Examining Authenticity

Pretty much every person has two ways of being. Authentic and inauthentic. Another way to think about it is the idea that each of us has a public persona and a private persona. The face you show the public, and the face you show your spouse on your worst day.

The thing of it is that when you are both authentic and in authentic, the closer those two personas are to each other, the more sane a person is. You have to examine yourself to assess if your social way of being is similar to your chronic way of being, or very different. If it is very different, you might want to seek professional help.

Assuming that your public or social way of being is pretty close to your at home way of being, then you have an opportunity to examine how your interactions with your partner play out. Lets use an obvious example so its not quite so hypothetical. Lets say, you have been misbehaved in some insignificant fashion., such as, you ran a red light on your way home from work. Your wife asks, “How was your commute.” and you, knowing that you ran a red light and narrowly avoided a collision, say, “Oh it was great,” with no sense of irony in your voice. Can you see how that response is completely inauthentic? OK, now lets up the stakes. Now, instead of narrowly avoiding an accident, instead, you have been chatting with an old girlfriend on your way home and she invited you to get together. Now, your wife asks, “How was your commute?” and again, you say, “Oh, it was great.” Again, you can see how inauthentic this response is.

So, what is the impact of being inauthentic? Well, obviously, there is now space between you and your spouse. She does not know that you are cheating behind her back and she can only suspect something is wrong because when you are being inauthentic, you tend to sound more like your public self rather than your usual self. She will suspect something, although she would not be sure what. In your normal at home persona, if she had enquired as to your commute, you likely would have said, “Fine.” My point is that while you are feeling smug that you didn’t let on (or share your secret), she would have noted the difference and wondered about it.

The same thing happens during sex. Here you are making love to your wife or husband, lets say, but instead of being with them, you are thinking about that new hottie at work. That is another instance of being inauthentic.

Who suffers when you are inauthentic? Here is the funny answer. YOU do. You create an absence of being by pretending to be something you are not. In this instance, you are pretending to be a loving husband or wife. That is a loss to you of moment that you will never get back. Not ever.

I like to think of it like this. When you are out and about in the world, and you are pretending to be something you are not, you are running a racket. Like a crook. You have a flower shop on the street, but you are selling crack out the back door. That is running a racket. When you are pretending to be something or someone while you share space and time with the person you profess to love, that is you running a racket.

The only thing to do is to come clean. Have a real conversation about you are and who you are pretending to be. Its the only way.