I’m heading off with my husband for a trip to celebrate our 25th anniversary that was canceled and rescheduled from last October.  I have to admit, after such a trying and stressful year, I’m extra happy to celebrate the success of making it to not only our 25th, but to our 26th!  Like many, the isolation and stresses of the past year were a challenge to our relationship.  I wasn’t always the person I wanted to be and certainly did not feel love in the way I wanted, both in giving and receiving it. And so with your indulgence I wanted to share some of my reflections on the truth about “real life love” in the hopes that I can better understand it and with the extra hope that some people may relate as well.

There is the Bible verse (Corinthians 13:4-8) recited at so many weddings that always comes to mind when I think about marriage…”Love is patient, love is kind…”  and how I should be.  But the reality is that I am not patient and not kind, at least a lot of the time.  On good days when I feel balanced and our lives feel under control, I can be very patient and very kind.  But most of the time I’m stressed to some degree, whether by external things or internal insecurities.  How patient and how kind I feel capable of tends to be in direct proportion to these other matters and how well I’m doing with them.  

Love itself is amazing.  When I can focus on it as a pure state, just as the slogans say, it is powerful and all I need.  It’s an energy like nothing else I can ever experience and makes me a better person.  It truly does fill my heart and puts me in a state of awe.  It guides me to make good choices and to put others before myself in a way that provides meaning and purpose to my life. It fills me up with gratitude and feels a little like magic, something that is beyond explanation and reason and provides a sense of “wow” to our existence.  When I’m able to stay connected to this energy, I feel as if I’m operating on another plane of existence – for me, it is a spiritual sense of connection.

But, then there’s all that I let get in the way of this.  Especially this past year, in working from home, I felt isolated and insecure.  I was worried about money and my job, people’s health and our daughter’s schooling and socializing, the state of our country and the state of the world.  With so much time by myself working from home, I started to overthink everything.  At the same time, my poor husband was trying to keep his business open and his employees working.  He was going in each day and riding waves of the unknown trying to keep things running, applying for business loans and dealing with ever changing potential crises. The counterpoint of our two experiences led me to feel lonely and “needy,” at just the time he was preoccupied and overwhelmed.  It led to tensions and hurt feelings.  While it was neither of our fault, we were both just doing the best we could in unusual circumstances, it still felt so damn personal.

And this is what I think gets in the way of love.  We are people full of fears, needs, and insecurities who long to be seen and appreciated.  Yet, we all have baggage from the family we grew up with and our old relationships. Pair this up with another human being with bags loaded down with fears, needs, and insecurities, and you’ve got a recipe for a messy conundrum – who’s perception is correct, whose need takes priority, who started it and who will apologize?  There is so much potential for conflict, it’s actually a miracle that relationships genuinely work as well as they do as much of the time as they do!

So, I guess what stands out to me is that, yes, “love is patient and love is kind”, but we, as people, are not.  And in order to make a relationship work, we have to be active in removing  the burdens that get in the way of the love that is.  But it ain’t easy.  It takes a lot of self awareness and humility, negotiating and compromising, balancing taking care of ourselves and one another.  In other words, we each must own what’s in our bags and see how it affects the relationship. And as I pack my bag for our anniversary trip, I most certainly need to keep in mind that someone else will also be there to carry it.  And this is both the beauty and the challenge of traveling life’s journey together.

Thanks to my husband of 26 years who is in fact kind, loyal, smart as heck, and funny.  He had no idea what he was getting into marrying a psychologist and, as he says, learning about all the “issues” one can have.  I am grateful for his wisdom, character, resilience and perspective that has indeed been a gift and a blessing.  And luckily for me, he’s been strong enough to help shoulder my bag through the troubled times when I could not.