YOU. ARE. ALLOWED.
YOU’RE ALLOWED AND EVEN ENCOURAGED.
You’re allowed to need time (even lots and lots of time) alone in order to be balanced and happy. Even when you love someone.
You’re allowed to want things they don’t yet know how to give you. Even when you love them.
You’re allowed to be weary, to feel at the end of your rope, to have thoughts of giving up. Even when you love someone and WANT to want to be with them.
You’re allowed to leave a conversation unfinished… even a difficult one that shreds both your innards and leaves you wondering which way is up. Even when you can’t breathe, NOT having finished it. You’re allowed to leave it in the not-knowing when you just don’t know. Even when you love someone.
You are allowed to remember loves of the past and to wonder which small pockets inside you would have expanded into whole wings full of sunlit rooms, had that relationship continued. Even when you love someone else now.
You are allowed to see someone on the street and fall in love in an instant and want their hands on your body and their mouth at your ear and to feel a jolt inside you and to feel more alive for the rest of the day. Even when you love someone and it seems disloyal even though you didn’t act on those feelings.
You are allowed to have your own language of love that speaks to your soul… even when you love someone. Even if they don’t speak that language at all, just yet.
You are allowed to be irrational, emotional, hysterical even. You carry the world’s pain, outrage, fear, and loss. Even when you love someone. And even when you’re afraid they can’t handle all your intensity.
You are allowed to imagine your own death, or someone else’s death, as an escape fantasy from all the complexity of life and relationship. Even when you love someone.
You are allowed to feel a streak of sadness or longing or questioning shoot through even the happiest of your days. Even when you love someone. And even when they’re tempted to take those things personally.
You are allowed to feel the dark thoughts or resentful feelings in the air like black smoke, even when they won’t admit them out loud. Even when you love someone.
You’re allowed to feel sexy, to feel desire, to know your own sensuality… independent of anyone else’s desire for you or lack of desire for you, or your desire or lack of desire for anyone else. Even when you’re in love with someone. And whether or not you’re turned on by them right now.
You are allowed to blurt out all your doubts, fears, anger and desire to ears that really know how to listen. You’re allowed to say things to that safe person you have no intention of following through on. And to go home and carry on afterward. And to feel differently the next week. Even when you love someone.
You’re allowed to swell with oceans of rage and mountains of ambivalence and torrents of grief. Even when you love someone.
You are allowed to ask for what you need, even when it’s hard to give and you’ve asked before and now you’re angry and you doubt you’ll ever get it. Even when you love someone.
You are allowed to believe in and to fight for the “impossible” dream of a life of passion and head-over-heels love. Even when you’ve loved someone for years.
You’re allowed to calmly say “I will no longer tolerate THIS between us,” even though you have no leverage, no “I’m leaving,” no way of enforcing your limit. Even when you love someone and aren’t going to stop.
(With thanks to Jen Lee for the inspiration to write these permissions. Everything I’ve read of hers has given me more permission and room to breathe. She’s at www.jenlee.net.)
THIS IS HOW I DO MARRIAGE.
This is how I support women and men to find bright aliveness through years and years together.
This is how we turn a marriage back on.
If you – or you and your partner – have thought about private coaching with me to bring back the closeness and/or turn on the aliveness, contact me to set up a consultation (for one or two of you) now. We’ll walk through what clients get and what kind of results you can expect, on your own or together.
Love love,
PS: I know it’s scary and uncomfortable to start talking about the things that you had very good reasons to NOT talk about. But that’s why I’m here: to make it safe. Fun, even. Call me?