Saturday, I found myself looking at my husband and feeling such deep love for him.
Not the romantic, swept-off-my-feet kind of love.
Something deeper.
Gratitude. Appreciation. Tenderness.
A profound awareness of the life and marriage we have built together.
We have been through dark days. We have wounded one another. We have misunderstood each other. We have each brought our histories, our hurts, our fears and our ways of protecting ourselves into this marriage.
And yet, here we are.
There is a freedom between us today that wasn't always here.
For a long time, I thought the difficulties I experienced in relationships were about what was happening in the relationship.
I didn't understand how much of my past was coming with me.
I didn't know that some of the ways I responded to my husband had very little to do with the man standing in front of me.
They were patterns.
Patterns I had learned long before I met him.
We Bring Our Stories Into Love
We don't enter relationships as blank slates.
We arrive with everything we've learned about love, safety, belonging, conflict, abandonment, worth and what we believe we have to do to remain connected to another person.
I had learned to abandon myself in ways I didn't even recognize as self-abandonment.
I could keep the peace rather than tell the truth.
I could take responsibility for how someone else felt.
I could struggle to recognize my own needs, never mind express them.
I could experience disagreement as something much bigger than two people simply seeing things differently.
And sometimes, I could look to the person I loved to create a feeling of safety inside me that I didn't yet know how to create for myself.
None of this meant I didn't love my husband.
I love him deeply.
But love doesn't automatically undo the patterns we learned to survive.
The Question That Changed Things
Eventually, I became less interested in asking:
What is he doing?
And more curious about:
What is happening inside me right now?
What am I feeling?
What does my body believe is happening?
What am I afraid of?
What do I need?
How old does this feeling seem?
And perhaps most importantly:
Is this moment actually about this moment?
That curiosity changed so much for me.
I began discovering the difference between something happening in my marriage and something being awakened in me through my marriage.
That's a very different thing.
Instead of immediately trying to change the person in front of me, I could turn toward myself.
Not to blame myself.
To know myself.
I Began Staying With Myself
This may be one of the greatest changes healing has brought into my marriage.
I learned how to stay with myself.
I learned that having needs doesn't make me needy.
That saying no doesn't mean love will disappear.
That another person's disappointment doesn't mean I've done something wrong.
That I can love someone without taking responsibility for everything they feel.
That conflict doesn't automatically mean disconnection.
That autonomy doesn't threaten intimacy.
And that I don't have to disappear in order to belong.
I began discovering that safety wasn't something another person could permanently give me.
I could create safety within myself.
And from there, I could meet my husband differently.
Not from the frightened part of me trying desperately to protect something.
Not from the woman trying to keep everything okay.
But increasingly, from the woman who could remain connected to herself while also remaining connected to him.
Healing Myself Changed How I Love
I didn't heal myself so I could save my marriage.
I wasn't trying to become a better wife.
Something much more fundamental happened.
As I changed my relationship with myself, I became capable of participating differently in my marriage.
I could see more clearly what belonged to me.
What belonged to him.
What belonged to our relationship.
And what belonged to a story that began decades before we ever met.
There is tremendous freedom in that distinction.
Because our partners cannot heal our childhoods for us.
They cannot finally prove that we're worthy.
They cannot guarantee we'll never be abandoned.
They cannot make us feel safe every moment.
And they cannot fill every unmet need we've carried into adulthood.
That is an impossible job to give another human being.
What they can do is meet us here.
Two imperfect people.
Two histories.
Two nervous systems.
Two whole human beings learning how to love without losing themselves.
And Here We Are
Today, I look at my husband differently.
Not because our marriage has been perfect.
Perhaps because it hasn't.
We have lived enough life together to know each other's wounds and edges. We've had seasons of hurt, frustration, misunderstanding and growing.
And we are still here.
But here feels different now.
There is room.
There is freedom.
There is individuality.
There is choice.
There is a kind of love that doesn't require either one of us to disappear for the other to exist.
And today, I felt enormously grateful for that.
For him.
For us.
For the marriage we've created.
And for the woman I've become inside it.
I love my husband differently today because I know myself differently.
Maybe It Isn't Only About the Relationship
If you're struggling in a relationship you deeply value, I wonder what might happen if, alongside asking what needs to change between you, you became curious about the patterns you're bringing with you.
What happens inside you when someone says no?
When someone is disappointed?
When you don't feel chosen?
When you need something?
When there is conflict?
When someone you love needs space?
When you want to speak but find yourself staying quiet?
There may be a story underneath the story.
A pattern underneath the reaction.
A younger part of you trying very hard to make sure something painful never happens again.
You don't need to judge her.
You can become curious about her.
You can learn her.
You can listen to your body.
You can discover what you need now.
And slowly, the patterns that once protected you don't have to keep deciding how you love.
This is part of what coming home to yourself has meant to me.
Not leaving the people I love.
Not becoming so independent that I don't need anyone.
Quite the opposite.
It has meant learning how to belong deeply to myself so that I can love another person without leaving myself behind.
And perhaps that is one of the greatest freedoms healing has given me.
I get to be fully me.
He gets to be fully him.
And we still get to choose each other.
What a beautiful thing that is.