Can We Pause the World for Five Minutes?

Who do you call when life starts feeling a little too heavy?

Not because you’re expecting them to solve your problems, but because there’s something comforting about knowing someone you love is willing to sit with you while you sort through your thoughts. Sometimes, that’s all we really need.

Have you ever reached for your phone to call that person, only to realize they were probably busy? Maybe they were at work, in a meeting, taking care of their kids, driving home, or simply living their own life. Did a small part of you feel disappointed, even though you knew they hadn’t done anything wrong?

Or maybe you’ve been on the other side of it.

Maybe you were the one who missed the call because you couldn’t step away. You were in the middle of work, sitting in an appointment, helping a customer, or taking care of responsibilities that couldn’t wait. By the time you finally looked at your phone, your heart sank because all you saw were missed calls and unread messages. Your first thought probably wasn’t, “Why did they call me so many times?” It was, “I hope they’re okay.”

I think this is one of the quiet struggles that comes with adulthood.

We’re all trying to be present for the people we love while also showing up for the lives we’ve worked so hard to build. We have jobs, deadlines, responsibilities, families, commitments, and people depending on us. As much as we’d love to drop everything the second someone we love needs us, life doesn’t always make that possible.

That doesn’t mean we love them any less. It just means we’re human.

A few days ago, I found myself needing my person.

I was overwhelmed with everything surrounding my sister’s baby shower. It wasn’t one specific thing that pushed me over the edge. It was the accumulation of little moments, unspoken emotions, and the invisible weight that quietly builds until one day you realize you’re carrying more than you thought you could.

What surprised me most wasn’t how overwhelmed I felt.

It was what I wanted in that moment.

I didn’t want to open my journal.

I didn’t want to sit down at my laptop and write.

I didn’t want to post on Threads.

I didn’t want to text my Mermaid group.

I didn’t want advice.

I just wanted my person.

Not because I expected him to fix anything.

There wasn’t really anything to fix.

I simply wanted the comfort of talking to someone who knows my heart. Someone I don’t have to explain myself to. Someone who could sit with me for a few minutes while I untangled everything I was feeling.

And that’s when I realized something.

Sometimes the hardest part about loving someone isn’t learning how to communicate.

It’s learning how to ask for them.

As I sat with that thought, I started wondering how often we expect the people we love to somehow know what we need without us ever saying it out loud.

We convince ourselves that if someone truly knows us, they’ll hear it in our voice. They’ll notice it in our silence. They’ll instinctively know the difference between us calling to chat and us calling because we’re barely holding ourselves together.

But how could they?

The people we love aren’t mind readers.

They only know what we’ve chosen to share.

I think we forget that sometimes.

We expect understanding without communication.

We expect clarity without conversation.

And somewhere along the way, we become disappointed when people don’t respond to needs we never actually expressed.

Then I found myself thinking about something that happened last year, early on in my relationship with my partner.

At the time, I was working in the ER.

If you’ve ever worked in healthcare, you know there are days when your entire world becomes the patient standing in front of you. Your phone stays in your locker for hours, and you don’t think about it because you’re focused on taking care of the people who need you most.

That day, my partner was having a really difficult day emotionally.

He called me.

Then he called again.

And again.

I had absolutely no idea.

By the time I finally got to my locker during my break, I opened my phone and saw a screen full of missed calls.

My heart immediately dropped.

I wasn’t irritated.

I wasn’t frustrated.

I was terrified.

When someone repeatedly calls you while you’re working in the ER, your mind doesn’t think, “Maybe they just need to vent.”

You think someone was in an accident.

You think someone got hurt.

You think something terrible happened.

I called him back immediately.

Thankfully, he was okay.

He had simply needed me.

Looking back, neither of us was wrong.

He wasn’t wrong for reaching for the person he trusted most.

And I wasn’t wrong for being fully present with the patients who needed me.

We were simply two people trying to love each other while also honoring the responsibilities that were in front of us.

That conversation stayed with me because it revealed something we had never talked about before.

To him, calling me multiple times meant, “I really need you.”

To me, multiple missed calls meant, “Something terrible must have happened.”

We were speaking two different emotional languages without realizing it.

And that’s when everything changed.

Somewhere along the way, I think we’ve confused emotional support with emotional responsibility.

They’re not the same thing.

I don’t think the people we love are supposed to carry our emotions for us.

I think they’re supposed to remind us that we don’t have to carry them alone.

There’s a difference between asking someone to solve your problems…

…and asking someone to simply sit beside you while you work through them.

One creates pressure.

The other creates connection.

Once we understood that, we stopped expecting each other to guess.

Instead, we decided to create something that belonged only to us.

A simple sentence.

Whenever one of us is emotionally overwhelmed, we don’t repeatedly call or send message after message hoping the other person understands what’s happening.

We send one sentence.

“Can we pause the world for five minutes?”

That’s our phrase.

Those words don’t mean, “Drop everything you’re doing.”

They don’t mean, “Ignore your responsibilities.”

They don’t mean, “Fix this for me.”

They simply mean,

“When you’re able, I need my person for a few minutes.”

Sometimes he’s in the middle of a meeting.

Sometimes I’m still at work.

Sometimes one of us has to wait.

And that’s okay.

Because the expectation was never immediate availability.

The expectation was simply this:

“When you can, come find me.”

That one small change removed so much unnecessary hurt.

It removed the guessing.

It removed the assumptions.

Most importantly, it reminded both of us that being emotionally available isn’t always the same thing as being immediately available.

Those are two very different things.

As I reflected on all of this, I realized it had very little to do with romance.