Things I Accidentally Taught Myself This Week #10

Turns out intimacy is the wisest teacher.

Love has a way of casting the clearest light. In both conflict and laughter, I meet myself again and again. Relationship keeps reshaping me: part workshop and part comedy show.

Here’s what I learned about myself through my relationship this week — accidentally, of course.

1. Romance is projection.
What I see in my partner is the part of me I forget.
Being in love is learning how to love myself through another.

2. Love is less a fairy tale than a practice.
It grows by being lived, not imagined.
The real spell is learning how to be with what is.

3. The real “we” begins inside.
Only then can it bloom between two.
When we each tend to our inner gardens, the “we” can flourish.

4. Attraction has a sense of humor.
It pairs opposites like socks from different drawers.
Maybe that’s the balance the cosmos keeps laughing about.

5. Conflict is a mirror.
The fight is rarely about the moment at hand.
I suspect I’m really arguing with the part of me I don’t want to see.

6. Marriage is an alchemy.
Two lives keep dissolving and reforming into one.
The vow reshapes us into something new.

7. Love is a trust fall.
It shows up in the small, ordinary ways we keep steady.
It’s trusting the net will hold when I let go.

8. Forgiveness is a bridge.
It spans the distance between hurt and repair.
Maybe love lasts because we keep crossing it.

9. Staying playful is survival.
It softens the edges when nothing else can.
The secret is laughing while we burn the toast.

10. Intimacy is ordinary magic.
It hums in groceries, car rides, and shared silence.
The sacred has always lived in the unremarkable.

After all these years, I see more clearly: a relationship is an unfolding, a becoming alongside someone else. Intimacy, it seems, has been the wisest teacher all along.

See you next Sunday for another round of accidental insight.
I’ll be over here crossing the bridge, as often as it takes.

Kindest,

Shannon

What did you accidentally learn about yourself this week? I’d love to know. Reply or leave a comment. I read each one.