I’ve been sitting with this post for a while now. Turning it over in my hands like a warm plate, I wasn’t sure I was ready to serve. But here I am, and today I’m serving myself a big, generous slice of humble pie. If you’ve been following my journey, you know I got raw with you. I told you about my divorce. I told you about feeling invisible. Unseen. Unheard. Alone in a marriage that was supposed to be my safe place. And I meant every single word of it. That was my truth. That was where I stood, and I will never apologize for honoring what I felt in that season. But today I want to do something that takes a different kind of courage. I want to backtrack. Not on my decision — never on my decision — but on the story I told myself about why.
Let me start here: I do not regret leaving. I want to be crystal clear about that, especially for those of you sitting in a marriage that’s slowly making you disappear. Leaving was absolutely the right choice. Because here’s the beautiful, unexpected truth — I don’t believe he would ever have truly seen me, heard me, or appreciated me the way he does now if I had stayed. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for a relationship is to stop pouring into a version of it that isn’t working. So this isn’t a story about going back to what was. It’s a story about God rebuilding something entirely new from the rubble.
The Man I Never Understood
For twenty years, I loved a man I couldn’t figure out. I couldn’t understand why he thought the way he did. Why he said the things he said. Why he responded — or didn’t respond — the way I so desperately needed him to. At the time, it all felt so cold. So insensitive. Like I was screaming into a void, and he simply couldn’t hear me. And then something shifted. Now, I know how this sounds. I know. Because don’t they all “change” to win you back? Aren’t they sweet as pie for three months, only to slide right back into old patterns the second they feel safe again? Sister, I thought the exact same thing. When he asked me to come back and work on things, my guard was up to the sky. I gave myself a private deadline. Three months. I told myself, “I love this man. We built two decades and a whole life together. I don’t want to live without him — but I am not, under any circumstances, tolerating bad behavior again.” The moment the old patterns crept back in, I was gone. That was the deal I made with myself. No exceptions. But something happened in those three months that I never saw coming.
He Opened
For the first time in twenty years, he opened up to me. He told me how hurt he was. What he was feeling underneath it all. What he’d been carrying silently this whole time. And I sat there stunned, because I was finally seeing him — not the guarded man I’d spent two decades bumping up against, but the tender, vulnerable soul hiding underneath. The one I had always, always wanted. Those conversations led him to counseling. And what we discovered there didn’t just change our relationship — it rearranged the entire way I understood the last twenty years of my life.
He was diagnosed with autism. And suddenly, so much of what had felt like cruelty, or coldness, or willful neglect… made sense. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It’s that he was wired to experience and express the world differently than I ever knew. And here’s where it gets almost too poetic to be a coincidence: I was diagnosed with ADHD. Me, forgetting everything. Him, remembering everything. Two people standing on opposite ends of the spectrum, spending twenty years wondering why on earth we couldn’t just communicate — when the truth was, we were quite literally speaking two different neurological languages. I don’t believe in accidents. I believe God and the universe conspire to reveal things to us in divine timing — and not one moment sooner than we’re ready. We weren’t ready to hear this ten years ago. We are now.
The Humble Pie
So here it is. My apology. My reckoning. My slice. I was 100% certain he was a narcissist. I said it. I believed it. I built an entire understanding of my pain on top of that word. And it turns out… he wasn’t. He was autistic. He didn’t respond or react to life the way I thought a loving partner “should” — and I filled that gap with the worst possible story instead of the truest one. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not knowing sooner. I’m sorry for judging when I didn’t have all the information. I’m sorry for listening to the voices around me instead of leaning in and trying, really trying, to understand. I’m sorry for hanging a label around the neck of a man who was simply lost in the same fog I was. That’s humbling. And I think it’s holy work to admit when we got the why wrong — even when we got the what right.
Why I Still Say It Was Meant to Be
Here’s the part my spirit keeps returning to. I truly believe all things happen for a reason. I believe we had to walk through that fire to arrive where we are today. Without the breakup, we would never have reached this place. And what a place it is — for the first time in our lives together, we are healthy. We are loving. We put each other first. We talk. Really talk. It’s been one year since we found our way back to each other, and I can say with my whole heart that we are closer now than we have ever been — closer than when we first fell in love. And no, I don’t feel marriage is in the cards for us again, and I’ve made a strange and beautiful peace with that. Because what we have now isn’t held together by a certificate. It’s held together by understanding, by grace, by choosing each other on purpose. Sometimes a reset is exactly what’s needed. Sometimes it takes another person entering the picture to wake up the one who took you for granted. And sometimes — sometimes — it takes you finally finding your own self, doing the deep inner work, releasing the hate and the anger and the resentment, so that your heart becomes soft enough to forgive, open enough to receive, and brave enough to try again with clearer eyes. Without all of that, I know in my bones we would not be standing where we stand today: in a solid, joyful, tender relationship. Now when conflict rises — and it does, because we’re human — we don’t run. We turn toward it with love. We’re on the same team now. No longer fighting against each other, but standing beside each other. And that, my loves, makes all the difference. So here’s my prayer for you today: may you find the courage to hold two truths at once. That leaving can be right, and the story can still be unfinished. That you can honor your past pain and stay open to a redemption you never saw coming. And that when it’s time to eat your humble pie, you do it with grace — because there’s freedom in that plate.
With so much love, 🤍