disconnect in our communication. Her expressions served as a mirror reflecting the dissonance between the me who penned that description and the me before her. This is what I meant when I said that she connected with me. Even still, meeting this woman felt different this time; perhaps there was something special about her, or I had reached a level of maturity such that I could be so receptive to her words and nuances. I think it’s the former and maybe it was so because she is one connected woman. Upon delving into this more, I found two reasons for this.
So how does this happen?
2 reasons:
Before delving into those reasons, it’s important to briefly touch upon another thing at play. We all know that only real things/feedback should be trusted and hence we must know how to differentiate what’s really real (nature) and what’s fake. Additionally, we know that intentionally or unintentionally, control is being exercised on everyone, and as soon as one loses theirs, they will be under someone else’s. A generic way to describe a tactic how someone might try to influence another is by faking something and a wise person should be able to recognize that and save themselves. Diljit Dosanjh highlighted the same in an interview with Anupama Chopra, when she asks him that when a man achieves so much stardom and everything around him changes, how does ‘the man’ stay the same. He said “sab drama hai ji” (translation: everything is fake OR people don’t act real with you when you have a lot). So, what should we trust? I think among all the feedback or response in the world, somehow, a woman’s response to a man is special in that it is real. At least that’s what I have sensed. The richer i.e. the more open & expressive the feedback, the better. This is all the feedback a man needs to become better. There’s a catch though, she should be so connected with her unapologetic self that no matter who or how I am, it shouldn’t intimidate her because only then can she stay real effortlessly. If it is so, her body language, facial expressions and vocal tone will signal a fitting response to any action the man is leading with indicating whether she likes where she is being led or not. That girl was really all that and that is probably why her feedback signals were so instantaneous. Something can be said about the saying that behind every successful man is a woman. Extending what the existence of that natural dynamic means, I think that for any given man, all the women in the world are into him and all that are not are actually in his team giving him feedback on how he can be better and/or guiding him to his woman
To refine upon “behind every successful man is a woman” I think that between a follower and a leader whoever can exhibit a stronger character in a certain circumstance at any given time, will be able to evoke a stronger character in the other. A good leader can make someone a good follow (evoke trust towards the leader in the follow) and a good follow can make someone a good leader (evoke trust in their own leadership and remind them of their sense of responsibility towards their follow)
Let’s tie in the concept of people-pleasing to this to see if things still add up; if a man or a woman is acting to please someone, then their response can not be good enough to draw feedback from. Probably that’s why acts that appease us make us cringe and uncomfortable. This is also congruent with why a good leader holds back on their compliments before the work is fully done because an untimely or overly generous compliment will disconnect the subordinate from their work, affecting the team negatively. Marriage is so much like that team. I think a guy must get to know the girl over the first few meets almost expressionlessly and by that all I mean is that he and actually she too, should just be curious about the other without judgment. Because emotion implies judgment, that’s why I used the word ‘expressionlessly’. I don’t mean it literally. Also, emotions cloud judgement. More on this and why keeping a therapist-like vibe (i.e. no emotions of one’s own) might set the most safe space like tone which would be nice for the first 2 dates, maybe. I learned what I learned, I will try to apply it. May be this is it, maybe this needs refinement. Maybe it is already in my subconscious but I just haven’t felt it tangibly.
Side note: Looking back I think men’s response too has the signal (with feedback) one needs to improve but it is much rarer, too subtle and may even be fake except when someone feels like a mentor, father or a truly supportive friend to them. That’s why it is harder to read and riskier to act on it. Contrastingly, women are expressive by nature and possibly naturally real with men and fake with most other women. It’s wild, I hear you.
Moving forward, how I think I should operate as a man and the value I see in it
I see the value of the man being a rock in a relationship
I see the value of the woman being the softer one in a relationship
Part One
A side quest : While I was trying to figure out the missing ‘edge’ in my embodied self that was present in my described self, I also got the idea that this edge is the spark a woman is looking for. The edge with which the man carves his way in the world. A woman is looking for a man that is sharpening his edge constantly and utilizing the abundant freedom a man has that women have lesser of in this society but possibly only preferentially because she doesn’t want to waste her time saying polite no(s) to the meaningless approaches towards her. Pardon me, I digress. So, I then wanted to know why women naturally look for this? Is there more value to it? Is there an element of fun to it ?
So, I started with the two clues below to find out the value they bring along with a thrill/spark :
About push & pull: I think we all might have experienced that the longer one stays in the comfort of their home the more they regress towards naivety. So if one doesn’t have consistent practice of facing a little darkness, they will lose their sharpness. They will then either not realize it when others are playing them or won’t have the tact to counter it and will lose their cool. So the value in getting played by your partner is in the practice one gets in keeping their composure when being poked. Only a partner can do this in a sly yet not-really-hurting way because you trust them without reservation. This is an exclusive luxury as they own you and you own them.
A connection to the therapist personality in all of us - how a good therapist or a wise & compassionate friend feels like home because they are willing to understand us and guide us, and how one can come as a partner in someone’s life and if they have a therapist like vibe (esp the man) - the other will find a home in them, conversely, one can also come as a therapist, that is when one starts dating someone, and become a partner because the other will seem to have found a home in them. Of course, if it is only one-sided this is not sustainable, but if the role can alternate or even be split 70-30 then it’s a beautiful thing.
Diving into this further, the vibe a man can have, because he’s naturally gifted to be less emotional, is solemn and exuding an assurance that no matter what’s wrong, he will understand, accept and guide and be able to protect those under him. Congruent to a therapist’s client, a woman in her dating phase, in turn, senses this and slowly reveals more about themselves, while continuously gauging how well the man is understanding her and if or now he is able to navigate her towards being better. This is how two strangers can gradually find a home in each other Keeping the above two in mind, one might understand why men are hard-wired to be less emotional and naturally more suited to act as a rock (emotionally detached) in a relationship.
Combining all of the above: I discerned how to operate as a man (works just as well for a woman when it comes to dealing with the world outside their home). It goes like - other than your work & relationship, as they financially & emotionally support you and give you meaning (because responsibility = meaning) don’t take anything else seriously. What/who you don’t take seriously cannot intimidate you. It will not stay on your mind, nor bother you, nor evoke a reaction from you.
Even in work and relationships, don’t take what the people express seriously. If it is a compliment, be thankful, don’t stay in the euphoria for long at all. If it is a valid criticism, work on it, don’t feel bad about it. Even if the words don’t convey enough may be because of too much expression, tease out what they mean and focus on that alone so that you can keep things running smoothly.
Part Two
I also realized the importance of a woman being the more emotional one, the softer one in a relationship
The time when a woman has to act like a rock can also come. A time when a man needs a woman is whenever the man is acting as if something/someone is controlling, attracting or intimidating him. In that state, the man is definitely not himself and he’s not going to make wise decisions as his own wisdom is inaccessible to him. At this time his woman should know enough tact to wisen him up. A man’s nature as we know is to believe a woman, especially his woman, so just by her acting a little disagreeable and outwitting him or by asking some cutting questions she can be a mirror to her man showing him how different he is behaving from his true self and knock him back to his senses.
In closing, a sincere thank you to that girl who unlocked the man in me. Unlocked people unlock people. All I had to do was listen.