New pets and familiar partners: what adoption of a dog can teach us about adult love.

I came across this story from the Boston Globe and it so poignantly hits at what many couples are struggling to learn in making their relationships work. Give it a read and think about how you and your partner go about the dance of learning and retraining your relationship based on what came before.

"We each carry around a hidden version of ourselves, programmed by our earliest pasts. It’s the self forged in childhood and adolescence, where we were shaped by our parents or primary caretakers — our “first owners,” if you will — and by our environments.... And when we try to solve the puzzle of another person by waking up next to him or her every damn day for the rest of our lives, we bend ourselves to their reality and they to ours. We learn each other’s respective backstories, and then we learn how those stories work in the present, minute by minute, by trial and error." - Burr

Any pet lover will tell you patience, paying close attention, and an open heart are necessary in the first months of bringing a pup home. How can we use that same openness, paying close attention, and keeping an open heart with our partner as they show us what they need, and as we continue learn about their story?