09/09/2019
My coach asked me recently what I want my relationship to be about. I came up with 4 things. This post is about GROWTH.
In my youth, I knew it all ¬– I knew what my career would be, I knew what my life would look like, and I knew that the person I married would make me happy forever.
Fast-forward 20 years and my life is unrecognizable from the Disney-induced fantasy of Happily Ever After. I married young and had 3 kids and giving up my career, I stayed at home with them. It wasn’t long before I felt unsatisfied in that relationship. I tried to fix it by going back to school and work, but the relationship ended when my husband asked me to go back to being at home. That wasn’t going to work for me.
I didn’t know it at the time, but growth is very important to me. I have found two ways to grow, evolution and excavation. Evolution involves trying new things, having adventures, thinking of things I have never wanted to think about before. Excavation is about taking off the layers of detritus that we have built up over the years in the form of protections and patterns.
I want my relationship to be full of growth. I’m getting a lot better at accepting the evolutionary, adventurous type. We go on trips to new places; we learn new things like how to ride a motorcycle or scuba dive. Those things are getting much easier to accept and try. The excavation, though, the places where I get called out for my old patterns or for putting up defenses, that’s HARD. It requires the undoing of years of belief about others and myself. This kind of growth requires SOFTENING. It requires time and patience to understand.
I know that when I get angry or sad, I immediately make myself a victim in the situation. In order to keep playing the victim, I have to make my partner either a perpetrator or a rescuer; often times, it’s both. In my marriage, this played out over and over again. Neither of us had the tools to stop it. We ended with a lot of misunderstanding and hurt feelings.
But now, I do know what is happening. I can’t always stop it in the moment, but Greg and I both know. We both want to change the patterns that aren’t working for us. I want him to call me our and he does. It isn’t always easy to hear, I am learning to trust his perception and insight.
This requires me to soften. It requires me to let down the walls of shame and defense and to hear the truth. It requires humility. But above all, it requires that I let him be there with me instead of running or pushing him away.
When I am able to do these things, my relationship feels bigger and stronger and I feel a little more growth.
