WILSHERE: How well can we really know someone?

Recently, I was floored by some new information I heard from a friend about an ex. I do not wish to incriminate him, though I don’t think he would think twice about it, but it affirmed my post-breakup belief that he is a terrible person. This side of him was never shown to me during our time together, so I had wondered what other qualities of him I had ignored. I wondered how I wasn’t perceptive enough to pick up the clues, wasn’t a good enough listener to pick up on his verbal cues.

This led me to ask the question, “How well do we really know someone?” Can we really know all of someone’s dimensions, or are we trapped in the conundrum Billy Joel presents in “The Stranger?” How much are we willing to see the stranger in the person in front of us?

He was, on the surface, a good person. But his actions proved more about his personality than anything I could have inferred. This was a scary thought to me, because it affirmed that we had talked a lot but never communicated. We spoke, and it seemed like we never listened. Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was timing. We always had a lot to say, but never had time to fill every minute with the words lingering on our tongues. Maybe it was our inability to scratch beneath the surface of each other, never moving past small talk about baseball or what happened in each other’s weeks.

It scared me that I had spent time with someone I never fully understood or even knew. It scared me how little I actually knew about him, even after the time we spent together.

The truth is, we can never truly know someone. We can make guesses, assertions, inferences about someone and predict how they’re going to act. We can study their habits, their quirks, their past behaviors and patterns. But there are things about them we’ll never know.

And that’s okay.

There are things about ourselves that we may never share. There are secrets about my life that are so deeply ingrained in the paragraphs of my diary I feel no need to share with someone, at least not at this stage of my life. That does not mean that I won’t be honest or vulnerable when sharing my secrets. I believe that any good relationship is built on a foundation of honesty, vulnerability, truth and the ability to be open with someone.

This is not to deter anyone from trying to get to know another person. One of the most beautiful parts of any relationship — platonic, familial, romantic and the like — is the process of getting to know someone. It can be a difficult process, but it is not entirely impossible. The process of moving past first names and hometowns is an interesting and exciting one. Learning about a person’s likes and dislikes, moving past small talk about the weather and moving toward their thoughts on current affairs and “House of Cards” subplots is one of the best parts of creating and forming a relationship.

Talking to someone and knowing that they’re not only listening but also hearing what you have to say and communicating is a beautiful process. Opening up and baring your soul, although risky and unpredictable, is very rewarding and can build the foundation for a healthy relationship.

Knowing that we may never know everything about a person should not hinder or deter us. People are complex, and they all come with histories that could fill a library of autobiographical books. Some have complicated pasts, and some are hesitant about the future. Some have been hurt in ways one may never understand, some are running from their past, others are running toward their future. People are complicated, filled with complexities and complications with messy pasts and sometimes even messier ways of loving.

Life is a time of discovery and exploration, learning from each other and growing with one another. This is not to say that we should study our lovers, friends or family in order to learn their deepest, darkest secrets. This is to say that we should be perceptive, open and truthful, always listening instead of waiting. We should be communicating instead of just talking.