I’m Mindy Peterson and this is Lagom Life, your weekly dose of equilibrium.
Have you ever wondered whether your marriage or romantic relationship is good enough? Maybe it’s not bad, but maybe it’s not all you imagined it would be. Maybe it’s even good, but… you wish your partner was more romantic, more adventurous, more talkative, LESS talkative(!), more fill-in-the-blank – or maybe just better at putting their clothes away.
Do you ever wonder what life might be like with someone who shared more of your interests, understood you more easily, or approached life more like you do?
Our culture is optimizing EVERYthing. Just this week, Dictionary.com named “maxxing” its 2026 Word of the Year. We are Looksmaxxing, Sleepmaxxing, and Proteinmaxxing.
And we live in an era of unprecedented choice. We can order products from all over the world with a click of a button, and they arrive at our doorstep the next day. And if they don’t meet our expectations? Free returns. We have food options including fast-food, fast-casual, Paleo, Keto, ultra-processed, unprocessed, vegetarian, vegan, carnivore… and I could keep going. Endless choices.
And then there’s marriage, where we make a choice for life. Once we’ve made a choice in marriage… and the novelty wears off… it can be natural to apply our consumer maxxing lens to our intimate relationship. Instead of asking, “Are we good?” or “How can we make things even better?” we wonder, “Could I be happier somewhere else?”
I am not a relationship expert. But I do love reading books by experts, absorbing their wisdom, and curating it for my audience. And I loved Dr. Alexandra Solomon’s book, Loving Bravely. Dr. Solomon IS a relationship expert, and she writes: “The happiest couples I know are the ones who are able to create and inhabit love stories that are good enough. Not perfect: good enough.” (If that isn’t a Lagom Life topic layup, I don’t know what is!) Solomon basically says that, after making a commitment to one compatible person, we trust ourselves to have made a good-enough choice and stop looking for greener grass. Instead, we water and weed and fertilize and mow our chosen yard.
To clarify: We are not talking about situations involving abuse. Abuse is never okay. If you do not feel safe, please leave and get help. This episode is for those of us in a fundamentally healthy relationship.
Solomon points out that our culture is obsessed with the idea of love… but not with investing in love. And our expectation of a partner is higher than ever: We look to one person to be our best friend, lover, roommate, co-parent, and business partner (whether this means running a household or an actual business – or both). The person flossing their teeth next to you also needs to plan romantic getaways, deal with a meltdown by the toddler (or teenager!), and plunge the toilet. And make dinner. And make it look good on Instagram. To state the obvious: unrealistic expectations.
Conflict and friction are going to happen in every romantic relationship. Hard stop. Love is rich… and painful. Rewarding and disappointing. Messy and fulfilling. Exciting and frustrating. Confusing and clarifying. Love is too complex to have one without the other.
Rather than seeing conflict as evidence that something is wrong, we can shift our perspective and realize there is no better place to learn, to grow, than in a long-term committed relationship. Yes, conflict is uncomfortable, even deeply painful. It’s also a given – it’s going to happen. We get to choose whether we simply tolerate it, fuel a downward spiral, or utilize conflict as a launch pad for deeper connection and greater understanding – of ourselves, our partner, our past experiences, and the human experience.
Dr. Solomon calls romantic love “one of the most powerful vehicles for self-transformation that we will ever encounter.” IF we choose to access the learning housed in pain, it can accelerate our transformation into the person we want to be when we grow up.
Solomon calls this Brave Love, “an authentic and deeply connected place in which both partners get to be imperfect and worthy of love.” They get to be themselves.
She says: “If we peered into the ordinary Tuesday evening of our favorite fairy-tale couple, living out their happily ever after, I hope we would see them embodying brave love—respecting romance yet tolerating disappointment, inviting passion yet navigating frustration, seeking deep connection yet enduring conflict. Identifying yourself as a ‘hopeless romantic’ is totally fine, as long as your fairy tale includes dark days and courage in the face of challenges.
“Intimate relationships involve messy, confusing, beautiful work that makes you grow and evolve like nothing else can. Surrender the fairy tale and embrace brave love.”
Coincidentally, as I was planning this episode, I happened to watch the movie Table 19 with Anna Kendrick. It’s a romantic comedy but in many ways beautifully illustrates this brave love concept. As one character says, “90% of love is just showing up.” To which their spouse responds: “And the other 10% is not being an asshole.” And another couple says, “You’re a mess. And I’m a mess. But you’re the mess that I want to wake up to. And you’re the one I want to keep forgiving over and over.”
One perspective on marriage that has stuck with me for years is from Jamie Lee Curtis. Hollywood marriages are notoriously short-lived, but she and Christopher Guest have now been married for over 40 years. When asked for the secret of her long marriage, Curtis borrowed a phrase from the recovery world: “’If you stay on the bus, the scenery will change.’ And, you know, that’s marriage. You stay on the bus, the scenery changes.”
Is this really the stuff that fairytales are made of? IRL fairytales – absolutely 100%! My husband and I have been on the marriage bus for 29 years. Like every long-term relationship, we’ve had seasons with more or less equilibrium in our relationship. But we showed up. And the scenery outside the bus windows is more beautiful now than I could’ve ever imagined. Just stay on the bus.
So how much love is enough? And what does equilibrium look like in love? Maybe a better question is…
- Am I comparing a real person – with all their habits, limitations, and imperfections – to an imaginary (mythical) perfect person with none of those things?
- Am I devoting more energy to critiquing my relationship than to nurturing it?
- Is the pursuit of perfection keeping me from appreciating what’s good in my life?
- Which conflicts matter, which differences can we accommodate, and which ones might actually enrich our lives?
- What can this conflict teach me about myself and my past experiences; and how might this challenge transform me into more of the person I want to be when I grow up (a better communicator, less defensive, more resilient)?
Instead of endlessly asking what else is possible, we can begin asking what is possible here.
- What could grow if I gave this relationship more of my attention? What might I appreciate if I spent less time cataloging what is missing? What could change if I invested in making our life together better?
As always, lagom – or equilibrium – in love will look different from couple to couple, and from season to season. My parents were in a horrific car accident when they were still in their 40s. My mom suffered traumatic brain injuries, and my dad has been in a care-giving role ever since. Finding a new equilibrium, a new normal, looked very different than they ever anticipated when they said their vows in 1968. But they showed up, they stayed on the bus, and have now been married 58 years.
And perhaps that’s the equilibrium we’re looking for – not a relationship with zero flaws, but one where we clarify what matters most, make room for imperfection, and continue choosing to nurture what we have. That is an investment that no one can take from you, and will pay dividends for the rest of your life – and for generations to come.
Sometimes, a richer life doesn’t come from searching for more. Sometimes it comes from recognizing – and building up – what is already enough.
If you’re looking for more equilibrium in your love relationship, check out Dr. Solomon’s Loving Bravely. I’m also a huge fan of working with a good marriage therapist, anything Terry Real, and my favorite marriage book ever, The Exceptional 7 Percent, by Gregory Popcak. As always, all links – and a transcript – are in the show notes.
Two things before I go:
1: Shout out to listener Elayna, who provided a beautiful metaphor for balance and equilibrium:
“Looking forward to your balance explorations Mindy. As a kinetic artist creating art that moves and moves you, I guide workshop participants in mobile making, a metaphor for moving towards balance, one small shift at a time. Just as it’s not easy to create balance in one’s life, it’s also not easy to create a balanced mobile, but with patience, focused attention, and experimentation balance is achievable. The personal mobile is a constant reminder to realign towards balance and equilibrium one movement at a time.”
I love this, and I will never see a mobile the same way again! Thank you, Elayna!
And 2: I would love your input on a question from a listener who is in a different season of life than me. Listener Diane asks:
How does an elderly person reconcile finding balance when you’re used to a more active life and entertaining a lot more and now in a point in your life when you don’t have the energy or the strength to do what you used to do? My mind still wants to do all these things, but my physical body can’t keep up. These activities are part of my identity and scaling back leaves me feeling out of kilter. I’m not succeeding very well in finding that balance between what I used to do and now only what I’m capable of doing. It’s frustrating to not be able to do what I love to do. Many of us are trying to find balance between what we want to do and what we’re able to do as we age. I would love to hear if any of your listeners have found their balance and how they managed it.
If you have input on this topic, please let me know! And if you’re in a different stage or season of life, I’d love to hear about it. What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to finding balance? Is there an area of life where you’re trying to figure out what “enough” looks like? And what would you like to hear us explore on this show? Your questions and experiences can help shape the conversations we have here. Let me know on email (mindy@mpetersonmusic.com), Facebook, Instagram, X, or LinkedIn.
Thank you for joining me on this exploration of living well, with just the right amount for the season of life you are in. To see future episodes, be sure to Follow the show in your listening app. And if you’re enjoying the show, please help others find the show by leaving a rating and review. Until next time, here’s to more moments of just-right.