Listen to Wait For You on Spotify, Apple Music or Soundcloud
What do you do when your partner informs you they are addicted to relationships and are going into recovery?
This was the situation I found myself in when I returned from Bali in 2016. Kati had moved out and I came home to an empty house.
As I wrote about before, I was freaked out and sad.
But I was also hopeful. I was hopeful because I knew Kati was working her way through a 12-step recovery program. The program promised to give her, and by extension us, a better, healthier way of being together (provided of course that she even wanted to be with me after she finished the program).
What would happen after the program? Would we find a new way to be together that felt more satisfying and fun? Would she decide that she just wanted to be friends? Would she adopt Jesus Christ as her personal lord and savior? I had no idea what was going to happen.
So even though I was angry and sad at how she moved out, I was still connected to my love for her, and I knew that the thing to do was to support her in her healing and transformation process.
(As an aside: if you aren’t familiar with 12-step programs, they are one of the most amazing and beautiful human creations that I’ve ever come across. 12-step programs consist of volunteers giving their time to help people heal the wounds underneath addictions of all kinds. Almost always the volunteers are themselves graduates, paying forward the healing they received from their own 12-step work. It’s scaleable heart-centered-healing and it has at its core the concept of recovery - a belief that healing and growing entails finding lost parts of ourselves and becoming whole again. 12-step programs exist for almost any addiction or behavior that might disrupt a human life. It’s beautiful work and I’ve not encountered anything like it. You can check out a list of 12-step programs here.)
So as I waited for Kati to transcend her love addiction and recover herself, I worked on Wait For You, a song about …. waiting. I sunk into this liminal period for Kati and I. The time between our old relationship ending and whatever was coming next. And it wasn’t just Kati that was healing. The time apart helped me connect to myself in a deeper way. To comfort and console myself where before I would have looked to Kati. To keep building the healthy self-esteem I wanted.
At first we didn’t have much communication. But as Kati worked the program, we started texting, then talking, then getting together in person. In a way it was like meeting her for the first time and it was clear she was doing work on herself. She seemed different: more mature, more adventurous, more emotionally connected, more sure of herself.
I missed living with her, but as I started to see her once or twice a week, I felt a new and deeper connection to her growing. it felt like the time apart was allowing us the opportunity to each come into ourselves more, and see the other through clearer eyes.
Our love fell to pieces. And I can’t find the way back together
But I can see you, more clearly now
Yeah I can feel you, more clearly now
So I can love you, more clearly now
And what I want to do is love you, more clearly now
Eventually we started dating again. It was a slow process and at times I got impatient. I had to remind myself to go at Kati’s pace; the pace of her recovery. I reminded myself to be a supportive force, and help her find what she was looking for.
I'm gonna wait for you, to get through what you've gotta get through
It might not be today, it might not turn out my way
But I love you, so I'm not going away,
Yeah I'm, gonna help you, through anything that you want to get through
Yeah I'm, gonna support you, all the way through.
And eventually she came out the other end and it turned out that she did still want to be with me(! As I suspected). And I wanted to be with her. So we got back together, I moved her back in, and we noticed things felt different.
We didn’t fight nearly as much. We were more aware of each others emotional boundaries. We started building a new way of relating based on accepting each other. It felt so much better.
And when we did fight, because we’re human, we reminded ourselves that according to Pia Melody, recovery from codependency takes on average 3-5 years. We showed each other patience. It was nice.
Looking back I have a lot of compassion for myself and for Kati. We were both doing our best given the tools and experiences we had. Neither of us wanted to fight, or control the other, or get our feelings hurt. But we couldn’t see the childhood pain running us, clouding reality.
In retrospect, it took being apart to show us what each of us were missing. It took Pia Melody’s work on love addiction and codependence to give us the map of what we were experiencing. And it took hard work for both of us to experience, befriend and transcend our pain.
And after we did the work, when we came back together, our relationship felt more whole, because I was more whole, and Kati was more whole.
And so this album is the story of young love’s maturation into adulthood. It’s a story of healing from childhood relational trauma, low self-esteem and unhealthy ways of relating. And it’s a story of separation that ultimately made possible a deeper union.
Looking back, I’ve learned that to be sustainable, love can’t be selfless, and it can’t be controlling. Love has to serve all involved. And when it does, it’s light illuminates abandoned parts of ourselves, and shows us the path towards healing. As we heal, we can love harder, and help empower more healing, and love harder, so on and so forth.
Love heals. And healing creates more love. Again and again.
I’d be delighted if these stories and my experiences have helped you understand the love and relationships in your life in some new way, and maybe transform your world for the better.
And that my friends, brings us to the end of this chapter of the story of Kati and I. You might like to know that we just celebrated 10 years together. It’s been a beautiful, challenging and transformational decade that has made me a better man.
Thanks for being on this journey with me. I love you. Please stay tuned for what’s next.
