Sam Smith's song Too Good at Goodbyes captures something I frequently encounter in counseling. It describes a person who has learned to protect himself from being hurt by refusing to let others get too close. He recognizes that he appears cold and heartless, but he explains that he is simply trying to protect himself.
There's something tragic about this. The person he loves means a great deal to him, but precisely because of that, he is determined not to let her get too close. The possibility of being hurt is too great.
I see this dynamic frequently in relationships. People develop ways of protecting themselves from being hurt, but those very defenses make it difficult for others to connect with them. Their loved ones experience them as distant, unfeeling, or even unkind. They complain about the lack of closeness, which creates more conflict, and the person who was trying to avoid being hurt ends up getting hurt all over again.
The very defenses that are supposed to protect us from getting hurt can make getting hurt more likely.
Learning Not to Let People Get Close
Smith describes becoming increasingly accustomed to disappointment and loss. With each painful experience, he cries a little less, recovers a little faster, and becomes less emotionally invested. He is becoming very good at saying goodbye.
In one sense, this seems like progress. If something that used to hurt terribly no longer hurts as much, haven't we become stronger?
Not necessarily.
We might have become stronger, but we might also have become less capable of loving. Our ability to endure separation may have improved because we have learned not to become deeply attached in the first place.
This is something that often begins long before a person enters a romantic relationship.
Perhaps a child grows up with parents who are highly critical, emotionally unavailable, or unpredictable. Perhaps a child is repeatedly hurt by siblings or classmates. Or perhaps showing sadness or fear is met with ridicule rather than comfort.
Whatever the particular circumstances, the child may conclude that expressing feelings is dangerous. The safest thing to do is to keep those feelings to himself.
Over time, that response becomes habitual. Eventually, it may no longer feel like a defense at all. It simply feels natural.
Then that child grows up and enters a marriage or another close relationship. His partner wants to know what he's feeling, wants him to open up, and wants to experience emotional closeness.
But he finds these requests uncomfortable, unnatural, or even suffocating. He may wonder why his partner needs so much emotional connection. From his perspective, everything was fine until his partner started demanding something that doesn't come naturally to him.
What he may not recognize is that what feels natural to him was something he learned in response to painful experiences.
My Own Experience with Emotional Walls
I remember becoming aware of something like this in myself when I was around nineteen or twenty years old.
I realized that I wasn't particularly good at showing emotions. Around that time, I heard a talk by a man with a doctorate in psychology who explained how our early experiences can shape us in ways that continue into adulthood.
That prompted me to begin examining my own emotional life. I started trying to recover feelings that I had learned not to express, or perhaps not even to recognize.
I made considerable progress through those efforts, although I would discover later in life that there was still more work to do.
One thing that experience taught me is that our emotional habits are not necessarily fixed features of our personalities. We can learn to become more aware of our feelings, more comfortable expressing them, and more capable of connecting with others.
But first we have to recognize that something needs to change.
Shame and the Fear of Being Known
Something else about Smith's song deserves attention. It begins with an accusation directed toward his partner: "You must think that I'm stupid."
He also assumes that she regards him as foolish.
Notice what is happening. Before we hear much about what she has actually done, we hear what he assumes she thinks about him.
This is extremely common in relationships.
People frequently carry negative beliefs about themselves that developed early in life. Some of the most common are:
I'm stupid.
I'm a fool.
I'm incompetent.
I'm powerless.
I'm not good enough.
I'm a failure.
There's something wrong with me.
These beliefs are often associated with shame.
Some people are acutely aware of feeling ashamed. Others rarely recognize shame as an emotion they experience. Nevertheless, I think shame plays a significant role in nearly everyone's life.
If we take the account of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 seriously, shame has been part of the human experience since the fall. Even apart from that account, we can observe how sensitive people tend to be to criticism.
Why does criticism so often hurt us?
Frequently, it is because the criticism touches something we already fear may be true about ourselves.
Someone criticizes our judgment, and we hear confirmation that we are stupid. Someone expresses disappointment, and we hear that we are a failure. Someone tells us we have hurt them, and we hear that we are fundamentally defective.
The criticism may be relatively limited, but what we hear is something much larger.
The Difference Between Doing Something Wrong and Being Defective
There is an important distinction between recognizing that we have done something wrong and believing that there is something fundamentally wrong with us.
Shame can serve a good purpose when it brings us face-to-face with our wrongdoing and prompts us to reconsider our actions. We ought to be troubled when we have acted badly.
But negative beliefs about ourselves frequently take a half-truth and turn it into a sweeping judgment about who we are.
I may make a foolish decision. That does not mean I am a fool.
I may fail at something important. That does not mean I am a failure.
I may behave incompetently in a particular situation. That does not mean I am fundamentally incompetent.
There is a profound difference between acknowledging our shortcomings and treating those shortcomings as defects that define our identity.
In fact, there is something particularly problematic about thinking of ourselves as defective. If I believe that my wrongdoing is the inevitable result of some fundamental defect in who I am, I can begin to regard myself as incapable of doing otherwise. My defect becomes the explanation for my behavior, and perhaps even an excuse for it.
From a Christian perspective, this raises a deeper theological problem.
To say that God made me fundamentally defective seems to suggest that God made a mistake when he created me.
But the Christian understanding of God as Creator does not allow for this conclusion. God creates out of nothing. Unlike the gods of ancient mythology, such as Zeus, who work within a world of preexisting realities, the God of Scripture is the source of everything that exists.
Creation out of nothing requires unlimited power, wisdom, and goodness. God is not a craftsman struggling to make the best of inadequate materials.
This does not mean that we are without weaknesses, limitations, or sin. It means that we need to distinguish between our created nature, our limitations, and the wrong things we do.
We can acknowledge our shortcomings without concluding that our very existence is a mistake.
And we can take responsibility for our actions without condemning ourselves as fundamentally defective.
When We Project Our Shame onto Our Partners
Now consider what happens when we carry negative beliefs about ourselves into marriage.
Suppose a husband believes, somewhere deep down, that he is incompetent.
His wife raises a concern about something he has done. Perhaps she is genuinely disappointed, or perhaps she simply wants to discuss a problem.
But he doesn't merely hear her concern. He hears an accusation against his character.
He assumes she thinks he is incompetent.
He may become defensive, angry, or withdrawn. Instead of addressing the problem she raised, he begins defending himself against a much broader accusation.
He might demand that she reassure him that she doesn't think he's incompetent. Or he might accuse her of constantly criticizing him.
But the problem is that he has attributed to her a belief that he already holds about himself.
The wife, meanwhile, may feel bewildered. She tried to bring up a concern, and suddenly she finds herself having to defend her character and intentions.
She may become frustrated and more critical, which only reinforces her husband's belief that she views him negatively.
The person who fears being judged becomes increasingly difficult to approach, making negative interactions more likely.
This is one of the ways shame and emotional self-protection can become a self-perpetuating cycle.
The Emotional Wall Becomes Part of the Problem
Returning to Smith's song, he recognizes that his partner may regard him as heartless or cold. But from his perspective, he is simply protecting his soul.
That distinction is important.
What we intend by our behavior and how our behavior affects others are not always the same.
The emotionally guarded husband may not intend to hurt his wife. He may be trying desperately to avoid conflict, rejection, or humiliation.
But his wife experiences his emotional distance as indifference. She feels lonely. She concludes that he doesn't care about her.
She may respond by criticizing him, pursuing him more intensely, or eventually withdrawing herself.
Meanwhile, he feels increasingly pressured, misunderstood, and unsafe. The more she demands closeness, the more he retreats behind his emotional wall.
Both partners may end up feeling rejected by the other.
And both may believe that the other is responsible for the distance between them.
Of course, not every emotional wall is irrational. Sometimes people have been genuinely mistreated in their relationships, and appropriate boundaries are necessary. But there is a difference between drawing healthy boundaries and making emotional withdrawal our ordinary way of relating to those we love.
The tragedy is that the person who learned to protect himself from rejection may now be contributing to the very rejection he fears.
Learning to Love Without Hiding
What does it take to change this pattern?
First, we need to recognize that our ways of responding to others have a history. What seems natural to us may be a strategy we developed many years ago to deal with difficult experiences.
Second, we need to examine the negative beliefs we carry about ourselves. Do I believe that I am stupid, inadequate, or unlovable? Do I assume that my spouse sees me this way? Am I reacting to what my spouse actually said, or to what I fear my spouse believes?
Third, we need to learn to distinguish between being hurt and being wronged. Not every painful interaction is evidence that someone has mistreated us. Sometimes criticism is warranted. Sometimes disagreement is simply disagreement. And sometimes another person's disappointment is something we need to hear rather than defend against.
Finally, we need to practice responding differently.
Someone who has spent years avoiding emotional vulnerability will not suddenly become comfortable opening up. It takes practice to recognize feelings, put them into words, and share them without retreating into defensiveness or withdrawal.
The good news is that these things can be learned.
One of the most important changes is learning that we can acknowledge our shortcomings without concluding that we are defective. We can admit wrongdoing without being overwhelmed by shame. We can hear criticism without assuming that the person criticizing us despises us.
And we can let other people get close without requiring a guarantee that they will never hurt us.
Sam Smith's song captures the sadness of someone who has become extraordinarily skilled at protecting himself from heartbreak.
But there is something much better than becoming good at goodbyes.
We can become better at remaining connected to the people we love, even when that connection involves vulnerability, disappointment, and the possibility of being hurt.
