My heart began pounding out of my chest as I saw Lynn Warburton, the man that was sure to be my first TRUE love, pull into my driveway. Windows down in his brand new silver Z28 with a T-Top while Foreigner’s song “Urgent” filled the summer night air.
“Act glamorous and sophisticated,” I thought to myself as I quickly put on some gloss and fluffed my hair. I repositioned myself on the front porch of my house by crossing my legs and slipping off my sandals.
Lynn turned the car off and walked over to join me on the porch. “I saw you on the porch,” he said, “so I thought I would stop by…”
“I am so glad you did,” I replied while flashing him my sexiest smile and tilting my head slightly.
It did not take long before we found ourselves getting as cozy as we could without being inappropriate. We had not known each other terribly long, however, we were both sending out signals to each other that we were interested in getting closer.
Lynn found his place on the porch by sitting one step below me and positioned between my legs. I gently placed my hands on his shoulders as we began to ask each about our days and our lives.
There was just one problem in all of this for me…I had to PEEE and BAD! See unbeknownst to Lynn, I had been on the porch for the last two hours, doing some writing, and had successfully finished an entire two-liter bottle of my favorite beverage at the time…TAB.
After wrestling in my mind for a few minutes with the question of, “Do I say I need to pee or just hold it until he leaves?” I decided I would just hold it until he leaves, because announcing that you need to pee is not glamorous or sophisticated and I was determined to be both.
All was going well for a good 20 or 30 minutes and then, all at once, a bit of teasing began and he promptly said, “I am going to tickle you!” while leaning back on my bladder to reach my armpits.
I lost control and…I peed down his back. I couldn’t help it. He was sitting on my very full bladder and it shot down his neck, soaked the back of his shirt and the top of his pants!
I sprang to my feet to see that my own pants were dripping wet and a puddle of pee had accumulated on the porch where I stood.
As I looked up from my pee puddle, their stood Lynn searching for something to say to me and our eyes locked. We both remained speechless for several minutes while we independently assessed what the hell just happened!?
Lynn broke the silence and said, “I am just going to go now and pretend like this never happened!”
“Great idea,” I replied…doing my best to continue to appear sophisticated and glamorous.
I quickly reached for the front door, ran inside, shut and then locked it just to make sure I was safe and alone inside. I then closed my eyes tightly in the hopes that I would wake from a terrible dream.
"Did that really just happen?” I thought to myself.
Yep! Sure did…damn IT! So much for being glamorous!
That experience was one of my first lessons about the importance of self-disclosure and I remember it vividly every time I find myself thinking, “I really don’t want to share this right now, but I probably need to.”
If you know you need to reveal important details about you and your life to another person (and we all know what that feeling feels like), consider these two important thoughts:
Sharing personal details we find uncomfortable to disclose will not become more comfortable with time.
If it feels uncomfortable today, it will be more uncomfortable tomorrow from avoiding the very topic you don’t want to discuss.
And oft times, the need to avoid these conversations quickly turns into lies, little white lies at first that then turn into bigger lies that eventually create a mess: i.e. a puddle on the porch.
In fact, what trips us up, is the cover up of who we really are, and what we really need and desire to be happy.
The cover up also prevents us from sharing all of ourselves with another, so hence we are not giving all of ourselves to be loved which in the ends robs us of our greatest human NEED: CONNECTION.
To feel fully loved and accepted for who we truly are, brings about life’s greatest sense of fulfillment.
“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
When you are filled with something that you know you need to share, I promise you, it is easier in the long run to take a deep breath and share it; otherwise, you are risking the very connection you are using to justify the reason you’re not sharing anyway.
Take it from me, putting it off doesn’t work, it just makes a huge mess when the pressure becomes so intense you pee your pants!
If you need help and support with disclosing details about yourself, we have steps to get you started that we call “The Practice.”
You can get even more tools to help you disclose something by learning and practicing C.P.T. C.P.T is like C.P.R in that it will bring you back to life.
We teach you what C.P.T is right here on our blog. To access the 4-part series and get started with C.P.T, click here.
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