Have your ship and your anchor too

​Yesterday I wrote, "many relationships fail because people don't know what it looks like to be anchors for one another. They climb into the boat of a relationship without considering there will come a day when they may have to go to the bottom of the ocean just to keep their ship afloat."

I went on to say, "it's then and there when they often discover they have no idea how to be an anchor, or that they have no desire to be an anchor that has to go that deep."

If that sounds like it was coming from a voice of experience - it was. Both my own personal relationships experience and the relationship stories I've heard from countless other people in recent years.

When I suggest that people have no idea how to be an anchor with someone else, I believe that's because people have never figured out how to be an anchor for themselves. You can't do with others what you've never done for yourself.

You can't help someone else face battles in life if you've never figured out how to face your own.

You can't help someone else regulate their jacked up stress response system if you've never figured out how to regulate your own.

You can't offer someone else grace and understanding if you've never offered those things to yourself.

You can't tell someone else you believe in them if you've never believed in you.

Many of us have never figured out how to go deep with ourselves because we've never been brave enough to go there. Trust me, I get that.

Our deepest stuff is deep for a reason. We shoved it there. Out of sight and out of mind. If I shove it deep enough maybe it will go away. Maybe it will never have happened.

That's what we come to believe.

Maybe the main reason we refuse to go deep with others is out of a fear they in turn may want to look deeper into me. It scares us to death that someone may locate all of our hiding places.

They will unhide things I've masterfully spent a lifetime hiding. They will uncover the lies I've thoroughly convinced myself are truths.

Maybe it's cruel, but that IS the point of being each others anchors. The point IS the unhiding.

Secrets ARE the storms of a relationship, the unhiding is often the most durable part of the anchor.

It starts with me, though. It starts with us. When we quit hiding things from ourselves we live in far less fear of someone else discovering those things.

When we quit hiding things from ourselves, we learn to navigate the stress and the pain that have long accompanied those things - no matter how deep we had them buried.

We learn to forgive ourselves. To offer ourselves grace.

And to believe in the path going forward.

A path that will more than likely present us the chance to be an anchor, an anchor for ourselves and an anchor for someone else.

Maybe many others.

Only this time we will know how to do that; we will be willing to do that.

We will have our ship and anchor too. And maybe that won't keep those relationships from being rocky, but it will keep them from sinking.