I told the truth yesterday to a former client who is six weeks away from her wedding and called me for some support around her fears and concerns.
I asked her how many great marriages she sees around her.
I told her that being married may be the most challenging thing that most people do in their lifetimes. You’re signing up to partner with someone on EVERYTHING in life, where each of you are far from expert in most things you will deal with.
I told her that love is wonderful, it helps, but it is not enough on it’s own to ensure a happy marriage.
I told her that trying to make everyone happy will jeopardize her happiness on her wedding day.
I asked her to share with me what she sees in the two of them that convinces her that they have a chance to make this work.
I told her she may wind up letting some people down and not be perfect and instead need to be human, for her own happiness.
I asked her why she was doing this at all.
These are the things we are often afraid of saying, of hearing, of dealing with. We cross our fingers, we let love leave us in an ambiguous state, we deny reality sometimes, we get caught up in belief. Love is wonderful, I encourage its growth all the time, but do we really need to be blinded by it and not look more closely? The only harm we are protecting ourselves from is that we may see we’ve built a house of cards and that can just be a starting point if you’re willing to look at it, a place to build from.
By the end of the call, with no prompting from me, she was reborn in her commitment, felt clear and more sure that she was with the right man, more trusting of herself than she was when she called me in a near panic and in breakdown. She felt the impact of her fears, shed some tears, saw that she could handle all of this and knew why the man she chose is the man that can take this on with her (and she thinks he’s cute as heck, too). Before we even finished the call, she texted her fiance to apologize to him, explain her recent behavior and let him know how ready she was. Of course he needed no explanation.
She was ready to lead her way into marriage. I had no idea how this conversation would go and no attachment either, but this is the way it went.
It’s not the truth that hurts us so much, it’s the not dealing with it. We are much more courageous and able than we give ourselves credit for. We create longstanding patterns where we let our fears run away with us. When we see more clearly, we give love an even greater chance to find it’s way deeper into our relationships and into ourselves.
Gotta love that Russian ethos… Slapped, huh?
Empower and Emerge 