The Honest Aspirations - These are the bigger aspirations I carry into my relationships. Of course, there are many reasons we seek intimacy—companionship, emotional closeness, sex, partnership. We’re tribal by nature. Evolution didn’t wire us for solitude. It wired us to connect, mate, nurture, build. (Sometimes, even to claim a joint tax return.)
But behind those practical and primal functions, something deeper calls.
Why do we keep showing up, even when it’s hard?
The Gamble of Consciousness - I believe nature made a dangerous bet by giving us minds that can override instinct. With that bet came a price: we arrive at adulthood wounded—psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. Most of us were not raised with perfect safety, attunement, or guidance. So we bring everything unresolved into our romantic lives.
We bring anxiety, triggers, and patterns that make love difficult. Like parenting, relationships are brutal—no manual, no cheat codes. But they are incredibly revealing. They become mirrors of our childhood. We relive our shame, our fear of abandonment, our confusion about love.
And if we’re brave, we don’t run. We stay. We learn. We feel. And in that process, we begin to change.
The wound resurfaces not to haunt you—but to offer healing.
The Unexpected Gift - I never expected that relationships would become my training ground for self-awareness. I thought love would fix everything. Instead, it broke me open.
The real growth didn’t begin when I understood my childhood wounds. That was just the doorway. The deeper work started when I faced anxiety head-on—the ghost in the machine. The background hum that shaped my moods, my reactions, my needs, my story.
It was never just about her. It was never just about us. It was about my nervous system crying out for peace.
It’s not about the surface fights. It’s about the scared child in your body trying to breathe.
What Anxiety Really Feels Like - I didn’t have panic attacks. I kept it together. I ran companies. I showed up. But in the quiet, in the intimate spaces—when I looked to my partner for emotional safety and didn’t feel it—I would quietly unravel. That unraveling didn’t start with her. It started in the crib. It started in moments I can’t even consciously recall, but my body remembers them perfectly.
And now? I try to stay with it. I breathe. I feel the grief behind my eyes and in my gut. I see the outline of old sorrow in the mirror when I look at my kids and wonder, what can I give them that I never got?
I see it in my marriage—in how I’ve misunderstood what my partner needs. Maybe what she’s needed all along is the same thing I’ve needed: To be loved without earning it. To be safe enough to fall apart. To be seen, not fixed.
What if love is just this: I see you. And I stay.
Why I Wrote This Book - Writing this book has been a long, brutal, beautiful labor. It’s taken more than a decade of reflection, heartbreak, evolution, humility. It’s given me words I wish I had when I was 20. It’s taught me how to listen, how to pause, how to stay grounded when the wave of anxiety tries to pull me under.
This book is not about being perfect. It’s not a collection of tips and tricks. It’s a survival manual for anyone who’s ever wondered: why does love feel so hard?
Because love is hard when you’re full of unspoken fear. Because relationships crumble under the weight of anxiety no one knows how to name.
So here’s the structure: — Learn your anxiety. — Learn how to regulate it. Everything else—communication tools, love languages, couples therapy—is a house of cards if that foundation is missing.
You can’t love well in fight-or-flight.
The Mission - So stay with the work. Stay on the path. Build yourself up—not as a way to become “better,” but to become safe. Learn how to hold space for yourself and for your partner, even when neither of you knows what you’re doing.
That, to me, is the purpose of a relationship: To grow. To heal.
To create a container where love becomes stronger than our past.
Love isn’t the reward. Love is the path.