Living with my partner has been a really wonderful experience. He’s one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. Our relationship is so completely different than any other romantic or sexual relationship I’ve ever been in before. I honestly didn’t know that healthy relationships, while not perfect, don’t have to be hard or hurtful or filled with agony. My partner and I disagree sometimes. We have moments where we lose patience with each other. But those moments don’t carry over into everything else, and the disagreements are resolved quickly and with compassion and love and consideration for one another. I’ve never known a love like this. So often I feel like I’m not doing enough for him because nothing I’ve done has ever been enough for anyone else, and he does so much for me. But then he holds me and reminds me that who I am is enough for him, and that I don’t have to stress about us.

My partner and I both suffer from mental illness. When we first started dating, I thought for sure our relationship would be fraught with toxicity, selfishness, and a constant battle over boundaries because that’s all I’ve seen, not only in my relationships, but in relationships around me. And it’s exhausting. I was starting to think that love was really just a synonym for misery, and I was wondering if the good moments were worth the soul sucking insidiousness of the rest of it.

But being with my partner is, dare I say it, easy. The longer I’m with him, the more I feel myself relax, unclench my muscles and allow myself to just breathe and exist in a place of belonging that doesn’t disappear every time one of us has a bad day. I’m given space to be myself, which is something I’ve never had before, especially not without a certain list of expectations regarding who that “myself” is/does. And it’s not that we’re perfect people, or that our relationship is without its problems. It’s just that we don’t approach our problems with a “me versus you” mentality that seems so common in our society. We both hold valid feelings, valid needs, and valid wants, and we express those things in ways that communicate love.

Now, we’re also still in a young relationship. I have no delusions about that. We haven’t been together long enough for our individual quirks and habits to get annoying or build resentment. But I’m hoping that since the foundation we’re building is one of equality, one without passive aggression and manipulation and other toxic traits, that we can minimize those things even as our relationship matures. My marriage, and a couple of other relationships I’ve witnessed up close, have shown me exactly what I don’t want in a partnership. It’s easy to say the right words and throw out platitudes about boundaries. It’s harder to actually live out those things. And I want this partnership to be just that: a place with mutual love, belonging, and respect where we’re both allowed to be who we are and express ourselves without facing undue lashing out.

I’ve never been so accepted as I am with him. Not by anyone who expressed romantic or sexual interest in me. There’s always been too much control, too much domination exerted, too much of my needs denied, neglected, and invalidated. Today, I’m sitting at my new desk set up in the bedroom; I’m staring out our bedroom window at the blue sky turning cloudy; I’m listening to the calls of crows in the trees around our complex, and I’m sipping a homemade cinnamon latte, breathing in gratitude for where I am. It’s not that all my problems are solved, because they’re not. PTSD, anxiety, and depression still take me through rough days. But I feel so much less alone, so much less weighed down by insecurity and self-doubt, so much more deserving of love, belonging, and acceptance. I see the changes in myself. Sometimes even the smallest changes are enough to show us how powerful we really are.