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At the time, I did not recognize the significance.
That unplanned moment of truth-telling—when the words left my mouth before I had time to shape or soften them—marked a shift.
It was the first time I chose peace over performance, presence over perfection, authenticity over appearance. A door that had long been bolted shut cracked open, and everything began to change.
For most of my life, I believed healing was something I had to earn. Prove. Complete alone. I had been wounded in relationship, so I assumed that’s where the danger lived. I never imagined relationship could also be where healing began.
I was wrong.
Healing began with the person who has stood beside me for decades, long before I had language for what I carried. Pris didn’t need explanations. She saw the story in my posture, felt it in the tension I wore, heard it in the silence between my words.
She Stayed
She never demanded I open up. Yes, she sometimes withdrew when I shut down, but she stayed. Her staying was not passive. It was fierce and unwavering. What she offered me was something I had never known growing up: presence without pressure. On days I disappeared emotionally—expecting her to retreat—she didn’t. She met my silence with patience. She met my shame with grace. Over time, her steadiness became the first real safety I had ever known.
There were seasons I could barely stay present, even with the people I loved most. When our daughter cried, I sometimes shut down. Not because I didn’t care—but because I felt everything too much. I didn’t know how to hold her pain and mine at the same time. Pris didn’t judge that as failure. She saw it as a fracture—not my fault, but mine to tend. She stayed through that, too.
It Cost Her.
There were times my silence made her feel invisible. Times she questioned her own voice. She bore her own silence while holding mine. And still, she stayed—not from duty, but from love, and the belief that I could become more than the sum of what had hurt me.
When she went back to school for her second master’s degree—choosing growth again and again—I felt something old stir inside me. Her independence awakened a fear I barely had words for: if she kept growing, she might leave me behind. She didn’t walk away. She walked forward. Slowly, I followed.
Not an Easy Journey
Our marriage wasn’t easy. I didn’t come into it whole. I had already lived through a short, failed marriage and a string of relationships where I either fled first or sabotaged the possibility of love. I never wanted anyone to get too close. I didn’t want them to see my secret shame—that I had been hurt, abused, and broken in places I still hadn’t touched myself.
Pris didn’t flinch. She didn’t ask for a man already healed. She asked for a man who was willing.
Healing Came Slowly and Imperfectly
Healing didn’t come because I got it all right. It came because we kept choosing to stay—imperfectly, consistently, with just enough courage to try again. We had to learn each other’s language. I came from confrontation. She came from avoidance. I chased. She withdrew. We weren’t fighting each other—we were reenacting old scripts that neither of us had written.
Therapy helped. Time helped. Trust helped more. But what changed everything was honesty. Not in dramatic breakthroughs, but in everyday moments—a breath shared. A truth spoken without performance.
A look held just long enough to say, I’m still here.
What She Brought That Helped Me
1. Presence Without Pressure. She never forced me to speak before I was ready. She stayed without making demands. That safety gave me room to come forward in my own time.
2. Steadfast Grace. When I recoiled in shame or retreated into silence, she didn’t punish or withdraw. She met me with grace instead of fear.
3. Growth Without Guilt. She pursued her own development without apologizing for it, showing me that love could stretch, not shrink.
4. Unshakable Belief. Even when I couldn’t see myself clearly, she held a vision of the man I could become.
5. Relational Courage. She stayed. Not to rescue me, but to stand beside me as I rescued myself.
What I Brought That Made It Possible
1. The Willingness to Stay. Even when everything in me screamed to run, I stayed. That choice became the foundation of trust.
2. The Courage to Name the Truth. I said it out loud. Slowly. First to myself, then to her. That honesty disrupted decades of performance.
3. The Choice to Grow Together. I didn’t resent her becoming more. I let it stretch me. I followed.
4. The Humility to Learn Her Language. I stopped trying to be right and started trying to be real. I listened. I changed.
5. The Desire to Be Fully Known. I wanted more than admiration. I wanted to be seen—and I let her see me.
It Walks With Us
We often think of love as the destination we find once we’re fixed. What I’ve learned—what Pris taught me—is that the right kind of love is part of the healing itself. Not because it rescues us, but because it walks with us. It sees what’s broken and stays. It holds the mirror, gently, until we dare to look.
Healing didn’t begin in solitude. It began in the space between us. In her gaze. In her patience. In the way she didn’t try to fix me—only loved me where I stood.
And in that sacred space, I finally found the permission to begin loving myself.
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