Stop Explaining Yourself
What if "never again" was your new rule?
☝️Seriously, give the audio a listen. I invite you to do so without doing something else while it plays. Just close your eyes and imagine yourself in a seedy night club in Las Vegas, circa 1976, light piano playing in the background.
Let Me Explain
Old memories fade like Polaroids. We’re left with grizzled tableaus and a narrative that shifts to match our current values every time we access that memory.
This one is like that. It’s a story of a story from a former girlfriend, sometime around Y2K. She’d told me this one several times.
“… And that was when he cut me off mid-explanation,” she’d say, adding the punch line, “Friends don’t explain themselves to friends.”
She loved this story because it captured a beautiful idea. Between friends, there’s a trust that doesn’t demand explanation. Of the pieces of that relationship that I’ve carried into the present, this is one of the top three. (I couldn’t tell you the other two.)
For a friend to relieve us of that grief is such a caring move.
The compulsion to explain ourselves is powerful. It’s pulled forward by the desire to be seen, but also to be acknowledged as a rational person. It almost never delivers on either front.
Over the years, I’ve marinated on this little anecdote so often that I’ve scaled it into a broader conclusion about explanations.
There are exactly zero situations where we must explain ourselves.
The compulsion to explain ourselves is powerful but misguided, and often unwise. Wisdom is the key differentiator.
This essay might surface some pushback from a few readers. Good. Let’s talk.
Powerful Compulsion
A few years ago, a friend demanded I explain myself to her. If memory serves, I hadn’t been replying with the desired expedience or concern. This was not a healthy relationship, something I’d later figure out.
At the time, I replied with my standard response:
“As a rule, I don’t ask the people I care about to explain themselves to me,” I told her. “As such, I don’t explain myself to the people who claim to love me.”
That response sparked a dialogue about expectations, which seemed to stem the problem for a time, but I knew this would come back. Over time, I noticed a slow increase in manipulation from her. When I finally ended the friendship, she flooded my inbox with a surge of demands for explanation.
I declined to oblige. She knew my boundary, and I wasn’t gonna compromise it. However, since it suits my intended outcomes for writing this essay, I’ll explain it to you, dear reader.
Any explanations from me would have landed in the deep chasm of Explanation Court, the worst court in all the land. There’s no jury. The judge is never qualified and is almost certainly biased against the defendant. The determination is always “guilty of making excuses.”
To be clear, there is no distinction between explanations and excuses in this context. The only difference is how the chief arbiter renders judgment in the end.
It’s a banana courtroom, and completely voluntary. Nobody goes to jail for refusing to appear. Worse than that, these judges are appointed by us the moment we start explaining ourselves.
In the end, I made it clear to my judge that I would not be appearing in court. To me, the die had been cast. I could not win this case anyway. Better to cut my losses and move on.
Harsh? Perhaps, but I do believe this person would have only tried to manipulate me. I had to protect myself. I’m too easily moved.
But Misguided
Recently, this topic came up in a men’s group I facilitate. It’s a weekly, therapy-free men’s group for men skeptical of traditional men’s groups, called Tolomen.
Anyway…
One of the men, we’ll call him Minh, raised a compelling refutation of my strong opinion. I’d thrown down that explanations are never required, and usually counter-productive to our full scope of desired outcomes.
[I’m paraphrasing here] “Yes, I might agree,” Minh lobbied. “But my family does not understand,”
He’d made a strong point. Admittedly, I panicked, but only for a second.
For starters, I’d done something I tend not to do in the group, which is lean in with one of my hotter opinions. I could also feel the men looking at me like, “Ope. He got you, Damon.”
In the end, this pushback proved useful. What we worry about when considering not explaining ourselves is how offended or pissed off people will be. It’s like keeping boundaries. In fact, I see them as the same. Not explaining myself is keeping a boundary. Anyone can ask me for what they want, but I don’t have to give it to them.
Here’s the catch. We can choose to explain ourselves whenever it suits us. I invite folks to consider doing it intentionally, not reflexively. But back to Minh…
“Normally,” I replied, modeling what I would say, “I don’t ask others to explain themselves, and I don’t explain myself to anyone, especially not the people who love me."
A silence hung on the call.
Continuing, I added, “Since I can tell that’s not going to work for you today, I’ll offer you an explanation this time, but I ask in the future that you respect my wishes.”
What I wish I'd said, but didn’t because we’re all imperfect, would have been something like this: “…because no matter what I say next, you are likely to find it unsatisfying.”
The men were skeptical. Minh, in particular, was skeptical that this would work.
“They’ll just accuse me of hiding something,” he replied, even as he seriously considered my invitation.
This is the thing we get stuck on. We all want to believe our explanations are going to resonate. It’s misguided thinking. The best we can hope for is a nod of conciliation.
Like, “Hey, sorry, but I missed dinner because my mother was rushed to the hospital with chest pain.”
An explanation like that will win, at best, an affirming nod. But the cost is that it teaches others they can demand explanations from us. What still surprises me is how effective “sorry I couldn’t make it” is, followed by eye contact that says, you ain’t gettin’ any more.
Knowing how to handle these situations is a matter of repetition, but also wisdom.
Wisdom’s Perspective
To this grown-up, wisdom isn’t the same as insight. We use these words interchangeably, but they have different intentions.
Insight is the amalgamation of the lessons one has accumulated, applied to circumstance. It’s often wise-sounding, but might not be wise for someone’s specific situation.
Wisdom is the application of all we know, which often includes insights, to determine how to get what we really want. This can be complicated because we reliably have competing wants.
Applied to this idea, that there is no situation where we must explain ourselves, wisdom is the tool that we use to determine when it suits our desired outcomes to bend or break this rule.
A few break-it situations come to mind:
The explanation will probably mean the cop will wave me on with a warning
This person won’t understand, and I care about them (see: Minh's story)
I want to take ownership of what happened (looking at you, leaders)
Ultimately, there could be untold reasons to explain oneself. Again, it comes down to weighing what we know against what we want to make happen.
Try this
The first and most powerful step you can take right now is to notice how frequently you feel the urge to explain yourself. Trust me. It’s way more than most of us imagine. More on that in a second, but if you’re ready to dive in, here is something you can try right now.
Just tell someone “no.” Explain nothing.
Like this:
Them: Hey, can you meet me later to move some boxes?
You: No
You could reply with “Sorry, no” if that feels more compassionate, but same. You could even offer a loving smile with your answer.
Here’s another one I’ve never used myself, but I love this one.
Them: You’re late
You: Thank you for your patience
In both cases, you move on immediately, but be ready. They might demand an explanation; you’d be wise to think through a few potential responses beforehand. Whichever you pick will depend on who they are to you and what you want from them.
When they push for an explanation anyway, you might reply…
Would it matter? Really?
Am I foolish to assume we trust each other enough that we don’t need to demand explanations?
I want you to know that I’ll never ask you to explain yourself to me. If I must, I will, but I don’t think you want to have that kind of relationship with me.
What I’ve found is that what happens is very similar to stating a boundary. We think someone is gonna freak out. Instead, they say something like, “I respect that you have a boundary. I need to get better at that in my own life.”
Some people lack the inner work to respond with their own wisdom. To Minh’s point, many of those someones are family.
Most people don’t demand explanations if the reply is said with confidence and kindness. They might hesitate as they try to figure out what’s going on, confused by the absence of the usual rambling, but they’ll eventually move on.
Over time, though, you can let go of the urge to spackle over the silence with yammering explanations.
Over time, people will respect you more and question you less.
Thanks for reading,
~ Damon
Between the day I started writing this and today, I’ve been present to so many exceptions where I broke my own rule. I wish I could say each was a demonstration of my own intentionalization. Nope.
Admittedly, it’s hard to resist the compulsion to explain ourselves.
Waking up to our grooved habits is extremely difficult. Just ask anyone who has tried to stop complaining for 21 days. I found the task nearly impossible.
Light Housekeeping
It’s been about a year and a half since I joined Substack. I did it to fall in love with writing again. That has since happened. Thank you for standing witness to this unfolding.
The time has come for me to hone my audience and message. Tolerance of Men is the new Substack. The content will center on talking to the men in the middle, those who don’t fall into any of the traditional ideologies for finding wholeness.
It will be for the men who can’t get down with talk of masculinity or femininity. They don’t feel the need to onboard Western religious beliefs as the only means to wholeness. They’d also prefer not to be accused of mansplaining, manspreading, or being patriarchal.
As I do, I’ll be smuggling in secular elements of Buddhism, like the value of noticing.
Rest assured, I won’t shut down this feed. Not right away, anyway. I still want to write about a variety of topics when the fancy suits me. I even have a few drafts in the wings right now.
Thank you for being here, for supporting me. I love you for it. I know that sounds weird, but people hate people they don’t even know, so why not?
~Damon
This is making me rethink so many interactions. I notice I explain myself most when I FEEL guilty or uncertain about my decision. Like you said, it's the desire to be seen as rational. But guilty explanations always sound like excuses anyway. The confidence + kindness combo you mention seems key - easier said than done when you're already feeling defensive, though. I am work in progress. Thank you Damon...
Thank you for writing such a marvelous examination of this human condition -- one I struggle with regularly.
You're right. We shouldn't have to explain ourselves to others. I do cave when a friend asks me to explain myself. I guess I feel the need to put their mind at ease about my intentions, our relationship. But to your point, should two people who care about each other need to do that?
And when someone else asks, boy can that get complicated? What do we do when it is a work colleague, someone who manages us?
Your metaphors, writing style, and the way all of this emanates from how you so remarkably parse complex issues consistently leaves me in awe. Thank you.