Having a clear vision of what you WANT in your marriage is the first step to creating it — because without knowing where you’re going, how can you ever get there? I want you – and all sensitive women who are in a partnership (or want to be) to have what they feel is an amazing relationship, an amazing marriage. I think that's what YOU want. To have a marriage that feels amazing. Fulfilling. Deeply loving. Supportive and alive. Yes? But having that experience in your marriage won’t come by chasing the idealized image of how a marriage should be (an image that comes more from what society taught you it should be --via movies, magazines, and works of fiction-- than from someone who has an actual real-life amazing HUMAN marriage.) So what does it really look like to have an amazing marriage as a sensitive person? Here’s a wee TASTE:
In an amazing marriage you never feel truly unloved. You recognize your partner's bids for love and his ways of loving you even when they are different than yours, and you feel cherished. You don't need him to show love in specific ways– but you’re always up for patiently teaching him the way you best receive it. And so over time you both feel completely loved by the way the other loves and you’re loved in the ways you love to be more and more. Having an amazing marriage is going for a walk or to a movie with your partner or alone, and either way feeling equally held in the sureness of you and your partner's love.
It is listening to your own need for connection or alone time and having no problem asking for it, or being willing to make that happen. For yourself... An amazing marriage is strolling through town in the falling dusk with your partner, poking fun at each other and talking about how you miss the old days together, identifying some obstacles to better connection right now, shedding a few tears, and feeling closeness emerge as you do so... An amazing marriage is saying no when he makes a request that you don’t want to do --and trusting him fully to handle his own feelings and to not lose an ounce of love for you. It is saying yes when doing so feels like the most loving thing for you. It is asking for what you want and when he says no, caring for yourself through the disappointment... and loving him as much as ever for knowing what he will and won’t do for you. Having an amazing marriage means having squabbles over silly things like being late... it means having moments where you get defensive or you approach him critically and you briefly feel against each other.
But these things never throw you off for longer than a few minutes.
When you have an amazing marriage you have a resting sense of being held in love, that all is well between you and your man, that you’re safe with this person, and your future together is, too. And of course, you’re filled up by the moments when the daily challenges of living are faced supportively together, when the daily to dos get done with ease and collaboration, when laughter bubbles up as you joke together…you’re filled up by the micro moments of connection, affection, passion that are woven into the fabric of everyday together… And you know they’ll continue and even grow more potent as you each grow in your capacity to love more clearly and fully.
But, this means an amazing marriage includes negative emotion. It expects it, makes room for it to come and go, without ever letting it mean there is less love because of it. Having an amazing marriage means feeling disappointed and frustrated, annoyed and bothered by things your partner does ...and when these feelings come up, instead of using them as evidence that there’s something wrong with your marriage or as a reason to harden towards him as if he were the enemy, you let such feelings point you towards your own internal landscape with curiosity and kindness.... So you can identify the places where you have some growing to become more of the woman who has such connection and understanding with this dear person you’ve chosen as your life partner. An amazing marriage is not expecting or wanting your partner to bypass his humanity—or you yours. It is the best opportunity to get all the things inside of you out of the way of being able to love the very humanness of both of you....of being able to love without condition this human creature that he is… and that you are. It's the chance to tear down the fantasies of perfection...And to cherish him not in spite of the things you don’t like about him-- his reactions, his defensiveness, his aloofness, his messiness-- but because of all of this… It’s the chance to do that, also, for YOUR OWN SELF. It’s letting yourself be imperfect, letting yourself get upset, letting yourself snap or say the “wrong” thing in the “wrong” way, and trusting in your goodness enough to not belabor the mess ups, to not berate yourself, but to instead simply move on with a quick apology and a commitment to keep working at communicating from a more conscious place. An amazing marriage is not waiting for him to make it amazing for you: it’s deciding to make it amazing yourself. It's deciding to feel amazing about your partner, about yourself, and about the relationship. And anywhere it doesn’t feel like that, deciding to make it feel more like that.
An amazing marriage isn’t when your partner heals you of your brokenness… It's when your relationship challenges you to learn to heal your own brokenness... with the wildest deepest love as the prize.... In an amazing marriage you hold the most compassionate, respectful, wildly loving space for your partner's brokenness ...and trust that his brokenness isn’t broken--that it’s actually his path to wholeness...just like yours is...and you make big-hearted, pressure-less space for the healing of it. When you have made your marriage an amazing one, you know the value of feeling love. You revel in this chance to have this human to love. You love feeling love, and so you choose it again and again.
You know you’ve had an amazing marriage when you can imagine saying when you look back on your life together at the end of it all : “I was someone who let my love be so big that it wrapped itself around and permeated every imperfection, every moment of discord, it allowed for all the failures and mistakes... and it instantly melted barriers, “I was someone who gave myself the very biggest gift there is to give myself and those around me: The gentle but persistent tearing down of all barriers inside of me to loving unconditionally… “I was someone who stopped trying to escape my humanity, and my man's humanity, and learned to love it more full heartedly--all the messy inconsistent cantankerousness of it all! “And so I tasted the most wild all encompassing kind of love possible and made my marriage --and truly my whole life-- wildly amazing.”
With Much Love, Hannah
P.S. My wish for you, my sensitive friend, is that this be the year you make the biggest move you've ever made towards having an amazing marriage-- so that you get to bask in the joy of it for all your years to come. If you want to assure this, come coach with me. This year, you and I will make your marriage one you can happily call amazing. The first step is simple and courageous (full of strong-heartedness): set up your consult call with me. You will be so grateful to yourself for doing so.