Who Are You?

This post may seem all over the place, but my thoughts tend to be. So, I apologize in advance if it gets confusing 😬.

In my family, I know who I am. I am a mother and a wife. But, who am I outside of that? What is my personal identity? I have been working on figuring out who I am outside of my marriage and motherhood. I think I have a pretty good grip on who I am. What I like, what I don’t. I am becoming friends with myself, as weird as that sounds.

With this, I revisited the love languages recently [maybe I will go into detail on this in my next post]. I realized that I show love in the ways I want to receive love. So that brought up the question to my husband on what ways he feels loved. I discovered, he too, shows love in the way he wants to receive love.

I feel like it can make relationships difficult when you feel like feelings are not being reciprocated in the manner that makes you feel loved. How does it work when it isn’t in your nature to express love in the way your partner needs? Can you make it a habit to change the way you express it to meet their needs? Is it wrong to want your partner to fulfill those needs? Or should you love them regardless?

Then I got to thinking. Who does my husband think he is outside of being a garbage man, a father, and a husband? What is his identity? Sure I can name a few basics, but what is in the core? Then also, does he know what is in my core?

We have been together almost ten years now, we do know a lot about each other, but surely we are always learning and changing. I think it is important to continuously revisit these conversations. Yes we are a team, a family, but we are also individuals. We have needs and desires for ourselves. It is a constant balancing act.

While I am working on becoming my own friend,learning more about who I am as an individual. I invite you all to do the same. Who are you?