Remember that rigidity is partially the fruit of anxiety born of years of accumulated rejection and of our brains’ comparative executive function deficits. We trust easily because we don’t see strategy or others’ self-serving behavior. We take things at face value, expecting a lover’s promise of eternal devotion to be reliable, intransigent fact, never hopeful hyperbole. For those of us who aren’t used to kindness, who feel we are more endurable than lovable, who don’t know what “healthy” or even “friend” looks like, the now-or-never, this-person-or-all-is-lost feelings are what we’re taught
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