Trust

Trust, I’ve learned, isn’t something I demand or perform. It’s something that grows when I feel safe enough to stay open.

When I told my husband, “You don’t need to ask for permission, I trust you,” I could literally see the relief spread across his body. His response was full of gratitude. He smiled, moved closer, and showed me adoration and affection in a way that felt completely new.

The pressure to appease me that I had put on him over the years was not intentional, nor was it a lack of kindness or love on my part. It was my effort to feel safe, shaped by a very disorganized attachment style and a nervous system that learned hypervigilance was more important than connection.

When we are in chronic states of survival, our social engagement system, the part of our brain wired for connection, goes offline. Even though we may still desire closeness, we begin to prioritize protection and disconnection over openness and trust.

The work of healing my nervous system and coming to my relationships with new skills around connection created a profound shift in my marriage. It has been a messy and delicate dance of slowing down and allowing my inner world to reorganize around new cues of safety. This looked like metabolizing, in my body, the experiences that gave rise to stuck survival patterns, while resourcing into a felt sense of stability, okayness, and goodness. Prioritizing anchors of connection slowly became more accessible. I gave myself context and room to practice connection while still learning how to authentically embody it.

What this has slowly taught me is that my sense of safety in the world, and in my relationships, is actually my honor to nurture and tend to. Listening to my inner world, meeting my needs, owning my agency, and resourcing myself, especially when fear arises, has become fundamental to my capacity to stay open and lean into trust, even when I feel triggered.

From this place, one of the most rewarding experiences has been my ability to hold space without managing. This trust in myself and my husband, the ability to let things be and rest in the bigger picture rather than react to a moment, has shaped a culture in our home that feels more beautiful than I once imagined.

This is what it means, for me, to love without bracing, and to allow intimacy to emerge in its own time.