Iron Love
Love, trauma, and what it means to heal in the presence of unflinching truth
This is a story about love, trauma, and the slow, painful process of healing in the presence of someone whose strength both saves and challenges me to become more than I ever thought I could be. It isn’t a fairy tale. It is both love story and lament, a wrestling match with myself, reality, and the kind of love that doesn’t flinch in the face of truth.
A question that time and time again confronted me was: what does one do in the face of an immovable force? Before I could answer this question I needed to recognise what was happening.
My nervous system has a problem. That problem is strange and unexpected. I’m in a relationship with the love of my life and he loves me fully and fearlessly. That in itself is not the problem. The problem is that we are both deeply traumatised.
For almost two years, we’ve been in a process both breathtaking and volatile, the most intense of our lives. Our story is one of love, trust, and commitment. But it’s also one of darkness, confusion, and deep pain.
How we survived
I’ve spent much of my life running from love and life itself. This has placed a heavy burden on my partner. Although I have been screaming for closeness and safety in love I have been too scared to trust. For him, he has been withstanding that screaming while trying to reach me through the noise, trying to say that he is there, waiting to hold me forever. All while his own system is screaming to his mind not to allow anyone into the core of his soul.
The distance between my cry for love and my terror of receiving it had to be managed somehow. And so my mind created structures to hold the contradiction, false selves that looked almost real but kept me safe by keeping me apart. It was a brilliant survival strategy; however, it left my soul trapped behind walls I couldn’t see and my boundaries nonexistent. As a result, I became completely vulnerable to the worst kinds of exploitation.
His trauma built something different: a perfect personality interface. One that allowed him to function in the world, intelligent, competent, and present, while his inner self remained hidden and protected. He could engage with the world but he wasn’t really online. He too lacked healthy boundaries in certain ways. They were wide open up to a point. When that point was reached and his boundaries were crossed, this would activate his internal defence system. And once that happened… you were done.
Our systems, though different, became highly attuned to certain truths, yet blind to others. Thankfully, we fit. Where I collapse, he holds. Where he hardens, I soften. But while our dynamic creates balance, our healing journeys are not equal in pace or nature. Mine is messier, slower, and more chaotic. It requires more care, containment, and energy, especially from him.
Different strategies, same wound
My partner’s coping mechanisms kept his mind safe and functional. For him, reality was non-negotiable yet updatable: if all things aligned logically and could be cross-checked with what was verifiably real then a system update could happen. This can be described as a technical and reliable system, built by a good soul that is aligned with what is morally right.
For me, coping meant bending reality to meet the needs and desires of others. Appeasement was survival. My integrity depended on flexibility. I had a moral centre aligned with what was right; I just had to find a way to enact that morality in compromised situations where I lacked power, protection, or permission.
In short: he was empowered, I was not.
Although his system rested on some flawed and even erroneous axioms, it was built with a solid structure that made updating both effective and almost immediate. Mine was nothing like that. Whatever I tried, I was updating truth on a foundation of sand. In my world, truth was so relative that nothing could ever fully take root, not because I lacked a moral centre, but because I had to continually bend external reality to fit that centre in circumstances where I had no power or protection. My inner compass stayed steady, but the “truths” I lived out were constantly reshaped to make survival possible; like shielding a flame in the open air, bending in every direction to protect it from winds strong enough to snuff it out. This was the only way I knew to preserve a sense of integrity in impossible conditions, but it left me with deep structural fractures.
My mind was broken, where his was not.
I am an honest person. I want to live in alignment with what is ultimately good and right. But in the world I knew, truth itself was dangerous. If I clung to it as something fixed and uninterpretable, I would be exposed; burned at the stake for refusing to bend. If I spoke it too clearly in the face of corruption, I risked annihilation. So I did the only thing I could: I let my mind fracture so that my soul could remain whole. Sanity became the sacrifice. Being good yet powerless in a corrupt world broke me but it did not kill what was most essential within me.
The fortress
Then my love came into my life, saw what was happening, and endeavoured to save me.
He has been there for me, fighting to set me free from a mind-prison constructed by fear. Every step of the way, I do what I believe I am told to do, and I get better and better at it. Unfortunately, it is a slow process, and endlessly frustrating.
Part of his trauma coping strategy is to make himself impenetrable to attack. He has spent most of his life being gaslit and attacked by the outside world. This created an immovable force protected by objective truth.
He is always right, even when he is wrong.
My partner achieves perfect integrity by performing perfectly according to the parameters of his experience. He relates to reality in the most correct way he has available to him. He never capitulates to wrongness. And when reality presents new data that shows he was incorrect, he humbly updates. Thus, he is never wrong, even when he is. Strange. Unusual. Damn impressive.
Conversely, I make mistake after mistake. I succumb to my fears and the pressure of life. I do not take up my cross, but instead, I run as far away as possible. In the current phase, I am training not to run. Thus, I do indeed take up my cross, meet all of those fears, and will keep doing so for as long as it takes.
My failures come with a certain emotion that lies somewhere between guilt and shame. He doesn’t fall prey to these emotions. There is no “failure” in this way: he accepts his situation and limitations, forgives himself, and endeavours to correct without shame or guilt. He holds himself accountable for the awareness he does have and puts the work in where needed. His strength is unwavering.
However, his strength is intimidating. To stand before it is not easy.
Grace and the mirror
The key is honesty but not necessarily in the way most people think.
We all present versions of ourselves to the world, each pointing toward a deeper and more complex totality of being. But if the version we present doesn’t accurately reflect who we truly are, in capacity, truth, or readiness, problems inevitably arise.
My love operates on a principle of grace. When he meets someone, he accepts how they present themselves and offers them trust, assuming that presentation to be genuine. But with that trust comes a corresponding expectation: that the responsibilities and capabilities implied by that presentation are real.
This grace, however, comes with an edge. Because he takes people at their word, his system naturally reflects back the consequences when those presentations don’t align with actual capacity. It’s not an attack, but a kind of truth-mirror. And when that mirror shows you’ve failed at something you claimed to be ready for, it can be deeply destabilising. Especially if the message feels like: “You failed, even though you should know better by now.”
In my case, my trauma and burnout were so obscured that I genuinely thought I was “fine” and could manage all of my hopes, dreams, and their manifestation. As time went on, I kept promising that I could do it and didn’t live up to that promise. He, then, became more and more frustrated. I was not meeting the standard I had laid out, and his system fought back with a vengeance.
At first, he was accommodating. But as my trauma processing intensified and my “failures” began to accumulate, his system could no longer absorb the dissonance.
Why the fortress exists
Growing up with his mother, my love needed a system that was robotic and unflinching. What he and his sister suffered is nothing less than true horror wrapped in a reality mind warp. To survive, an A.I. needed to take over for the beautiful soul that was not equipped to deal with that horror.
When the full strength of this A.I. is triggered, it becomes a force designed to crush whatever stands before it. Quick, relentless, and unyielding; like standing in a storm you cannot out-argue, only withstand. However, because I know how deeply he loves me, I understand that it’s my role to face that energy, not resist it. The purpose of this A.I. system is to stand in absolute truth and demand the same truth from anyone it interacts with. Thus, if you have nothing to hide then there is no problem.
The truth was, I was hiding. I was hiding from myself and my fears, my vulnerability, and how I truly felt. When I am met with this impenetrable force it is my responsibility to own up to my dishonesty. I need to say: “You’re right. Here is where I truly am, and here is how I will move toward my goal.”
Every time I do this, I’m met with grace, love, and support, completely.
Beyond words
My Love is so full of care and devotion that, in the face of honesty, he would never hold these things against me. In my eyes he is the most wonderful person in the world and that has nothing to do with his correctness.
He reaches for my hand again and again. And to take it, I must be willing to stand in the reality of who and where I am without shame. Trusting that he loves and walks beside me, no matter what.
To think in terms of right and wrong is folly. We are both human, with human fallibility, and we work towards healing together. Yet he rests in a truth that lies beyond words and it holds me accountable.
I’ve been trapped in the linguistic realm for most of my life, trying to explain, define, and defend my way to safety. But now, I’m beginning to break free. And my partner is the prince who helps rescue me, not with words, but with presence.
For this reason, I must let go of all the proving, justifying, and correcting. I must simply show up, day by day, and bear the weight of my own pain with steadiness and grace.
The realisation
So what do I do in the face of this immovable force?
I accept my faults with softness. I offer my hand not as a project or as a broken thing but as his wife, and nothing less. I hold my head high in the presence of my flaws. I love myself enough to make mistake after mistake, while carrying the burden of my pain, no matter what.
Perhaps this is the only way through love and trauma, not by striving for perfection, but by standing together in devotion to what is real.
Elsewhere in The Province of the Mind:
Lana Del Rey and the Siren’s Game
Lana is a special lady. Somehow every time I listen to her I receive the wonderful gift of trauma processing blanketed in melodic serenade. I think she gets me.
Fire Returned to Heaven
This is the introduction to my ongoing series Fire Returned to Heaven: Transcripts from solitary prayer walks recorded over the past years. Each walk was spoken aloud, later transcribed and gently edited for clarity and privacy.