In Love Again

Can we have an honest conversation about loving while healing? Ok, let’s go.

I am very fortunate to be in a relationship now where I get to experience love in ways that I never hav before. I honestly thought that a love that fills you up, where you see your person and smile each and every time, where you are excited to see them and can’t wait to be with them. The kind of love where you can daydream and think about your person at random times and you find yourself smiling. But above all of these flowery feelings the key component in this love is safety. The moment that I first met my fiancee I immediately felt safe around him. And this was something new to me.

Some years ago I was in a therapy session working out some childhood trauma. I was married but to someone else at that time. During one of my sessions I began to recognize that in addition to (and almost more important than) love, I also needed to feel safe. I had never even considered that before and here I was a full grown person deep into my thirties and having this epiphany. After a couple of sessions where I had uncovered some real serious trauma wounds and and felt proud of the work that I had done, I shared my revelations with my former spouse. I’m not sure what my sharing triggered within them but they actually got upset, like angry. Not so much of what I shared. Not even because I had come at them with some “this is all your fault” type stuff, because to be clear I did not have that energy.

I was super excited to tell them what I had learned and what was beginning to be healed and when I shared and their immediate response was anger I was like hmmmm, not the reaction or response I was hoping for. They later apologized but if you had noticed I mentioned that there were a couple of sessions that this was the reaction. After the first time I chalked it up to the possibility that maybe they were having a bad day or I caught them at a bad time. My ex is prone to move to anger easily, it’s their resting emotion. I decided to try again and share when a new revelation was uncovered. When I got a similar reaction the second time I said “you know what I think it’s best that I don’t share anything else moving forward”. They apologized again but I quickly realized that this relationship was not safe for me.

But what was I to do? I was married with no intention of leaving at the time. I wanted to stick it out and keep trying. But as time passed the safety meter was getting lower and lower. I won’t bore you with the details of my prayers, petitions and offerings to Spirit for help and guidance. Let’s just say that Spirit was not playing about me. So when my fiancee came into the picture and I immediately felt that safety in my body I felt a wave a relief because I was finally able to feel safe around someone. As someone who is very hyper vigilant and extremely guarded, to feel this was a bit scary. What do I do with this? How can I be sure that I can trust him?My previous relationship had severely damaged my self-trust and made me constantly question and doubt myself as a result of their gaslighting. I wasn’t sure that I could trust what my body was telling me. *And let me be clear that when I’m referencing my body I’m not talking about anything sexual. I’m referring to how my nervous system felt.

We’ve been together for about two years now and I must say that this has been quite a challenging ride. When you come out of a relationship where you were labeled as the problem and the cause of all the issues in your relationship, you would question yourself when a new person came into your world. I had (and still have) some deprogramming to do. All of the things that I believe are my strengths (vulnerability, communication, my expression of love, my compassion and patience) had all been weaponized against me. When I love I love hard and I was unsure that I could get to those depths of love again.

But at each turn my fiancee was patient. I never felt rushed in anyway to hurry up and heal. And let me tell you that there were many times when I just knew that he was gonna throw in the towel. I still interact with my ex because we have children together which made my healing that much more complex. At times I would be back and forth with safety and anxiety so much that for months I was exhausted. And yet again, my fiancee was always there, standing like a strong pillar. He would do some of the sweetest things for me like draw me a bath or have my bath prepared for me when I would go over to his place after work. He cooks for me, he rubs my feet and my head when I’ve had a long day. He checks in with me often asking if there is anything that he can do, or not do, that would be beneficial for me. He creates a space of peace whenever we’re together.

The hardest thing about opening myself up to love again is not allowing my mind to slip into those dark places. For a while I found myself scoping out as many red flags as I could find. Anything that he said or did that came remotely close to my ex was inspected with a fine tooth comb. I refused to get my heart broken again so I became a deep cover investigator. I didn’t blow up, get upset or ask a bunch of questions. I just slowly retreated into myself and tried to create as much space between us as possible. But he wouldn’t allow me to do that. Like I said he wasn’t pushy or overbearing, he wanted to communicate. He wanted ME to communicate. He didn’t get upset, frustrated or angry when I needed reassurance for the fifth time by 10am. He had an understanding of what I had gone through and was willing to be with me.

I often wondered (and eventually asked) what made him continue to choose me. He said that any other person would have given up, thrown in the towel and either gone back to their ex or shut down completely. But he saw my continued work to heal. He saw that each and everyday no matter how difficult things got, no matter how many emotional breakdowns that I had, I continued to push through. And that made him love me even more.