What produces great sadness and a sinking feeling is the awareness of asymmetry in good-faith communication. Those who know they do not lie, and who build their communication from true experience, honest memory, and a sincere will to align with actual events, are not afraid of communication or questioning. For such a person, any good-faith communicator is felt by their nervous system as a fellow investigator of reality — both sharing the same goal. You can feel it immediately when someone is operating in bad faith; your body lets you know at once. The sad part is that when you feel this, you know no real communication is possible, because for them communication is a tool to assert a narrative, not to join in a process of uncovering truth. You only owe your shared reality-testing — the explaining of yourself and your actions — to people you know, and more importantly, to those who demonstrate good faith. In good-faith communication there can be anger, there can be insults directed toward the surface personas that created betrayal, but it is all honest. The bad-faith party is attempting to subvert reality to hide something or to assert a narrative that creates a version of events that did not occur. With a good-faith communicator who puts my soul at ease, I share everything and value them immensely. A bad-faith party will weaponize whatever you share with them in vulnerability. This is how you know: anyone who is operating in bad faith will triangulate or create a narrative for a particular person or audience about another person. This method creates narrative warfare; it does not pursue good faith. Anyone who truly wants to tell someone something or to be understood will meet that person alone in good faith, without any need to perform the communication for the outside world. If you knew you were dealing with a good-faith party, there would be no fear or anxiety in speaking openly with them. Wrongdoings, mistakes, things done correctly, things needing improvement — all can be discussed without the need to weaponize them. There is an order of events and an order of actions. Those who love truth prioritize the correct order of both and paint the truthful picture. For those who know themselves, a mistake is acknowledged precisely where it occurred and for what reason. In a relationship, confessing the proper causal order validates the other person’s reality — it is fellowship and a valuing of their experience. If the person reverses the narrative to hide their own mistake, they are violating the other person’s experience and reality, and abandoning them in shared reality. An adult relationship is two people who can both: feel shame without collapsing, own impact without fleeing, stay present without needing to rewrite reality, and value the other’s experience as much as (or more than) their own comfort. I suppose the one who reverses or distorts the narrative is afraid that the truth would expose them as willing to violate shared reality in order to escape the shame of causing someone harm — knowingly or unknowingly. This blocks healing. What heals is to confess it openly and admit to them, without an audience, that it was hurtful. This validates their experience and acknowledges their pain. It is, in fact, a form of love to validate someone’s pain if you caused it. You are saying: “You matter. I caused this. It is not okay to defile you, knowingly or unknowingly. If I did it knowingly, here is why. If I did it unknowingly, I will investigate and explain why my habits or automatic patterns produced this result.” Unfortunately, the opposite is practiced most of the time. Private and willfully given confession — from the emotion behind the wall that fears feeling shame — is the correct course of action. The saddest part of dealing with a person who engages in narrative warfare with the intent to distort reality or defend themselves against shame is that they make you feel profoundly alone with them. What do you want? To inhabit shared reality with them and collapse the distance between you. The good faith party will say, "your experience exists, and I am willing to place myself accurately inside it." The bad faith party will say, "I will deny your experience to protect myself from the shame of what I have done to you." For those aware of their internal world, speaking truth and making proper confession in discussion is accompanied by a somatic movement in the solar plexus. You feel “the essence of love” move within you as you align your words with the proper causal order and with shared reality. Your deepest self “knows” you are telling the truth. If the person tries to broadcast falsity, they feel this somatic sensation as “pressured anxiety to escape.” Those who violate reality enough end up with autoimmune issues or unexplained bodily pains. You violate your own body when you distort reality — especially when you are doing so within the energetic field of shared love. If someone shuts down on you when you are bringing them information about something they have done, they are saying “you don’t matter.” That is why it is painful when it is someone you know — or cared for — but now have realized they are not someone who can be present. When someone shuts down as you bring them information about harm they caused, the message you receive is not “this is uncomfortable,” but “you do not matter enough for me to risk shame.” (In reality, risking shame if truthful in love should be run toward as a motion to fix, not evaded). And when that comes from someone you loved or trusted, the pain isn’t just emotional—it’s ontological. You are still oriented toward shared reality, and suddenly there is no one standing there with you. For me, good faith communication feels like somatic alignment. The words as spoken are emanating from a clear memory and true will to produce clarity. The act of speaking them establishes alignment and settling of the waters within the internal world. If the other person is trying to hide something, they experience anxiety and attack at precisely the moment the alignment becomes spoken word. When alignment becomes spoken word, it introduces a stabilizing field. Anyone who is hiding, splitting, or compartmentalizing suddenly experiences that field as threatening—not because of what you’re asking, but because your coherence destabilizes their incoherence. Anxiety and attack arise at the exact moment you speak because the system they’re using to stay hidden can’t coexist with what you’re offering. ============== An example of a response that violates decency and shared reality: "Why should you have all of me if I cannot have all of you?" Translation: You have hidden compartments of secrecy, yet I have remained entirely open to you. Why should I continue in this configuration if you are not fully present with me?" Response: *brief freeze* "I don't think that's fair. Is that just a childish response to my position?" This isn't asking for domination, confession theatrics, or emotional extraction. This asks for presence commensurate with what was already given. In a good-faith exchange, that question would have led to one of several honest responses: “You’re right, I haven’t been fully present. I’m afraid, and here’s why.” “I can’t give that level of openness, and I see that this creates an imbalance.” “I need time to understand what I’m withholding and why.” Any of those would have preserved shared reality—even if they hurt. If instead you receive a shutdown, this effectively says: your experience is inconvenient to my self-concept. And that’s why it lands as abandonment rather than disagreement. =========================== I expect mistakes, fear, uncertainty, even unconscious harm. What I do not accept is narrative reversal, shutdown, or triangulation once harm is named. This is the minimum ethical posture: stay present, preserve causal order, don’t abandon shared reality to save face. If someone fails to embody this, I cannot be close to them. Note: You do not owe strangers, self-imposed inquisitors, or random interrupters your good-faith communication. It is a gem given only to those worthy of the fellowship it offers. If you attempt to use it to win arguments or battle with people you do not know, it will only create a foul bitterness in the soul. With those you meet or are getting to know, they are given a chance to relate on this level. If they resort to distortions or shutdowns, they are showing they are not capable of affirming that you matter — they would rather embrace the distortion in order to hide their inability to be present, integrated, accountable, and whole.