There is a conversation in the book The Velveteen Rabbit that I love. 

 

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

 

The notion that becoming a Real partner takes time fits with my experience. While I would have preferred the ordeal to be painless, that doesn't seem to be possible. I might also wish that it could be faster than it is, but that fantasy too is pointless. When I am high maintenance, or have sharp edges, Becoming Real stalls.

 

Yesterday I believe I managed a bit of becoming. We began a fresh marriage group, and I introduced the idea of Check ins.

 

"We will go around the room and you can say how you are doing. It can be one sentence or a few minutes. Whatever you want to say is fine."

 

When John offered his check in he included a comment that I had an opinion about. Then I remembered what I had said only a moment before. Whatever he wants to say is fine. 

 

Ouch. I settled in to just love him, and the rest of the evening whooshed by as each couple told the story of how they fell in love. I laughed more than I have in a month. 

 

John held my hand when it was our turn to talk and I rubbed the back of his as he spoke. I think a few hairs fell off.