Tuesday Talks #4: The taboo of tenderness

Reflections on an Italian wedding.

Tuesday Talks is a new weekly series for paid subscribers where I share spontaneous reflections on a variety of topics, aiming to spark conversation and deepen our connection as a community. Since I’ve been on the road for the last weeks, this edition is not audio and is available for free to all subscribers–so feel free to share the essay and contribute your thoughts in the comments below.

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I’ve just come back from a much needed holiday where I attempted to relax, I finished the second client case study for my training (hurrah, a step closer to graduating!), and, most importantly for this essay, I attended a wedding.

I haven’t gone to many weddings as a thirty-something year old, so I can’t say if my experiences are universal. Perhaps seasoned wedding-goers experience fewer of the complex, uncomfortable feelings that weddings tend to bring up. Maybe they already know the arc of the experience so well that they anticipate when each emotion will threaten to choke them up. Maybe they drink just enough to tune down their self-awareness and enjoy themselves for the day. Or maybe people who tend to observe and think about things deeply don’t really go to weddings?

Well, anyway, I’m now fascinated by weddings and the intense psychological experiences people have at them.

The carefully curated environment turns the new couple into an easy hook for projections and idealisations. There you are, leisurely downing a glass of champagne, and all your unresolved childhood stuff comes up, along with any festering feelings of lack and unlovability that you’ve been somewhat successful at ignoring.

A lot more can happen emotionally. Although none of us will admit it, we might feel envious seeing the happy couple surrounded by friends and family. We might succumb to a semi-conscious desire to spoil it by complaining about the food, criticising the bride’s figure, or fantasising about an imaginary fight that almost broke off the wedding the night before. There can be grief for parents or family members who are no longer around to witness us get married–if that ever happens for us! And there can be many anxieties (especially about death, which existentialists may insist are behind all of the above experiences): that we will never find love. That love is for everyone, except the unlovable us. That we will undoubtedly die, and we will die alone.

Perhaps wedding invitations should come with a warning and a therapy buffet:

“We kindly remind you that this day is about me and Steve. We’d love for you to join in our celebration and feel happy for us, without making it about your personal tragedy. If you need a moment, please look for the emotional support tent behind the fruit buffet where you will find tissues, calming music, and the phone number for an accredited therapists who will be on stand-by for the day. Don’t feel shy to use it, Gary is great!”

While I’m only joking, perhaps this wouldn’t be the worst idea for supporting folks who, despite working hard on themselves, still struggle with unresolved “stuff” or relational trauma. But there’s a fine line between these normal feelings coming up (and being noticed, felt in a contained way, or set aside for later) and them becoming the main event.

In this way, going to weddings as an adult has taught me that these happy occasions can be some of the most powerful mirrors for our narcissistic parts. After all, for an event that’s about “them”, there can be a lot of “what about me-me-me” going on–and that’s a very lonely place to be. But I’m of the belief that narcissism can be outgrown: that we can come out of our shells and enter reality with an open heart. Stepping out of self-concern and holding our tender feelings whilst being genuinely happy for someone else is one of the most beautiful and human experiences we can have–and rather healing in itself.

So here’s my invitation: if you want to gauge your narcissism, go to a wedding. Can you be fully happy for someone else for a day, without being entirely absorbed by your personal tragedy?

The emotion that snuck up on me this time was different. Sitting at a table in the shade, a woman and I noticed we were both captivated by the same thing: the two men, coming from different families, cultures, and even sides of the world, who were playing with their young daughters.

These two fathers were patiently following their daughters around as the girls explored the garden. They seemed unfazed that they were away from the adult crowd. They crouched to meet their daughters’ gazes and listened intently to them. They tied their hair back and fixed their clothes. They didn’t rush the girls or longingly glance back at the bubbly conversations happening by the bar. It was almost as if… they took pleasure in being with their kids?!

These fathers weren’t doing anything special. They were simply fathering. But perhaps this was the saddest realisation of all: that most of us had not had that. We weren’t spoken to at eye level. Sometimes we weren’t even spoken to at all, as if we didn’t exist. And then, as adults, we couldn’t even make sense of our inner voids because most psychology and self-help books don’t even acknowledge how important the father really is. He’s just as absent from the literature as he is from our lives.

For the rest of the wedding I sat with an odd mix of grief and tremendous joy for witnessing something so loving and innocent. It made me realise how easy it is to turn a beautiful experience into yet another reminder of allthethingsIdidntget, but that it’s possible to reroute yourself back into the world, into the present, and receive the joy that is there to be taken.

The real kicker, however, happened when I noticed the wider context of the two families. Although it was a beautiful, emotional wedding, there were no dramatic declarations of love. No parent clung to their child in theatrical sentimentality. There were no over-the-top gifts or speeches. What I saw instead was a quiet, unassuming tenderness between all family members: a genuine joy to be together. And that was new.

I was reminded at that time of something Jung once said that made my whole body shiver at the time (and which I will inevitably misquote, since I’m intentionally not looking up in order to avoid intellectualising this experience): that sentimentality is a defence against love. This idea put words to something I had long known in my bones, ever since I was a child: that many of us have grown up with the first, but lacked the latter. We got to know love as a declarative performance with dramatic gestures, explosive conflicts, epic threats to its loss–something to fight for. But we didn’t experience the quiet tenderness of presence, attentiveness, touch, or simple delight in our being.

Watching this tenderness unfold between the families made me think of the typical teenage responses some of us develop against what we judge as “mushy”, “lame”, or “cringe”. It reminded me of someone who used to think hugs from their in-laws were “gross”. Or someone who didn’t want to be seen holding hands in public, even when they weren’t at risk of running into anyone they knew personally. Or someone who refused to try speaking to themselves in a more compassionate way–even when no one else would know that they were doing it.

Many of us would rather share our most awful, heart-wrenching stories than share a tender moment with another–isn’t that crazy? We’d rather have stern therapists who tell us what’s wrong, rather than what’s right about us. And we’d begin to feel unsettled if someone actually showed us some genuine tenderness.

Watching these families carelessly dance with each other, hug, hold each other’s cheeks in their hands, or exchange affectionate looks reminded me that this quiet, gentle love (which you can call tenderness or affection too) is probably what most of us search for all our lives. It may be the very thing that life is about. And defending ourselves against it because it’s one of allthethingsIdidntget may be the greatest self-foolery of all times.

So how can we change that?

“At the moment of my birth, I was looked upon with loving kindness, cherished and made to feel wanted on this earth and in my home. To this day I cannot remember when that feeling of being loved left me. I just know that one day I was no longer precious. Those who had initially loved me well turned away. The absence of their recognition and regard pierced my heart and left me with a feeling of brokenheartedness so profound I was spellbound.”

Bell Hooks - All About Love

Thank you for reading this week’s Tuesday Talks. If this essay struck a chord with you, please share your thoughts in the comments below. And if you’d like more content like this, consider upgrading to a paid subscription for just £5/month. This would help me dedicate more time to writing and recording high-quality content, plus you’ll get special discounts on 1:1 sessions and my workshops.