Breaking Free: The Default Isn't an Instruction

Editorial note: When I originally wrote this article, I treated conformity and authenticity as though they sat on opposite sides of a line. Breaking societal molds meant freedom. Following them meant conformity. I've thought about it again. Unsurprisingly, it's more complicated than that.

I Still Believe in Authenticity

The original version of this article was very enthusiastic about breaking free from societal expectations. It talked about defying expectations, redefining success, celebrating uniqueness, living your truth, and embracing your non-standard path.

It even called our differences “superpowers.”

Let's not do that.

Some of my differences are things I love about myself. Some are neutral. Some are useful in one context and a giant pain in the ass in another. Some are genuinely disabling. I take medication specifically because there are aspects of how my brain naturally functions that I would very much like some assistance modifying. I don't need every difference to secretly be a gift before I'm allowed to accept that it's part of me.

But there's one thing underneath that original article that I still believe very strongly: authenticity matters. Being authentic gives other people permission to be authentic too. It tells people that what they're getting from you is real, and that creates trust. If I'm not constantly presenting the version of myself I think I'm supposed to present, the people around me don't have to spend quite as much time wondering what I actually mean.

What I've changed my mind about is what authenticity requires. I don't think it necessarily requires defiance.

Sometimes I Do the Fake Thing for a Real Reason

There are social conventions I absolutely do not understand. The ritual good-morning text is one of them.

Some people find enormous value in receiving a “good morning” or “good night” text from someone they're in a relationship with. I don't. Most of the time, they feel fake and unnecessary to me. If you're thinking about me and want me to know that, I want active engagement. Tell me something. Ask me something. Send me a meme. Show me the weird bug you found outside. Give me something that tells me there was an actual thought between Tabby entered my brain and Good morning.

I have a similar reaction to “I hope you're well.” I know perfectly reasonable people use this phrase with perfectly good intentions, but my brain frequently translates it as: I don't actually want to know how you are, so if you're not well, please don't tell me about it. “How are you?” feels like a question. “I hope you're well” feels like a polite statement specifically constructed to avoid asking one. On a good day, this merely irritates me. On a bad day, it can produce a wildly disproportionate level of impotent rage. I know it's disproportionate. Knowing that doesn't make the feeling disappear.

But here's where authenticity gets complicated. If someone I care about tells me that receiving a good-morning text makes them feel loved and connected to me, I understand something I didn't understand before. The ritual still doesn't mean much to me, but it means something to them.

Understanding the Standard Changes the Calculation

Explicit communication is tremendously valuable to me because otherwise I have to do a lot of mental calculus. Is this person sending this because they genuinely want to, or because they think people in relationships are supposed to? Am I expected to respond? What does my response communicate? What does not responding communicate? How well do I know this person, and how safe is it to assume that the interaction is genuinely motivated rather than performative?

When someone simply says, “This matters to me,” much of that disappears. Now I know what the behavior means.

That doesn't magically make the behavior intrinsically motivating to me. In fact, sometimes I know perfectly well that something matters to a person I love, want to give it to them, and still fail to consistently do the tiny thing that would meet that need. Then I feel guilty because their assigning value to the interaction doesn't automatically make my brain assign value to performing it.

Maybe that's ADHD. Maybe it's some other neurospicy trait. Maybe someday I'll find better language for it. For now, I know the disconnect exists.

But when I do participate in the ritual, something weird happens: it feels fake, and it's genuine. The action feels performative because I would never independently assign meaning to it, while the emotion motivating the performance is completely real.

I'm doing a thing that means nothing to me because I know it means something to you.

That's not necessarily inauthentic. It might actually be love.

Not Every Social Standard Is Oppression

That's where the argument I made in 2023 starts falling apart. Social norms aren't inherently bad. Research on social norms describes very real functions for them. Shared expectations can facilitate cooperation, reciprocity, predictability, and trust. They give us shortcuts for navigating a world full of other people whose minds we cannot directly access.

The problem comes when we stop recognizing a default as a default and start treating it as an instruction.

Sometimes I follow the standard because it works for me or because it makes interacting with other humans easier. Sometimes I follow it because someone I care about values it. Sometimes I decide the cost of resisting it is higher than the cost of complying. And sometimes I look at it and think, no, this is fucking stupid.

The important part isn't whether I conform. It's whether I understand that I have a choice.

Apparently Married People Are Supposed to Sleep Together

My husband and I have been married for 26 years. We haven't shared a bedroom for more than half of that time.

Today, that statement doesn't seem to shock people nearly as much as it did ten or fifteen years ago. Back then, casually mentioning that my husband and I slept separately could trigger an astonishing amount of concern. A married couple that doesn't sleep together? THEY ARE BROKEN. What does it mean? Is the marriage okay? How do we save them? OH NOOOOO.

It was wild. And for a while, I worried about it too.

The cultural default told me that married couples share a bed. Separate bedrooms were associated with marital problems, lack of intimacy, or relationships that were somehow failing. Our actual reason was much less interesting: we were terrible sleep partners.

At the time, I needed sound to fall asleep. Television or music gave my brain enough external input to stop generating quite so much internal input. My husband needed darkness and quiet. Then there was my snoring. He's a light sleeper, so even if he managed to fall asleep before me, I might wake him. Once awake, he couldn't necessarily fall asleep again, so he would eventually give up and sleep in his chair in the living room.

We were conforming to the expected arrangement and sleeping like shit.

So we stopped.

The Default Wasn't Solving Our Problem

Eventually, a therapist told me that couples sleeping separately was more common than I realized. I later found research supporting that, although I couldn't tell you today what I originally read. Current research still supports the broader point. Separate sleeping isn't rare, and couples report doing it for exactly the kinds of reasons we encountered: snoring, different schedules, noise, lighting preferences, movement, and other sleep disruptions.

Research doesn't tell us that separate bedrooms are universally better, either. Bed-sharing can have benefits for some couples. That's exactly the point: there isn't one sleeping arrangement that proves a relationship is healthy.

Over years of sleeping separately, I also discovered something I hadn't known when we started. I sleep much better alone. I didn't always prefer it. As a child, I loved when my sibling came and slept in my bed. But I'm not that person anymore.

We tried the default. It didn't work very well. We changed it, and this works better.

That's not exactly the inspirational story of courageous rebellion I would have written in 2023. Nobody dramatically broke free from the shackles of Big Shared Bedroom. We just needed some fucking sleep.

Why Did I Need to Know Other People Did It?

There's something about that story that still bothers me, though. Our arrangement was already working. I had direct evidence from my own life that sleeping separately improved our sleep without destroying our marriage, and yet hearing a therapist tell me that other couples did it too made me feel better about it.

Why?

Apparently, knowing that my deviation wasn't quite as statistically deviant made it easier to trust my own experience. The standard had enough authority that evidence from my own life wasn't entirely sufficient to override it. I needed evidence that other humans had also successfully ignored it.

There's a tension there that I don't think I've completely resolved. It's one thing to say, “Do whatever works for you.” It's another to actually trust yourself enough to do it when everyone around you treats your choice as evidence that something is wrong.

Authenticity Isn't the Absence of Influence

I also don't think authenticity means excavating some pristine “true self” untouched by other people. That person doesn't exist.

I've spent my entire life being influenced by my family, friends, partners, children, culture, education, experiences, mistakes, successes, random strangers on the internet, books I've read, therapists I've seen, people I've loved, people I've disliked, and ideas I've encountered. Those influences are part of me now.

Sometimes another person's needs legitimately change my behavior. That doesn't necessarily make the resulting behavior fake. If I send a good-morning text because someone I love told me it makes them feel connected to me, I'm allowing their experience to influence my behavior. I'm still making the choice.

Maybe authenticity isn't about doing only what comes naturally. Maybe it's about understanding why I'm choosing what I choose. I can authentically reject a norm, embrace one, compromise, or even perform a behavior that feels unnatural because I've consciously decided that what it communicates to someone else matters more to me than whether I personally enjoy the ritual.

The Default Isn't an Instruction

That's the part I was missing when I originally wrote about “breaking free.” Freedom doesn't necessarily come from rejecting societal molds.

Sometimes the mold fits. Sometimes it facilitates cooperation or makes another person feel loved. Sometimes it solves a problem efficiently enough that there's no reason to reinvent it. Other times it works for almost everybody except you, costs you considerably more than anyone realizes, or has outlived whatever problem it originally solved. And sometimes the standard was bullshit from the beginning.

Being non-standard doesn't require rejecting all of it. It means the existence of a default doesn't settle the question.

I can examine it instead. What is this expectation trying to accomplish, and does it actually accomplish that? Does it work for me? What does following it cost, and what does rejecting it cost? Does my choice affect other people, and does their experience change the calculation? Am I doing this because I want to, because it serves something I value, because I've consciously decided the compromise is worthwhile, or simply because I've never considered that I could do something else?

Then I can decide whether to keep the standard, modify it, negotiate around it, or discard the fucking thing.

That's a lot less inspirational than “Embrace your difference. Celebrate your journey. Live your truth.”

I think it's also a lot more liberating.

Extended Reading