The Shift: Stepping Outside of Myself

For most of my life, I argued, and then I deflected. I would try and open up. I redirected. I didn’t take accountability. I justified. It took me nearly thirty years to realize those were all versions of the same thing.

When you grow up in an environment where emotions aren’t explained, validated, or safely processed, you learn to survive them instead. Conflict felt unsafe. Vulnerability felt dangerous. Accountability felt like confirmation that I was exactly what I had always feared — difficult, dramatic, too much, not enough. So I developed coping mechanisms that looked like personality traits. If someone confronted me, I turned it back on them. If I felt criticized, I shut down or exploded. If I hurt someone, I minimized it or found a reason why it made sense. If I felt exposed, I lied. If I feared abandonment, I sabotaged things before someone else could leave me first.

Those patterns started in childhood and quietly followed me into adulthood. I didn’t see them as patterns at the time. I thought they were just reactions. I thought I was protecting myself. In reality, I was avoiding conflict, vulnerability, and accountability at all costs. Big lesson learned, you can’t build healthy relationships on avoidance.

By the time I entered my first marriage, those behaviors were automatic. Hard conversations felt like threats. Emotional intimacy felt overwhelming. Instead of leaning into discomfort, I created distance. Instead of saying, “That hurt me,” I reacted defensively. Instead of saying, “I was wrong,” I explained why I wasn’t entirely to blame. When that marriage ended, I told myself it was compatibility. When the second one failed, I blamed circumstances. But when different relationships end with similar emotional wreckage, eventually you have to step back and ask what the common denominator is.

It was me.

Not in a shame-filled way. Not in a self-hating way. But in a clear, grown-up way. I wasn’t emotionally healthy. I wasn’t regulated. I didn’t fully know who I was. I just knew how to adapt into whoever I thought someone needed me to be. And when you don’t know yourself, vulnerability feels like exposure. So I deflected. Every time.

The biggest change in my life didn’t come from someone leaving. It came when I changed my perception. I stopped living entirely inside my reactions and started stepping outside of myself, looking in. Instead of immediately defending myself, I began asking, Why am I reacting like this? Why does this feel like rejection? Why am I avoiding this conversation? Why does taking responsibility feel so threatening?

That shift, observing instead of reacting, changed everything.

Therapy helped me untangle years of unmanaged anxiety and impulsivity. Medication quieted the noise enough for me to think clearly. Motherhood forced me to mature in ways nothing else could. But perspective is what transformed me. I stopped asking, Why does this keep happening to me? and started asking, What am I contributing to this pattern? That question is uncomfortable. It requires humility. It requires sitting in your own mess without pointing outward. But it’s also empowering, because if you are contributing to the pattern, you have the power to change it.

My marriage now is nothing like my first two. Not because it’s perfect, and not because conflict doesn’t exist. It’s different because I am different. I don’t deflect conflict anymore; I stay in it. I don’t avoid vulnerability; I practice it. I don’t run from accountability; I take it, even when it’s hard. When I’m wrong, I say it. When I’m triggered, I name it. When I’m scared, I admit it instead of masking it with defensiveness.

The most healing part is that my husband knows everything. He knows the divorces. The chaos. The mental health struggles. The impulsivity. The shame. The growth. He knows who I was, and he sees who I am becoming. And he has stood beside me patiently while I’ve figured that out. His steadiness doesn’t feel dramatic or intense. It feels safe. I am accepted. I am loved. I don’t feel like I have to perform to keep him. I don’t feel like I have to manipulate situations to feel secure. I don’t feel like I have to deflect to survive.

Growing up, I thought maturity would feel like having all the answers. Instead, it feels like pausing before reacting. It feels like sitting in uncomfortable conversations without running. It feels like saying, “I was wrong,” without collapsing into shame. It feels like letting someone see the parts of you that used to terrify you.

The woman I was in my early twenties was surviving. The woman I am now is self-aware. There is a difference. I’m still learning. I still have moments where old instincts whisper. But they don’t control me anymore. The explosive reactions have softened into conversations. The impulsive chaos has turned into intentional living. The need to deflect has been replaced with the courage to own my part.

If the younger version of me could see this life — a healthy marriage, four incredible kids, peace in my home, clarity in my mind — she might not recognize it. But she would be proud. Because the greatest transformation wasn’t finding the right partner. It was becoming the kind of person who could participate in a healthy love without running from it.

And that only happened when I stopped deflecting long enough to finally grow up.