Your “one who got away” is in town, and a lively dinner party is being thrown in his honor by your sister’s in-laws—upper class people known for their exceptional hospitality.
Social gatherings are opportunities to rub shoulders with the elite, and your sister is eager to accompany her husband to the event.
There’s only one thing standing in her way. Your spirited nephew is bed-bound with a dislocated collar bone from a nasty fall he took. His grandfather has insisted that the boy’s father attend the dinner to meet the guest of honor. Assuming he’d be of no use in his son’s recovery, he accepts the invitation to the ire of your sister.
“So here he is to go away and enjoy himself, and because I am the poor mother, I am not to be allowed to stir; and yet, I am sure, I am more unfit than anybody else to be about the child. My being the mother is the very reason why my feelings should not be tried.”
She knows exactly what she’s doing. You’re known for being incredibly patient and obliging, and she’s counting on your selflessness.
You could tell her to touch grass and say that’s just the occupational hazard that comes along with being a mother, but you don’t.
You offer to watch your nephew for the night. Your sister gleefully accepts, giving no consideration to the possibility of you wanting an opportunity to catch up with your ex-fiance.
You don’t—but she doesn’t even bother to ask because she is so consumed by her FOMO.
You understand that self-centeredness is just her area of weakness, and she came by it honestly from your father.
Though annoying, her implied babysitting request isn’t actually hurting you—especially since you didn’t want to go anyway.
A power struggle over such a minor slight hardly seems worth it to you, so you quietly yield.
Nothing of value was truly lost.
Can you actually picture yourself making that decision? Honestly, I think I would’ve been inclined to tell her I’d send my regards to the other guests and be on my merry way.
After all, my name isn’t Anne Elliot, and I certainly don’t live in Jane Austen’s universe.
Throughout the novel Persuasion, Anne musters up the patience to navigate heartbreak, the generational curse of main character syndrome plaguing her family, and her unofficial role as therapist and referee to everyone in her social circle.
If your life is anything like mine, your problems are more modern in nature—heartbreak and anxiety from the news cycle, loneliness in a world that values digital interactions over time spent face-to-face, and constant pressure to choose sides in social and political issues.
If only our problems were as mild as Anne’s, am I right?
Unfortunately for us, living in such a chaotic timeline can put a strain on our personal relationships—since it’s harder to be patient when it feels like the world is on fire.
Still, patience when dealing with the people we love and value is possible.
In fact, it should be a priority since it can be the glue that holds our social circle together.
We need these relationships more than ever since there is strength in numbers.
In this week’s post, we’ll explore the role of patience in conflict-resolution, trust building, and relationship resilience.
Patience in Relationships: How to Conflict Well With the People You Love
Think back to the moment you realized you’d found your new best friend or met the love of your life. How long did you bask in the joy of knowing you’d never again have to go to a concert, movie, or vacation destination alone before the first moment of tension struck?
For my husband and me, it was about three months into our marriage.
Unbeknownst to us at the time, I was in the earliest stages of pregnancy, and my hormonally fragile state triggered an epic meltdown over a relatively innocuous set of circumstances.
The honeymoon was over, and both of our insecurities and minor flaws felt free to roam around the nest.
These moments can feel jolting at times. How did we go from not being able to get enough of each other’s company to being at each other’s throats with one comment, look, or tone of voice?
In reality, interpersonal conflict should never really come as a surprise—even when it involves our favorite people.
Having compatibility with someone is amazing, but it isn’t to be confused with perfection.
Close relationships of any type are the meeting of two imperfect minds with different wills that won’t always remain in alignment. Add in the general chaos of our current timeline and nervous system responses, and conditions become increasingly favorable for slights, misunderstandings, and overreactions.
In short, interpersonal conflicts are not a matter of if. They’re a matter of when—which is why patience is essential for healthy relationships.
Recently, my husband was diagnosed with a basal-cell carcinoma on his nose.
Obligatory P.S.A. that EVERYONE—regardless of skin tone—needs to have a close relationship with SPF at all times.
Though this particular type of skin cancer has a near 100% five-year survival rate, the nervous system isn’t exactly designed to favor the bright side of things.
We were stressed to say the least—and no one more than the patient himself.
I’m going to be honest. The last month hasn’t exactly been a highlight reel of our relationship. Fights are typically a rare occurrence in our house, but we managed to get one or two in during my husband’s health scare.
Hindsight being 20/20—I can see where patience on my part would’ve minimized these conflicts.
My husband turned inward to process being confronted with his own mortality. I’d tried really hard to use my coping skills to be a calm presence in the storm.
Still, my own nervous system locked into other perceived threats—the distancing taking place in my relationship and the general chaos of my home.
I was trying to do all of the things—catch up on the piles of EVERYTHING, take the kids to their therapy appointments, and take better care of my own mental and physical health—but I felt like I just couldn’t get anywhere despite my best efforts.
Even worse, I felt lonely since the person I’d been able to rely on for adult connection had seemingly pulled away from me.
It got to a point where I felt I couldn’t take it anymore. My mind demanded immediate reassurance and resolution, so I took my concerns to my husband.
It didn’t go as smoothly as I would’ve liked. What was supposed to be a calm explanation of my headspace devolved into an explosive fight. We made up fairly quickly, but I realize now that the whole thing could’ve been avoided if I’d taken the time to remind myself of the context surrounding the state of things.
Nothing was normal. My husband had CANCER, and he needed the space to navigate it without the added burden of my emotions.
Though my feelings were valid, I could’ve waited to express them.
Honestly, that’s a common thread in most of our arguments.
My husband will withdraw during tense interactions to avoid blowing up, but I’ll insist on talking things out immediately in a misguided attempt to ease the tension.
He’s trying to self-regulate. My nervous system is seeking instant relief. The two aims are not compatible. There’s rarely, if any, harm in letting time and patience do the heavy lifting in resolving conflicts with the ones we love.
In fact, immediate reactions tend to be more hazardous since they’re often driven by a fight-or-flight response.
Temporarily putting space between ourselves and the person we’re in conflict with gives both parties time to regain a sense of relative calm and avoid saying or doing things they’ll regret later.
How Patience Creates Safety in Relationships
Patience doesn’t just help us avoid or resolve conflict. It also builds trust.
For example, bulldozing my way into my husband’s inner world reinforced a narrative that he isn’t safe to navigate complex emotions without the added burden of everyone else’s feelings.
If I had just waited out his procedure and let things return to baseline, it would have signaled to him that his experiences matter, and he doesn’t have to carry the weight of the world on his own.
To be clear, those things are true, but it’s easy to see where that gets lost in translation when I allow my own anxiety to get in the way of being fully supportive.
We don’t want the people we love to feel like they have to hide how they feel or filter out their personalities on our behalf. At that point, certain aspects of the relationship become performative and even exhausting.
Have you ever felt like you had to walk on eggshells around someone in your life? Perhaps there are certain topics you feel you have to tip-toe around to avoid blow-ups. Likely, you tried to express a concern or feeling to them in the past but were met with an uncomfortable amount of negativity in return.
You learned that you can’t trust that person with your true thoughts and opinions when it comes to certain things, so you just bite your tongue now.
But what if that topic is something potentially detrimental? Maybe they’re involved with a problematic person, but you hesitate to say anything remotely negative about the situation because you’re afraid of upsetting them.
Predictably, things end badly, and now you’re being asked why you never spoke up about the red flags you noticed all along.
Now they’re having trust issues themselves because they feel like you looked the other way as they got more and more attached to the wrong person.
Their impatience has not only broken your trust in their ability to handle your honesty. It’s impaired your ability to truly look out for your friend’s best interests. Everyone loses.
Granted, this doesn’t mean we’re obligated to accept everything someone in our circle says as absolute fact.
Still, we can patiently hear them out without judgment and backlash to show them that we value their thoughts and invite them to share the things that are really on their mind.
We also want to avoid letting our own thoughts and opinions dominate our interactions with no regard for the messaging our friend or loved one might actually receive about themselves.
I learned this the hard way from my earliest experiences with playdates and mom groups. I can give a firsthand account about what happens when mothers are too hasty to make sweeping claims and judgments about others’ personal choices.
At the time, I only had my two little girls—a two-and-a-half year old and a baby who was only a few months old.
A mother I’d been eager to have as a close friend had been inviting me and my girls to the zoo. To save money, I’d pack my toddler a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, crackers, graham crackers, and some juice.
I would even pack extras to share. Little did I know, I was being judged for these nutritional choices.
I’ll never forget the embarrassment I felt when a following zoo invite was accompanied by a snide remark.
“And please be sure to bring HEALTHY snacks this time.”
I was aghast. I was still relatively new to the whole playdate thing, so it had never even occurred to me to be self-conscious about my daughter’s lunch.
I never felt quite right about my place among other mothers after that, and I let that would-be friendship fizzle out completely.
To this day, it still takes me a lot of time to warm up to fellow moms because I’m scared of being judged harshly for relatively harmless decisions.
Were my daughter’s lunches exemplary when it came to nutrition? Not exactly.
Did I deserve to be shamed for it? Absolutely not.
It’s possible that my would-be mom friend didn’t intend to unlock new insecurities for me. If she had stopped to think for a moment about how she might have felt in my position, maybe she would’ve said nothing at all or found a way to communicate her thoughts with more care.
It’s hard to say, but I’m grateful to her for highlighting this important lesson.
Having the patience to choose our words carefully and let others express themselves without judgment goes a long way in fostering strong relationships built on trust.
Patience in Relationships Makes You Storm-Ready
Relationships fall apart without healthy conflict resolution and trust, but patience gives them the resilience to endure challenges like annoyances, misunderstandings, and stress.
I can say that a key reason my marriage has lasted nearly 13 years is because my husband and I have learned to navigate each other’s neurodivergence without getting lost in resentment.
Looking back on my life, the signs of depression and severe ADHD were always there, but pregnancy and postpartum made them impossible to ignore.
My husband has seen me through numerous cycles of not being able to get out of bed, high motivation to fix every aspect of my life, and burnout from unrealistic expectations.
At my lowest point, he had to use half of the nest egg he’d been working so hard to put together to send me six hours away for in-patient psychiatric care.
He stepped up for two and a half weeks to be a single, work-from-home parent, so I could get the help I needed to keep living.
I didn’t come home miraculously healed, either.
Though I no longer struggled with self-destructive thoughts, it took exponentially longer for me to find my motivation to tackle the mountain of things that had piled-up in my year-and-a-half bout with depression-induced paralysis.
In all honesty, I’m amazed he didn’t disappear on a trip to the store for a carton of milk during that time period.
He was patient with me because he knew that wasn’t a reflection of who I am as a person. It was all symptoms of mental illness. He honored his commitment to me as a person instead of letting a season of sickness tear us apart.
I’m truly grateful for that, and it helps me accept the fact that he isn’t as keen to be out on the town or travel as much as I would like.
He’s a homebody who enjoys his niche hobbies and struggles with social anxiety in a way that’s not always easy for me to understand. Nonetheless, I didn’t marry him to be my plus one.
I married him because he is reasonable, kind, highly intelligent, and incredible at problem solving. He’s also been a calm presence in the midst of my inner chaos. All of this makes him not just an amazing husband, but an amazing father as well.
There’s no petty grievance that could make me give up on this relationship. When problems arise, I tend to choose communication over passive aggression and withdrawal.
While this can result in outright conflict at times, we rarely let the day end without making amends.
Patience has made our relationship storm-ready, and I’m happy to share that we did get through his skin cancer diagnosis.
The doctor was able to cut it out without butchering his entire nose. The basal cell carcinoma is gone, and so is all the uncertainty and tension that rocked our relationship in the weeks leading up to the procedure.
All that remains is an eraser-sized hole in his nose and the task of nagging him to have an annual check-up with a dermatologist.
Are you going through a rough season with someone in your life?
Maybe you’re at a crossroad where you’re wondering if the relationship is worth continuing, but it’s worth carefully considering if the situation calls for more patience before permanently distancing yourself from it.
Ask yourself:
Do these problems reflect the actual character of this person, or are they driven by extenuating circumstances?
What traits attracted me to this person in the first place, and do they outweigh current difficulties?
If you conclude that patience won’t fix the problems in your relationship, that’s ok. The idea isn’t to white knuckle your way through a toxic relationship. It’s simply to pause and reflect before making a decision.
Next Steps for Your Self-Discovery Journey
If you’d like to join me in making patience a daily practice this month, here are some resources to help you get started.
Subscribe to receive your free Patience Readiness Toolkit, designed to help you explore this month’s theme at your own pace.
Gentle Ways to Apply This:
- Slow down before a hard conversation. This free Conflict Pause Card walks you through a simple grounding check, four questions to ask yourself before you engage, and a reminder of why the pause matters in the first place.
- Pause, check your intentions, and consider the impact of your words before saying things you can’t take back. Use this free Before You Respond Card, as a gentle guide.
- Examine what’s really driving the difficulties in your relationship, whether it reflects who this person truly is, and what patience might still make possible. This free Is This Worth Fighting For card is a printable reflection prompt for the crossroads moments in your relationships—when you’re not sure whether to push through or walk away.
Reading Recommendation
Persuasion by Jane Austen (This novel is in the public domain. I’m linking to a free, legal copy through Project Gutenberg so anyone can read along without barriers. You’re welcome to use any edition or format that works best for you.)
Relationships Worth Fighting For
Relationships fortified by patience not only endure conflict. They thrive even in the midst of it.
Every time we pause to let nervous systems settle before addressing tension, we create a safe space for healthy conflict resolution.
Every time we let our loved ones express themselves without judgment, we reassure them that their thoughts, feelings, and personality traits are valuable to us.
We’re not perfect, and we have no control over what happens to us today or tomorrow.
However, when we practice patience, we foster relationships worth fighting for because they give us a sense of belonging and reassurance that we won’t have to brave life’s challenges alone.
If this post resonates with you, please share it with anyone who would appreciate a reminder of the importance of patience in relationships.
Where do you find interpersonal patience hardest to hold onto? Family, friends, the general public?
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. If you’d like to receive an email notification when the next post goes live, you can subscribe using the form below. Next week we’ll explore how patience helps us remain steady in an increasingly unstable world.
Keep it kind, respectful, and focused on self-love and growth—let’s make this a safe, uplifting space. 🌿