Dear Extremely Patient Boyfriend,
I am pretty sure when you met her, all you paid attention to was the way she played with her long brown hair when you talked to her or the way her eyes lit up when she saw you coming down the hall. I am almost positive that you noticed how much she enjoyed your company, always smiling and laughing as long as she was with you. I bet you couldn't wait to finally call her yours and take her out to eat in all the exciting restaurants from your hometown. But what I know is that you had no idea what was going on behind her intense stare or the bundle of worry that she struggles with every day.
By now you are quite familiar with the way she deals—or doesn't deal—with her problems. You have the hardest time figuring out how something that is no big deal to everyone else can make her completely fall apart. Consoling her while she cries into your chest, you try your hardest to make her feel better, but after a while its only normal that you get frustrated.
The easy thing for you to do would be to leave her because she is too hard to deal with sometimes. It’s definitely less of a hassle to be with a girl who can explain why she’s sad or wake up next to a girl that is always in a good mood, right? But the fact that you are still the one she runs to when her world is crashing down all around her certainly says a lot. Props to you for being the man that she can count on to be there when she needs you.
I know that it is hard for you to understand anxiety when you yourself don't have it. It’s hard for anyone to really understand it unless you are unlucky enough to have it as well. But the effort that you put forth in trying to understand as much of it as you can does not go unnoticed. Despite the fact that you have no idea what goes through her head when she’s upset, you have shown her that her anxiety is not going to define your relationship. Anxiety has caused her to lose a lot of people in her life already, to miss out on a lot of experiences, and the guilt she feels from that weighs down on her everyday. She knows that sometimes she holds you back from doing all of the adventurous things that you would like to do because she cant handle them. And that hurts her more than anything, but she is so extremely happy that you are patient with her. Never forget that when you’re frustrated with her anxiety, I can promise you she is 10 times more frustrated than you are.
Making her happy is something that you are naturally good at. You are her best friend, her partner in crime, and now the person she can lean on when things are getting tough. Being that she doesn't like to show weakness, she knows that when she tells you she is hurting, you are not there to judge or hold it against her. You’re untainted love for her is unique, and she will never understand how she found someone so special.
Thank you for loving her unconditionally, always. For knowing that her heart aches with this anxiety just about every day but for continuing to pick up every piece of her when she falls apart and glue her back together with your hugs and smiles. You mean the world to her. I can tell you that she is truly grateful to have someone like you in her life.
Don't forget how much of a difference you have made in her life already.
Love,
The girl who's been there before
