The truth is, long-term relationship communication is incredibly hard. After years together, your partner can have a mountain of feelings they want to share with you, but they keep quiet because they do not want to start a fight, look weak, or sound ungrateful.
I am going to say it as your partner.
- The one sitting across from you at dinner who sometimes goes quiet for no reason you can understand.
- The one who forgot to say you looked beautiful this morning even though they noticed.
- The one who loves you in ways that do not always make it out of their chest and into the room where you can actually feel it.
They asked me to help. So here we are.
I notice you more than I let on.
I notice when you are tired before you say it. The way your shoulders drop just slightly. The way you laugh a little too quickly when someone asks if you are okay. I notice the face you make when you are trying not to cry in public and I want so badly to reach over and hold your hand but sometimes I freeze because I do not want to embarrass you. I should reach over anyway. I know that. I am working on it.
I also notice the good things. The way you are with people you love. How generous you are when you think nobody is watching. How hard you try, every single day, even on the days trying feels impossible. I see it. I just do not say it nearly enough and I am genuinely sorry for that.
I am more scared than I look.
I know I come across as steady. Unbothered sometimes. And I work hard to be your rock because I think that is what love is supposed to look like from where I am standing. But the truth is I am scared too. I am scared of letting you down. Scared that one day you will realise you deserve someone who is better at this than I am. Scared of how much I need you because needing someone this much makes a person feel very exposed and I was not raised to be comfortable with that feeling.
My silence on the hard nights is not me being cold. It is me being terrified and not knowing what to do with that. I wish I could explain it better in the moment. I am trying to learn how.
I want to be your safe place and I do not always know how.
There are moments I watch you go through something painful and I feel completely useless. You are hurting and I am standing right there and I cannot fix it and that destroys me in a way I do not have words for. So I make tea. I sit close. I put my hand on your back and hope that somehow you feel what I cannot say. I hope it is enough. I worry constantly that it is not.
What I want you to know is that when I go quiet and just sit with you, that is not me checking out. That is me saying I am here and I am not going anywhere in the only language I currently know how to speak. I am learning new ones. For you. Because you deserve someone who can meet you where you are.
I think about our future more than you know.
Not in an anxious way. In a warm, private, this is mine kind of way. I think about the holidays we have not had yet. The version of us that is ten years from now, still annoying each other, still choosing each other, still laughing at the same stupid things we always laugh at. I think about growing old next to you and I feel something I genuinely do not have a name for. Gratitude maybe. Relief. Something bigger than both of those things combined.
I do not say it because saying it out loud makes me feel vulnerable in a way that is hard to explain. But I think it. More than you know. More than I will probably ever fully admit.
I brag about you in rooms you will never enter.
At work. With my friends. With my family. I tell them things about you that I sometimes forget to tell you directly. How capable you are. How funny you are when you are fully relaxed. How watching you care for the people you love is one of my favourite things about being alive.
I say these things easily to other people and then come home and hand you a cup of coffee and say nothing and I know that is backwards. I am working on turning the volume up where it actually counts.
And this is the most important thing.
Choosing you was not something that happened to me. It was not convenience or timing or circumstance. It was one of the most deliberate things I have ever done. On the days you doubt it, on the days you lie awake wondering if you are really loved the way you deserve to be loved, I need you to come back to this.
You are not a habit. You are not background noise. You are the person I would choose again, on the good days and the hard ones, in this life and any other one I get.
I just needed someone to help me finally say it out loud.
If this said something your partner has been trying to say to you, send it to them. Not with a long explanation. Just send it. They will know.
Patricia Monroe
I’m Patricia – a writer, a wife, and the kind of person who feels just about everything at full volume. I live in Manhattan, but I don’t write about the fairytale version of romance. I write about the real stuff: the miscommunications, the long-term commitment, and the tiny, everyday decisions it takes to keep a relationship thriving. I’m just a fellow wildheart trying to put honest words to how love actually feels from the inside.