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Love After Sovereignty: There Is More Life Here Because We Loved Each Other · Create Love Create Freedom

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Create Love, Create Freedom Podcast.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: This podcast explores feminine psychology, embodiment, sovereignty, archetypes, and conscious womanhood in a post spectacle world.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: My name is Alison Fisher, and my work centers on internal authority and relational clarity across the seasons of a woman's life.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: As you listen to today's episode, there's nothing you need to force here.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: We're simply noticing what is already present and allowing clarity to unfold over time.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: As we start today's episode, I'd like to ask a question.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: What is love for when you already have a life?
0:55
SPEAKER_00: For a very long time, women have been told a particular story about love.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: You build yourself, you become interesting, you become accomplished, you become beautiful, confident, and independent.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: You create friendships and work and a home and a life you enjoy.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: But somewhere underneath all of that, there can still be this quiet assumption that eventually the relationship arrives.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: And somehow that is when the story becomes complete.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I believe that anymore.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Not because I don't believe in love.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: I actually think I believe in something much more interesting than simply love.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Because what happens when a woman reaches a point in her life where she isn't waiting for someone else to begin it?
1:55
SPEAKER_00: She already has a life.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: She has work that matters to her, ideas she wants to explore, places she wants to go, friendships she treasures, perhaps a home she loves, rituals, ambitions, solitude, responsibilities, things she wants to build.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: She isn't sitting in an unfinished life waiting for a man to arrive and make the rest of it happen.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: So again I return to this question What is love for then?
2:36
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a much more interesting question than whether a woman needs a relationship, because I don't think mature love is really about need versus independence, and I don't think feminine sovereignty means arriving at a place where we proudly declare I don't need anyone.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: That can become its own kind of prison.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: I think sovereignty gives us the opportunity to ask a completely different question.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: If I already belong to myself, what kind of love becomes possible now?
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Because there's another story about relationships that I become increasingly interested in questioning.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: We often admire the successful man who has built an extraordinary life.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: He has the career, the accomplishments, the home, the wealth, the ambitions, the plans.
3:36
SPEAKER_00: He knows where he is going.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: And eventually he finds the quote unquote right woman, and she becomes the final beautiful addition to the life he has already created.
3:51
SPEAKER_00: But what if she's building too?
3:54
SPEAKER_00: What if she has a vision?
3:56
SPEAKER_00: What if she knows where she wants to go?
3:59
SPEAKER_00: What if her work matters deeply to her?
4:02
SPEAKER_00: What if she has dreams that cannot simply be folded neatly into someone else's existing architecture?
4:10
SPEAKER_00: Then perhaps the question isn't how do I fit into your life or even how do you fit into mine?
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the question becomes what could we create together that neither of us would have created alone?
4:28
SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean by love after sovereignty.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: Not two people protecting their independence from one another, and not two people dissolving into some romantic idea of becoming one.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Two people with genuine agency, two people who can say this is who I am, this is what matters to me, this is the life I've created, and then remain open enough to say, and loving you may change some of it.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: Not because I have surrendered authorship, but because now there are two authors, and perhaps that's one of the most beautiful possibilities of mature love.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: You don't need someone to give you a life, you don't need someone to complete you, you don't need someone to rescue you from yourself.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: You have already come home, you have already begun building, and from that place, love gets to become something entirely different, not completion, not absorption, not rescue, creation.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: So today I want to explore a question I think becomes possible only after we've developed some degree of sovereignty.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: What does love look like when a woman has already authored a life of her own?
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Let's begin.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: First we're going to examine how a woman is not the final addition to a man's life.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: There is a particular image of successful heterosexual partnership that I think we still romanticize.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: A man spends years building an extraordinary life.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: He develops his career, he builds wealth, he creates a beautiful home, he travels, he develops friendships and interests and ambitions.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: He becomes established, and then eventually he meets the woman, the woman who somehow completes the picture, his picture.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing inherently wrong with any of that.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: I hope men build lives they love.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: I hope they have meaningful work and beautiful homes and friendships and interests and dreams that belong entirely to them.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: But I've started noticing something about the way we tell this story.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: The man's life is treated as the architecture, and the woman is treated as the final addition.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: Where does he live?
7:14
SPEAKER_00: What does his career require?
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Where is his family?
7:19
SPEAKER_00: What is he already built?
7:21
SPEAKER_00: What does he want his future to look like?
7:24
SPEAKER_00: And then the relationship question quietly becomes where can she fit?
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a closet cleared for her.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's room made in the schedule.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's invited into the traditions.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he genuinely adores her.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he treats her beautifully, and still the underlying architecture remains his.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: I think that is something women who have deeply authored their lot their own lives eventually have to confront.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: Because she has an architecture too.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: She has work that matters to her.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: She has relationships she wants to protect.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: She may have a home she has carefully created.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: She has rituals, ambitions, financial goals, business ambitions, places she wants to live, things she wants to experience, perhaps things she wants to build that will take decades.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And none of those things become less important simply because she falls in love.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: This is where I think we need to distinguish between being chosen and being considered.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Being chosen can feel wonderful.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: Someone looks at you and says, I want you in my life.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: But being considered asks something deeper.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: It asks, what does loving you require me to reconsider about the life I thought I was going to have?
9:04
SPEAKER_00: And that question has to belong to both people.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Because perhaps he imagined living somewhere forever.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps she imagined living somewhere else.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps his work requires one kind of life, and hers requires another.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps both people have responsibilities they cannot simply abandon.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Neither person necessarily has to be wrong, but if one person's existing life automatically becomes the default, then we don't really have co authorship.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: We have incorporation.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: One person has been incorporated into the other's life.
9:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think women can participate in this without realizing it, especially when the man has built something impressive.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: It can be incredibly seductive to step into an already beautiful world.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: But I think a sovereign woman eventually has to ask herself Is this a life I am helping to create or merely a life I have been invited to join?
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Because those aren't the same thing.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about demanding that a man dismantle everything he's built to prove that he loves you.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't be partnership either.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: It's about recognizing that when two adults fully developed with fully developed lives choose one another, both lives become relevant to what happens next.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps his life changes.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps hers changes.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: Most likely both do.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Because love isn't simply asking Do I have space for you?
10:58
SPEAKER_00: It's asking what are we willing to create space for together?
11:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a much more interesting form of devotion.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't want a woman to have to become smaller so that she can fit beautifully into the empty space someone else has prepared for her.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: And I don't want her to require a man to become smaller so that he can fit into hers.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: I want to imagine I want something more imaginative than that.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Two people who can look at everything they've already built and say I value my life, my life, I value yours.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Neither one of us is the accessory to the other's story.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And if we decide to build a life together, then we both get to hold the pen.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Next let's examine how sovereignty changes the question.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the most profound things that happens when a woman becomes sovereign is that the question of love begins to change.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: For so much of our lives, consciously or unconsciously, the question can become will he choose me?
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Does he want me?
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Does he think I'm beautiful?
12:25
SPEAKER_00: Does he see a future with me?
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Am I the kind of woman someone would want to marry?
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think there's anything shameful about wanting to be chosen.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: There is something beautiful about being deeply wanted by another person.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: But sovereignty introduces another person into that decision you.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly the question isn't only does he choose me?
12:55
SPEAKER_00: It's also do I choose him?
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Do I actually like the life that becomes possible beside this person?
13:04
SPEAKER_00: Do I respect the way he moves through the world?
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Do I admire his character?
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Do I feel free to remain fully myself around him?
13:15
SPEAKER_00: Can he meet the woman I actually am or only the version of me that fits comfortably into the life he already has?
13:27
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most importantly, do I want what we could create together?
13:34
SPEAKER_00: That's a very different orientation to love, because you're no longer auditioning for a role in someone else's future.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: You're evaluating whether this relationship belongs in yours.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think that changes attraction as well.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: When you don't need someone to give you a life, you can become much more honest about whether you actually want the person standing in front of you.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to turn potential into compatibility.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to make someone extraordinary simply because they chose you.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to negotiate with yourself into wanting a relationship because it looks good on paper.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have to keep asking, can I make this work?
14:27
SPEAKER_00: I think that question has kept a lot of very capable women in relationships far longer than they actually want it to be there.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Because of course you can make many things work.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: You can accommodate, you can communicate, you can become more understanding, you can carry more, you can explain yourself differently, you can adjust your expectations, you can become incredibly skilled at maintaining something.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: But sovereignty asks, do I want to?
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Not could I survive this relationship?
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Not could I make this relationship successful?
15:12
SPEAKER_00: But is this something I genuinely want to build?
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where sovereignty can sometimes be misunderstood, because sovereignty isn't I don't need anyone.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: It isn't emotional invulnerability.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: It isn't refusing to compromise.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: It isn't building such a complete life that another human being becomes unnecessary.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: That's not sovereignty.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: That can become isolation dressed beautifully in the language of independence.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: To me, sovereignty means I don't have to abandon myself in order to love you.
15:56
SPEAKER_00: I can love you deeply, I can consider your needs, I can change, I can compromise, I can allow your existence to alter the shape of my life.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: And none of those things threaten my sovereignty because I am still participating in the authorship of those choices.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm not disappearing, I'm choosing.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what makes interdependence possible.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to cling to independence when you trust yourself not to disappear inside connection.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: You can need someone sometimes, you can rely on them.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: You can let them matter enormously.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: You can allow yourself to be affected by whether they're there.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Because belonging to yourself doesn't mean belonging only to yourself.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: It means that whatever you give is actually yours to give.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's one of the most beautiful changes that happens after sovereignty.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Love is no longer primarily asking will someone choose me?
17:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's not even simply asking who will I choose?
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Eventually it becomes what are we choosing together?
17:21
SPEAKER_00: What kind of relationship, what kind of life, what kind of values will organize it?
17:27
SPEAKER_00: What will we protect?
17:29
SPEAKER_00: What will we create?
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Who might we become because we loved one another?
17:37
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly love is no longer the reward a woman receives for finally becoming worthy enough to be chosen.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: It becomes something far more interesting, a choice she participates in making.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Next let's look at how love is not absorption.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the reasons sovereignty matters so much in love is that women don't always disappear inside relationships dramatically.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we disappear incrementally, one small decision at a time.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: His job pays more, so his career becomes the priority.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: His work is less flexible, so your schedule adjusts.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: His family lives nearby, so that's where you spend the holidays.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: He already owns the house, so you move into it.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: He has stronger preferences about where to live, how to spend money, what weekends should look like.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: And maybe none of those individual decisions are unreasonable.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: That's what makes this complicated.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: There doesn't necessarily have to be a controlling man standing there demanding that a woman surrender her life.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes two loving, decent people can make a series of perfectly rational decisions, and yet somehow, years later, discover that the life they created together looks remarkably remarkably like his life with her living inside it.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's worth paying attention to, because compromise isn't automatically mutuality.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes compromise becomes a pattern in which one person repeatedly adapts while the other person's life remains relatively unchanged.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: And women can be extraordinarily good at adapting.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: We know how to make things work, we anticipate needs, we accommodate, we reorganize, we create beauty inside circumstances we didn't necessarily choose.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Those can be wonderful capacities, but every strength has a shadow.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: And adaptability can become self erasure when we're no longer asking, what is all of this adaptation costing me?
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you still have your career, your friends, your interests, your opinions.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: You haven't disappeared, and yet slowly the things that matter deeply to you have migrated towards the edges of your life, the book you wanted to write, the place you wanted to live, the business you wanted to build, the solitude you need, the friendships you once tended carefully, the dreams that required more space than the relationship seemed able to give them.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Nothing was explicitly taken from you, you simply kept choosing everything else first.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why this conversation has to go deeper than boundaries, because boundaries are important, but a woman can have excellent boundaries and still organize her entire life around somebody else's center of gravity.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: The deeper question is where is the center of authorship?
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Who determines the architecture?
21:26
SPEAKER_00: Whose dreams are treated as fixed?
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Whose ambitions become negotiable?
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Whose inconvenience carries more weight?
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Who is repeatedly asked to become flexible so that the other person's life can remain intact?
21:46
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps one of the simplest questions we can ask about a shared life is if we examined what we've created together, could we find both of us still inside it?
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Could I see your dreams?
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Could I see mine?
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Could I see the things we've chosen together?
22:07
SPEAKER_00: Could I see the places where you changed because loving me mattered?
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Could I see the places where I changed because loving you mattered?
22:18
SPEAKER_00: Could I see something that neither of us would have created alone?
22:24
SPEAKER_00: Because love isn't absorption, but neither is it two people living completely separate lives and occasionally meeting in the middle.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Love requires us to affect one another, to accommodate one another, sometimes even to sacrifice for one another.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: The question is whether those sacrifices emerge from shared authorship or from an unspoken assumption that one person's life matters more.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think sovereignty becomes so important.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: A sovereign woman can compromise because compromise doesn't threaten her identity.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: She can move, she can change plans, she can support someone else's ambition.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: She can choose, sometimes, to put his needs before hers, but she can also expect him to do the same, not as scorekeeping, not fifty fifty in every decision, but as a deeper form of reciprocity.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Your life matters to me, and mine matters to you.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes love may ask more from one of us, sometimes it may ask more from the other.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: Different seasons will carry different weights, but across the life we're creating together, neither person should slowly become invisible.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think the goal of mature love is to find someone whose life you can successfully disappear into.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: And it isn't to find someone willing to disappear into yours.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: It's to build something spacious enough that both people remain visible.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: Both people remain alive, and both people can look around at the life they've created together and say yes, I can see you here, and I can still see me.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Next we're going to discuss how co authorship is different from compromise.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: I think when we talk about healthy relationships, we talk a lot about compromise, and the compromise matters.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Two people aren't going to want exactly the same thing all the time.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I give a little, sometimes you give a little, sometimes we meet somewhere in the middle.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: That's part of loving another human being.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: But I think co authorship is something deeper than compromise.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: Because compromise often begins with two already established positions.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: I want this, you want that.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: How much are each of us willing to give up so that we can stay together?
25:28
SPEAKER_00: Co-authorship asks a different question.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: What are we actually trying to create?
25:34
SPEAKER_00: And once we know that, maybe neither of our original answers is the right one anymore.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there is a third possibility that neither of us could have imagined before there was an us.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: I think that's where love becomes incredibly generative.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: Because perhaps the purpose of partnership isn't simply finding someone compatible enough to fit into the life you've designed.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps relationship itself can become a place of creation.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: You bring your imagination, I bring mine.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: You bring your history, I bring mine.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: Your desires meet mine, your strength encounters mine.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Your way of seeing the world changes what I can see, and mine changes what you can see.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: And from that encounter something new becomes possible.
26:34
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we create a home neither of us would have chosen alone.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we live somewhere neither of us originally imagined.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we develop traditions that didn't belong to either family we came from.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe our work changes, maybe our priorities change.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we travel differently.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we create a business together.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we create a family, maybe we don't.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we build an unconventional life that would make absolutely no sense to anyone else, but makes perfect sense to us.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: That is co-authorship.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think the difference is important because compromise can sometimes become an accounting system.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: I gave this up for you.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: You got your way last time.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: I moved for your career, so now you owe me something for mine.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those conversations are necessary.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Fairness matters, but I don't want love to become a lifetime negotiation over whose pre existing blueprint gets preserved.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: I'd rather ask, what are we building that makes some of these changes worth making?
27:58
SPEAKER_00: That's a different orientation.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Because now sacrifice can become chosen rather than extracted.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I give up something because we're cre what we're creating matters more to me than what I originally planned.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you do the same.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: And neither of us experiences that as losing ourselves because we participated in creating the thing we're choosing instead.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: I think that's an important part of sovereignty as well.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: A sovereign woman doesn't have to preserve every preference she's ever had simply to prove that she's still free.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: She can change her mind.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: She can be influenced.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: She can fall in love and discover that something she once considered non negotiable isn't actually important anymore.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: She can encounter another person's vision and think, Oh, I hadn't imagined that, but I want it.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: That's not self abandonment, that's expansion.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: And the same has to be possible for the person loving her.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: He may have imagined his life one way.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Then he encounters this particular woman with her ambitions, her mind, her desires, her way of seeing the world, and realizes the life I imagined before I knew you isn't necessarily the life I want now that I do.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: There's something incredibly romantic about that to me, not I'll squeeze you into my existing plans, and not I'll throw away everything I am for you.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: But knowing you has expanded what I can imagine.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that's what genuine partnership can do.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't merely add another person to the story.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: It changes what the story is capable of becoming.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is why co authorship requires two people with genuine agency.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: You can't coauthor with someone who always differs.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: You can't coauthor with someone who always dominates.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: You need two people capable of saying this matters to me, and also tell me what matters to you.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Two people willing to influence and be influenced, to bring a vision and allow that vision to evolve.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: Because perhaps one of the most beautiful things love can offer us isn't someone who perfectly fits the life we've already imagined.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: It's someone with whom we can ask what could we create together that neither of us would have ever thought to create alone?
30:55
SPEAKER_00: And then begin writing from there.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: Next we're going to examine how sovereignty doesn't mean remaining untouched.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a shadow side of sovereignty that we don't talk about enough.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: We can do all of this work to come home to ourselves.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: We learn boundaries, we learn discernment, we learn how to enjoy our own company.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: We create lives that feel deeply our own.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: And after everything it took to get there, we can become incredibly protective of what we've built.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: My home, my routines, my work, my solitude, my money, my plans, my future, my life.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: And understandably, we don't want anyone coming along and dismantling it.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: But if we're not careful, sovereignty can quietly become something else untouchability.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: No one gets enough access to disrupt me.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: No one gets enough influence to change my plans.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: No one's needs become important enough to inconvenience me.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: No relationship is allowed to ask anything of me that I wasn't already planning to give.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: And eventually what we call sovereignty can become a beautifully constructed fortress.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: We're safe inside it, but we're also alone.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Because intimacy requires permeability.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: If I truly love someone, that person is going to affect me.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Their joy will matter to me, their grief will matter to me.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Their dreams will enter my consciousness.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: Their needs will sometimes change what I do with my day.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: Their existence may alter decisions I once assumed belonged entirely to me.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think of that as failure of sovereignty.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what love does.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: The question isn't will this relationship change me?
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Of course it will.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: The deeper question is can I allow myself to be changed without abandoning myself?
33:20
SPEAKER_00: I think that's one of the great developmental tasks after sovereignty.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: Because when we've spent years learning not to disappear inside other people, sometimes the next lesson is learning that being influenced is not the same thing as being controlled.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Compromise is not automatically self abandonment.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Needing someone is not automatically dependence.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Changing your plans for someone you love is not automatically losing yourself.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Sacrifice is not automatically oppression.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes sacrifice is one of the most beautiful expressions of love precisely because it is freely chosen.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: I can say this isn't what I would have chosen for myself, and also but because I love you, I am willing to choose it with you.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: That's different.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: Agency remains, authorship remains.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing it because I'm afraid you'll leave.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing it because I've been taught that my needs matter less.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing it because I don't know who I am without you.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing it because you matter to me.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: And when someone matters to us, their well being becomes part of the landscape of our decisions.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: I actually think there is something incredibly mature about that, because sovereignty was never supposed to make us incapable of attachment.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: It was supposed to make attachment safer.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: I belong to myself deeply enough that I can let you matter.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: I can depend on you sometimes, I can let you depend on me.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: I can miss you, I can need your comfort.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: I can recognize something because you need me.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: I can allow your perspective to change mine.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: I can discover that the future I imagine before loving you is no longer the future I want.
35:34
SPEAKER_00: And I don't have to panic and ask, am I losing myself?
35:38
SPEAKER_00: I can ask something much more discerning.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: Am I choosing this freely?
35:44
SPEAKER_00: Is there reciprocity here?
35:47
SPEAKER_00: Does this relationship still contain both of us?
35:53
SPEAKER_00: Because perhaps the opposite of self-abandonment isn't independence.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's self-possession.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: And a self-possessed woman doesn't have to clutch herself so tightly that no one can ever reach her.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: She can open, she can soften, she can allow someone to become precious to her.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: She can even surrender certain things without surrendering herself.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: I think that's where love after sovereignty becomes especially beautiful.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: You no longer need to protect your freedom by making sure no one matters too much.
36:36
SPEAKER_00: You know that you belong to yourself.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: And because you know that, you can choose to belong with someone as well.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: Not as possession, not as absorption, but as devotion.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: Sovereignty means I belong to myself.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: Love means I can freely choose what and whom I allow to matter deeply to me, and perhaps mature intimacy requires both.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Next we're going to examine how love becomes a stewardship.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: I think there comes a point in mature love when the question changes again.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: At first we might ask, do I love this person?
37:28
SPEAKER_00: Then do I want to build a life with this person?
37:32
SPEAKER_00: But eventually, if we choose one another and begin creating something together, another question emerges.
37:41
SPEAKER_00: How do we care for what we've created?
37:44
SPEAKER_00: Because love doesn't remain alive simply because it was once extraordinary.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: A relationship is something living, and living things require tending.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: I think this is where love begins to become a form of stewardship, not ownership, not possession, but stewardship.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: There is something here that has been entrusted to both of us.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Your heart has been entrusted in some measure to me.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: Mine has been entrusted to you.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: We have memories, trust, intimacy, perhaps a home, perhaps children, perhaps shared finances or work or responsibilities, perhaps simply years of knowing one another in a way very few other people ever will.
38:38
SPEAKER_00: And none of that should be treated casually.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we talk about relationships as though finding the right person is the difficult part.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: Find someone compatible, find someone emotionally mature.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: Find someone whose values align with yours.
38:59
SPEAKER_00: Find someone who wants the same kind of life.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: And yes, those things matter enormously, but even the right relationship can be neglected.
39:10
SPEAKER_00: Even good love can become careless.
39:14
SPEAKER_00: Even two people who genuinely adore one another can stop paying attention.
39:20
SPEAKER_00: That's why I think love eventually asks something beyond compatibility.
39:26
SPEAKER_00: It asks for care.
39:28
SPEAKER_00: What does this relationship need from us now?
39:31
SPEAKER_00: Not what did it need five years ago?
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Not what does a healthy relationship supposedly look like?
39:41
SPEAKER_00: What does this relationship need in this season?
39:45
SPEAKER_00: Maybe one person is caring more than usual.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: Maybe something that worked beautifully no longer works.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've become too busy.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've stopped being curious about one another.
39:58
SPEAKER_00: Maybe one person's dreams have quietly become the priority.
40:03
SPEAKER_00: Maybe resentment is beginning to accumulate underneath something neither of us wants to discuss.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've become excellent logistical partners and forgotten to be lovers.
40:18
SPEAKER_00: Stewardship notices it doesn't wait until something is collapsing before deciding it's worthy of attention.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: And I think that this is where everything we've been discussing about wisdom and judgment enters love because there isn't a universal formula for tending a relationship.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes love requires patience, sometimes it requires confrontation, sometimes it requires forgiveness, sometimes it requires a boundary.
40:51
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it asks us to stay.
40:54
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the wisest and most loving thing we can do is leave.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes one person needs to carry more for a while.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes what looks like generosity has become a pattern of one person carrying everything.
41:12
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom differentiates.
41:15
SPEAKER_00: That's why I don't think stewardship means preserving a relationship at any cost.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Stewardship isn't martyrdom.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean the relationship becomes more important than the people inside it.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: In fact, part of stewarding love well is protecting the dignity and development of both people.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: The relationship should not survive by consuming one of them.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: And this is also why stewardship has to be mutual.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: One person cannot indefinitely tend something that belongs to two people.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: You cannot communicate enough for two, repair enough for two, remain curious enough for two, carry the emotional responsibility for two.
42:08
SPEAKER_00: At some point, love requires two active participants saying this matters to me too.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is one of the most beautiful forms of devotion, not simply I love you, but I will pay attention to what we are creating together.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: I will notice when something needs care, I will tell you when something hurts.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: I will listen when you tell me I've hurt you.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: I will allow our relationship to evolve.
42:41
SPEAKER_00: I will not assume that because you chose me once, I no longer have to be someone worthy of choosing.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: And I will not assume that because I love you I can stop choosing you consciously.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's what love looks like after sovereignty.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: Two people who belong to themselves, who have chosen to create something together, and who understand that what they've created now deserves their care.
43:12
SPEAKER_00: Not because love is fragile, but because love is precious.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the deepest expression of mature love isn't simply finding someone extraordinary, but perhaps it's becoming two people capable of saying what exists between us matters.
43:32
SPEAKER_00: Let's attend it well.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, we're going to look at how the relationship should create more life, not less.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the questions we can ask about relationship is actually quite simple.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: What is this love creating?
43:55
SPEAKER_00: Not just are we still together?
43:58
SPEAKER_00: Do we love each other?
44:00
SPEAKER_00: Are we compatible?
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Have we figured out how to make the relationship work?
44:05
SPEAKER_00: But instead, what becomes possible because we are together?
44:10
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a very different way of evaluating love, because a relationship can technically work and still slowly make one or both people's lives smaller.
44:22
SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps more often, one person's life becomes larger while the other's becomes smaller.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: One person becomes more ambitious, the other becomes more accommodating.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: One person's career expands, the other becomes responsible for making that expansion possible.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: One person's friendships and interests remain intact.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: The others slowly disappear.
44:53
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps no one deliberately chose that.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it simply happened through a thousand small decisions.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: But eventually I think mature love has to ask, are we creating more life here or less?
45:12
SPEAKER_00: And by more life I don't mean more activity, more travel, more money, more accomplishments, more impressive photographs of a beautiful relationship.
45:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean aliveness.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: Do I feel more capable of inhabiting myself because I love you?
45:32
SPEAKER_00: Do you?
45:34
SPEAKER_00: Does this relationship give both of us room to develop?
45:38
SPEAKER_00: Can we become more intellectually alive, more creative, more courageous, more emotionally honest, more playful, more rested, more ambitious when ambition calls us?
45:54
SPEAKER_00: More willing to slow down when life asks something quieter of us.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: Can we build things?
46:01
SPEAKER_00: Can we change?
46:02
SPEAKER_00: Can we surprise one another?
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Can we remain curious about who the other person is becoming?
46:10
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think love should freeze us at the moment we met.
46:15
SPEAKER_00: If we're together for ten years, twenty, forty.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: I hope neither of us is exactly the person the other originally chose.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: I hope we've lived, I hope we've learned, I hope we've changed our minds.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: I hope we've developed capacities we didn't have before.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: I hope we've encountered versions of one another we couldn't possibly have known when we first fell in love.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the greatest privileges of long term love, and that it could be getting to witness that.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: Not please remain the person who fits the relationship we created twenty years ago.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: But who are you becoming now?
47:03
SPEAKER_00: And how does what we're creating together make room for her?
47:10
SPEAKER_00: That requires a very different kind of security, because sometimes someone's expansion will inconvenience us.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: Their growth may require renegotiation, their dream may ask something of us.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: Their changing needs may disrupt an arrangement that worked beautifully before, and that's where stewardship returns.
47:35
SPEAKER_00: We don't simply protect the relationship from change, we help the relationship become capable of holding change.
47:44
SPEAKER_00: I think that's part of what co authorship means.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: The relationship itself continues to be written.
47:51
SPEAKER_00: There isn't a point where we say good, we figured it out.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: Now let's preserve this forever.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: Life keeps moving, and so do we.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps love becomes one of the places where that movement is not only tolerated, but supported.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to be careful here though.
48:12
SPEAKER_00: A partner is not responsible for making you extraordinary.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: Your development remains your responsibility.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Your dreams remain yours to tend.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: Your partner does not exist to heal you, motivate you, finance your ambitions, regulate your emotions, or transform you into the person you've refused to become on your own.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: That's not what I mean by a relationship creating more life.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean something much more reciprocal.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: Because you are in my life, there are possibilities I can now imagine that I couldn't imagine alone.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: And because I am in yours, I hope the same is true for you.
49:01
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I see something in you you haven't fully trusted yet.
49:05
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you challenge an assumption I've carried for years.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: Maybe together we create a home that becomes a place of extraordinary warmth.
49:14
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we build something, maybe we care for people, maybe we travel, maybe we create traditions.
49:23
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we contribute to our community.
49:26
SPEAKER_00: Maybe our relationship gives both of us enough safety that we can take greater risks elsewhere.
49:34
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we simply create a life with more beauty, laughter, intellectual depth, tenderness, rest, and meaning than either of us would have created alone.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: There are countless ways for love to become generative, and perhaps that's ultimately what I mean when I talk about coauthorship.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: Not two people completing one another, not two people merging until no one can remember where one ends and the other begins.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: And not two fiercely independent people protecting their individual lives from the inconvenience of genuine intimacy, something else.
50:22
SPEAKER_00: Two whole lives encountering one another and becoming generative.
50:29
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps one of the most beautiful measures of a relationship isn't how completely two people have merged.
50:36
SPEAKER_00: It's whether, years later, both can look at the life around them and recognize there is more life here because we loved each other, not less of me, not less of you, more of what became possible because there wasn't us.
50:57
SPEAKER_00: As we end today's episode, I would like to discuss this question What could we create that neither of us could create alone?
51:12
SPEAKER_00: Maybe this is the question I find most interesting about love now.
51:17
SPEAKER_00: Not will someone choose me, not will I ever find the right person?
51:22
SPEAKER_00: And not even can I build a beautiful life on my own?
51:26
SPEAKER_00: I already know I already know that I can.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: The question that interests me now is what could two people create together that neither of them could create alone?
51:39
SPEAKER_00: Because if I have already authored a life of my own, if I know how to come home to myself, if I know what matters to me, if I have dreams and work and friendships and rituals and a future that I am already actively creating, then perhaps love doesn't need to rescue me from an unfinished life.
52:04
SPEAKER_00: And it certainly doesn't need to complete me.
52:07
SPEAKER_00: Maybe love gets to do something much more interesting.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: It gets to surprise me.
52:13
SPEAKER_00: You arrive with an entire world I didn't create, a history I didn't live, ideas I haven't considered, dreams I didn't imagine, ways of seeing that aren't mine, and I arrive with all of that too, and neither of us is asking the other person to disappear, if neither of us needs to dominate the story, if neither of us is waiting to be rescued, then perhaps we can place those two lives beside one another and ask, what wants to exist now that there is an us?
52:52
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a home, a family, work we do together, a life of travel or service or creation.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it's simply a way of loving and living that neither of us had ever experienced before.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, and perhaps that's what that's part of what makes it beautiful.
53:14
SPEAKER_00: Because co authorship means we don't have the entire story written before the other person arrives.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: There has to be some blank paper left, some willingness to be surprised, some part of the future that hasn't already been decided.
53:32
SPEAKER_00: And I think that requires something from both people.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: I have to know myself well enough that I don't disappear into you, but I also have to be open enough that loving you can change me.
53:46
SPEAKER_00: I have to value the life I've built without worshiping it so much that there is no room for another person to affect its shape, and you have to be willing to do the same.
53:59
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that's one of the paradoxes of love after sovereignty.
54:03
SPEAKER_00: I belong to myself, and because I belong to myself, I can choose what I give, where I bend, what I protect, what I change, and I can choose what I build with you.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: Not because my life was incomplete before you arrived, but because something new became possible when you did.
54:27
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is what mature partnership can become, not the woman standing at the end of a successful man's story as evidence that he has finally acquired everything a successful life is supposed to contain, not the man standing at the edge of a sovereign woman's life, carefully forbidden from disrupting anything she has built, but two people standing beside one another, each holding a pen, each capable of writing alone, each with pages already filled, and still willing to look at the blank pages ahead and say, I don't want you to write my life for me, I don't want to write yours for you.
55:17
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps there are chapters neither of us could write alone.
55:22
SPEAKER_00: And if we choose one another, let's see what we can create together.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: Let whatever was useful in today's episode settle in its own time.
55:37
SPEAKER_00: Clarity, I found, tends to unfold naturally when we give it space.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay rooted, stay sovereign, and trust your own becoming.