My darling,
Every couple travels a road of its own, yet the landscape of love is remarkably familiar. There are mountains impossibly high and valleys so deep that we sometimes wonder how we will ever climb out again. There will be days when your beloved finds herself stranded on a narrow ledge, and you must summon the courage to climb toward her. There will be other days when she is sinking into a frigid sea, and you must plunge into the water, even when the cold threatens to steal your breath. And then, when your own strength falters, she will be the one reaching for you.
Love offers us its ecstasies, of course. The breathless beginnings, the intoxicating kisses, the delicious discovery of another body and soul. But love also tests every promise we make. There are seasons when we are not reclining in the afterglow of passion but enduring, simply enduring, the difficult weather of being human together.
During such seasons, we may feel as though we have wandered into a desert that passion has forgotten. Only prickly cacti bloom there. The sun is merciless, the earth is thirsty, and the clouds refuse us their gentle shade. Desire is thwarted. Patience wears thin. Our hearts, which once seemed so magnificent in their capacity for love, suddenly become as whiny as a tired child and as fragile as the surface of a frozen lake.
And in those seasons, we wonder why we made such extraordinary promises.
Why did we promise to journey beside another complicated, impossible heart when life itself is struggling to survive within our own breast? How can we sustain another needy, fractured soul when our own melody has yet to be fully heard? This is the unspoken dilemma of every lasting relationship. Two imperfect people, each carrying old wounds and private fears, decide to travel together. Neither possesses a complete map. Neither knows exactly what the journey will demand. And neither can promise to save the other.
Perhaps that is the first great lesson of love: we can only save ourselves. Still, we try.
We extend a hand. We sit beside the other in silence. We return after an argument. We offer an apology when pride would prefer to build a monument to its own righteousness. We learn to listen when every impatient bone in our body wants to be heard instead. And in that trying, something miraculous occurs. Grace is offered and accepted. One broken soul lends a little of its strength to another, not because it has strength to spare, but because love has taught it that tenderness is sometimes the bravest thing we can afford.
This is where love's deepest promise is realized. Not always in the heat of passion, but in the quiet hours when passion is nowhere to be found and we choose, nevertheless, to draw our beloved toward safety. Real love is forged in the unsung moments. It is the hand that reaches across the bed after a difficult conversation. The voice that softens when it might have sharpened. The willingness to say, I see now. I did not understand you before, but I want to understand you now.
These are not the grand gestures that inspire poetry or make beautiful scenes in the cinema. Yet they are the small, unremarkable acts upon which a life together is built. And that brings me to trust. Trust is the thread that holds the garment of love together. It is woven slowly through promises kept, words that prove true, and the quiet assurance that the person beside us will not deliberately use our vulnerability against us.
When trust is broken, it can sometimes be mended. But every tear leaves its mark, and repeated injuries weaken the fabric. Eventually, if we continue pulling at the threads, there may be too little left to sew together. The garment that once kept two people warm begins to unravel until both are standing in the cold, wondering where the warmth went.
This is why forgiveness matters so deeply. We forgive because we are not strangers to error. We know the strange geography of our own hearts, the detours we take, the foolish things we say, and the moments when fear disguises itself as anger and pride pretends to be principle. We know how easily we can become unrecognizable even to ourselves, and yet, we hope to be understood.
Perhaps you have heard someone say of a beloved, She knows me better than I know myself. What a remarkable thing that is! Someone has witnessed our contradictions, our inconsistencies, and our less admirable moments and has continued to look for the person beneath them. We are such peculiar creatures. Just when we think we have finally figured ourselves out, consciousness changes the furniture. We alter our appearance, change our profession, discover new passions, abandon old convictions, and become someone we could not have imagined a few years earlier. But beneath all these transformations, we remain creatures who need to be understood, accepted, and forgiven.
I am writing to you about these things because, recently, my darling, I had an opportunity to show up for you, and I did not do it very gracefully. Instead of being your steady rock, I threw a tantrum. I insisted upon my own way and left you wondering whether you could trust the promises I had made. I am not proud of that moment, and I do not wish to dress it up in pretty language to make it more palatable. I behaved like a frustrated child who could not have what she wanted.
Why did I do it?
Because years of singleness have taught me to be self-reliant, self-directed, and, if I am being honest, rather accustomed to having my own way. When you have spent a long time steering your own ship, you forget that another capable person may have a hand on the wheel. Now I am part of a couple, and some of those old habits must change. Not because I must surrender myself, but because I have chosen to make room for you. There is a difference. I am beginning to understand that trust is not merely believing you will love me tomorrow. It is trusting your judgment today, especially when your judgment leads us in a direction I would not have chosen myself.
You were doing what you do so brilliantly: solving a problem. You are persistent, my darling. When a door refuses to open, you do not simply walk away and admire the architecture. You examine the lock, inspect the hinges, consider the key, and return to the problem with renewed determination. At first, I mistook your persistence for stubbornness. I thought you were being obstinate, refusing to accept that something could not be done. But when I looked more carefully, I saw something else. For you, a no is not necessarily the end of a conversation. It is the beginning of another investigation. Somewhere inside that beautiful, organized mind of yours, you are already searching for a different approach, another possibility, a solution that has not yet revealed itself.
You were not trying to make life difficult; you were trying to make something work. That is what your profession has taught you to do, and you have become remarkably good at it. You examine the facts, consider the alternatives, and persist until the problem finally yields.
I, on the other hand, can be rather impatient with practicality. I see a problem and immediately wonder how to make it beautiful, pleasurable, meaningful, or spiritually illuminating. If it refuses to cooperate, I may be tempted to abandon it altogether and go in search of something more interesting.
I ask different questions than you do.
How can this become more beautiful? What is the deeper meaning of this experience? Does someone need to feel understood? Can empathy make a difference? What might I create that would bring a little more loveliness into the world? And, above all, what can I do to touch your heart? You see, my darling, I approach life as an artist, a romantic, and an incurable hedonist. I want to make the world more beautiful and the hours more pleasurable. You approach it as a practical, disciplined problem-solver who wants to make the world work as it should.
Neither approach is wrong.
But when two very different ways of seeing the world collide, misunderstanding is almost inevitable. I was looking at what I wanted. You were looking at what needed to be done. I interpreted your persistence as resistance to me when, in truth, you were pursuing a solution. And there I was, protesting like a child who had been told she could not have the red balloon.
Eventually, I had to step back and look at myself. I had been so busy insisting upon my own way that I had failed to recognize the value of yours. I had mistaken a difference in motivation for a failure of love. I had forgotten that your intentions could be every bit as loving as mine, even when they led you toward a different conclusion.
So I apologized.
Not because I had suddenly become a perfect woman, heaven forbid, but because I had finally understood what the moment was asking of me. It was my turn to yield. And yielding, I am learning, is not the same as losing.
Perhaps one of the great mysteries of love is that we so often choose someone whose strengths are the very things we lack. We are drawn to the qualities that both fascinate and frustrate us, the abilities we admire but do not naturally possess.
I am irrepressibly romantic, playful, artistic, and frequently impractical. You are serious, methodical, and wonderfully organized. You are so businesslike that you once included in a written proposal your intention to court me.
My darling, I still smile when I think about that!
Who else would formalize romance in a proposal? Who else would decide that the best way to clarify her intentions was to set them out in writing, as though love itself might benefit from a well-structured document?
I found it both amusing and insanely adorable.
You probably never considered how unusual it was. To your mind, you were simply making your intentions clear. And there I was, a woman of words and metaphors, falling in love with the very practicality that sometimes drives me to distraction.
How deliciously strange we are.
Thank God you are a practical woman.
And thank the Goddess I am an artistic one.
The world needs both. A beautiful idea may inspire us, but someone must figure out how to bring it into being. A brilliant plan may solve a problem, but someone must remember the human heart that will live with the consequences. We need reason and imagination, discipline and spontaneity, the engineer and the poet.
And in our little world, my darling, we need you and me. So I want to make you a promise. In matters of practicality, I will try to trust your judgment and allow you the room to do what you do best. I will try not to mistake your determination for opposition or your questions for a refusal to understand me. I will remember that you may be working toward a solution even when I have already decided there is no hope.
And in matters of the humanities, especially art, psychology, and expression, I hope you will sometimes allow me to lead. Let me bring the colors, the music, the questions that cannot be answered by a spreadsheet. Let me remind you that not everything beautiful needs to be efficient, and not everything meaningful can be measured.
We are both capable women. Neither of us needs to disappear for the other to shine. We simply need to learn when to lead and when to follow. Which brings me to the dance.
My darling, a dance is such a beautiful metaphor for a relationship. Sometimes one partner moves forward while the other follows. Sometimes the music changes, and the one who led the previous song must learn to surrender the next. Sometimes we step on each other's toes, lose the rhythm, and nearly collide. And sometimes, if we are patient enough, we find ourselves moving together so naturally that we can no longer remember who is leading.
I have spent much of my life taking the reins. In my younger years, I led clients, managed a business, and cared for my little family. I was not always graceful, but people could generally count on me to show up and work through whatever difficulties life placed in our path. I became accustomed to being the person who knew what to do. There is comfort in that role. There is also a certain loneliness. When you are always the one holding everything together, you can forget what it feels like to lean against someone else's strength.
And now, my darling, life has given me a new and rather lovely dance partner. I am learning to follow. Not blindly. Not timidly. Not by abandoning my voice or pretending that my own instincts have no value. I am learning to follow with trust, with curiosity, and with the humility to recognize that another person may see something I cannot.
I am discovering the sweetness of yielding to a capable, younger, and gentler force than the one I have so often tried to be. And there is something unexpectedly liberating about it. We may stand shoulder to shoulder and make a formidable pair, but perhaps we are even stronger when we allow one another to take the lead. There is a grace in that exchange that cannot be achieved by two people determined to prove that neither needs the other.
We are not in competition, my darling. We are partners. And the dance has only just begun.
There will be other songs, other disagreements, other moments when I forget myself and you become exasperated with my inability to appreciate the obvious solution. There will be times when your practical mind needs my imagination, and times when my wandering heart needs your steady hand.
When those moments arrive, I hope we will remember that we are not enemies standing on opposite sides of a problem. Instead, we are two women standing on the same side, trying to find our way through it together. That is what I want our love to become: a place where neither of us must win at the expense of the other. A place where we can disagree without withdrawing our affection, apologize without humiliation, and change our minds without feeling that we have somehow become smaller. A place where trust is strengthened by the very moments that test it.
And so, my darling, I think it is my turn to follow.
I am still learning your steps. I may occasionally stumble, and I suspect you will sometimes have to rescue my poor toes from the enthusiastic ambitions of my feet. But I am willing to learn. I am willing to listen. I am willing to let you show me what you see. Because I have begun to understand that love is not simply finding someone who will dance to our favorite song. It is learning to hear the music that moves the other person's heart.
And when you reach for my hand again and ask, "May I have this dance?" I hope I will smile, place my hand in yours, and allow myself to be led. I hope I will trust your footwork, admire your clever turns, and delight in the way you find a path through life's tangled corridors. I hope I will remember that following you does not diminish me, any more than allowing me to lead diminishes you. For some songs, you will lead best. For others, I will.
And over time, perhaps we will discover the exquisite ease of no longer needing to decide who is in charge. We will simply feel the music, recognize the moment, and move together.
That, my darling, is the dance I want with you. Not a perfect dance. Not one without missteps or bruised toes. But a dance in which we keep reaching for each other, learning each other's rhythms, and finding our way back into one another's arms.
So yes, my love.
The next time you ask me, "May I have this dance?"
I will say yes. And this time, I will be smiling before the music even begins.
Always,
Your Poet
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