"I've always felt like I was born in the wrong era when it came to relationships." I’m a hopeless romantic in a time where love feels disposable. Where relationships are treated like trial subscriptions instead of covenants. Where the moment discomfort shows up, the advice is quick and loud: leave, you deserve better, don’t tolerate that, go find someone who gets you.
And sometimes, that advice is absolutely right. For those seeking long lasting relationships, the right guidance can make all the difference.
There are relationships that are unsafe, abusive, destructive, and those require distance, boundaries, and often separation for survival. This is not about staying where you are being harmed.
This is about something else entirely.
It’s about how we’ve lost the ability to sit in the uncomfortable middle of relationships. The messy part. The growing pains. The seasons where love doesn’t look pretty or easy, but it is still real.
We’ve confused inconvenience with incompatibility. We’ve confused struggle with failure. And we’ve confused selfish peace with true healing.
Every relationship has friction. Every relationship has imbalance at times. One person gives more in one season, the other carries more in the next. There are misunderstandings, miscommunications, old wounds that surface unexpectedly. There are moments where you don’t like each other very much, even though you still love each other deeply.
That doesn’t mean the relationship is broken. It means two humans are learning how to coexist, how to grow, how to love beyond their own instincts.
Jesse and I got together in 2016. He proposed in 2017, one year later. We both came into our relationship divorced. We both had children. We both carried histories that shaped us in very different ways.
We have walked through miscarriage together. We have held grief side by side. And we have also welcomed a beautiful rainbow baby into this world, raising him together through joy and exhaustion and the quiet miracle of everyday life.
We did not come into this relationship whole and healed.
I came with trauma. Childhood abuse. Neglect. Relationships marked by addiction and abuse. I came with anger I didn’t know how to soften, hostility I used as armor, independence that was born out of survival rather than choice. Letting people in has never come easily for me. Trust has always felt like a risk.
Jesse came with his own battles. Addiction. A different upbringing. A different pace of emotional growth. He was sheltered in ways I never was. I was forced to grow up too fast. He was allowed to stay young longer.
When we met, that difference collided hard.
There were arguments. There were fights. There were seasons where I felt like I was dragging him forward while I myself was exhausted. I’ve said before that I felt like I was raising him, and at times, that’s exactly what it felt like. My friends begged me to leave. Especially when his addiction worsened. Especially when the road felt too heavy to carry.
And there were moments where staying didn’t mean standing still.
It meant stepping back without giving up. It meant fighting for us while not always being physically or emotionally present in the way people expect fighting to look. It meant believing in who he could become even when who he was in that moment was hurting both of us.
What made the difference is this: he was willing to fight too.
Not perfectly. Not without setbacks. But with humility. With effort. With growth that didn’t happen overnight, but happened slowly, visibly, honestly.
We learned each other in the hard seasons. We learned what triggered one another. We learned how past trauma shows up in present conflict. We learned how to pause instead of escalate, how to listen instead of defend, how to choose repair over pride.
And in that fight, something deeper formed.
I look at him now and I can say, without hesitation, that I am more in love with him than I have ever been. When I look at old photos, I see who he used to be and who he is now. I see the growth. I see the man he’s become. And I see the woman I’ve become alongside him.
He didn’t just overcome addiction. He grew into responsibility, into presence, into partnership.
And I didn’t just survive trauma. I learned how to soften without losing strength. How to trust without abandoning discernment. How to love without disappearing.
That kind of bond doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from perseverance.
We’ve taught ourselves that if something costs us effort, it isn’t worth it. But the truth is, the most meaningful things in life require endurance. Faith. Patience. Commitment. Love that stays when it would be easier to leave.
The grass is greener where you water it.
And sometimes the field looks barren before it blooms.
I believe we are missing something sacred in modern relationships. We’ve replaced covenant with convenience. We’ve replaced growth with escape. And we’ve replaced long suffering love with instant gratification.
The love that lasts isn’t the love that never struggles. It’s the love that refuses to quit when struggle arrives.
And when you reach the other side, when healing has happened, when growth has taken root, the bond that forms is unbreakable.
That kind of love is rare now. But it still exists.
And it’s worth the fight.
© ASHLEYLYNNE
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