How I Stay in Love – Emotional Boundaries
People often assume that understanding comes from sharing the same language.
I speak Mandarin fluently.
I look Chinese.
On the surface, it should be easy.
But I moved to the U.S. when I was 13.
My parents weren’t with me the whole time.
My sister was around, but she was in college, living her life.
That’s not blame.
That’s just how it was.
I learned to grow up on my own.
My wife grew up differently.
She grew up with her family in Taiwan.
She grew up inside a shared emotional system.
So even though we speak the same language,
there is a gap between us.
She would get frustrated and say,
“I wish I could talk to someone who understands me without me having to explain everything.”
At first, that hurt.
I thought marriage meant we would share laughter and sadness automatically.
That we would feel things together, at the same time, in the same way.
That didn’t happen.
She is very direct.
She wears her heart on her sleeve.
Her emotions rise and fall quickly.
I am more even-keeled.
I process slowly.
I stay steady.
Trying to ride her emotional highs and lows felt like being strapped into a roller coaster.
Every hour.
Every minute.
The climbs.
The drops.
The turns.
I wasn’t afraid of the ride.
I was afraid of losing myself on it.
That’s when I realized something important.
I could not attach my emotional state to hers.
Not because I didn’t care.
But because if I did, I wouldn’t survive the marriage.
She saw that as coldness.
As slowness.
As lack of reaction.
For me, it was regulation.
It was the only way I could stay present over time.
We’ve been married almost 19 years now.
Most people didn’t think we’d last three.
She often assumes I know what she means.
The truth is, I guess a lot.
But I’ve learned this:
Love doesn’t require emotional sameness.
Stability is not indifference.
Boundaries are not abandonment.
Golf taught me this before marriage ever did.
On the course, if you chase every feeling,
every swing thought,
every emotion after a bad shot,
you fall apart quickly.
Good players learn to stay inside themselves.
They respond without absorbing every fluctuation.
Marriage, for me, works the same way.
I don’t need to feel everything she feels
to act with care.
Being steady is how I stay.
This wasn’t something I was taught.
It was something I learned by necessity.
Another lesson collected quietly,
off the course.