True Love

Let me be clear – I’m not giving out relationship or dating advice here; I’m simply speaking to what I’ve learned through experience and observation.

Do you believe in soulmates? Or this idea that there is one-true-love out there for you, and when you find them, you will have everything you’ve ever wanted from a relationship?

I don’t. At least, not that version of it.

I do believe that we all have one-true-love out in the world – ourselves – and every relationship that we have is meant to help us get closer and closer to loving ourselves the way that we deserve to be loved.

Me — I love the idea of love. I love being in love. I love having someone to love. I love being loved back by that someone. And I do (to a certain extent) believe in the idea that two people can be “meant to be together” in this lifetime. 

In fact, I believe that I have had the opportunity to be with many people that I was meant to be with — all at the time that I needed them, and for the amount of time that served me and the lessons I needed to learn from them. And in the end, the reason it didn’t work out with most of them was because either I wasn’t willing to do the work with them, or they weren’t willing to do the work with me, or perhaps neither of us knew how.

I think there’s this idea that a relationship should be easy. And while it’s certainly possible to have an easy relationship, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. If someone tells me that their relationship is easy — that they never fight — I find myself wondering if one of them is sacrificing their wants and needs to appease the other. (This is just a thought I have, and I’m not saying that it is true in the case of all easy relationships).

I believe that love, affection, friendship, and a shared vision for life are invaluable in a romantic relationship, but ultimately, those things are not enough on their own to make a relationship stick — to make it last. In my opinion, the most important piece of the relationship puzzle is that you are both willing to do the work together.

What does that mean?

When your partner triggers you (which they will — again and again), and/or when you trigger them (which you will — again and again), you both need to be willing to come together to unpack the baggage that holds the trigger. Because the truth is, (most likely) the reason they are triggering you has nothing to do with them, and everything to do with you.

I’ll give you an example.

When I was a kid, if my dad was upset with me, he would give me minimal acknowledgement and sometimes even the silent treatment. 

My husband is a gamer. He likes to play video games for about an hour after work to unwind and decompress. Often, when I come home, he is in the middle of a game, and thus, barely even says hello. 

My trigger gets activated and I think — he must be mad at me. What did I do? I don’t deserve this!

I start to get mad back and my fight or flight response kicks in, (I usually lean towards flight).

The reality is, my husband is not mad at me. He is just in the middle of something that requires his focus, and as soon as he’s done, he will put the controller down and connect with me. Also true, when he has the time he needs to unwind from work, our experience together at the end of the day is MUCH better than if he doesn’t have that time. But because of my past experience and the pain I hold onto, my immediate belief is that my existence, my choices, and how I live my life, is making my husband mad. And this makes me want to run.

These are things I know, because I have been triggered by this reality countless times through our relationship. But because we are both willing to do the work, we’ve been able to develop an understanding of what we both really need from one another in these moments.

Getting to a place of mutual understanding and compromise like this means coming together to talk about our fights without either of us trying to be the winner. Instead, we both try to understand where the other is coming from so we can work through the pain points, and come out the other end of the fight stronger and more aligned.

We’re both willing to admit where we were misunderstanding the situation, or how we were projecting our feelings onto the other. Most importantly, we’re both willing to be vulnerable. To share our fears with one another. To share our pain points. To let the other know that we trust them to carry this pain with us. To hold each other accountable when we see each other projecting.

This has taken time, effort, self-awareness, intimacy, trust, patience and love.

Now, just because someone doesn’t know how to do the work, doesn’t mean they aren’t willing. Working through our problems together in these ways has required both me and my husband to learn how. Getting to the point where we can do this work through one or both of us being triggered, has required us to start by having these types of conversations in our peaceful moments together. And it has required a lot of self-reflection on both of our parts.

We are open with one another about what we want, what we need, and where we are able to compromise vs where we aren’t. 

Our fears and pain points and triggers and everyday challenges still create issues that we have to face, but I love my husband, and I’m grateful to be able to do the work with him. I’m grateful for how we help each other grow. And I’m especially grateful for how our relationship helps me learn to love myself more each and every day.

I used to believe that loving myself meant abandoning ship when I wasn’t getting what I felt like I wanted and deserved. Now I know that loving myself means looking deeply at the reasons why I want and need certain things from my spouse, and recognizing when those wants and needs are actually my nervous system reacting to old wounds. 

Now I know that loving myself and loving someone else means being able to ask for what I really want and need while simultaneously respecting what he wants and needs.

Now I know that loving myself means giving myself the love and attention I often want from others, and recognizing that every piece of love and attention I get from others is a gift they give me, not something they owe me. And if this is true, then that means I can give myself permission to feel the same way about how I give love..

My love and attention are gifts I get to give to others. They are not something I owe to anyone.

And recognizing this truth gives me so much more time, space, and energy to give myself the love that I need from me.