Somewhere in Between

There are days when I look at my husband and think, Lord, I love this man… but I don’t like him very much right now.

For years I thought admitting that made me a bad wife. Shouldn’t love always feel warm? Shouldn’t marriage always feel safe? Shouldn’t the person you chose make you happy more often than they make you want to scream into a pillow?

Life has taught me otherwise.

Somewhere along the way, I confused liking someone with loving them. Liking is easy. I like people who agree with me. I like people who make me laugh. I like people who understand me without explanation. I like people who don’t challenge my patience.

Love is something else entirely. Love sits across from another imperfect human being and realizes they are carrying a lifetime of experiences that shaped them long before they ever met you.

My husband and I don’t experience the world the same way. He reaches certainty much faster than I do. When I’m usually still asking questions, he’s convinced he’s already found the answer. I process by thinking but he processes by concluding. I.m more naturally exploring possibilities. While he naturally seeks conviction. For a long time I assumed one of us had to be wrong.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less interested in proving who’s right and more interested in understanding why we arrive at such different conclusions. Every experience I’ve had has shaped the woman I’ve become. Every heartbreak. Every disappointment. Every answered prayer. Every unanswered one. Every lesson I had to learn the hard way. Why would I assume my husband is any different?

That realization changed something in me. I stopped asking why he couldn’t think more like me. Instead, I began asking what his experiences taught him that mine never did. It didn’t make every disagreement disappear, and it certainly didn’t make me enjoy every conversation. There are still days when his certainty frustrates me. There are still days when my questions frustrate him. There are still moments when we completely miss each other. But understanding someone isn’t the same thing as agreeing with them.

Marriage has also forced me to confront something about myself. I spend a lot of time inside my own head. I process quietly. I think. I write. I sort things out internally before I ever say them out loud. I’ve always considered that one of my strengths, and maybe it is. But strengths have shadows too. What feels like thoughtful reflection to me may feel like distance to someone who simply wants to know where he stands with me.

I’ve also realized that certainty has a shadow. What feels like confidence to one person can feel like unwillingness to listen to the other. Somewhere between my need to process and his need for certainty, we’ve had to learn that we aren’t always speaking the same emotional language. Sometimes I hear control where he’s trying to offer protection. Sometimes he hears rejection where I simply need space to think. Neither one of us experiences that moment as pretending. We’re both responding to what feels true from where we’re standing.

The older I get, the more I realize that my perspective is exactly that—my perspective. It isn’t the whole story. My husband has lived a life I didn’t live. He’s survived things I didn’t survive. He carries fears I don’t naturally carry, just as I carry questions that don’t naturally occur to him. We don’t always understand each other, but I’ve stopped believing that misunderstanding automatically means someone doesn’t love the other person.

I don’t need to like every version of my husband to love the man he is. Love isn’t pretending his flaws don’t exist. Love isn’t agreeing with everything he believes. Love isn’t sacrificing my own voice just to keep the peace. Real love allows me to say, “I disagree.” It allows me to say, “That hurt me.” It allows me to need space without believing the relationship is suddenly in danger.

There are still days when I look at him and think, Lord… I love this man, but I don’t like him very much today. Oddly enough, those two things can exist at the same time.

I’ve stopped believing that every difficult day is evidence that something is broken. Sometimes it’s simply evidence that two imperfect people are trying to build one life while carrying two very different histories. The man frustrating me in this moment is still the same man I’ve watched pray for me, encourage me, make me laugh, dream with me, cry with me, and choose me again. And if I’m asking him to love all of me—including the parts that are still growing—then I have to be willing to extend that same grace to him.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been learning all along. Love isn’t proven by how we feel on our best days. It’s revealed by what we choose to do on the days when liking each other takes a little more work.

Maybe loving someone isn’t the hard part.

Maybe the real work is never believing we’ve finished getting to know them.