What does a partnership look like to you? I can’t speak for everyone but I can speak for myself. The past few months have been particularly trying – and the tough part is, not in the normal way. It’s not that we don’t like each other, or aren’t attracted to one another, it’s that all these wild external factors have just bombarded us so hard and so often that it’s been hard to find an even keel within our own selves, let alone our relationship. 

We’ll call it unbalance. Regardless of this unbalance I’ve been blown away by the incredible force in which my husband has supported me, held my hand, held me up, talked me down and given me a hug exactly when I didn’t know I needed it the most. [ I’d like to think I was able to do the same for him but since this isn’t his blog, we’ll never know 🙂 ] 

When things are hard, and I mean really hard and your space is being knocked out from under you and you’re living in boxes and you really have no clue what the future holds, you can’t help but to feel completely out of sorts. Completely not your usual self. I don’t know about you but when I feel like this, every other little thing gets completely exaggerated and magnified. Things that shouldn’t matter, all of a sudden matter. You get snippy, you get short, you get frustrated really really easily. 

I can’t generalize this because I know every person is different in the face of stress, but for myself, having a partner in times like these, is probably one of the biggest saving graces I’ve ever had. To be able to fall asleep next to one another and help each of you forget or let go of what that day forced you to hang onto is one of the things I am most thankful for. We always joke that somehow it works out that whichever one of us is doing worse that day, the other one happens to have had a good enough day to be the supportive and strong one. 

One of my favourite memories was on a night we were driving home from visiting our best friends in Vermont. It happened to start snowing as soon as we got in the car. A big, bad, huge snow flake snow storm. The kind you can’t really see out the windows in, the kind that scares you because you know you have to drive but you aren’t sure really sure how you’re going to navigate through it. Me being the Canadian ( and not driving somehow ), I had to support ( and fake it, let’s be honest) that this was just a ‘light dusting’, that this tiny snowstorm was totally normal. It was one of the scariest drives we’ve ever had but it wasn’t until it let up when we crossed the border that I finally turned to him and told him how freaked out I had been. He started laughing and said that he knew it wasn’t just a light snow fall, that he was totally stressed out but that my confidence somehow assured him that we’d be just fine. 

Partnership is more than just two people living and loving. It’s supporting and talking and being open. It’s laughing and holding hands and fighting through the moments that aren’t great. It’s having conversations that are scary. It’s talking about things with no answers. It’s about loving and knowing one another so well that you can see past the bitchiness, the tears, the anger, the snippiness, and the silence so that you can truly support one another when you really need it the most. It’s about being there, both physically and emotionally so that the other person doesn’t have to worry that they’re driving through the storm alone.