Welcome to The Question Underneath — with Care, my advice column where I sit with your questions about love, conflict, heartbreak, grief, and the strange, holy difficulty of being in a human body.
This isn’t a column about answers. It’s about slowing down long enough to hear what a question is really asking.
In this column I respond to one reader—not to tell you what to do, but to help return agency where it belongs. You can write to me with whatever you’re circling: a conflict you can’t resolve (internal or external), a regret that won’t loosen its grip, a pattern you’re tired of repeating.
Today I’m answering XoXo, who asked:
I struggle to trust myself to pick the right people for me. In the past I have been so deeply hurt and harmed, that I now really struggle to open up because I am constantly looking for ways in which this person will be harmful to me. It ruins my relationships, but most importantly: it makes me miserable ! Help!
As always, I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments!!!
Dear XoXo,
I want to begin somewhere honest, even if it lands a little hard:
You cannot make sure this never happens again.
Not because you are destined to be hurt forever and after (!), but because you are alive, you’re breathing! For all of us, humans, rocks, mountains and waters, care is our only currency. And to love, to connect, to be intimate with one another is to enter a space where harm is not only possible, but around the corner. Not guaranteed—but probable. And the part of you trying to eliminate that possibility altogether is not wrong. It is trying, in its own way, to protect you from ever feeling that depth of pain again. I wish I could come out of this screen and tell you: I feel you!
And, I know from experience that this part of you is using the wrong tool: control.
It is using control to solve what is, at its core, a wound around trust.
And trust cannot grow in control. Trust requires contact. It requires relationship—with others, yes, but also with reality itself.
Control as the near enemy of connection
In Buddhist philosophy, there is a concept called the “near enemy.” It describes something that closely resembles a virtue, but subtly distorts it. Unlike the “far enemy,” which is easy to spot—cruelty versus compassion, despair versus joy—the near enemy is deceptive. It feels almost like the real thing.
Control is often the near enemy of connection.
It can look like attentiveness, like devotion, like being deeply invested. But underneath, it is not rooted in love. It is rooted in fear. It is the attempt to secure safety by managing outcomes, by anticipating harm, by tightening your grip on uncertainty.
Connection, on the other hand, does not promise safety in that way.
Connection says: I will meet you here, without guarantees. I will stay present, even without knowing how this will unfold.
Control says: I will only relax once I am absolutely sure & certain of the outcome.
But certainty never comes. So control keeps working, endlessly. It keeps you alert, scanning, bracing. It keeps you alive—but it does not let you rest. It does not let you be nourished.
And over time, it becomes exhausting. Not because you are doing something wrong, but because you are trying to solve a relational wound with isolation disguised as vigilance.
True connection asks us to stay—not necessarily with the other person, but with reality itself. It invites us to meet what is without armor, without bending it to fit our fears.
So let’s uncover (y)our fears, shall we? (yayy!)
