Shrink Fear Grow Love

When the fear-fog clears, when the projection that has kept him separate from you and sealed a barnacle over your heart finally shatters, you see your partner as if for the first time. Not only do you see her clearly, in all of her sweet and simple splendor, but the delusions of separateness fall away, and you can see how under the hooks of

hair or

teeth or

height or

education or

ambition or

boredom or

do we have enough to talk about or

he’s wrong for me or

she’s not attractive enough or

I’m always irritated or

mannerisms or

humor or

social fluidity or

so-called chemistry

lives the voice that says:

I have loved you all along.

In those moments of clear-seeing, like sunshine after rain, it’s as if there is no “me” or “you” but only us, or maybe it’s fully me and fully you that makes the us so good.

Without the fear-fog clouding vision, you can see what matters most: her heart of goodness, his mind of honesty, her willingness to keep trying, to keep showing up even when you’re stuck behind the dark wall of shame and projections, even when your past flies out like a thousand bats at night and lands in your bed, even when you’re a thousand miles away while standing side by side.

In real life, the projections don’t fall away in one magic movie moment. Rather, they shatter then seal over then shatter again, a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times, until the space between projections is longer and the place of real love is wider. In the clear moments, you know what you know which is that I do not want to walk away. I want to know what it is to love, fully, without restraint, without fear. I want to know what it is to receive your love every day, to stand at every doorway of our life holding each other while the winds of change blow around us. I want to grow old together, not just to count up the years but where each year of our marriage brings new richness and depth, where our grandchildren look at us and say, “I want their marriage.” Passion will still pulse between us when we’re ninety. We will be Love Warriors.