Revealing a Little Bit at a Time

I'm constantly amazed at how difficult it is for new people to share what's going on in their lives.  We really seem to resist sharing the nuts and bolts, the mundane minutiae of our lives with other people.  I chat frequently with a 45 year old guy - the man who was raised in foster care and does not know who his parents are - who has been in an on again/off again relationship with a woman in A.A. for a long time.  I love both of them and think they're good people trying to learn how to maintain a healthy relationship after enduring difficult childhoods and then drinking at life for many years.  Here's the thing . . . the manifestation of how hard new people make it to help them . . . I am constantly flummoxed to hear that the relationship - it was definitely over last week or was it definitely back on last week, I can't keep track of all the sudden, jarring twists and turns, feints and weaves - is back without a word or a hint being shared, with me, anyway.  The episode that made me laugh, ruefully, anyway, was hearing that my buddy came home one day to find all of his stuff in a pile out in the garage - that relationship sounded over to me - and then receiving a few pictures of them happily hanging out together.  WTF, right?

I don't believe that he's being purposefully deceptive or trying to hide something - I think he doesn't consider bringing anyone else into whatever conversation he's having with the world.  I know I didn't.  I had parents who weren't that engaged in my life - and that's on me as much as it's on them - so I was used to doing whatever I wanted, whatever I thought was best, all of the time.