Putting Your Best Knee Forward

You've probably heard stories about men who claimed they were astrophysicists when they were actually working in the mailroom at Jet Propulsion Lab, or women who described themselves as beauty queens when all they might have won was a contest for Stringiest Hair in Hemet. The majority of us do try to be pretty honest about important things when we're mate-hunting. Still, we're all probably hiding something. And some people keep on hiding bits of themselves for many years into long-term coupledom.

In the getting-to-know-you phase of a relationship, it's only natural that we wear our best selves. It's not that we're lying or actively covering up, but. we do want this person we're falling in love with to like the self we're exhibiting, so we pick the most desirable one we've got in our repertoire. It's only at the end of the so-called high romance-the end of that period of idealizing-based-on-repression-of-the-negative-that a real relationship can begin. That's when you've reached a place where you can be honest, no longer feeling you'll be rejected if the cracks in your pedestals show.

I'll give you a tiny example. Twenty years ago when my husband Stephen and I were dating, he would spend Friday and Saturday nights at my house. Due to an achy lower back, I'd gotten in the habit of sleeping with a small pillow between my knees, but I didn't feel this was sexy and didn't want him to see me using it. So I hid my knee pillow in the closet. For a full year.

As we gain trust and security in the relationship, we allow more aspects of our personalities to be seen-bringing our knee pillows out of the closet-as a way, consciously or not, to find out for sure if our partner will still love us after he discovers who we "really" are. It's a possibility that by showing some aspect of yourself that you'd kept out of sight, you may disillusion your mate. When your partner expresses a bit of surprise or disappointment at a revelation, that may feel disillusioning to you. After all, weren't you promised unconditional love, no matter what?

When I was researching Loving in Flow: How the Happiest Couples Get and Stay That Way, I spoke with dozens of exceptionally satisfied couples. For example, a librarian in Los Angeles who has been married for more than eighteen years to her husband admits that during the first year they were married, she "had to get over the feeling that somehow he'll discover what I look like in the morning, and was it safe for me to be upset and get angry?" The relaxation of true flow can't happen until we've let ourselves be fully experienced by our partners.

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