Learning to Let Certain Things Die in Marriage… and Live Again
- The Broken & Beautiful
- Mar 30
- 6 min read
Updated: Apr 19
The Long Work of Love — Essay #4
Reflections on marriage, survival, and the slow courage of becoming real together.
There is a moment in long partnership when you realize that not everything can come with you into the next season. Some things have to be released — not because they were wrong, but because they no longer fit who you are.
When Marriage Stops Holding Who You’re Becoming
There was a day I remember clearly. I was alone in my car, driving home, my mind spinning faster than I could keep up with. Thought after thought, looping, trying to solve something I couldn’t quite name. I was trying to figure "it" out.
"It," was how to fix what I was feeling. How to make sense of the ache. How to become a version of myself that could hold everything together again without the terror and pain of losing control of my world and failing those I love. But underneath all of that effort, something else was happening.
Something I had kept buried for a very long time was beginning to rise. It felt like the part of me that had gone into hiding at seventeen — the part who learned that desire was dangerous, that feeling too much could cost me something I couldn’t afford to lose — could no longer stay submerged.
She (my 17 year old self being held under water) needed air. But, I didn’t know what would happen if I let her up and breathe again.
My greatest fear wasn’t just being seen. It was being seen and no longer being loved. Or maybe even more frightening — That if I allowed that part of me to exist again, I would no longer be able to be the person I had spent so many years trying to be.
The good wife.
The devoted partner.
The safe, steady presence.
It began to feel like those roles and my unbraced self could not coexist. And something in me knew — without fully understanding how — that the roles would have to give way.
But that realization didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like failure. A deep, internal failure. As if I had somehow done life wrong. It was like I'd had one job and I had tripped and face planted as I ran toward what I somehow thought would be a mathematical home run. If I put this into my life, I'll get success out.
I had truly built something carefully and faithfully, only to arrive at a place where it just didn't work anymore.
I remember praying in that space.
Not a sweet, gentle one. Instead it was the gutteral wailing of a desperate woman, pleading with God to break the barrier of time and to let me go back and have a do-over.
I promised that I would make better decisions this time; that I would fix whatever I had broken. And what came back to me was not what I anticipated. It wasn't shame or correction.
It was something gentle, quiet — almost... still.
I heard, "I never asked that of you. What if you trusted me with the mess?"
Something shifted.
It wasn't exactly clarity in that moment, but it was something much kinder than the feeling of a mental jigsaw coming together. It was relief. A tender reminder from the voice of the One I remembered loved me. It was a full cup of cold water for a desperately thirsty soul. It was an invitation.
Not to fix or perform. Not to return to who I had been, but to take a step forward.
A step toward myself.
I drove the rest of the way home in mental silence. Still unsure. Still afraid, but aware for the first time in a long time, that I could choose something different.
Letting Go Is Not the Same as Losing Everything
That was one of the first moments I understood what it means to let something fall away.
At the time, my psyche experienced it as death. There was real grief in it... and disorientation.
It was a sense that something I had relied on for a very long time was dissolving beneath me. But looking back now, I can see it so much more clearly. Even though it felt like death, it was actually a giant step toward toward living again.
I was standing at the edge of water I had avoided for years, finally reaching out to touch the surface. The tension breaking. The stillness giving way.
And underneath — I had no idea what would be revealed. That was the terrifying part.
Not knowing if what lived beneath the surface would hold my face with the tender touch of a loving mama… or undo me with it's depths of shame.
There in front of me was myself, having needs, having a story. The part of me that equated goodness with silence was starting to speak again. The belief that love meant maintaining what worked at all costs, was falling away.
I wasn't being destroyed. I was being reclaimed and restored.
There is a kind of grief that comes with becoming more fully yourself. Because as you grow, you begin to feel what you have lived without. And once you feel it, you cannot unfeel it. Once you see your face, you cannot unsee it easily.
For a long time, I thought grief was something that happened to us. Something we reacted to. Something we had to process and eventually move through. But I have come to see something different. Grief is also something that shapes us without asking our permission.
It reorganizes our inner world.
It softens what was rigid.
It exposes what matters.
And often, it does this without us even realizing it.
Looking back, I can see how grief had been working on me for years. Through loss and through exhaustion; through the long stretch of life that asked more than I could give. It was preparing me to want something more honest. More alive. More real.
The Quiet Work of Becoming Yourself Again
And as that desire surfaced, I found myself in a place I did not expect. I was less certain about the external structures of my life.
Less confident that I was fully supported or understood. Less sure that I was safe in the ways I had once defined safety. And yet — I was more at ease inside myself than I had ever been.
That tension surprised me.
I would have assumed that less certainty, less control of myself, would mean more anxiety.
But instead, in the releasing, I felt steadier and less driven. It was as if something inside me had shifted its center.
Safety was no longer coming from everything being aligned around me or conflict-free within me. It was coming from something more primal, deeper in the waters, but simultaneously, with more air somehow. More grounded.
More… mine.
This is the part of growth that often goes unnamed. We talk about healing. We talk about communication. We talk about becoming more connected. But we don’t often talk about what it costs.
We don’t talk about the versions of love that must be surrendered.
The expectations that have to finally give way to the free fall of healing. The "somewhat-real-but-not-fully-me" identities that can no longer be maintained.
And that...right there... is where the healing deepens.
Because what emerges on the other side is not a better version of what was. It is something entirely different. Something that cannot be forced. Something that cannot be performed.
Only something that can be welcomed home; allowed to return.
Invitation
Letting something fall away does not immediately change anything externally. There is a space in between — a liminal space that holds incredible possibility - where how we are perceived could go in any direction. A space where the old structure no longer holds, but the new one has not yet fully formed.
That space is scary, even disorienting. I'm not going to lie. But it is also where something essential takes shape. Not through effort, but through tiny little sprigs of hope that rebelliously push through the dirt of the mess you find yourself in.
Small choices are an outcome of this space. Very tiny movements that begin to loosen the parched ground. We find a new space within us to remain present in what is unfolding rather than rushing to resolve it. And over time, those small shifts begin to change how two people meet each other.
Not as roles they are playing.
Not as responsibilities they have or even because of commitments before God.
But as real, evolving selves.
Next time, we'll get in that dirt of the messes we create in our relationships and talk about some practical ways to open up a line of connection that is less staticky, less fraught with fear, less overwhelming.
Continue the story...
Start from the beginning...
Dear Reader,
If you've made it this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart. These tender little thoughts of mine are vulnerable and I offer them as a gift to you. I pray that they are. My deepest hope is that something, even if it's a single word or phrase, meets you right where you are and helps you take a deeper breath, and your shoulders feel something lifted.
Love,
Patria
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