I want to open up about what's been going on with me. I've been blessed by wonderful friends and other support to help process, and now I'm ready to talk to my twitter fam, in the most on-brand way possible: a thread practicing vulnerability and intersecting mental health.
This week my spouse and I decided to end our marriage.
We both grew up evangelical (hi #exvangelical crew) and hence in a culture that had a LOT to say about marriage and divorce. The latter felt almost like a bad word, something deeply shameful, a recognition that something had gone wrong (and should be erased and forgotten).
But if there's one thing I've learned this year, it's that everything I thought I knew was wrong 😂
Nev and I started our relationship the first year of college; teenagers! We married young too, and have been married for 13 years.

(That's my dad officiating; we got married in my childhood back yard)
Neither of us knew it when we first met, but we had something else in common: deeply traumatic childhood experiences. In each other, we found safety, kindness, compassion, honesty, trust, and a fucking badass partnership.

(Picture: us hamming it up at a modern art museum)
Fastforward to today, and you can see the garden we've grown together. Two great kids. Holding space for each other to grow and change in some of the biggest ways imaginable. Discoveries about gender, sexuality, and love. Dealing with hard shit, us together against the world.
Our marriage has taken us from surviving to the brink of thriving.
So, what happened? Why now?

Has there been simmering resentment? Growing tension and distance? Did the stress of parenting get to us?

Did we "fall out of love"?
No. None of those things.
I am learning, slowly but surely, that deep within each person is a kind of "inner truth", the things you know and the things you want at your core.
Letting yourself SEE and FEEL your truth is really, really hard. So often, that truth conflicts with what some part of you WANTS to believe and cling to. That's the Buddhist concept of "attachment", clinging to an idea so much that it distorts your view of reality.
So to find your truth, you have to let yourself see what you don't want to see, what's uncomfortable and uncertain and painful. You need courage, vulnerability, openness to the fullness of the moment.
You may find in your truth something you didn't expect, but once you see it, the stars of your life suddenly become a constellation, and it all makes sense.
But you're not done yet! More courage is needed.
The courage to mourn the idea, the dream, you had rigidly held, even as you replace it with a deeper understanding of what's been real all along. It's a loss that must be grieved.
But also, the courage to plot your new course, to FOLLOW your newfound truth. Maybe you have to say hard things, things that could hurt, and not know how people will react. Maybe you have to flout convention to stay true to your conviction. Lots of uncertainty.
In the course of our relationship, Nev and I have both had moments of courage, of embracing our truths. It's one of the most beautiful ways we have supported and held space for each other. The gratitude I feel is immense.
We've held each other in safety and love to get to this point: our shared truth that, to step more fully into ourselves, to flourish in our lives, our relationship needs to look different.
So, there you go. It's not a failure, or a mistake. It comes from a place of deep love for each other, support for each of our truths -- or, as bell hooks says, for each other's spiritual growth.
I don't know exactly how our family shape will grow and change, but we had already started down that road, and what I see ahead is richness just waiting for discovery. https://twitter.com/aaron_turon/status/1145818500952276992
I've let go now, in major arenas of my life, of the compulsion to control the future and make things match the "ideal" image in my head. What will my relationship with Nev look like when I reach old age? Who knows! But it won't be driven by a fearful clinging to security.
What I CAN say is: I love you, Nev.

I'm so grateful for everything we've done and learned together, including this step. And while I mourn and prepare to face big challenges ahead, I'm as secure as ever that we'll figure it out with loving-kindness.

I'm excited for my future.
You can follow @aaron_turon.
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