A lot of false narratives about what marriage was, what it wasn’t, and what it should be stayed ruminating in our heads for years before we met. And then we got together, and marriage felt like something we both wanted. But we were left with solving the large puzzle of how to get these intrusive narratives worked out first.

So much of our history is thrown into the mix of our present day dilemmas — how we were raised, the culture we grew up in, the dysfunction we normalized, the fears we embedded into our nervous systems, and even the roles we play in our other relationships. How do we show up well for each other when we can’t fully understand all of the things that came before us?

There have been too many moments in my life where I’ve had to ask myself, was any of this truly my idea? Sometimes it takes a daily remembering to acknowledge the truth of who you are and why you’re here. This is mine.

Each group feels like a little world of mine. At some point in time, that little world may have been my whole world. And then I grew, and changed, and saw. Who’s still here?

It’s the story we’ve heard a million times over. The girl who’s miserable but won’t leave. We think it’s simple. But a narcissist’s job is to make it anything but simple. Is it a lack of self-worth? Is it just manipulation tactics at their finest? Or can it be a world we may never truly understand?