Someone’s at the door, and I have no idea how to let them in

Looking back at twelve years of marriage and every friendship that drifted, I'm finally seeing the pattern.

Someone’s at the door.

Not metaphorically. Actually.

I’ve been dating. And someone’s shown up who’s different. Who’s asking for something real. Who’s making me want to try.

And I’m discovering a fear I didn’t know I had.

Not fear of getting hurt again. Not fear of repeating the same mistakes. Not even fear that I’m not healed enough yet.

It’s something else. Something I’ve never admitted to myself until this person showed up and made it impossible to ignore:

I’ve never actually let anyone all the way in. Not in twelve years of marriage. Not in any of the friendships that drifted. Not ever.

And now, for the first time in my life, I could.

I have a decision to make. And I have absolutely no idea how.

The Pattern I Didn’t Want to See

After the divorce, after the accident, after I’d learned what solitude actually means instead of just enduring loneliness, I started noticing something.

Friendships fade sometimes. People move. Life changes. Distance happens. That’s normal.

But mine faded in a particular way.

There was this friend from graduate school. We’d meet for coffee every week, have these intense conversations about ideas, about life, about everything that mattered. Real conversations. Vulnerable ones, even. I thought we were building something deep.

Then he moved across the country for a job. And we just... dissolved. No fight. No falling out. We’d text occasionally, make vague plans to visit that never materialized. Within six months, we were strangers who used to know each other.

I told myself it was distance. Geography. The normal drift that happens when life changes.

But here’s what bothered me: it felt too easy. Like we’d hit some invisible ceiling in the friendship and neither of us knew how to break through it. So when distance came, when life changed, there was nothing strong enough to hold us together.

And looking back across many other friendships, other connections that felt significant in the moment but somehow couldn’t survive normal life changes, I could see the same pattern (and I couldn’t blame distance).

I kept asking myself: Why?

What am I doing that makes even close connections feel like they’re built on something unstable?

The answer came slowly. The way uncomfortable truths always do.

I’d been showing people rooms.

Letting them into carefully selected spaces of my life, my thoughts, my feelings. I’d seem available. Present. I’d share real, vulnerable things. But I was curating what I showed. Choosing which parts were safe to reveal.

The core, whatever that even was, stayed locked away. Protected. Partitioned off.

I’d perfected the appearance of intimacy while maintaining careful distance at the center.

This wasn’t conscious manipulation. I wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. This was just... how I’d learned to be safe. Show enough to seem close. Hold back enough to stay protected.

Let people into the living room, maybe the kitchen. But never the basement. Never the rooms where I kept the things I didn’t know how to name.

And people could feel it, I think. Not consciously maybe. But they could sense the locked door. The place where I stopped letting them in. Where the connection hit a wall it couldn’t break through.

So when distance came, when life changed, there wasn’t enough foundation to hold the friendship together. Because intimacy can’t survive on partial presence.

They didn’t drift from me. We drifted because I’d never let them get close enough to stay.

What I’d Never Actually Done

I was married for twelve years.

Twelve years. That should mean something. That should prove I know how to be intimate, how to let someone in, how to build a life with another person.

But here’s what I’m realizing: I was there, yes. I loved him, yes. But was I fully there?

Was I ever completely available? Unpartitioned? All the way present?

Or was I showing him rooms too? Offering curated versions of myself while keeping something back? Performing intimacy while protecting the core?

I think about the four-year conversation we never had. The way I couldn’t say what I needed. The truth I kept swallowing because speaking it would have required me to be fully present to my own wanting.

I wasn’t just protecting him from difficult truths. I was protecting myself from having to show up whole.

And it wasn’t just the marriage. Looking back across friendships, relationships, connections, I can see the same pattern. I’d practiced partnership. I’d practiced connection. I’d practiced what I thought intimacy was.

But being fully present? Completely available? Unpartitioned, undivided, all-the-way-there?

I’d never actually done that. With anyone. Ever.

The countryside gave me something I didn’t know I needed: space to stop performing. And slowly, through practices that felt more like survival than self-care, I started meeting myself.

Not the curated version. All of it. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t divided against myself. I learned what integration feels like. But I learned it alone.

The New Terror

And now someone’s at the door.

Someone’s shown up who’s different. Who’s asking for something real. Who’s making me want to try.

And I’m discovering a fear I didn’t know I had.

It’s not “what if they hurt me” or “what if I’m not ready” or “what if I repeat the same patterns.”

It’s:

What if I let them in—really in, to everything—and I don’t know how?

What if this is the first time I’ve ever actually tried full intimacy? What if twelve years of marriage and decades of friendships don’t count because I was never fully present for any of it?

And I have to decide. Soon. Whether I’m willing to truly try.

What I’m Learning to Ask

The questions that keep me up at night aren’t about whether I’m healed enough or ready enough or brave enough.

They’re simpler. And harder.

• Can I stay integrated when someone else is in the room? Can I keep all the parts of myself available (even the ones I used to partition of) when their preferences brush up against mine?

• Can I speak truth on day one instead of year four? Can I say “this matters to me” before resentment builds?

• Can I let them see me changing? Because I’m still becoming who I am. I’m still following the orange, still discovering what feels alive. Can I let someone witness that?

• Can I want them without needing them? Can I choose vulnerability when I’m not requiring rescue?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the actual territory I’m standing in. The complexity of trying to practice something I’ve never practiced before.

With someone real. Who’s waiting for an answer.

Last week we were driving back from dinner. They were talking about something five years from now: where we might live, what kind of space we’d need. Just casually planning. Assuming a future together like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And I felt my chest tighten. My hands on the steering wheel. The road stretching out in front of us.

Everything in my body saying: yes, I want that.

And also: I have no idea if I can do that.

Not because I don’t want that future. Because I do. More than I’ve wanted anything in a long time.

And that terrifies me more than anything.

The Decision

What I’m learning is: the wound closed. I learned to be okay alone. I learned to be more than okay, I learned to be whole.

And now the work isn’t about trying again. It’s about trying for the first time.

Trying actual intimacy. The kind I’ve never practiced. The kind where I show up completely. Where I don’t partition or protect or curate. Where I let someone see what the basement saw, what the countryside taught me, what the solitude revealed.

There’s someone at the door. Someone who’s asking for something real. Someone who’s making me want to try.

And I have to decide: Am I willing to be terrified and do it anyway?

Am I willing to practice something I’ve never practiced before?

To let someone witness the whole thing, the integrated version I’ve only just learned to be?

I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’m ready, not because I haven’t healed, but because this is genuinely new territory.

But I know this: I want to try.

Not because I need someone to complete me. Not because solitude stopped working. Not because I’m lonely.

But because I finally have something I’ve never had before: a whole self that could actually be witnessed.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s worth the terror of not knowing how.

Maybe the decision isn’t whether I’m ready. Maybe it’s whether I’m willing to be unready and still show up whole anyway.

Someone’s at the door.

I think I’m going to let them in.

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This might matter to someone you know who’s learning to let people in for the first time. Someone who’s standing at their own door, wondering if they know how.

Would you share it with them?

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Writing this piece was its own practice in letting people in. Showing you the whole thing, not just the curated parts.

That’s what we do here, show up together in real time. I’m writing from the middle of it. The questions, the decisions, the terror and the trying.

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About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

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