For a Patient Man

“Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go...” ~Marianne Williamson

To my handsome darling,

Thank you for loving me while I learn how to really love. Please know that I have given you my heart willingly, happily, fully aware of the risks. Know that I am for you and you alone, and am honored to be your lady. Know that I have never felt brave enough to be so vulnerable in a romantic relationship. To be so goddamn honest about expressing my feelings to you, however subverted or confounding they may be, is something I’ve far from mastered.

I’m not bad at “expressing” myself as I’m sure you well know by now. Ask around and you’re sure to hear a multitude of stories illustrating my capacity to express: the decibel of my shriek when I’m elated in a bar, or the painfully obvious empathy at the corners of my mouth when a friend is in pain. The deep furrow of my brow when I am deeply focused or otherwise engaged in concentration. The overtly critical way my left eyebrow raises itself when faced with the utterly obtuse, or the untethered bursts of laughter I am prone to when something is just too damn funny. Overall, you’ll know what kind of mood I’m in, and I generally won’t make you guess what I need. I’ll ask for it.

That being said, I forcibly taught myself to unlearn the art of being so openly forthcoming with men I was in relationships with. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t act disappointed. Don’t grab too much attention. Don’t take up too much space. Don’t feel your feelings...don’t shine...you get the idea. This isn’t a pity party, just the facts. We all make mistakes, right?

Anyway, here’s the thing: these days I do shine...and you love it and I love you for loving it, and dammit I do a pretty good job of it. I take up space and I’m not afraid to speak up when things don’t jibe right. I also feel all the feelings - boy do I ever, right? - buuut I’m not always very good at that bit. I’m trying, though. The thing is, it’s easy to be the “fuck you” kinda gal. The one who breaks you before you even consider breaking her, leaves before you contemplate showing her the door. Easier still to be the girl who plays around and keeps every man at arm’s length, taking what she needs, leaving all else tattered in the wake of her tempestuousness. Never let ‘em see you cry, give no quarter, take no prisoners. It’s just too fucking easy.

And so for a while, I made being a liberated libertine lover seem cool. Preferable, even. I sometimes boasted or laughed as I talked about my conquests. Scoffed at the ones who wanted me to stay. Berated those who made it unnecessarily obvious they wanted me to leave. In the end I made peace with all of them; in some cases forgot names, forgot faces, and kept only anecdotal remnants fit for retelling to particular audiences. The truth is I never let them in, not in the truest sense. But here’s a secret, my love, the biggest one of all: I knew I was full of shit the whole time.

I wanted real love. The kind that would grin at my morning-after hair, brush tears off my cheek after a tough day, make grocery shopping seem fun, buy a dining room table with me. I found myself looking for a man who made me want to stay the night, a man who wanted to make me dark coffee and then sip it with me the way I like to on a quiet Sunday morning - exchanging little more than knowing smiles, allowing jazz to float around in the soft light of day while I wear my woolly socks and beat up pajamas. Below my cynical façade, I wanted to allow myself to receive and accept that kind of intimacy. And deep down, I was longing whole-heartedly to give it...yet continuously finding reasons not to.

I knew once I did, it would be total. A complete giving over of the sterling chains I kept my little heart bound so tightly in. That would be it, I’d have to crack; be open, be easy to see, easy to break down and discard once weaknesses were revealed. What would I do without my self-employed shackles? Who would I be if I wasn’t the hard-hearted, chain-smoking nympho we had all come to know and (pun partially intended) love? I refused to fall because I thought that meant I would have to make too many sacrifices, give up some hollow version of “my Self”. I thought I was a bonafide hard-ass bitch, and I played into that for so long.

So when you showed up, my darling lover, I was unnerved. I thought I’d set such lofty goals for my suitors. Unmovable walls, unshakable ground. Pshh. You shredded through that bullshit immediately and saw my little light shining, which was at once wildly infuriating and deeply fucking magical. With that I knew you were different. You saw me and didn’t look away, and suddenly I found I could love with total openness. I knew I could be the most straight-forward version of myself with you; you deserve nothing less than all of me, and I never want to be afraid to be all of me. Never again.

So here we are. And this is what I’ve learned: sometimes, when I’m scared or embarrassed about how I’m feeling, I’m not great at talking about it. When I feel insecure I can get defensive or even nasty; my sarcasm suddenly has teeth. Other times my words inexplicably get in my way or just get lost completely - despite the fact that I happen to be quite the wordsmith (*casually brushes shoulder off*). I don’t always get it right the first time I try to explain and it can be ugly, confusing; it certainly isn’t always cohesive on the first go-round, let’s put it that way. The intellect I so heavily rely on, sadly, begins to shut down, leaving nothing but raw unrefined emotion. Sometimes I’m just a fucking ice queen. You love me through it.

There’s something about us, my love - rather, something about the way I feel about us - that makes me want to keep trying, keep learning, and keep doing the work. I’m truly understanding for the first time in my life what it means to be growing with someone, not in spite of them, and that kind of intimacy truly has little to do with the act of making love and everything to do with how much of our Selves we are willing to strip bare in front of another human.

Thank you for being patient with me, lover, and for choosing me every day. Thank you for meeting my occasionally dizzying spiral of thoughts with that trademark grin and for gently kissing the crazy away after I realize I’m just spinning out. Thank you for your kind eyes and soft voice and strong arms. Thank you for listening and thank you for talking.

But mostly...thank you for being you.