A heatwave. 37 degrees in the shade, and it’s only 10 in the morning. We live in a beautiful build, every corner of it shaped by our identity over the past year and a half. Every piece, every screw, every decision big and small feels so personal. Yet at this moment, this deeply personal house doesn’t protect me from the forces of nature. I feel frustrated. It’s too hot. I search for refuge and can’t find it.
Shai voices his discomfort first, so mine folds back inside me to keep the balance. “Okay, it will pass, it’s just a wave,” I tell him, then myself, trying to stay calm within the hot wind that won’t stop blowing against my skin.
I suggest we drive to the ocean. I remember that within fifteen minutes we can escape this heat and feel relief. The thought alone rearranges my body chemistry, and suddenly I find the strength to take responsibility, to mobilize us both toward a little ease.
We drive. Shai is in discomfort. I can feel it in every heavy breath inside of the car, but I don’t have the energy to got into this conversation.
At the beach, I sit with a book on the sand while he works in a cafe with his laptop. Later, when my body has cooled, I join him. We hug, we wait for food, and then - everything I didn’t want to surface in the car erupts between us.
The heat has pushed everything up, exposing the cracks in our journey. My attempt to avoid the conversation only made the storm louder.
“I can’t keep going like this.”
“We need to recalculate our path.”
“I want us to have a home that can actually hold us through this kind of weather.”
“I need time and space to devote to what matters most to me right now: my art.”
“We’ve reached a point where too many of our resources go into the land, and not enough into our own personal growth.”
I couldn’t look at him. My eyes filled with tears, my throat closed, fatigue washed over me like a fog. Inside my head I heard the same voice again and again: I can’t… not again… protect yourself.
I felt lost in the weight of it all. Days of joy and fulfilment followed by this crushing heaviness. What does it even mean to “recalculate our path”? Why now, when I’ve been saying for so long that we can? Why did we wait so long?
I was angry. At him. At me. At us. At how hard it all feels.
We drove home in silence. I was shaken, confused, my body closed and trembling. I was afraid.
From the very beginning, I knew that the option to make changes in our path was always there. That’s part of what gives me freedom, what makes this life feel possible—the awareness that nothing is fixed. That we can and should always choose again.
I know everything we do is in service of the endless journey. A path of non-attachment, of essence, of celebrating both the small and great moments. Every turn we take nourishes our growth, together and apart. It’s not a one-way ticket. It changes, because we change.
But this time something was different.
For a year and a half, it felt like I’ve been the one holding the container for most of our struggles. Now, Shai was speaking in a different tone. He was taking responsibility, saying this has to change. That his choice in us is clearer than ever. That he knows our living conditions must evolve to support the path we’re asking for. That it needs to happen now.
Something in his gaze had shifted. This time, it didn’t feel like he was asking me to find a solution or a thread to follow. His eyes were steady, clear. It scared me. Because at the core, it released me from a role I’ve held for so long: being the one who carries the strength, the optimism, the wide vision for us both.
I was scared to let it go. Scared to step into something new.
But from that gaze, from the tectonic movement in the ground of our relationship, I finally felt my own need for a broader kind of planning. Not the planning of tomorrow or next month, but one that touches on children, finances, new foundations of life, beginning now.
And to allow that planning, I first have to let go of the role I’ve identified with. To recognise the change already happening inside me, and between us. To acknowledge that I no longer have to be the one holding the "knowing" for both of us. I can also be confused, and let his knowing lead us.
These moments remind me again how much our relationship demands the delicate dance between vulnerability and non-attachment. In most times vulnerability arrives when I understand I can no longer carry everything, when the pain spreads through my body and I go numb. These are the moments of helplessness, when the strong image shatters and, if I’m lucky, not long after comes the willingness to be exposed. Vulnerability creates more space for me, for us - a space it is almost impossible to access when I keep trying to balance everything at my own expense.
And alongside it, I meet the practice of non-attachment. To release the idea that what we’ve built must hold exactly as it is. To release the script I painted in my mind about how our life would look. To agree that things change, that our dynamic changes, and that this is what allows us to live in love and friendship for so many years.
I keep rediscovering the difference between non-attachment and giving up. Letting go of attachment isn’t surrendering—it’s a chance to release control, and let discovery guide us into new forms of home, of togetherness , of belonging.
It’s about allowing myself to be exposed, while also letting go. Not clinging to a fixed picture, but letting our hearts attune again and again.
And right there, within the fragility and uncertainty, I find the reminder: our connection isn’t held by the outer structures around us, but by our choice to stay together through, and because of, the changes.
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