A Relationship Story That is Meant to Fill You with Hope. This one is Personal.

I met Steve Torma in person for the first time on November 11, 2000.  That date makes it easy to track what anniversary we are celebrating.  We have been partnering together for 25 years!  I never would have guessed it, given our troubled beginnings.  This is my version of our story.  Quite frankly, he is likely not to remember many of the details as he tends to live in the world of big picture thinking, rather than focusing on relational things like I do.  I’m grateful now that he doesn’t remember many of the details, because some of them aren’t pretty.

While I am truly celebrating 25 years of building a relationship that is pretty much always fun, filled with laughter and depth, I’m sharing this story here because I intend to offer you hope if you are struggling to find that ‘perfect partner’.

I first met Steve online.  I saw his picture and somehow knew that he was the one for me.  He was exactly my perfect look.  Little did I know how much shared reality we would have, given how counter culture I was in those days.  He has supported me in being even more counter culture over the years which these days is comforting.   He introduced me to living on the land, off the grid when he invited me to visit Earthaven Ecovillage with him.  Had that day not happened, we likely wouldn’t have made it through our communication struggles.

When Steve and I first met, I was clearly not “it” for him.  He was clearly “it” for me.  That was our first disagreement.  In hindsight, that discrepancy in our assumptions about each other was the foundation of our ‘rocky’ start.  That, and that we struggled to communicate about what it meant honestly and openly and productively about it.  I’ll take most of the hit for that, yet he (and his beliefs at the time) contributed to our distress a good deal as well.

We weren’t making clear agreements about much, so our assumptions about how we were to navigate our relationship was filled with ambiguity and distress.  He was doing things I didn’t like and he didn’t want to share openly with me about how he felt, because my strategy for deep communication was to tell him, in no uncertain terms, how he was going about this all wrong.

It led to hiding, and resignation, confusion and many, many hours of unproductive conversations to resolve our painful feelings.

This kind of relating went on for two years or so, until finally we decided to break up,  Augh!  The timing of our separation was uncanny because at that exactly time, my mom needed my help with her life.  I made the choice, even though I was reluctant, to step in and support her.  I saw it as an opportunity to heal the rift and hurt feelings between us, for me to find boundaries and stick to them.  I felt good about righting that relationship, although it wasn’t until I embraced the work of Nonviolent Communication when this relationship became dear to me, and quite frankly relatively easy to navigate.

All the while, wondering how it was possible that Steve and I couldn’t figure out our relationship given the tools we did have, and how attracted we were to one another.  I asked myself over and over, how did I contribute to that outcome, and listened to all the answers.  I explored this question this even though I was fairly certain that I would never speak to Steve again, much to my chagrin.  Like I said, he was my guy.

Five months after we broke up, Steve called.  He was heading to DC for a conference, did I want to meet up with him, no other promises.  Can you imagine how fast I said yes?!  No questions, just yes.

I was committed to being friends first.  No demands.  I was committed to being a person with whom Steve would be happy to share his truth with, no matter how difficult it was for me to hear.  We participated in quite a few relationship workshops together and read quite a few books.  We invited coaches of various schools of thought to support us.  Many of these helpful, yet not quite enough to make our relationship easy.  It still seemed like we had lots of work to do together, and lots of conversations, many of which felt like work.  Yet we were both committed to doing it and staying together until it was clear again, that we would be better off apart.

It was when we fully embraced Nonviolent Communication (NVC) that we embarked on the full shift to respect, curiosity, care and honesty.  It was quite a process, yet our conversations became productive.  I heard things from Steve that I longed to for years. 

The healing deepened when we received coaching from Doug Dolstad at our first IIT NVC Workshop/Conference.  Hours of soft coaching and a new way of leaning into our struggles through a needs-based lens.  Many of the old traumas simply dissolved as I was consistently focused on what was alive right now.  I was so aware of how grateful I was to Steve for staying in this conversation with me, that I preferred to focus on that.  We learned how to bring the past into the present for healing. 

I kept a clipboard with all the old hurts, so I was confident that we would get to them.  Many dropped off the list as we got through so many.  I was committed to only using the structures:  observations, feelings, needs and requests, empathy and honesty.  It took a bit of time for me to get comfortable with only being able to say what was on my mind in this format.  Until it became easy.  The benefits were spectacular.  The shifts in our connection were spectacular.

Here's the inspiration.  Maybe Steve and I struggled, then worked hard, or maybe a better word would be diligently, intentionally, for 10 years?  Even during those 10 years, building trust and care and companionship.  Finding ways to understand and celebrate each other.  Ten years seems like a long time to me.  Yet the subsequent 15 years have been nothing but delight, companionship, laughter, joy, shared reality, true partnership.  15 years of depending on each other to show up for each other.  We built a shared history as well.  Twenty-five years of sharing the same experiences together.  Of being each other’s soft place to land.

If you ask me, I will share with you some or all of the wild and seemingly crazy things we tried to find our deep and easy connection.  If you ask me, I will help you put together your list of needs that you want to have met in a partner relationship.  It is an essential first step.  All relationships are strategies to meet needs.  Commit to those needs so you will broadcast out to the world who you are and what you are wanting to create.  Commit to those needs so someone who is interested in that as well will be able to find you.  Commit to those needs so you will recognize the right person when they show up in your field.