Individual selves, yes, but also a oneness...

Today is our 18th Anniversary. 18 years of marriage. Now when he smacks my butt something in my back slides out of place for a second. 👵🏼 But I still like that he smacks my butt. 😚 (If I start breaking hips at some point we will have to revise this practice…)

I want to get reflective and personal in this anniversary post, because I feel like there have been breakthroughs that I can actually visualize with strings linking one thing to another, and there is some real beauty in this. Some of this has happened during the Covid era, so when you need to find silverlinings, this has been one for us possibly.
When this picture of Milo (Jose) was taken, he was a little boy living in the desert of New Mexico near the Rio Grande close to the Juarez, Mexico border. His dad had died when he was a toddler, and his mother worked hard to feed and clothe her children during an era that was not kind to single mothers. Milo spoke Spanish to communicate with his Grandmother who birthed all 11 of her children in a small adobe house with dirt floors located in beautiful historic Old Mesilla, and he learned to cook the most amazing Mexican food from scratch (masa, whole chiles, etc) and be responsible and take care of others. There’s a lot he had to learn to compartmentalize and rise above from an early age. He grew to be one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met, someone who was an all star wrestler in high school, tested high on his ASVAB and became an intelligence analyst in the Army, went to college and has a Masters in Accounting. He’s someone who cares about people and understands hardship in a deeply personal way. He shows his love by acts of service and that core belief has been challenged during his life with me because I believe his time and his words are what make me feel loved and seen. He is an amazing cook, he knows how or can figure out how to do anything, and he is one of the most stubborn people I know. He is also sensitive when you get through that stubborn layer, and I love him even more when he shows me that depth. I find him immensely handsome, and he just gets more handsome by the year. His acts of service of part of who he is: making and bringing me a cup of coffee every morning, buying my favorite flowers for no particular reason when he's out getting some groceries, starting my car on cold mornings... the list goes on.

I was still a baby when this picture of him was taken.

When this picture of me was taken, I was 1,700 miles away from him living in Apple Carr trailer park in Muskegon, Michigan. My parents had recently divorced, and the last time my dad came to see me was around this time. I too began to learn to compartmentalize at a young age, and I tried always to be a good girl who stayed out of trouble. I was incredibly sensitive, and it took me many more years to be able to cover that with stubbornness that impressively rivals that of my husband’s. I have felt the emotions of other people and animals for as long as I can remember, and somehow even at the age you see me in this picture, I knew that my life was going to be extremely painful if I did not find a way to learn how to manage the effect on myself that I would feel from knowing about all of the pain in the world. More importantly, because I grew up around tough kids in my neighborhoods and schools, I had to learn to not show my emotions so that it would not be mistaken for weakness. I learned a real appreciation for gardening and preparing meals from the summers I spent with my grandparents in the south while growing up, and I learned about which peppers taste best in butter beans from my grandma. If not for that those experiences, I would have known even less than I knew about cooking when I was a young adult. I was a hard worker from the time that I realized I could make people happy doing things for them and that I could earn money helping people that had tasks to be done or kids to be babysat. I loved to feel useful. I did not know how to become a successful person, but I knew I wanted it. If I knew then what I know today or if I'd had someone back then to ask, there are things that would be infinitely different in my life and career, but I went to college and I found my footing in the business world, and up until the day I gave birth to my twins, I looked very much like a workaholic. A lot of things have changed my views about the difference between a strong work ethic and balancing it with the things that really matter - which is the people around you that cannot be replaced and the experiences that you can’t have once you’ve missed the opportunity. I still struggle with showing vulnerability in person, I have trouble trusting, and it’s hard for me to say no.

Both of the people you see in these pictures communicate in different ways, are both stubborn and a little set in their ways. They each had to grow up quickly, they learned how to take care of themselves and do things without help, and they both grew up without their dads and experience and work through their own versions of abandonment issues. They both prioritized work over a life for too long and are working on each of these things. They both love to cuddle, and they both love humor and talk to each other in movie lines, and they both put fries on burgers.

Our relationship is not nor has it ever been perfect. We are both Type A people who don’t like to have to get permission from anybody to do some thing we feel is right thing to do at any given time - including each other.  Our communication styles are so different that at times I have felt that he really did not know me all the while he thought he knew me better than I know myself - wrong. One thing that we share in common is our need for touch, so, those cuddles… here for it.
I shared with him a couple of weeks ago when we spent the weekend together in downtown Dallas to celebrate his birthday (Mar 24), my birthday (Mar 11), and our anniversary (Apr 9), that when we were in our separate spa treatments the first day of our weekend, I cried quietly throughout my triple body scrub. I was embarrassed and hoped because the room was dark that she could not see the tears pouring down my face. I told him that I always find myself having emotional meltdowns during any sort of self-care treatment like a massage or a restorative yoga class or just any sort of session where a person does something nurturing to my body. I know these individuals are strangers and they do not know me nor do they love me. But I think because my entire childhood I was someone who needed physical touch as part of my love language, and almost the only time I was ever touched was by someone who was doing something bad and self-serving to me, I now as an adult just have these very deep seated emotions that come out when someone does something genuinely nurturing to me like scrubbing my body with salt or rubbing oils into my muscles, or lying a blanket over the top of me, or putting a warm towel on my face with drops of essential oils on it… any act involving nurturing touch opens up my flood gates. Sometimes even an extended hug from a friend causes me to have to hold back tears.
I’m telling you all this to say that on this our 18th anniversary, I am still learning how to tell my husband who I am, because there are many layers beneath the opinionated, funny, loving, book loving, recipe creating, nerdy, curious, business person, journaling mother and wife. And he is still learning how to hear from me that he doesn’t know all the parts of me that he needs to know to understand me better. And I need to know all of his parts to understand him better, because he is more than a boy who lost his dad, more than a foodie, more than a brilliant accountant, more than a stubborn but funny grump who makes amazing coffee, more than one of 7 siblings each with their own stories, and more than a dad of a little girl that experienced many painful years after his divorce from his first wife. And the more we do this actual listening and asking and paying attention and being thoughtful before speaking, the closer we are, the happier our life together will be.  But I can’t just be the one doing it, and he can’t just be the one doing it. We have to both be doing it.

And I’m happy to tell you that 18 years in we are probably in the best space we have been in yet because with all of this work comes more patience and more respect. And while he’s always been the best cuddler I’ve ever met, it’s even better sharing those physical touches with someone who knows the parts of you that heal a little more with each one.

I think I just wanted to share all of this because someone reading this might find something resonating about it. I wish I’d understood from the beginning of our relationship that while I thought we connected in our ability to communicate, he thought we connected on my carefree attitude and the fresh air it brought to him and his tendency to be uptight. When I learned we actually did not communicate the same way, I was honestly confused and often felt hurt. All of my loneliness from my whole life set in again very deeply and very quickly in moments of misunderstanding… which bred resentment. But I know now too that as a result of my reactions to not having the communication I value so much and had expected, I lost some of that care free spirit that he first fell for… which made him feel more distant. These realizations take time and addressing them while also being consumed and saturated with jobs and child rearing is in my mind probably one of the biggest reasons that once children are grown and leave the nest, marriages don’t always survive. Neither of us wanted to be in this statistic and on this we were united.

Something I learned from him fairly recently that helped some of the hurt is this: a traumatized person isn’t always able to handle the traumatization of the one they love. He knows some - not all - of my “stuff”, and I have never been sure that I know all of his but he tells me I do.  I had wondered why he never asked many questions or why he never read anything I write. He told me he didn’t want to read about me; he wanted me to tell him about me. It then took me years to explain to him that I can finally write about things but I still cannot simply speak them. It takes me hours and hours to even write something out to make sure I am expressing it exactly as I mean it, and I am utterly exhausted by the time I finish. So I pressed him on it again and again telling him that if I knew he’d written so much as a sentence about anything I would be reading it that very second because I want to know every single part of him and his mind and his heart and his soul no matter how mundane.  Then one day recently he did read some thing I wrote, because I was dealing with a lot of backlash as a result of it and I couldn’t even talk to him about what those feelings were like if he had not even read the subject of what was hurting me in that moment. He ended up reading it, and I was able to have an outlet and sounding board from the one person I needed it from. And he finally told me the answer I have looked for for 20 years. He said, “It hurts me too much to actually know details of things that happened to you and how they made you feel and how they have affected your whole life. It’s enough for me to know about them and I’m sorry I cannot let myself get into that space with you in the actual events themselves, because loving you and hurting at that level is too much." And he said all of this through tears.

People, when I wrote above that I knew early in my life that the pain of other living beings was going to always be a struggle for me, I saw him in myself when he said those words. He was also protecting himself from pain he didn’t feel he could bare about my own pain. I understood him finally for the first time, and I actually felt more loved by him than I may ever have before. In having that conversation, I was also able to let him know that I needed him to know me through and through, and that I might need him to get into the trenches with me anyway even if it hurt him to do so. Because he’s my partner and literally the only person that really does have to know everything about me if we are seeking the oneness of marriage. Still our individual selves, yes. But also a oneness.

This is all stuff over the course of 18 years of marriage, of course… part of the ups and downs. As anyone who’s been in any kind of long-term relationship knows, there are ebbs and flows in relationships. And all of this is why everybody who is married says it’s hard work. Because it is damn hard work. For people who come from backgrounds that caused them to build walls and struggle with trust, the “oneness” of marriage might be the most ultimate and yet unattainable goal of all. But getting to a place where you each can know each other and understand each other and be sensitive in the right places, spaces, and times brings you closer, and there is more of a oneness. And isn’t that the point of marriage anyway?

Happy Anniversary to my love… the one who  with whom I will always roll into a cuddle. Thank you for loving me.