How do you balance sacrifice and self-expression in your relationship?
In this shorter episode, we hear from a previous guest: Jean Hodges. Jean was my theatre teacher in high school and an all-around-life mentor. Here she talks about 2 attitudes she faced in her married life of almost 6 decades. I wanted to share this with you because the juxtaposition in these two ideas rang so deeply with my own life:
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- First she says, “I had to become more myself before I could join with another”
- Then, later in her life she says, “I needed to grieve the life I was leading on my own in order to join with another”
Listen to episode #38 to hear more of my interview with Jean Hodges.
How to balance your self-expression with your relationship
First, we have the idea that we can lose ourselves in a relationship if we don’t first know ourselves. Secondly, the idea that there comes a time in every relationship where you sacrifice something of your own for the sake of deepening the relationship. Can you feel the tension and also the truth of these two ideas?
We want people to want us. We want independence. This is another juxtaposition that is true about marriage and life, right?
I find Jean Hodges to be very brave and ahead of her time. She was growing up decades ago when the idea of women “becoming more of themselves” just didn’t really exist. Women were supposed to foster other people’s identities, not their own.
As a culture, we don’t believe this anymore. But have we actually surrendered all the expectations that grew out of this attitude?
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Have you had to make sacrifices for your relationship?
Let’s look at the other end of this juxtaposition: I needed to grieve the life I was leading in order to join with another.
Jean’s husband, Jack, wanted to live that retired together phase of life. Meanwhile, Jean was deeply in love with a career she’d created. A career, it’s important to note that came later in her life because she spent the first 20 years of their marriage caring for children, making meals, and tending a home. There is a certain sacrifice to that lifestyle of caring.
Inside a marriage there is an individual, another individual, and then there is the relationship of the two together.
The relationship was asking something of Jean. Jean wanted that relationship and she wanted her career.
Sometimes your relationship is asking you to become more of yourself. And sometimes your relationship is asking you to sacrifice something in yourself.
The art piece titled Emerging Woman.
How about you?
How do you know when it’s time to become more? Or when it’s time to sacrifice more?
Text me at (970) 210-4480 and let me know how you see this juxtaposition in your relationship.
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