What if our relationships are teaching us lessons we’re not ready to learn?
Dear Universe,
What if our relationships are teaching us lessons we’re not ready to learn?
My ex-husband used to drive me fucking nuts because any time I was stressed or worried about something, his solution would be to say, “Just relax – it will all work out.”
And it made me want to punch him in the face.
How could I possibly relax? No. The only way for things to work out was if I went into overdrive thinking and planning and thinking some more. That inevitably brought on more worry and usually lots and lots of tears.
But guess what, Universe? Things always did end up working out. And probably 99% of the time, the working out thing had absolutely nothing to do with any of my attempt to control the outcome.
The fucker was right all along.
And now here I am months later, writing to the world about how I am learning to surrender more to life – to trust in you that things do in fact work out the way they are meant to and to trust that I am capable of rolling with the punches as they do.
It only took a wildly painful divorce for me to finally figure that out.
Only now can I see that he had been giving me the damn lesson all along. But I wasn’t ready to receive it then. I couldn’t see it as a lesson to be learned. I only saw it as a pain in my ass.
And that has gotten me wondering now, Universe, about how many of the pain-in-the-ass things our partners do are actually just growth hurdles for us? Mirrors into the shit we are meant to face and learn – sometimes things we need to change within ourselves, and sometimes things we can no longer accept.
That seems pretty brutal, I guess.
Relationships are supposed to be love and happiness and all of that. And yeah, I still believe they should be. But I think I am also understanding now that they are the biggest incubators of our personal development if we let them be.
Which… in a way is far more beautiful than it is brutal.
I stand here now, Universe, with the opportunity to enter new relationships in the future. I am certain that my next partner will do plenty of pain-in-the-ass things that will piss me off (and 100% he can expect the same from me).
I only hope that I will be a little quicker to recognize the mirrors that he will be holding up for me when that happens. I hope I will be open to seeing what they reflect back.
I look forward to that – a partnership filled with not just joy and love, but also with challenge and growth. I look forward to brutally beautiful.
XO – Bailee
October 14, 2026
