The One Where You Find Out You're the Soil

We’re back this week with more on the Connection Loop™. You can find that newsletter here. The idea of a full cup (and in the Division Loop™, its counterpart would be self-neglect) is what we’re focusing on today. But I’m also introducing an analogy that I really love.

For a lot of years, I low-key expected my marriage to make me happy. Not in an obvious, dramatic way. It was more subtle than that. It was the quiet disappointment when my husband didn't notice I was having a hard day. The frustration when he didn't say the right thing, or do the thing I needed, or just know, the way I felt like he should know, that I needed some extra love that week. I wasn't asking him to complete me out loud. But I was absolutely expecting it.

And here's what I've realized, both in my own marriage and in working with women: this is incredibly common. At least one person in most marriages is quietly pulling from the relationship instead of pouring into it. And a lot of the time, that person doesn't even know they're doing it.

Here's the analogy that changed things for me.

I learned this analogy from the book, The Go-Giver Marriage, by John and Ana Mann, and I loved it. Think about a tree. A really beautiful, healthy, thriving tree. That tree is your marriage. Now think about what actually keeps a tree alive; it's not the tree itself. It's the soil. The soil is what feeds it, sustains it, and gives it what it needs to grow.

In your marriage, you and your husband are the soil.

Each of you is responsible for the quality of what you bring. And when the soil is rich, when both people are showing up as full, whole, tended-to human beings, the tree flourishes. But when one or both of you are depleted, dried out, running on empty? The tree suffers. No matter how much you want it to thrive, you can't pour from soil that has nothing left in it.

This means that your happiness, your emotional health, your sense of self, those are your responsibility. Not his. And his are not yours to carry, either.

Now, before you come for me…

This doesn't mean your husband has no impact on how you feel. Of course he does! A hard conversation, a thoughtless comment, a really terrible week; those things affect you, and that's completely normal and human. Your partner absolutely influences your happiness on any given day. That's part of being in a close relationship with someone.

But there's a difference between being affected by your partner and being dependent on your partner for your baseline okayness. One is intimacy. The other is a setup for both of you to feel really stuck.

When we outsource our happiness to our husbands, we're essentially handing them a job they were never meant to have. And most of them don't even realize they've been handed it; they just know that nothing they do ever seems to be quite enough. That's exhausting for him. And honestly? It's exhausting for you, too, because you're always waiting on someone else to fill something up that only you can fill. Your full cup is yours to fill.

So what does a full cup actually look like?

It looks like knowing what genuinely recharges you and actually doing those things, not someday, not when everything settles down, but regularly. It looks like processing your hard stuff, with a therapist, a coach (ahem), a trusted friend, in your journal, in prayer, whatever works for you, instead of dropping it at his feet and expecting him to fix it. It looks like taking ownership of your own emotional state instead of narrating it at him and waiting for him to make it better.

It looks like doing the inner work. That's not a cute buzzword, it's the real thing. Getting to know yourself well enough to understand why you react the way you react, what you actually need, and how to meet some of those needs on your own.

And part of that, and this might surprise you, is staying connected to your femininity. Not for him. For you. When you allow yourself to soften, to feel, to be the warm and receptive person you actually are underneath all the managing and doing and holding everything together, something shifts inside you. You feel more like yourself. And a woman who feels like herself is a woman with a full cup. Tending to your femininity isn't just good for your marriage, it's good for your soul.

And here's what happens when you do all of that: you stop showing up to your marriage as someone who needs to be filled up. You show up as someone who has something to give. And that changes everything, because now you have two people bringing 100% to something, and that tree? That tree gets really, really good.

Now, I have to be honest with you about something.

Most of the time, when you start showing up differently, fuller, softer, more grateful, less reactive, your husband responds. Maybe not immediately, maybe not perfectly, but he notices. And things shift. I've seen it happen over and over again, and I lived it myself.

But it doesn’t always happen.

Sometimes you do the work. You tend to your soil, you fill your cup, you show up as the most grounded, generous version of yourself, and he doesn't meet you there. He stays exactly where he is. And that is a really painful thing to sit with, especially when you've been putting in genuine effort.

Here's how I want you to think about that, though: it's information.

If you give everything you've got to this marriage and he consistently brings nothing, that tells you something important about him and about where things stand. And you get to decide what to do with that information. That's yours. I'm not here to tell you what that decision should look like.

What I will say is this: even in that disappointing scenario, you are still better off than you were before. Because the work you did wasn't just for the tree, it was for you. The woman who knows herself, tends to herself, and shows up with a full cup is better equipped to handle hard things, make clear-headed decisions, and know what she deserves. That version of you doesn't disappear just because he didn't rise to meet you.

And more often than not? He will. But either way, you gain something valuable.

This is not about doing more.

I want to be clear about that, because I know some of you just read all of that and thought, "Great, another thing that's my responsibility." That's not what I'm saying.

Taking care of yourself is not a burden. It's actually the kindest thing you can do for your marriage. When you're well, when you're rested, regulated, and rooted in who you are, you show up so differently. You're less reactive. You're more generous. You're easier to be around, and honestly, you're a lot more fun.

You can't give what you don't have. So go get some!  Your marriage will thank you for it.

As always, I'd love to hear from you. Where are you at with this one? Is your cup full, or does it need some tending to? Comment below and let me know.

If you’d like to chat with me about your marriage, you can book a complimentary session with me here. As always, gift sessions are sales-pitch free.