It happened early in the morning on the sunny deck that used to be our favorite place to drink coffee and watch the dogs play in our acre wood. We were well into a busy year that left little time for self care, let alone couple care. We seemed to be leaving the all-things-dreamy phase and entering the work phase of the “rest of our lives”. Neither of us were ready for it.“I think we need to separate.”I panicked. He panicked. He didn’t have a plan, he ran, I was just trying to hold shit together so it didn’t get worse. It got worse.

I won’t get into details of my ex-husbands depression, that’s his story to tell, but despite guilt and shame, despite the anger, there was still a profound love. A week later he wanted to come home. Yet he would wax and wane on whether this is what he truly wanted. Sometimes leaning in, then threatening divorce when conversations got too deep. It was torture. I had stopped eating and sleeping and functioning out of grief. How do I hold space for this person? Through counseling I realized expectations had started creeping into the relationship like kudzu and we were slowly suffocating from lack of loving oxygen and sunlight.

After a couple months, I asked my husband to meet me on the deck. That day, I gave him a hall pass and asked him to move out. What happened was simple: We let each other off the hook.We told the truth about what we were each experiencing in the relationship without making each other wrong or responsible in any way. We had both been experiencing incompatibilities in the way we now related to each other. I was doing the work with my relationship coach, I was tired of doing it alone, and he wasn’t ready to face himself. But a weight was lifted, and he cried for the first time in front of me, for me, since we were married. At that moment we intentionally gave back to each other the freedom to be whoever we authentically wanted to be and came clean about how we were struggling and let go of any expectations. We reclaimed our freedom to effortlessly just be two individuals. We also decided to end our intimate relationship.

I will always feel melancholy that we couldn’t find a way to make it work. He is truly a good person. But this did teach me about obligations and truth and perhaps that was the lesson I was meant to learn. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be partnered, or not be in committed relationships or whatever that looks like to an individual. What I am saying is we should set each other free in all our relationships, intimate and plutonic, friends and family. Tell the truth about what’s really going on, how we are feeling. Share what’s working and what’s not, without obligating our partner to do anything about it. Obligation is bondage. Obligation is why relationships stagnate, or worse: cause them to implode in a fiery fight of chaos on your favorite deck. Ensuring an ill-fitting obligation gets met, often requires some measure of force, whether passive aggression or outright violence and ultimately loss.

Telling our personal truth instead, sets everyone free. It sets us free to stay if we’re genuinely called to stay, and it gives us the freedom to leave if our deepest truth is to dance elsewhere. I’m also not saying you should dance at the first sign of a problem. Relationships require making mistakes, making amends, and trying to manage matters with an increasing degree of skill and intelligence, not to mention a fuck-ton of forgiveness. And I’m actually not suggesting that we shouldn’t hunker down and do the work it takes to create a thriving intimate or otherwise relationship. That would just be silly of me. Relationships take a shitload of work but relationships are also fluid. Love is never complete. Just as life is always moving and re-shaping itself. But when you own your truth, Love is a helluva lot easier to navigate.

I’ve come to realize in the past, when my relationships were struggling to fly, it was almost certainly because expectations were weighing down the vessel. Either mine or his, and usually both. It’s perfectly appropriate – healthy, even – to make requests for what we want and need. But it’s futile to obligate our partners to do what they do not authentically want to do: touch us more, touch us less, do things differently, see things differently, think differently, want different things than they actually want, eat differently, spend their free time differently. The most destructive element in a relationship is the expectation that your partner will behave differently than they genuinely want to, just to make us happy.

I get it, though. We’re scared we won’t get our needs met, we’re scared to be alone, so we obligate the other person to show up and make it happen. In the process, we enslave a good human. Everyone loses, even when we get what we want. Recently my ex has been going to counseling. I know, right? Now? I’m happy that he is finding some peace. He has looked deeply into his ownership and apologized to me that he did this very thing. He had made me responsible for his happiness. And when I couldn’t meet his expectations I was demonized. But because we have let expectations go and no longer interact on fear, we are able to be honest and reset the truth between us and be friends again. Eh? It’s only taken 4 years.

The best gift we can ever give a partner is our happiness that doesn’t depend on their behavior. Though that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be held accountable for hurtful behavior. But when we make our partner responsible for our happiness, we’re saddling them with an obligation to be a certain way for our well-being. I’ve never met a man who seemed to enjoy wearing a saddle. Well, there was that one…But I sure don’t want to wear one. Even horses don’t like wearing a saddle until they’ve been “broken.” I don’t want a broken man. Consider how deeply our partners can relax when they know they don’t have to pretend or force themselves to be a certain way just to please us! This in itself strengthens trust.A wise person once said, “I knew I had met the man I would spend my days with when I didn’t want to change him.” Your intimate partner isn’t your project. They deserve a person who will worship them as they are today.

Back to my story; after setting each other free, we hugged for a long time. It was sublime. We hadn’t been that close in years, just holding space for each other. Breathing each other’s air. Relaxing. We were able to share those intimate knowing looks-without-words like we had countless times in our past. We connected deeply in our authentic love for each other, without expectations, and were once again able to appreciate each other’s presence. Releasing each other was profoundly liberating and we have been able to talk and laugh again as friends.

I find myself visiting this topic again as my new potential partner challenges me to meet him in this place without obligation. Perhaps this is why we have crossed paths. To remind me of the work I have done and bring me back to mindfulness. Perhaps to heal old wounds and grow from this place and be present together in our most authentic selves. Perhaps to help him grow and sink deep into his vibrations without fear. Perhaps to remind myself it’s ok to ask for what I want and need from a place of profound respect and love and hold space for his truth even if it differs from mine. Thich Nhat Hanh stated, “You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” I can only promise to do my best.Time will tell.