Consulted Out of Connection

When too many voices speak for one heart.

When Every Answer Met a Different Question

We’d been together long enough to know each other’s rhythms. But we never quite learned how to sync. There was always some kind of lag. Like we were trying to communicate through slightly scrambled audio. Nothing explosive, just the slow kind of static that builds over time.

She asked for my thoughts often. Not in passing. Deliberately. “What do you think about this?” she’d say. “What does it mean to you?” I’d answer, slowly, carefully. I wanted to get it right. I wanted to meet her where she was.

Then there’d be silence. Not disapproval. Just a pause that lasted too long.

And then: “That’s interesting. Because my friend said it’s not like that at all.”

It became a pattern. Ask. Pause. Counterpoint from someone who wasn’t there. A friend, a therapist, an article, an acquaintance who once dated someone kind of like me. At first, I found it curious. Later, I stopped talking as much.

From Conversation to Cross-Examination

One night I was describing something personal. A quiet win. A skill I’d been trying to develop for years, now finally feeling like it was landing. She nodded while I talked. Didn’t say much.

The next day, she messaged:
“You know that thing you were talking about? Someone told me that’s not how it works.”

There was no hostility in it. No challenge. Just a cool insert from someone else’s point of view, dropped into a space that was meant to be mine. I didn’t reply. What was there to say? I wasn’t looking for approval. But I also wasn’t expecting a panel of judges.

Trying to Speak Without Being Rewritten

It got worse when we hit rough water. We’d been circling the idea of moving in together. A next step. But we couldn’t agree on where. She liked the quiet rhythm of the town we were in. I wanted the noise, the pulse, of a bigger city. We weren’t arguing, exactly. But every conversation about it left us both a little more tired.

One night, I said, “I feel like part of this is about how we each imagine the future. Maybe we’re picturing different lives?” I wasn’t accusing her. I was trying to name something gently. I was trying.

She looked at me like I was misquoting myself. “You’re just spinning the facts,” she said. “You just want me to look bad.”

Spinning? I didn’t even know what that meant. I hadn’t said she was wrong. I hadn’t even blamed her. I was speaking from feeling. Carefully. Honestly. But somehow, that got treated like manipulation.

The conversation stalled. We left it open.

A few days later, she came back with: “I talked to a friend. They helped me understand. You just don’t want to accept me as I am.”

That “someone” wasn’t me. 

Then: “We should talk more. You never really want to talk about these things. You usually just criticise me”.

And I wanted to shout. Because I had talked. I’d been talking. She just wasn’t listening. Didn’t hear what I wanted to express. Not until someone else repeated it back in a language she preferred.

Note to Self

When someone always needs a third party to understand you, you’re not building a relationship. You’re building a translation service. Real intimacy doesn’t require constant outside clarification. It requires presence. Trust. The willingness to stay in the messy moment together, not outsource it and circle back once it’s safe. There’s nothing wrong with getting perspective. But if every important conversation ends in a quote from someone who wasn’t in the room… maybe you weren’t really in the room either.

And maybe, when someone hears your feelings as a threat, they’re not defending against you. They’re defending against something in themselves they’ve never learned how to sit with.