Marriage brings ALL our “stuff” up to the surface. (By stuff I mean, our unhealed, less mature, weaker, wounded, unskillful, unhelpfully patterned, up-until-now-under-developed aspects). This is one reason marriage so great. (Not joking!)
Because it is only when we see our stuff that we can heal it and move beyond into the life we most want to be living.
For example, I had NO IDEA I had issues with being impatient and controlling until I got married.
Well, I knew I had been those ways as a kid...but I had thought I was past all that…
Ha! Turns out, these lifelong ways of being just hadn’t had the proper environment to come out again until I was safely tucked inside my marriage…
And then come out they did!
I had a low tolerance for my husband's slow responses to my questions about how he was feeling.
I interrupted when I thought I knew what he was trying to say--and said it for him.
I felt I knew better how to decorate or how to lay out the garden.
I liked to be in charge, but then felt burdened when I had so much I was in charge of! (Etc!)
NONE of this created for me the experience I most wanted in my marriage.
Seeing these things about myself (and so much more) was uncomfortable, for sure.
But it also gave me the info I needed to overcome these things.
Which was the only way to become more of the person I really wanted to be. (Which was for sure NOT impatient and controlling...and burdened.)
Has it been easy to confront those darker parts of myself? Not at all.
Has it been liberating?
Has it been the most empowering thing?
Has it reaped rewards so big I would never want to hide from my challenges again? (Like a man who loves me for ALL of me, like a me who loves me for all of me! Like being honestly able to say I am so proud of the high-integrity, big-hearted, brave, loving woman I now am.)
YES YES YES.
Your marriage is the perfect arena for doing your most powerful healing work. Because it will shine a searing light on exactly where and what your work is.
If it feels scary, or you find yourself resisting looking at where you could grow, or you’d rather just put on Netflix, please hear this:
YOU are more than strong enough to look at and do the sometimes uncomfortable, always rewarding, work it takes to become someone you feel so good about being.
Your future self will thank you beyond what you can imagine right now.
She is waiting for you. She is cheering you on. She is holding her arms open. She is SO thrilled you were willing to look honestly at yourself, and grow beyond any limitations. She wants you to know she now lives day in day out with the deepest, safest, most wondrous love in her marriage.
All because you were brave today.
Go get her. Go become her. You will be wildly grateful to yourself forever more.
P.S. Tired of trying to do this work on your own? Ready to give yourself the gift of the most loving and clear-eyed support that will not only make this journey to that future self and marriage quicker, but also so much easier and so much more laughter-rich, tender, and joyful, along the way? If so, come coach with me. I’ve got you every step of the way. Apply here for your consult with me.
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