What I’m about to share is personal, because I’m currently trying to conquer it so although I’m healing I’m not on the other side of it yet.
I have been dealing with solo-travel anxiety for a long time now. Not just my own travel but anxiety around Matt traveling alone as well. It has been consuming and was starting to hinder our growth as individuals and as a couple.
My question to myself was why? Why do you feel fear around this, why am I trying to hold on to control here, what am I truly afraid of? Here is what I discovered.
There have been moments in our lives where solo-travel has brought adverse outcomes. There is hurt attached to these memories.
What I have learned from going through A Course in Miracles though is usually the hurt only happens once, but we carry the hurtful memory around with us and continue to hurt ourselves over and over again with the reliving.
How can I let go of the control? It’s like I’m standing in the doorway between the life I love and the life I fear. I’m picturing myself as a barrier and if I let go then… Then what though? What is really going to happen?
I’m afraid to be hurt. But predicting future hurt is a slippery slope. You take what you fear is going to happen; you play it all out in your mind, you feel it like it’s truth, then you start acting in ways to protect yourself from the hurt that has not happened yet in reality but has been played out in your mind.
The hurt can feel real because you’re holding onto the pain from a past experience. You justify the feeling because it was once truly felt. But like I mentioned above, someone may have hurt you once, but YOU continue to hurt yourself over and over again by reliving it in your thoughts.
By holding onto this hurt in the past, I’m creating the story for my future. So I decided it was time to lean into the fear and feel it, study it, and heal it.
My ultimate desire is to be whole. To have a relationship with my husband that is free of expectations, one with complete freedom. Freedom to discover who we are as an individuals and freedom to explore as a couple. It’s easy to box your marriage in and put a tight lid on it, but that creates resentment and the urge to break out. When you create a space that welcomes growth, change, and discovery, it then becomes a fantastic place to reach your highest potential, and together you are living your best life.
This weekend I traveled to my sister’s house that is about seven hours from me. I took my time on the road, ate lunch in a random restaurant, explored, listened to a new book, enjoyed my sister’s company with no guilt, shopped, ate lot’s of snacks, laughed a ton, and allowed this time to fill my soul.
On the way home I did a lot of inward reflecting, I drove silently with my thoughts, allowing things to flow through letting go of what no longer served me. I reached my home albeit tired but in a place of peace.
I’m not done with the anxiety yet, but I believe I’m closer to the freedom I know I deserve.
I hope by sharing this is you see my imperfections, that you realize you will always need to do the work. But more than that I hope you see that marriage is not something to box in, to restrict with expectations, to hold onto like it’s your whole life. Marriage to me is two people, whose souls connected and together they decided to travel this journey together. Together is the decision, it’s not the rope that binds. You are still two individuals, and should not be held to your past mistakes or held down to what is believed to be your future decisions. You should be free to evolve, change your thoughts, free to discover new passions. When you give your love the space to do this, I believe you can create marital bliss. It can be a love that is soul-filling, life-changing, light igniting and passion fused. With this overflow of love, you and your partner can then take that power and go out and change the world. That I believe is the true definition of a power couple.
