Something that struck me very early in my relationship with my fiancé was how comfortable he is with every layer and version of me throughout the month. I wouldn’t describe myself as an emotional roller coaster. I am quite conscious of how I observe, navigate, and express my emotions, and that awareness generally keeps me steady.
But steadiness doesn’t mean never allowing yourself to unravel. I also believe in giving emotions room to be felt and expressed, rather than quietly tucking them away. Reading books such as Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score and Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life has encouraged me, in different ways, to reflect on the relationship between our emotional lives and our bodies. Yet we so often move through life from the neck up, distant from what is happening within us.
With that in mind, I have grown comfortable allowing my feelings to rise to the surface; to move through me rather than linger, unacknowledged, beneath it. When you are on your own, there is a certain ease in this. It becomes more vulnerable when you are sharing your life with someone who gets to witness those tender, unguarded moments.
And yet, whenever tears begin to flow, or emotions arise that I don’t quite know how to navigate, he is there to catch me. Steadily, calmly, gently. Whether I’m feeling a little tender before my period, returning from a gnarly, unforgiving surf session, or simply having a day when everything feels closer to the surface, his presence gives me room to breathe.
I am still quite new to surfing, and much of my commitment to it comes from him. He has been a surfer for years. But he isn’t simply a surfer. He is an utterly obsessed, gloriously fixated surfer.
Even when the waves aren’t good, he will head out “just to paddle a bit.” The very part of surfing that so many surfers consider a necessary chore is something my fiancé actively delights in. He also needs to be in the lineup at least thirty minutes before anyone else shows signs of life. This regularly puts him in the water at an hour when calling it “morning” feels generous, paddling out into complete darkness.
But after years of this devotion, he has become remarkably familiar with the ocean and her ways.
Yes, her ways. The ocean is feminine, and you can’t convince me otherwise.
Water has long been associated with the feminine in spiritual traditions and poetic imagery. Its unpredictability. Its capacity to take on so many forms: ice, hail, snow, rain, rivers, seas, lakes, streams, mist, and vapour. Its gentleness and ferocity. Its power and grace. The way it can cradle you one moment and humble you the next.
I could go on and on.
And recently, a thought occurred to me: when a man immerses himself in that energy, literally and figuratively, every day, for hours at a time, perhaps he begins to develop a particular sensitivity to its rhythms. A familiarity with changing conditions. A respect for something he cannot command.
Perhaps that familiarity carries over into how he meets the feminine: her different colours and seasons, her expressions and moods.
Out in the ocean, you learn to remain calm when the water grows rough. To steady yourself through an unexpected wipeout. To recognise when to paddle, when to wait, and when to surrender to a force greater than your own. You learn that panic rarely helps, and that strength sometimes looks like patience.
In a way, surfing becomes a lesson in how to move through life.
And I feel the fruits of those lessons in our relationship. In moments when my emotions swell, he remains calm, steady, and grounded. His composure helps me find my own footing again. I can feel what I need to feel, knowing that there is something solid beside me.
It brings to mind the verse Matthew 7:25: the image of a house enduring rain, rising waters, and fierce winds because its foundation rests on rock, not on sand.
“And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
In those moments, he feels like that rock.
I can’t help wondering how much of his steadiness has been shaped by his love of surfing… by all those years of meeting the ocean as she is, in every mood, without expecting her to become something else.
And even for me, as a woman, the water offers a way to become more familiar with my own nature. To discover that I can be gentle and powerful, frightened and brave, all within the same morning. To find my balance, lose it, and find it again.
What a gift that is.
So, the moral of this story is: surf. And, more importantly, take your man surfing.
