Woman Decided To 'Shrug Off The Burden' Of Finding A Husband & Explains How It Has Changed Her Life
She was so focused on trying to secure marriage that she let her other relationships fall by the wayside.
@shyftyogacoach / TikTok A woman recently recorded a life-altering realization she came to, sharing it with others, explaining that the lesson was for anyone who might need to hear it. She learned how to live fully for herself, in pursuit of her own best interest, and let others know how she arrived at that moment.
The woman ‘shrugged off the burden’ of finding a husband, and the decision changed her life.
Heather Diemond Labbe stood amidst a clearing in a forest, sun filtering through the trees. Watching her, it felt easy to imagine she’d just been on a hike, and in her solitude, found the words to express her innermost thoughts: “The highest use of your life is not to secure and support marriage.”
Labbe detailed that three major forces in her life — her family, faith, and culture — have “all conspired for the entirety of my life to convince me that the best and highest use of my life, body, mind, and heart, was to secure and support a lifelong monogamous, heterosexual, romantic partnership.”
She revealed that she’d spent most of her life sacrificing all her energy and her other relationships in pursuit of that particular goal: to find a husband. She explained that she wanted to meet the expectations placed upon her by those three entities in order to “secure the validation and acknowledgment” they might bestow upon her.
“It has been in the best interest of those institutions, those systems, but it has not been in my best interest,” she stated.
Photo: Roberto Hund / Pexels
“That is not the best and highest use of my life,” she concluded. “It is not the best and highest use of my body, of my mind or of my heart to center one specific relationship and sacrifice wherever else I may have to, to make that relationship work, alone, as if I were the only one responsible for it. And that’s what I’ve done, and it has not been pleasant.”
Living her life in pursuit of a husband has not been in her best interest, and once she realized that, she felt free.
She continued on, making her declaration of liberation. She acknowledged that her shifting mindset changed the way she lives her daily life, saying, “ Sometime in the last four or five days, I shrugged off that burden… It's like I’m living in a whole new world.”
Labbe decided she’d no longer expend her physical, mental, and emotional energy to secure one singular partnership, “at the expense of all other relationships.”
Her realization is a testament to listening to what your soul needs to feel nourished.
In seeking out one exclusive partnership, Labbe came to understand what was missing in her life was true, actual connection, to herself and to others. Now, she's living in pursuit of her own most authentic self, seeking her own inner validation.
Photo: Kampus Production / Pexels
There are so many forms of love and so many different kinds of relationships to nurture.
By solely focusing on a partner, or an imagined partner, one who might — or might not — appear in the future, we lose sight of living in the present moment. We eschew all other forms of partnership, whether they be in the form of siblinghood or friendship, or any other iteration of human connection.
Labbe’s newfound understanding of herself and her decision to center her own needs, and not the superimposed wishes of anyone else, show that she is fully living freely.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers mental health, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.