I’ve been doing some more head laundry lately about those good old life lessons, and I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me because I’ve accumulated enough thoughts, memories, mistakes and lessons to keep the washing machine going for quite some time.
Relationships: the complicated, wonderful, occasionally maddening business of allowing another human being close enough to see who we really are.
For a long time I had very definite ideas about what love was supposed to look like, including the excitement, the chemistry, the grand gestures and the certainty that this person is different from everyone who came before.
Then life happened. People got real. They disappointed us and we disappointed them.
I discovered that two people can love each other and still misunderstand each other, that good intentions don’t always produce good outcomes, and that being right isn’t nearly as satisfying as I once thought it would be.
I am becoming less interested in what someone says and more interested in how they behave — less interested in being adored (although I am pretty darn adorable) and more interested in being respected. I’m less interested in keeping score and more interested in whether both people are actually showing up, because a relationship is not built in the extraordinary moments. It’s built in the mid-week evenings and in the little things nobody else sees. The cup of coffee, the check-in, the remembered detail and the willingness to listen to a story you’ve probably heard before.
It’s in the way someone speaks to you when they’re tired. It’s in what happens after an argument and whether an apology is followed by a change. Big. Huge.
I know that love isn’t supposed to require us to become smaller but I’m also learning that it isn’t supposed to require another person to be perfect.
We all bring our history with us. (Heaven knows I have a sack of things on my back heavy enough to make a sailboat list).
The things we learned from our parents, the things we learned from previous relationships, the things we learned from getting our hearts broken and the things we learned from breaking someone else’s heart. I am among those humans who have brought my fears, habits and assumptions into a relationship. I have hauled in all the wounded places where I am still tender.
Sometimes we expect the person standing beside us to somehow know what to do with all of it and it’s an unreasonable expectation for sure.
I believe relationships work better when we stop expecting someone else to be responsible for all of our healing.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t need each other. We do need each other. A lot. However, there’s a difference between needing someone and making them responsible for our happiness.
There is a difference between being loved and being validated, between compromise and self-abandonment, and between forgiveness and pretending something didn’t happen.
Somehow, those realizations are finally coming out of the fog. Is it my age?
I am more interested now in understanding another person’s point of view and less interested in proving my own. I’m learning that “I’m sorry” doesn’t make me smaller, that listening doesn’t mean I agree, and that kindness is not a weakness — and honestly that sometimes the most loving thing two people can do is give each other enough room to remain themselves.
I think self-worth allows us to love more honestly. We can say what we need and we can hear what someone else needs.
We can recognize when something isn’t right without immediately deciding that everything is wrong — and this is a huge realization for me. I can appreciate what is good without pretending that nothing is difficult.
A relationship isn’t a test we pass or fail. It is something two people continue to make day after day, choice after choice. Sometimes we do it beautifully and sometimes we do it imperfectly and from where I stand, always with the opportunity to do a little better tomorrow.
I used to think that knowing my worth would make my life simpler. No. It has made some things clearer.
I know now that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life proving that I am worthy of love (because after all I am the best girl out there) but I also don’t want to spend it building walls so high that nothing can get in.
I want room for mistakes — and heaven knows I have a trunk full. I want room for laughter, for growth and for the possibility that people can still surprise us.
And maybe that is the part I am still learning. I didn’t mean any less of what I wrote in my last column about the importance of realizing my self-worth. Knowing myself doesn’t mean I have everything figured out. It simply means I am finally paying attention.
And perhaps after all these years that is enough to keep the head laundry going.
There are still things I am sorting through.
But I’m getting better at knowing what belongs in the wash, what needs to be aired out—and what is worth keeping.
