70/30.

I never realized how important words were to me until my new therapist articulated that 70% of communication is non-verbal. I wondered if so much of my reliance on words is because of how much I depend on non-verbal communication to express things that I might miss in your every day conversation that I expect the words of my partners to be truthful and solid. In particular, I’ve been struggling a bit lately because the three words I want to hear have been said and then retracted.

I didn’t want to talk about this publicly because I was worried that suddenly, G would be judged for the wrong reasons. All that is important is that he was trying to avoid making the same mistakes he has made in the past so that our relationship can continue to grow, rather than be stunted by things moving faster than he is ready for. His commitment to making sure that our story is different than his previous relationships is what helps me remember what is important, rather than dwelling on what has not been said.

But I have struggled a bit, especially when we are starting to learn more about each other’s imperfections and how to deal with them. I find myself saying, “Well he’s doing this because he doesn’t really love me and therefore does not want to be with me.” My immediate instinct is to fight or fly and typically, I’d rather flee than stay. He knows this about me; he knows that if I am upset, I will physically try to remove myself from the situation and recoil at his touch if he tries to pull me closer. He also knows that to help me, he needs to hold me – that while I am in my head processing everything, he needs to physically embrace me so I can’t tell myself something different than the reality.

It helps so much that he is willing to put up with our physical discomfort on top of an emotionally uncomfortable moment. It speaks volumes about how he truly feels about me.

I started seeing a therapist again because I realized while I am no longer depressed, this is my first real relationship. I am involved with someone who is involved with me, who is physically present, who acknowledges that we are together, and who does not have wandering eyes. I realized that my experiences with boys who have done at least two of the three in the past have stunted me – I am anxious when I want to be strong. I am wary when I want to be trusting. And I have absolutely no reason to be either.

She helped me put it together today. Since this was only our second session together, she wanted to know about my dating history. After all, I am 27 and to say this is my first real relationship is somewhat atypical. So I explained.

I told her how my first boyfriend met me, then met someone else, then continued to date me secretly. I told her about my stupidity and vengefulness, and how he manipulated me into staying with him when I wanted to go. Telling a seventeen year old girl that you’re going to kill yourself if she leaves you, while not a sign of someone stable, is certainly a great way to convince her to stay. I told her how I accepted him at face value that when he said he wanted to be with me and only me, that was what he meant – not realizing until later that much of our relationship was shrouded in secrecy and lies.

I told her how the second boy I met cared for me then dismissed me. How we never got around to saying any of those important words: boyfriend, girlfriend, love, together. How I waited for him to tell me the words I wanted to hear, and how they never came. Instead came words that were uglier than I could have ever imagined.

I told her how D was my best friend and how we had a week together before we spent the next year and a half going back and forth. I told her how he took back his feelings for me, proclaiming that it was all one giant mistake and what he thought he felt was just not the case. I told her how his actions told me otherwise – memories of how he would hold my hand, sleep in my room, and always put me first no matter who we were with – and I remembered how I spent most of our relationship waiting for him to say, “I want to be with you.” He never said it and he never would.

I told her about GDB. About how we met and fell and fought and fled. About how I waited for him to ask me to join him in Chicago and he never did. About how he would make me feel like the most important person in his world sometimes, and yet never back it up with action. How I would wonder if he truly meant what he said or if it was simply the fantasy of me, someone who wasn’t present in his every day world. I would hear his words, but not his voice.

As we talked, I began to see a pattern. That up until now, I was with people who would say one thing and do another. I would see things in their behavior that differed from their words – whether it was what I wanted to see or what it really was will never be clear. And then I realized what was throwing me off with G. I have been waiting for him to say “I love you,” relying on words to tell me how he feels, rather than looking to see what he has been doing.

He took those words back because he wasn’t ready to say them, because he wanted to make sure that he was mentally and emotionally in the right place when he does say them. But just because I’ve laid myself bare, expressed how I feel, doesn’t mean that his feelings for me are any different. They seem stronger instead. When I express disappointment or hurt, he looks to himself to see how he can change the behavior – and then does. He doesn’t just apologize and say, “That’s who I am, take it or leave it.” He acknowledges that even if he may disagree with my perspective, that something he did hurts me and we need to understand why to fix it. He also will let me know when I do something that he feels is hindering us from moving forward and help me figure out how to change it. He tells me repeatedly that relationship is about growth – individually and together – and as long as we keep communicating, we can keep growing.

But all this time, I’ve been focused on the verbal aspect of our relationship because I’m a verbal person, and because those are the things that I believed until now help develop a relationship. Until today, I didn’t realize that I was so focused on what was or what was not being said that I was forgetting to look at how he was treating me. I would ignore the signs in the past, trusting that what my perceived partner told me was true.

When my therapist pointed out that 70% of communication is non-verbal, it sunk in. I thought about how just this morning, he would take a moment from getting ready for work to climb back in bed with me, to hug me and to kiss me on my cheeks, my lips, my neck, even when I was only vaguely conscious. I thought about how when we go out together, he is never possessive but always clear about the fact that I am with him and he is with me. I thought about how we sat on the water taxi yesterday and he pulled me up against his chest so I could lean against him while the wind blew through our hair and the boats bobbed on the water around us. He may not have told me he loves me yet, but everything he does says that’s where we are headed.

I know I will still struggle. I know I still want to hear those words from him. But I also know that even if I don’t hear them soon, it’s not the only thing to use as a marker of his feelings for me. He wants to be with me and he is doing everything he can to make sure I know it. My therapist was right. Now I just have to learn how to be more patient and to remember that 70% of communication is non-verbal. If I can trust that 70%, then the other 30% will be even more beautiful than it already is.

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