Pam and I run together some mornings. On those runs there’s not much talking at times.
We settled the pace and distance before each run. We agree on it before we leave the driveway, and then it’s just the road and the miles. No agenda.
Some of my favorite mornings this fall have looked exactly like that.
They’re also the mornings I catch myself.
There are two kinds of silence when you run with someone you love, and from the outside they look identical. Same pace. Same road. Nobody talking.
The first is easy. I’m in my legs, my breathing, the cold air coming off the greenbelts or lakes. She’s in hers. Neither of us needs the other to manage the quiet. That kind of silence gets earned by two people who are each okay enough in their own skin.
The second has a different process. My attention has left my mind and body and moved over to hers. I’m checking her stride, listening to her breathing, waiting for some signal that she needs something from me. Still quiet, still side by side, but I’m working the whole time.
I drift between the two without noticing the moment it happens. Truth be told, I usually find out about a mile late.
Our pace agreement settles the pace. It doesn’t settle where my attention goes once we’re out there.
I can read Pam with real accuracy, usually. I often have a sharp map of her state at any given minute. What I can’t see as clearly is what my own anxiety is doing with all that information. Good map of her, fog over me. You can read everyone in the house and still be blind to yourself.
So when the silence turns heavy, nothing is wrong with her. She’s running. I’m the one who took her experience and somehow made it my job, and now my legs are on the road with her while my head runs her race.
The anxiety is telling me something in those miles, usually that if she struggles I’m responsible, and if I’m responsible I’d better stay on watch. That’s the position I will take at times in the marriage: protector, manager of how she’s doing. I stay there because it feels like love, and because watching her is a lot easier than being with myself.
The adult move is much smaller. I set the pace we agreed on. I run it. I stay with my own breathing and the particular feel of the morning, and I let her stay with hers. She has permission to speak up if she needs something. My part is to trust that she will.
None of this means I stop caring. I care plenty. The question is whether her experience gets to stay hers.
Erich Fromm wrote that love means standing next to someone rather than merging with them. Two people who stay themselves and keep choosing each other. The merged version of a run feels like closeness and is really anxiety with good intentions, which is why it makes everything heavier.
I won’t get this right every time. I’ll drift again next week. What matters is the movement back: noticing the shift, returning to my own legs, one mile at a time.
Same road. Two inner lives. Running next to each other because we choose to again and again.
