Loneliness In Singlehood and Marriage

EPISODE 93 | LONELINESS IN SINGLEHOOD AND MARRIAGE

We were created for deep attachment, safe attachment, to be seen not just as a means to an end, not just as like a business partner that provides some utility, but as a person to be loved. Right, so, the root of that loneliness, whether we are single, in a relationship, or even in a marriage, it really seems to go deeper than whether or not we can find somebody that can really see us.

[00:00:33] INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Becoming Me, your podcast companion and coach in your journey to a more integrated and authentic self. I am your host, Ann Yeong, and I'm here to help you grow in self-discovery and wholeness. If you long to live a more authentic and integrated life and would like to hear honest insights about the rewards and challenges of this journey, then take a deep breath, relax, and listen on to Becoming Me. 

[00:01:10] Good morning! And today is day 18 of my 30-Day IG Challenge. Can't believe I’m at day 18 already. Thank you for all of you who have been following me. And I know some of you, at least a couple of you have been watching the recordings or watching Live - practically every single one so far.

[00:01:30] You guys are amazing. Thank you so much. Okay, so, today I want to talk about the experience. Okay, so, before I go into what it is, although you probably would have seen in the topic. Again, I'm addressing two questions today. Okay, so, there are two questions that I received and they may seemingly, at first, not seem like they're very related, but I actually think they are. And so, I'm going to be speaking to both of these questions through today's Live. Let me just bring up the question.

[00:02:04] QUESTION 1: SINGLEHOOD AND CONTENTMENT
Okay, so the first one is this question about how do we navigate the tension of wanting to have a life partner and being contented to be single? Okay, so, the tension between that, but at the same time, there is worry about loneliness. And to be honest, being single is more practical, but I also want to have someone as that intellectual, emotional, doing life partner. And to be loved and to be stretched in love. I mean, isn't that true for all of us? We want that, right?

[00:02:33] But if someone tells me that I need to put myself out there, get to know more people, I'm not excited to do that. I just want to be at peace with my existence and one day maybe we'll meet. Okay, and I also totally understand what you're saying. Because that's exactly how I felt before too.

[00:02:51] Okay, but so, this is the question about how do we navigate the tension? So, if you're still single and it's not like you're unhappy per se, being single, there's some contentment there, but at the same time, there's longing for a life partner, right? That companion and, and also the reluctance of having to, maybe kind of like try and make it happen.

[00:03:09] I think this is the case especially because for the person who's asking this question, there is a contentment also to being single. It's different from someone who's single and not feeling content. Okay, so, there's that. That's the first question.

[00:03:23] QUESTION 2: MY EXPERIENCE WITH EARNED SECURITY
And then the second question that I received - actually, it was kind of like a request - was I would love to hear more about how you were able to experience earned security with your husband. And how that has helped with your healing. So, she wanted to hear more about how I experienced earned security with my husband, Henry, and how that has helped with my healing and my journey. 

[00:03:45] So, earned security here is I guess a little bit of a technical term when we talk about secure attachment, okay. So, insecure attachment versus secure attachment. Secure attachment is that kind of relationship where you feel safe, where it's not ridden by insecurity. So, insecure attachment styles may sometimes be, you know, the more codependent kind of anxious and the villain style or the very detached and distant style. There is another one as well, but that's not what this is specifically about.

[00:04:16] So, I won't go too much into that. But the question, this question actually came from Brya, my friend. Brya, who is also on Instagram and with whom I recorded a podcast episode recently about safety, even in a relationship with God. Okay, so, earned security meaning it didn't start off as a secure relationship, but we built it to being secure. So, she wanted to my experience in that and how that has helped with my healing.

[00:04:41] So, you may be wondering how are these two questions related, right? The first question was on the tension between being single, contented being single and wanting to have a life partner. And this one, the question or the request is shared about how I earned or experienced insecurity.

[00:05:00] Okay, so, the reason to me they are linked is because at the root, kind of like underlying both topics or both questions is first, the experience of loneliness, okay. And secondly, the longing for secure attachment. Okay, so, the universal experience of loneliness.

[00:05:27] SAFE COMPANIONSHIP
You know, I think we are all lonely hearts, whether single or married, actually, okay. There's an experience of loneliness and then the longing for secure attachment. And I want to specify, okay, although it wasn't explicitly stated in the first question there, was a longing for the companionship, emotional, intellectual partner, right? I think we can all assume that the desire is not just for companionship, but safe companionship. Safe companionship as an emotionally safe companionship, someone with whom I'm able to be my authentic self, someone with whom I can experience being loved for who I am, not who I should be, not someone who tries to change me the whole time.

[00:06:13] Not someone who tries to improve me the whole time or teach me the whole time. Someone who lets me be me, loves me for being me, even in my state of imperfection and being in progress, right. That's a very important, I think as an addition, to make, when we talk about that longing for companionship.

[00:06:32] Okay, because this little addendum that I just added is the reason why regardless of whether you're single or you're in a committed relationship or you're married and whether you're newly married or you've been married for 60 years - you can still be very lonely. Because whether or not there's someone living under the same roof with you or sleeping in the same bed with you or maybe in another room, if the nature of that relationship is not safe and you are not received fully as who you are, the loneliness - it's going to be very, it's going to be felt very deeply.

[00:07:16] Okay, so, I also want to state that there is another element here that's not really specified. But in the relationship, we're talking about here in marriage, right? Or singlehood and marriage. We're also talking about the nature of that longing for companionship is the companionship of equals, of peers, right?

[00:07:36] There was a word there that was said: partnership. And partnership specifies, I mean, kind of equality. there's a kind of reciprocity that is mutual. And you know, it might not be always equal. Sometimes, one may be the one that's giving, then one is receiving, but there's enough mutuality and reciprocity it's a relationship of peers.

[00:07:57] Now, that's different from another kind of, like you can have a very loving relationship with, let's say your child or your parent or someone else that, but if they're not really peers, it's different. And I think we all have a kind of longing for a relationship. Okay, and this is the case even in, let's say, in faith community or spiritual companions.

[00:08:23] We, sometimes, of course, we can benefit from having a mentor that is ahead of us, right? And we often may experience pouring ourselves out and feeling enriched that we are journeying with somebody else who is where we are the ones further along the journey. But those kind of relationships alone don't satisfy us.

[00:08:42] We all have a longing to be with peers, someone who is pretty much kind of like , doing life and making that journey pretty much around where we are at, who understands the struggles that we are at, and who shares the struggles that we are at - not too far from where we are. There's something particular about that desire that we have that isn't satisfied in other kinds of relationship. And that's also one of the reasons why sometimes we enter into dysfunctional patterns. Because if we don't have that relationship with peers, sometimes, we try to get that need met from someone who is not our peer.

[00:09:20] So, for an example, as someone who used to work in youth ministry, youth, and young adult ministry, right, where it's not a relationship of peers. Okay, I think that's actually very important to note that a youth minister or a youth worker is not a peer to the youth or the young adults that we're ministering to. I am the adult in the situation. The responsibilities that I have - it's not a relationship of equals.

[00:09:45] But if I do not have that kind of need, my need met, that there's someone also journeying with me alongside me as a peer, what often happens in this kind of relationship is that the youth worker or the youth minister can be very tempted to try and make the young people into that kind of peer and then you have all kinds of blurred boundaries, right, where the relationship shouldn't be of peers. Because they're not capable of being your peer but you are trying to get a need that is legitimate, met in the wrong place. And usually this happens without our conscious awareness, which is why self-awareness of our own loneliness and our own needs is actually so important to being able to be in healthy relationships, even professionally, right? Professionally speaking here.

[00:10:37] LONELINESS
So, there's an element of that equality that we seek, alright. Now, loneliness is a vacuum. I think a lot of us experience loneliness like a vacuum. I think the first Live that I did in this series when I shared why I started on my interior journey, the reason was deep loneliness.

[00:10:56] When I was in secondary school, even when I was out with friends, I always felt actually really alone and not seen. And then I thought there was something wrong with me because I was always with people, right? In my twenties, when I was living overseas in Canada, whenever I was at home alone, or even if I was out, running errands on my own, sometimes, just out of the blue, I would be hit with this deep loneliness. I just felt all alone in the world. So much that I would want to cry. Which is the reason why if I was at home and no one else was home, like my roommates weren't home I had to have the TV on or I had to have the music playing really loud so that I could hear it wherever I was in the house.

[00:11:41] The silence at home was too much sometimes for me and I didn't really stop to think about it because it's not a nice thing. It's not a nice feeling to dwell on, right? But even with that loneliness, I'd always used to be afraid. I used to be afraid because I am married. I used to be afraid of marriage because I've also seen firsthand and experienced firsthand, not as a spouse, but as part of a family, what an unhappy marriage can be like and how much hurt it can cause. And I actually, always believed since I was very young, that unless I could be in a good marriage - and I wouldn't even know what that would look like - I would rather be single because I thought that at least I would have freedom to make my own choice about how I want to live my life, what is the meaningful way for me for me to live my life, rather than in a sense, being committed to a relationship which was very unhappy, which was draining. And then, I would feel that I was stuck and I couldn't. It would be different than when I was single.

[00:12:55] So, there was, in me, always that experience of loneliness, that longing for a companion, that always wanted that companion, that could see me for who I was, love me for who I was. Sought, looked for that in a friend when I was younger, couldn't find anyone that fit that bill, decided that Jesus would be the one to fit that bill.

[00:13:16] I shared this in the first video about why I started my journey. I was 15 years old and I decided, okay, Jesus, you're it. You're going to be the answer to my loneliness. Only to find much, much, much later that even God himself will not fill that hole, that hole that we experienced, right? That hole that I experienced. I thought He was the one. And, actually, He wasn't.

[00:13:41] No human, I thought no human would fit that bill, so, surely it must be God. And then, you know, even God, showed me that when I try to make Him the one to fill that hole in me, see what ends up is, that codependent relationship that I had with God, which I've been talking about in quite a few of my recent videos.

[00:14:01] I thought that was what it was meant to be, and actually it's not at all. That was, in that sense, that feeling of that hole in me, that was a part of that - that was only meant to be filled by me. It was designed, like by God, so that I can connect with myself. So, that loneliness, that deep sense of loneliness, I think that we often feel is from alienation from ourselves.

[00:14:27] So, it's actually our alienation from ourselves. Now, I don't want to downplay that yearning to have a companion, especially when you haven't had that yet. I was there before I entered a committed relationship. I remembered all the time that I prayed, you know, Lord, you know my desire, you know how much I really wish to have someone.

[00:14:50] Really, and I would love that to have that experience of being loved, really loved by someone, being taken care of. Because in my life, my experience, I'm always the one looking after other people, right? It'd be nice to have someone else take care of me for a change, someone that I can relax. So, there's this yearning and that's that hope but at the same time I didn't I think, because of my own lived life experience, I know that if I just was seeking someone more often than not, it would end up being a nightmare and not the fulfilment of my dreams.

[00:15:21] RELATIONSHIPS CAN'T FIX OUR WOUNDEDNESS AND TRAUMA
Okay, because more often than not, the person that we enter the relationship with has a lot of issues that we don't see usually when we're in love. And then when both parties kind of like see the other person as the answer to our hunger, the answer to our loneliness, which we cannot help but feel that way, I think.

[00:15:42] It's like, you know, you've been starving for so long and then finally there's someone that seems to love you and is attracted to you and wants to be with you. It's like all that suppressed energy of loneliness, of hunger, of neediness just wants to come up to the surface and I remember that in the early days of my relationship, I tried so hard to keep that down because that energy that I was so familiar with, that hunger, is really scary.

[00:16:11] And I instinctively felt or knew that if my partner felt that hunger, he will be scared away. Because really it's like it was looking for someone to cling to. It was looking for someone to rescue me, right. So, I tried as long as I could to try and keep that hunger down. But of course, I mean, you know, when you're in a committed long-term relationship, you can't. You can't hide that. You can't hide that very long at all, actually. So, sooner or later, both parties, right, whatever issues or kind of insecurities that they have or we have, begins to bubble up to the surface. So, I learned pretty early on that even when I had a wonderful boyfriend - who is not my husband - but even though I really had a really good guy, it wasn't enough to take away that hole.

[00:17:05] And that I was so easily triggered into feeling like I was being abandoned or that I was afraid I'll be abandoned by very small things, okay. They don't feel small, okay? When I say small, it's like the rational part of me think it's not that big a deal. But the rest of me reacts in such a way that it's like, oh no, the worst is going to happen.

[00:17:29] Okay, so, now, where I am, I have the language of trauma to understand why all these things happen. Because the trauma is embedded inside me, inside my nervous system, inside my body. Everything in me was still wired with fear. That doesn't change just because you suddenly now have a committed relationship and there is someone that has chosen to be in relationship with you and love you, all that stuff. 

[00:17:56] All that wiring, all that fault, faulty wiring, all the woundedness and the trauma, they're still there. And you bring all that emotional charge into whatever relationship you are in, right? And when there is a lack of awareness of that, and let's say you see when we are insecure, or I'll say it, but for me, when I was insecure, I really want to make the relationship work.

[00:18:21] I mean, I was, I'm that way with friendships. Okay, so, can you imagine what it's like when it's a romantic relationship? I really want to make it work. I was willing to do whatever I could, so that I wouldn't lose this person. So, I wouldn't lose this relationship, right. But that meant that all my energies was consciously focused outward towards this person, towards what would make him happy.

[00:18:48] So, I had a lot of expectations, not just of him, but of myself. I built up some kind of ideal of what that kind of companionship should look like, right? So, like the first question that I shared today from the person who said, like, you know, you have some idea of the vision that you desire, a person maybe that would match you intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, somebody that you could do life with. We have dreams, right? We have hopes, we have expectations, but underneath those dreams and expectations are a hunger.

[00:19:23] So, we think that what we dream for or dream of will satisfy that hunger in us. And so, we, in a sense, when we enter into a relationship, even when it enters into marriage, we cling to that dream and we get really upset, whenever reality shows that it doesn't match what we were hoping for. Alright, so, whether it is, our partner or ourselves, we can hold both of us to standards that are unreal. Unreal, in the sense that it's very far from the reality of where we actually are. And so, there's a lot of unhappiness. And over time, it becomes worse because when you end up in a committed relationship, where it seems like the answer to your dreams is so near, but yet it feels so far, It's either you will perpetuate that conflict from all that expectation that you have of yourself and of your partner, or you over time you may just end up being indifferent, right? Or despair.

[00:20:29] Truth be told, I don't know how many of, whether you guys would agree with me, but in my experience, not just in my own life and in the circles of the people that I've grown up with, whether it's communities in church or like, you know, families that I know from like friends or people that I've accompanied now that I'm older or my own friends who have gotten married, and gotten divorced. Even some who are married and haven't gotten divorced. I will tell you there are more unhappily married couples than there are truly happily married couples. It depends on what you mean by happily married, okay? I think in between being very unhappily married and being, let's say, very deeply satisfyingly married, there's maybe, you know, a group where it's like they are good partners, they make life work and they are companions.

[00:21:22] And for some people, that may be what they are looking for, whether consciously or not. And some people may not feel that that's a bad thing. You know, it's good enough. But for those of us, like the person who asked that question, the first question, I know that's not what you're looking for. I know some of us, what we long for is a soul deep connection.

[00:21:44] We want real attunement, real emotional attunement, because it's possible to make a marriage into just like a partnership. Like a work partnership, right? Where we share our finances, maybe. We pull our resources and we support one another's aging parents, we build a family together and we raise our children together. It's possible to do all that almost like a business transaction and I know people who do that like a business transaction, you know? They may be quite amicable, right.

[00:22:07] SECURE ATTACHMENT
We were created for deep attachment, safe attachment, to be seen not just as a means to an end, not just as like a business partner that provides some utility, but as a person to be loved. Right, so, the root of that loneliness, whether we are single, in a relationship, or even in a marriage, it really seems to go deeper than whether or not we can find somebody that can really see us.

[00:22:47] I mean, that helps, of course. But it's like a chicken and egg thing. When we project our need onto that other person, expecting the other person to see us, and then feeling so abandoned and sad when that person doesn't, it doesn't usually help the other person become more capable of seeing us. Because remember, they also have their issues. They have their history of trauma.

[00:23:13] So, there's a journey that they need to make in order to actually be attuned to you. They either have it or they don't yet at that time, right. And when we are in a committed relationship, a long term committed relationship, the question is, can both parties make that interior journey?

[00:23:33] So, even like I said earlier, even in a relationship with God, our relationship with God, He doesn't try and fill that hole, that gap of our loneliness. Because if He did, or if we made Him, we try to make God fit that hole in us, we are entering a codependent relationship with God, right? A secure attachment with God requires that I also have a healed relationship, or a healing relationship at least, with myself.

[00:23:57] So, the missing link is my relationship with myself. So, in almost all my content, when I talk about relationship or love, I always say it's three ways, right, with God, with myself, and with others. And the thing that always gets missed out is this relationship with self. Marriage prep doesn't talk about this.

[00:24:19] At least, I've gone through two marriage preps, right, I've gone through Engaged Encounter. I've gone through Marriage Preparation Course, given that was quite some time ago, but they don't talk about that. Actually, they don't even really emphasise, I mean, very much about the interior dimension of our relationship with God.

[00:24:39] The focus is more on between the couples and just a general sense of it's important to have faith and to pray. I'm not dissing it. I'm just saying that it doesn't address this other component. Maybe something else needs to address this component. Or I don't know why it is that Marriage Prep doesn't talk about this.

[00:24:57] It's really unfortunate that it doesn't because when the rubber meets the road, this is what is missing. And I'll tell you something else. Okay, I said before that I'm going to be very honest and very blunt and very real. And I'm just going to put it out there. It is a fact that some, at least some of those couples who are facilitators for couple programs, are in themselves actually feeling very lonely.

[00:25:23] It's truth, it's fact. I know for a fact. The couples that they're journeying with may not know, I mean, they can still present at marriage encounters, at engaged encounters, and all that kind of a thing. It's part of the ministry, right? But it doesn't mean that they are not lonely or it doesn't necessarily even mean that they have actually themselves find that secure attachment with one another or with God.

[00:25:50] Okay, that's just the reality that we are in. And I think it's important to state that because the question was how is how are these things related to the interior journey? Precisely if we don't make the interior journey into integration ourselves, no amount of tips about relationships and marriage or whatever is going to fill that gap, okay? 

[00:26:13] And whether it's marriage or even in terms of just talking about faith formation programs, a lot of the emphasis is not on this relationship with ourself, right? So, whether it is more intellectual formation or even if it's more spiritual kind of formation, I would say, and I've been exposed to a lot of these, by and large, the emphasis is on other important things, right. They're all important things, it's a lot of important stuff, you know? But very few, very rarely will you find programs that emphasis on the connection with yourself as being an important piece of the puzzle to be able to deepen your relationship with God and to be able to love others better.

[00:26:55] Okay, the only place that I would say I've encountered that more would be in individual spiritual direction. Okay, individual spiritual direction and maybe some retreats which are also tends to be individual retreats. Okay, I haven't attended before in terms of group kinds of retreats or whatever. It's kind of hard, I guess, to also address that it's not so much about that relationship with God and others. You need that connection with yourself to be in relationship with God and with others. Okay, they all kind of like happen together.

[00:27:32] MY EXPERIENCE WITH SECURE AND SAFE ATTACHMENT
So, going into that question now. Okay, so, now, so now I want to go to talk about addressing the request from Brya to talk about how Henry and I experienced earned security in our relationship. We discovered, I think, on our own, that we need to heal our relationship with ourselves and deepen our relationship with God in order for us to actually have a better relationship with one another.

[00:28:03] So, we did things quite differently from what we were taught, actually, and what we were told. I guess it was one of those things like, you know, you hear something, you see something, but then you look. You know, if you have eyes and you observe and you see what is taught and then you look at the reality of that is being lived by those who teach it to you.

[00:28:23] And then you don't really - you don't want to actually have that reality that they have. So, you kind of think the answer has to be somewhere else. There has to be something else that they're not telling you, right? And one of the things that as a Catholic couple that we often always heard is, it's important to pray together and it's important to serve together.

[00:28:40] And by serving together, it usually is understood as kind of like being serving in the same ministry together. And early on in our marriage, we did do that a bit. We explored different kind of things. We did. But after a while, we realized it was very contrived. There's this tension between where we are in our own lives, where we are in our own journey with God, our individual journeys with God.

[00:29:05] And where we feel kind of called or drawn to in the first place, whether to even be in service in ministry. Or secondly, even if we're talking about being called to serve in what ministry, we may not be called. We may not feel called to serve in the same ministry, right? So, if there is that difference between where we ourselves feel called. And then this there's this expectation that we have that we're supposed to do the same thing, which, you know, we're supposed to find a ministry where we both can serve together.

[00:29:35] We did, like I said, we started. We did serve together in the same ministry with the Catechists together. We were in PPC together. That's parish pastoral council. You know, there are a couple of things we did together. But then at some point, because it caused tension in our marriage, and whether it was in terms of service or wanting to go for faith formation, the same faith formation together.

[00:30:00] So for me, I was very "we should do it together". We should go for this together. And my husband is a wonderful person, Henry. Usually, he's really easy going and he's really supportive, right? But I remember very clearly there was once when he told me, He said, "Ann, you know, if you're so sure that's what God wants me to do, can you please tell God to tell me Himself"?

[00:30:17] BUILDING ON OUR OWN RELATIONSHIPS WITH GOD FIRST
Okay, he said. That's actually what he said. He said, if you are so sure that's what God wants us to do together, that means I have to get the memo too. Can you please ask God to tell me directly? I need to hear it from Him. And, you know, I thought that was really reasonable, actually. Because I'm like, it can't come from me.

[00:30:34] It's true. It has to come from God. Because I already know and I truly believe that we each have our own relationship with God that is still building and still growing. There is healing that we each need to go through that is distinct and different from our togetherness, from our marriage, right? So, the best thing that I ever did at that point in our marriage was to let go of wanting us to serve together. Okay, or to even go for the same kind of retreats of faith formation together. I let that go. 

[00:31:12] And actually, it wasn't that difficult to let go because I thought it made a lot of sense. The source of our union, in that sense, what hold elders together, was not doing things together. It's God, right?

[00:31:24] I mean, it's God who is holding us together. So, and it is our relationship with God. The deeper we go in our relationship with God, the firmer foundation of our union and our marriage will be. So, I thought, okay. You know, let's just focus for me where I am on, where God is calling me. And it was different from where God was calling Henry at that time.

[00:31:44] And what was beautiful is that as I became faithful to where I was called and I gave my husband also that space to be where he felt called, he moved, not towards me, but he also moved towards God more freely because I wasn't interfering. I wasn't interfering with his journey by insisting that he do this or he come with me for that.

[00:32:10] And you know what? That mutual space and respect then that we started giving each other, learning we needed different things to be all right with ourselves, to be all right with God. And that sometimes, paradoxically, it is giving each other more space apart from each other that actually deepened our love.

[00:32:29] Now, that was a very difficult lesson for me because I’m the codependent. Okay, my insecure attachment means that oh, I inherited this, right? It's like we're already spending so much time apart because of work. Okay, we're in Singapore. I'm in long hours of work, especially for my husband, for Henry, at that time.

[00:32:45] That was such long hours of work that whatever time we had left, let's say on the weekend where I wasn't working in church or whatnot, I wanted to spend every time where we had together, do something together. And at some point, I realized that we can be together, but the quality of the togetherness, it can be quite strained.

[00:33:02] BEING IN SOLITUDE TO ENJOY TOGETHERNESS
Whereas, going for runs for my husband, is a very important part of his spirituality. It's where he feels still and he can commune with God and himself when he goes on a run on his own. And I discovered at some point, that blessing him to go for that run, even if it seems to take away an hour and a half of my precious together time.

[00:33:24] He would come back from those runs happier, more alive, more affectionate. Then I become happier, right? Then happier and more affectionate. So, it's kind of like by trial and error, I realized that solitude, our respective solitude is needed for us to enjoy our togetherness. And that for me - so, for him it was running, for me it's not running.

[00:33:49] For me, sometimes, it looks like I need some - I need to go into a different room, close the door and just be by myself and journal or read something or just be quiet. I need quiet. And for me, it's not just a quiet, I need to be alone in that space, you know? Or to head out for a bit on my own.

[00:34:09] SELF-ALIENATION
Whether it's to just run an errand by myself or to go to the adoration room and spend a bit of time in prayer. For me, when I am out of sorts, if I don't take some time to be alone and I just try and prioritize whatever it is, being together with my husband - that is almost a sure recipe for disaster. It's a ticking time bomb.

[00:34:32] At some point, tempers will flare because my nerves are afraid. And so many times, when we do end up fighting and being so unhappy and I realize I feel abandoned. It's because when I connect with myself again, I realize it's because I first abandoned myself without knowing. So, you see, back to the alienation, self-alienation. What do I mean by abandoning myself? I mean that I have not been attuned to, let's say, how tired I am. And I expect my husband to pick up on how tired I am, okay? So, I'm not attuned to myself. I haven't done anything for myself to take care of how tired I am and I kind of was hoping that he would notice it and he would offer something let's say for me. 

[00:35:19] Or I've been feeling lonely, maybe needing emotional support in a week where he has been very busy at work. And I thought that a considerate loving thing to do as a wife is to not Impose on his time because he's already so busy and his work is very important. So, in trying to love him, I have been ignoring my own needs.

[00:35:43] The parts of me that are saying, I really, I feel neglected. I need some of his time too. Do I not have the right to ask for that time to say, at least just to say that I want some time. You know, so, but it's scary, right? Because for me, part of my script is I need to be the best possible wife so that he won't abandon me, right?

[00:36:03] And best possible wife comes with a script that's like, I try not to ask or impose on him and just try to be understanding and give him what I think he needs. Okay, it's a modelling that I have. It's the modelling that I had when I was a kid and that's what I picked up on and that's why I automatically default to, right?

[00:36:20] But when that goes on for too long, resentment builds because I'm thinking, “Hello, I've been making all these sacrifices, you know?" I hadn't even been asking for your time. But actually, I'm actually feeling so out of sorts, so lonely and neglected and you're not even making time for me, right? So, it begins to build the resentment, built until we have some kind of maybe argument.

[00:36:39] And then I'll realize, well, I didn't speak up for myself. So, in that sense, I had abandoned myself first before I gave my husband a chance, in a sense, to experience an abandonment from him. Right, and if I had at an earlier time spoken up, there's so many ways to do it. I mean, we've learned to do it, to say, I really been feeling very down this week. I really would love to have some time with you. Can you hear me out and can you hold some space for me this weekend? Right, and knowing him, I mean, there's no way he's going to say no. But we would plan into it. We'll plan that in, right. And I give him an opportunity to be generous to me.

[00:37:17] So, that kind of tuning into my own needs is the opposite of being alienated from myself. And that also included in terms of my husband's relationship with me. Me learning to draw boundaries sometimes when - so, for example, sometimes it's his turn. There were times, very challenging times when both of us are going through a very difficult time together.

[00:37:41] So, both of us are having low capacity, okay, just to deal with our own stuff. And there's hardly anything to offer the other person. Those are usually very trying times. It's not so bad when one person has abundance and the other person needs topping up. We can share. The one with more can give.

[00:37:57] But sometimes we are both low. And one of the harder things I had to learn was that when I'm low and my husband also asks something from me, let's say to hold space for him to hear him out, if I can't do it in the past, in my younger self, would force myself to do it, abandon myself because that's laying down my life, right?

[00:38:16] Laying down my life to give him what he needs. But actually, what am I? I'm just there physically, but I can't really be present. Because I'm actually abandoning myself and I'm already maxed out and at some point, later I might even get upset and angry because I had to, in a sense, I was forced, I had forced myself to lay my life down when I wasn't really ready or willing to do so.

[00:38:41] So, there was a point in our relationship where the lesson was to be able to tell him I'm so sorry. I know you really need this right now. But I really can't. I just don't have it in me right now to listen to you tonight. I'm so sorry. Right, and it is really scary to say that because I know he'll be upset, especially at that point, and he would get upset. Rightfully so. I mean like understandably so. And my work was to be okay with letting him have his emotion, with having his emotional reaction, right?

[00:39:18] But what I could tell him is like, right now I can't, I can't. But you know, when I'm in a better space, I want to be. I will be there. I'm so sorry, it's just not right now. I just can't do this right now for you, right? And then I allowed him to be upset. And then, in a sense, it became okay with time because he also realized this is just the reality. 

[00:39:39] And I was honest, I was able to be honest with him that I couldn't. I didn't try and pretend that I could hold space for him when I couldn't. And that built trust, that deepened our trust with each other, and that actually made us feel more safe with each other. From his side, one of the things that Henry used to really not be able to do was to be for him to remain regulated when I am upset So, let's say we get upset and we're already arguing, and I'm crying.

[00:40:07] I cry a lot. I cry quite easily. It's a way of releasing the emotion, right? I'm okay with crying, but he gets really dysregulated when he sees me upset. He couldn't. It's like he needed me to stop being upset. He would try to tell me don't cry, you know? He'll try to soothe me. And I remember, this was much earlier days in our relationship, but I’ll say like no I’m going to be okay. You got to let me cry it out. You have to let me be upset, it will pass.

[00:40:33] But it used to be like an ordeal for him when I am when I'm upset and I'm crying. And he would feel like a failure that he made me upset or feel like a failure, that he couldn't get me to feel better and that would cause me stress because I would feel that okay, I better be okay, like real quick. Because if not, I'm making him suffer. You see how that spins out into so much? It can increase the tension and the conflict. But over time, as we deepened our own journeys of integration, and that included spiritual direction for both of us, that included counselling and therapy for both of us.

[00:41:12] In fact, at one point when deeper things were coming out, and here's the deal, right? If you really want to make this interior journey into integration, over time you'll find there's so many layers, and there are deeper and deeper things, and they can feel pretty overwhelming. And one thing that I didn't feel ashamed of - by the at this point, this was like maybe just during COVID. So, like maybe three, four years - three years ago, I actually told my husband in the most loving way, I said, okay, a lot of stuff is coming out. And he wanted to talk to me about some of the stuff that was coming out in his - he was going through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, the 19th annotation, which is basically every day there's an hour of prayer. Every week he's meeting with the spiritual director. It's a pretty rigorous retreat in daily life that went on for nine, ten months. Okay, so, things were surfacing and actually, his spiritual director had also told him maybe some of these things he might want to bring to a counsellor.

[00:42:02] So, he started seeing a counsellor but it was a counsellor that specialized only in a specific area and other things were deep things were coming up. And because I have gone through, in a sense, I was a little bit ahead of the journey, compared to Henry, I've been through some of these things. I know what are the resources that would help him.

[00:42:20] I suggested to him to also, on top of seeing the counsellor, there was a particular coach, I think, that had a particular area of interest that I thought he could talk to. And then later on there was a therapist that specialized in somatic experiencing, in the body. And when I recommend these things, the younger me would have thought like, wow, you're like trying to push away your responsibility as a wife and trying to direct your husband to like professionals, right?

[00:42:45] But for me for me and for us actually, that's not that at all. You know what? It's like what is coming out in you, in this integration journey is really important and is really heavy and it's too much for any one person to carry. As the wife, I want to be able to be here as your wife. I don't want to be your therapist. I don't want to be your coach. I mean, although sometimes we take turns to play that role a bit, right? But we know when we're out of our depth. And if I try to carry this weight that I know I'm not equipped to carry, it's going to actually make it detrimental for our relationship. And so we both learned in prioritizing our own individual journey of integration, to also spread out and seek the resources that we need so that - as in beyond one another - so that the both of us can be that support and that companion, that secure attachment with one another, which is whatever is coming out, wherever you are. I love you for you.

[00:43:47] I am willing to forego my expectations of you or what I need from you because I understand that you're a human just like I'm human. And whenever there is that, that sense of being upset and abandoned by the other party, we have both learned to reconnect with ourselves because we've learned that maybe that means we had overlooked something, we have unknowingly abandoned ourselves again. Maybe there's something that we need to do for ourselves. Sometimes when you learn what that is and you do it for yourself, you don't need it from your partner anymore, you know?

[00:44:23] So, the earned secure attachment that Henry and I have and experienced it's very connected or interconnected with our growing security with God and our growing security within ourselves. It's a virtuous cycle, you could say. It's very hard to see which comes first, which comes later. But one thing's for sure, if we were not growing in interior security within ourselves, and also growing in security in our relationship with God, our own relationship would not continue to grow in that sense of safety and security.

[00:45:02] Right, so, the root of, I think, our universal experience of loneliness is ultimately inner security and solitude. Okay, so, solitude; to be able to be at peace, even in our aloneness, is not an easy thing. But it's a very simple truth, and I think we run away from this. The instinct is always to try and find the solution outside of us.

[00:45:28] I want to have a friend, or a spouse, or a god, or a community that will solve this problem of my loneliness for me. And we never actually connect in solitude with ourselves and learn what it is to be alone, with the alone, right - with the alone and the God, which then overflows in our ability to connect securely with other people, with other finite, flawed, imperfect, lonely creatures, for whom we are not the answer, and they are not the answer to our loneliness.

[00:46:09] BALANCING THE TENSION
So, back to that first question earlier, like how do I balance or how do I navigate that tension between longing for that companion, a companion like that and also being content with my current singlehood and not really wanting to put myself out there to try and get a partner, right? I'd say the one thing, and you probably already know this, right? You who asked this question probably know this.

[00:46:36] The one thing that you can continue to build on is that earned security with yourself and with God. I think you already know the thing about with God, but maybe the part that you haven't maybe really looked into or invested as much resources into yet is, what does it mean to develop that earned security with your inner self?

[00:46:57] And then at the same time, enjoy the relationships that you do have around you, even if they're not exactly one of peers. Or sometimes you may have peer kind of relationships, but it may be intellectual and not emotional or maybe it's emotional, intellectual and not spiritual, right? But we can enjoy what we have, what God gives us, as we build that inner security.

[00:47:20] Because ultimately, as people of faith, as interior pilgrims of faith, we know it's about trust. Right, that trust in God that is also not a transactional trust, but the trust that the longing for fulfilment, that longing for union in me is something that reaches or comes from somewhere beyond this world.

[00:47:46] Okay, our longing for union cannot be ultimately satisfied in this world by another person, even by ourselves, or even by God completely in this world. It comes from eternity, like it comes from some place beyond now and it reaches into eternity beyond now. And this is true, no matter whether you are married or single or in religious life or a priest. This is true.

[00:48:09] Our longing cannot be fulfilled here. So, all of us in some sense, are living in that tension of being contented. If we can sometimes experience the contentment of our current state where we're still lonely, our loneliness can never be fully as wage, connected and moving towards deeper connection. But I just want to open up that the deeper connection is not just with another person, but it's also with ourself.

[00:48:37] Okay, so, a couple of questions. Okay, one is a comment: "I don't want my partnership to be conformity, rather two parallel roads to the same destination". Yeah, I agree. It's really companions on the journey, right? And really being a good team. For me, often, it's the image also of the Emmaus disciples. It comes to me often, as a husband and wife kind of thing.

[00:49:02] So, then it's another question: "after going for counselling therapy, doing inner healing work, et cetera, at what point is a person fully healed"?

[00:49:09] I don't think in this lifetime we can be fully healed, actually. We can experience a great deal of healing when you just put one foot in front of the other, consistently. Over time, you can look back and realize, wow, I've really come a long way. I never expected that I could be where I am now.

[00:49:28] Okay, so, there's incredible progress that can be made, but at the same time, I don't think it will ever be complete in this life. Just like I mentioned earlier, because I think that longing that we have for union is not something that can be completed or fulfilled ultimately in this life. We're in a state of like, it's here and not fully there, right? In the in between stage.

[00:49:53] That may be difficult to hear, but I just want to say, I know what it's like to have that impatience. I want to be fully healed, right? And I'm not going to speak for you. I'll say that for when I was in that state often of, when can we get this over and done with? Like, when can I be fully healed is because it's so uncomfortable, right? The brokenness and the pain, all that, it's just so unbearable. And it's normal, it's natural that we just want, we wish, or we think that if we're fully healed, then all this wouldn't impact us anymore. But I guess reality is, my reality and my experience is that it doesn't happen that way.

[00:50:33] Healing often comes in a way not that I expect, not in the way I maybe want it to happen, but healing does come. And then the effects of healing is also not what I had expected or I had imagined it should be. But there are real effects. And maybe I should put it this way. What I've found so far is, as I get more integrated and more healed, I'm more able to be in the present, in the discomfort, in the same situations that are imperfect and harmful.

[00:51:07] I actually have greater capacity to remain here and be present to myself and be present sometimes even to the other person, the people who are causing the hurt. And you know, it wasn't what I thought healing would bring, but as I experienced this, I feel like it makes a lot of sense. I feel like it makes a lot of sense because the call is to love, right?

[00:51:33] And love is to love what is and not what it should be, whether it's directed at ourselves. So, the invitation is, can you love yourself even when you're not healed? Can you see how beautiful and precious you are? Can you see how much delight God looks at you with, even now, even in the mess that you are in?

[00:51:54] Wow, when you can experience a bit of that, even though you're not healed, in some ways, I think it's even more incredible than being healed. I think it's more incredible because that is the unconditional love that you're experiencing, right? It seems like that. God may think that's more important than us actually getting better.

[00:52:11] You know, and then when we experience in our own capacity to be able to love ourselves, even in our current state, and that we can attune to ourselves and therefore learn to be more present to others and then begin to recognize how much they are suffering. Sometimes we can become, as we heal, we can actually become more aware of somebody else's suffering even more than they.

[00:52:32] Like, they may not even be aware, self-aware enough as to how much they're suffering or how much they're causing their own suffering or how much maybe their past or their trauma is causing their suffering. But when we get more integrated, we actually can see that in the other person. And that usually leads to greater patience and compassion in accepting that this is the reality that they are in.

[00:52:55] And that they may not have, they're not able to see it or change yet. At least in my experience, that's what the journey of integration and healing has brought into my life. Right, and more ability to see the truth and to be willing to call a spade a spade. Less fear. I don't know whether that kind of response to you, I mean, answers your response. Not full healing, but there's something to look forward to, you know.

[00:53:30] Let me just check my notes and see if there's anything I left out. Yeah, no, I think I covered all the points I wanted to cover. So, loneliness and solitude. They are kind of like the flip, two sides of a coin. There is a podcast episode that I did, I think it's called From Turning Loneliness Into Solitude. I would invite you to listen to it, or to re-listen to it, because I found often that loneliness is like God knocking on the door of our hearts, not just to let Him in, but for us to realize it's an invitation to see ourselves, to build that relationship with ourselves, which is actually the foundation for all our relationships, including the relationship with God.

[00:54:20] So, I hope you've enjoyed today's Live and that I responded to the questions. You know, you can always send me follow up questions or comments that I will try to incorporate and address in future Lives. So, thank you so much. And I'll see you tomorrow, maybe if you're around or in some future Live, okay? Bye. Thank you.

[00:54:43] CONCLUSION
Thank you for listening to Becoming Me. The most important thing about making this journey is to keep taking steps in the right direction. No matter how small those steps might be, no matter where you might be in your life right now, it is always possible to begin. The world would be a poorer place without you becoming more fully alive.

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