It’s my husband’s birthday today. Some people like to make a big deal out of their birthdays; my husband is about as far away from that as one can get. For weeks, I asked him what he wanted to do for dinner tonight, whether he wanted to go out or order in, or if he wanted me to cook. Finally, his parents offered to take us out to dinner to celebrate his birthday, and it took him days to agree but still asked our four year old where she wanted to go for dinner instead of deciding on a restaurant himself. Of course, man plans and G-d laughs; our kid is under the weather and we canceled dinner plans for tonight. When I again offered to pick up takeout from anywhere he wanted or cook anything he wanted, he insisted on just eating leftovers!

We have had a nice evening of leftovers and some delicious cake and watching some important sports games, and he’s happy, so that’s all that matters to me! I don’t understand his reticence about birthdays. However, if over the course of our nine years together I have learned anything from him, it is this: he has taught me that one can respect another person’s wants, needs, and preferences, even if we don’t really understand them.

When my husband met me, I was more or less a fucking mess. I was still unaware of the manipulative, toxic nature of my mother, or at least, not yet aware that I could remove myself from it and all the hostility of my family life as I knew it. My mental stability was fragile at best. I was also still in the process of reconciling with a diagnosis of PTSD, and reconfiguring the medications I was taking for that, as well as trying to get off of meds I shouldn’t have been on for a misdiagnosis you can read about here. I am obviously exceptionally fortunate that he saw in me what it took me years to see in myself. I believe confidently that he loves me for who I am now, but in our early years, I feel like he loved me more in spite of myself than anything else.

I’ve said before that people often say therapy should be something a person gets into for themselves, which is all well and good, but also bullshit. I didn’t get into therapy for myself; I’ve stayed in it for myself, but I got into it for my husband. I reached a point where I knew that if I didn’t get help, my traumatized mind and trauma-informed response to everything would drive him away. I knew that would happen, because it had happened before, with nearly all the exes I’d had leading up to him.

Trauma survivors often get into unfortunate patterns with their relationships, because while abuse is obviously bad, it’s also familiar, which ironically can make it less scary than seeking actual safe harbor which is quite an unknown. I had struggled through the same relationship with several different partners before meeting my now husband. I knew he was different when I told him about the terrible relationship I’d had in college (which at the time was the only abusive experience I thought I’d had, but it turns out that was a small fry compared to the Big Mac of everything else I’ve dealt with). After fretting about how to explain it to him, knowing I would need to do so because a flashback or nightmare would inevitably occur around him, I had decided to essentially write a short essay about it. I was afraid to try explaining it out loud because previous exes had not reacted well to that. At the end of that essay I wrote a bit of advisement on how best to respond to a person who’s gone through such trauma; essentially, you offer the survivor a hug, tell them you’re sorry that happened to them, and ask how you can help.

We sat on his couch and he read what I wrote. Then he put his arms around me, told me he was sorry that happened to me, and asked how he could help.

He didn’t laugh, or sneer. He didn’t dismiss or ignore or reject. He did exactly what I wrote down should be done, with no hesitation or added commentary. He respected what I needed and provided that for me, even if he couldn’t necessarily understand (he’s fortunate enough to generally have lived a trauma-free life). He was the first person to ever respond like this upon learning that part of my story. That was the moment I fell in love with him. It was also the moment I began to see myself as worthy of love. True love. Love without strings.

I vividly remember at one point in the first year or so of our relationship, asking if he knew at what moment it was that he had decided he loved me. Readily, almost off the cuff, he told me that it was somewhere around our third date. Our third date! That had sounded outrageously early to me. He didn’t ask me that question in return, that I can recall; from time to time over the last nine years, I’ve thought about that memory and still wondered how I would answer it. Truly, it was only today that I figured out my answer, as described in the previous paragraph. Three dates in, and he had decided I was worth it (boy am I grateful he seems to still feel that way, because I am a very aggravating person to be with sometimes!). I didn’t have a response back then, but it isn’t because he wasn’t worth it; he always was. I didn’t have the ability to see that he was worth it yet, because I didn’t know that I was worth it yet either.

True love is not always romantic and full of grandeur. Sometimes it’s leftovers on your birthday with a sick kid coughing up phlegm. But it is the kind of thing that creates a life you want to keep living. It’s the demonstration of genuine respect and validation and compassion, even in the absence of understanding. He doesn’t need to understand what I have gone through in order to willingly make space for me, and he does so unfailingly.

I don’t think it’s healthy to say that I don’t know how I’d live without him; what I do say, though, is that for years now, he has made me want to live for myself. That is true love. That’s a gift I have no clue how to repay, though I’ve spent years with him trying, and I will keep trying, for as long as he’ll have me.