A Love That Was Forged, Not Found

There is a moment in every relationship where you stop and realise you are not just loving a person, you are loving the strength, the softness, and the truth you have grown into together.

For Matty and me, our story has not followed the clean lines people expect.

Some chapters would have looked messy from the outside.

Some chapters really were.

We have had seasons of distance, space, breaking open, and rebuilding.

Moments where it felt like everything was falling apart so something truer could be built in its place.

And somehow, through all of it, the heart of us remained untouched.

The world has already tested our edges deeply, loudly, and more than once.

We have walked through things that could have ended us, and maybe even should have.

But they did not.

Because the truth between us has always been stronger than the chaos around us.

When I look at Matty now, the love I feel is not from the girl I once was.

It is not tied to fear or attachment or the old stories that used to shape the way I loved.

I love him from truth.

From the woman I have grown into, and the man he has grown into beside me.

And the way he meets me now brings me undone in the softest way.

He does not shrink around my depth.

He does not question the way my life looks different from others.

He does not pull back from the parts of me that are unusual, intuitive, or expansive.

He accepts me fully, and somehow makes space for even more of me to exist.

That is a rare kind of love.

A love that strengthens rather than confines.

A love that feels like being met exactly where I am.

Watching him with Grace lately melts me.

The way she speaks to him so openly.

The way she feels safe calling him out when he drifts, “Dad you are not listening.”

And the way he is learning her, growing with her, meeting her more fully as he evolves.

Their bond is something sacred, a father daughter relationship that is still forming, strengthening, deepening as they both learn each other.

She made him a dad.

She shaped him in ways only a first child can.

And soon, I will get to watch him step into fatherhood again, softer now, steadier now, more grounded in truth than ever before.

I find myself whispering to this little soul inside me,“You chose the best daddy.”

And every time I say it, I feel how real it is.

Matty has shown me a love that is lived, not performed.

A love that stands firm through change, through honesty, through growth.

A love that has been tested and still stands strong.

A love that keeps choosing without hesitation.

Today, I simply wanted to honour him.

To honour the man he is.

To honour the way he has walked beside me through every evolution.

To honour the father he is to Grace.

And the father he is already becoming to the little one growing inside me.

What we have was not stumbled into,

it was forged.

And because of that, it feels like home.