There's a woman I worked with who hadn't started the business she wanted to start for three years
She was waiting for her husband to get more stable first. More consistent. More present. Then she'd feel safe enough to take the risk. That was the logic. It was airtight. It was also destroying them both.
He could feel her waiting. Men always can. It sits in the room.
What I told her is that she'd done this before. Different situation, same feeling.
She'd put her life on hold as a kid for a parent who was never quite okay. Who was always one good month away from being someone she could relax around. She'd learned to make herself small and still and patient, because moving felt dangerous when someone else was unstable.
That's a child doing what she had to do to survive.
But she wasn't a child anymore. And her husband wasn't her father. And the business wasn't going to wait forever.
When she started it anyway, without his situation changing, she stopped resenting him for the life she wasn't living. She stopped needing him to be different so she could begin.
And they both started loving and appreciating each other more than ever.
