Find Your Wildheart

I never want to wonder who I’d become if I was loved right.

*The space between independence and being held*

That sentence has been sitting with me for a while now, so I decided to write it out. Not as a wishlist, not as a checklist of demands, but as a way of finally naming what I mean when I say I want a good life with a good partner.

Let me start with what I don’t mean.

I have watched a certain cycle play out too many times.

Fathers raise daughters to be strong. Independent. Confident. Then those same fathers turn around and want wives who don’t question them, don’t talk back, don’t ask for more than what they were given.

I have sat with ladies who love their fathers deeply, without irony, no complaints. And still wouldn’t dream of dating that version of a man. That’s not a contradiction they missed. It’s one they lived through.

Their mothers didn’t get a choice. A lot of women ‘were handed religion’ as the reason to stay. Submission dressed up as scripture. Silence dressed up as grace. They called it faith. It was often just fear with better branding, and a generation of women who were taught that questioning a man was questioning God.

So, when their daughters grow up and speak up, some of these same women get uncomfortable. Not because they don’t love their daughters. Because their daughters are naming, out loud, what they spent decades quietly enduring. It’s easier to call a daughter difficult than to sit with what that difficulty is actually exposing.

That’s a conversation most don’t want to stir. The insecurity of an older generation who settled isn’t really about the young. It’s about being confronted by a version of womanhood that refuses to shrink the way they had to.

I am not interested in picking up a baby in an adult body. I am not interested in inheriting a marriage that ran on obedience instead of respect. I am interested in a partner.

So here is what a partner looks like to me.

He’s teachable. He listens, actually listens, not the version of listening that’s really just waiting for a turn to speak. If I ever say, “he didn’t hear me out,” it will be a rare exception, not a pattern, because listening is simply who he is.

He is the one I don’t have to make excuses for in my own head. No quiet negotiations with myself about why something came out wrong, no weighing his frustrations against my own and trying to explain away a turn the day took. My mind gets to rest around him.

He knows my cycle the way he knows the weather, ovulation, luteal, period, all of it, and there’s a stock of sanitary items in the house, so I never have to make an emergency run to the store. He knows my comfort food without being told twice. If I mention a craving occasionally, a stock would be appreciated. Because cravings a seasonal too. If I show him something I liked online, I imagine finding it waiting for me at home, or better, I hear “remember that thing you showed me, want to go grab it as a mini date?” That’s effort I don’t have to ask for.

He spoke life into my wild imagination before I trusted it myself. He saw my strength before I could name it and told me so, out loud, more than once.

He challenges me intellectually, and he understands seasons, how I can play one song on repeat for a month straight and then, the next month, the vibe is simply gone and I need something else. He doesn’t take that personally. He just adjusts.

He’s the one who says, “dress up, I’m picking you up in an hour” and means it. The one whose compliments about my body and who I am land so consistently that my confidence stops needing to ask permission.

He’s the one I gossip with, because I love drama and I collect stories every time I step outside the house. He knows all the characters in my office by name and temperament. He hates Judy from work with the kind of passion of someone who’s never even met her, purely out of loyalty to me.

He’s also the one who annoys me the most and still manages to be my favorite character in this life. Because here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: when someone actually wants to fix things, you hear a plan. When someone just wants to stop you from leaving, you hear promises. I know the difference now, and I’m only interested in the first one.

He’s a partner in the fullest sense. If I go away, maybe a road trip with my girls, I don’t leave behind a manual on how to run the house or handle the kids (if kids are in the picture) because he was never a babysitter to begin with. That was always his house too, his responsibility too. When he calls me while I’m away, it’s just an update, not a status report from someone struggling to keep things afloat. The calls feel light because nothing is falling apart in my absence.

He books the trip, and somehow, I still don’t know where my passport is, or how we’re getting there, or whether my phone is charged. Actually, let’s be honest, the real question isn’t whether it’s charged, it’s when I last even saw it. He takes beautiful pictures of me. He understands angles, light, the difference between a photo and a moment.

Notice I never once mentioned money. That’s on purpose. I can sort my own bills. That was never going to be the question. The real question isn’t what I bring to the table. It’s a conversation about how his love reflects back onto me, whether I get to see myself more clearly through it, not smaller.

Most importantly, it’s a version of him that shows up when I’m not at my best, when I’m anxious or low or difficult to be around, and he doesn’t flinch or disappear or start keeping score. He stays curious about me instead of acting defensive. He can say sorry and mean it, without turning it into a performance or a debt I now owe. Safety isn’t just the big romantic gestures. It’s also who shows up on the ordinary, unglamorous days.

This person exists. We’re just yet to cross paths.

And until we do, I never want to wonder who I’d become if I was loved right. I’d rather just become her anyway, on my own terms, and let him meet me there when he arrives.