Oh, this one lands close to home for me. Really close.
Let me tell you something personal first, because I think it matters here. I spent most of my life hiding. Son of a single mum, alcoholic father, growing up in Ireland with all that Catholic weight on my shoulders. I went to Trinity College Dublin and made damn sure I hung out with all the private school kids. I hid where I came from. I hid who I was. I even, to this day, feel a jolt of shame when someone does the math on when my daughter was born versus when Teal and I got married.
So I know this thing you’re describing. I know it in my body.
Here’s what I want you to understand. When you hide who you are in a relationship, it’s almost never because you’re a coward. It’s because somewhere along the way, the real you got the message that it wasn’t safe to be seen. That the actual you, with all your complexity and your history and your tender places, was going to be too much, or not enough, or both at the same time.
And here’s the cruel trick of it. The hiding feels like protection. But what it actually does is starve the relationship. Because the person on the other side of you is falling in love with a performance. And some part of you knows that. And that knowing creates this low hum of loneliness that never quite goes away, even when things are going well.
What I’ve seen over 16 years of sitting with couples, and what I’ve lived myself, is that the shame you’re carrying in that hidden place, it’s usually not even originally yours. Somebody handed it to you. A culture, a parent, a religion, an early relationship that taught you your real self was a liability. You became the keeper of someone else’s discomfort.
And now you’re doing that same work in your relationship. Keeping yourself small so no one has to deal with the full, complicated, real you.
That youngest, most wounded part of you, the one who learned to hide, deserves to exist in your relationship without being managed or shamed or tucked away. That part doesn’t need to be fixed. It doesn’t need to be apologized for. It needs to be witnessed. First by you, and then ideally by your partner.
Now, I want to be honest with you. That’s terrifying work. Showing the hidden parts of yourself, even to someone who loves you, requires what feels like proof that you won’t be destroyed for it. It’s not a speech. It’s not a grand gesture. It’s the repeated, hard effort of showing up in the rawest place inside yourself and trusting that the relationship can hold it.
And here’s what I’ve seen happen when people do that work. When they stop performing and start actually inhabiting themselves in the relationship. The connection that becomes possible is so much richer than anything the performance could have created. Because now there are two real people in the room.
The question I’d want to sit with you in is this: What specifically are you hiding? And what’s the story you’re carrying about what would happen if you were seen? Because until we name that, we’re just working around the outside of the thing.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Emotional Safety in Relationships: What It Means and How to Build It
