Follow Through — The Verb of Love

I want to tell you a story. Not a story of glitz and glamor. And certainly not a story where I was the hero. 

Nope, this story — among many — locates me squarely on the trail of my own journey toward receiving Love, toward embodying relationality, toward the sometimes challenging, always vulnerable, “walking the walk,” as the wise people say. 

It’s a story about the importance and down right neural, emotional and spiritual exercise of follow through. 

It was about a year into my marriage with my beloved husband, Nathan. 

We were in a scrimmage. A rumble or tussle, if you will. Picture two young folks sitting at their dining room table in their rental on a Thursday night. One who adapts to threat by getting bigger (hint, hint, that’s me) and one who shuts down. 

On a rough day, our dance looks like: the more he walls off, the bigger I get and the bigger I get, the more he walls off. 

We were dancing with the best of them on this particular evening until my emotions hit a new-to-me peak and before I knew it, my hand was stinging from the explosive contact it made with the wall. 

Yep, a part of me hit the wall out of rage. 

Am I proud of this? Absolutely not. And I share because I have the sneaking suspicion I am not the only one (though the particular action can take on countless forms — this part of me just happened to fancy wall hitting). Nathan immediately left the room as I thought about taking a bow for the biggest finale to a fight so far.

What happened next was just what I needed. 

After a moment, Nathan reentered the room and, with steel in his back, powerfully and quietly stated, “You talk about Love all the time but you do not treat me with it.”

I’d been in a relational stupor, unconscious, asleep, unaware. He dumped a bucket of ice water of truth and Love on my being and I woke up.

I recognized that I talked the talk but I was not walking the walk. 

Said in another way, my follow through was crap and it smelled like it too. 

Years later full of healing and integration, here’s what I’ve learned:

When Love is just a noun — an idea — it’s easy. It’s easy to have thoughts and opinions about. You can discuss it, think about it, write about it, and even genuinely want it. My love was a noun.

And nouns aren’t, themselves, living. They aren’t creating, breathing, walking and being. They don’t have their hands in the mess of life. They aren’t flesh. 

It’s the follow through — the doing of things you say no matter how clumsily — that alchemizes Love the noun into Love the verb.

Because saying things and actually doing things in alignment with what you say are different. 

And depending on your brain state, sometimes the only aligned thing you’re neurologically and physiologically capable of choosing is the smallest thing.

Is taking a breath. 

Is keeping your mouth shut. 

Is staying in the room. 

Is leaving without slamming the door. 

Is saying the brave thing. 

From my experience, the grandest, most impactful display of Love often comes in the smallest actions done consistently and that is hard.

That’s one of the very reasons why I am certified in Relational Life Therapy and work with couples. Because, if you’re like me, you might read this and think, “Oh yeah, totally going to follow through” and then turn around and still be as stuck as ever with your partner. 

And if you want to make significant progress in a short amount of time, whether you’re a couple or an individual, join me at the next Relationship Bootcamp (January 24-25, 2025). A two day intensive workshop where you can expect to:

1. Learn the why, how and what of relational living, including answering the favorite question, “Okay, but what do I actually do?!”

2. Discover, address and befriend the part of you who keeps you from what you want in a relationship

3. Get in the arena together with a coach (that’s me!) to take risks, try out skills, mess up, learn and try again

I speak from experience — Our first Relationship Bootcamp was the step we needed to move toward Love. 

Learn more and register here