Dear Diary,
A few days ago, I was having a conversation with some friends when one of my single friends asked my married friend a question I imagine many of us have wondered about at some point: How did you know your husband was the one for you?
Her response was that he felt like peace (cue the awwwws 🥹).
And honestly, I understand the sentiment. There is something beautiful about finding someone whose presence feels safe and with whom you can imagine building a life. We've all heard some version of the advice, “Marry someone who feels like peace.”
But as my friend continued to share what that meant for her, I remembered something my therapist once said while we were discussing a potential relationship: the absence of conflict doesn’t always mean peace.
This thought matters especially if you grew up in environments where chaos was familiar. When you've spent a significant part of your life navigating unpredictability, tension, or instability, the absence of those things can feel like peace. When you're no longer walking on eggshells or anticipating the next disagreement, the quiet can feel like a gift. And sometimes, it is.
But I wonder whether we sometimes mistake the absence of what hurt us for the presence of what will heal us.
Later that night, I remembered something I had learned during my master's program in a class called Foundations of Peace, Justice, and Social Change. We had explored the concepts of negative peace and positive peace, and I began thinking about how relevant they could be to our personal relationships.
Who knew that a lesson from the classroom would find its way into a conversation about marriage?
In peace and conflict studies, negative peace generally refers to the absence of direct violence or overt conflict, while positive peace considers the conditions that allow people and communities to flourish.
When applied to our relationships, this distinction invites us to look beyond whether we argue and consider what is happening beneath the surface.
Think about the friendships where you choose not to address something that hurt you because you don't want to create tension. The family relationships where certain topics are permanently off-limits because everyone would rather pretend everything is fine. Or the romantic relationships where one person has learned to suppress their needs because speaking up feels like too much trouble. Nobody is fighting, but that doesn't necessarily mean everyone feels heard, respected, or safe enough to be honest.
Of course, some relationships experience very little conflict because people communicate well and navigate their differences with maturity, and that is beautiful. The concern is when the peace we experience depends on someone continually swallowing their feelings to preserve it.
A relationship can be quiet without being healthy, and a relationship can experience conflict without being unhealthy.
The question is not simply whether conflict exists, but how we respond when it does.
Positive peace invites us to consider what we are actively building: mutual respect, trust, honest communication, accountability, and the freedom for everyone in the relationship to express themselves without fear of punishment or rejection. It’s being able to tell a friend that something hurt you without fearing that the friendship will end. It’s being able to disagree with a family member without the relationship becoming a battleground. And finally, it’s being able to establish a boundary with someone you love without having your love or loyalty questioned.
It’s especially also being willing to listen when someone tells us that we have hurt them.
Positive peace does ’t mean we will never misunderstand each other or cause each other pain; it means we are willing to take responsibility, make room for repair, and learn to navigate our differences together.
And I think this is where the conversation becomes even more personal, particularly for those of us who have known what it feels like to live around chaos.
When chaos is what you know, the absence of chaos can feel extraordinary. You might be deeply grateful for a friendship that feels predictable, a family environment with less tension, or a romantic relationship where you can finally exhale. While safety and stability matter and we should never take them for granted, healing also invites us to look beyond what is no longer happening and pay attention to what is happening now.
Can we express our needs and disappointments honestly? Can we have difficult conversations without fearing what might follow? Is there room for us to grow and change, or does maintaining the relationship require us to continually compromise who we are?
Sometimes, we celebrate a relationship because it doesn’t resemble what hurt us, and understandably so. But perhaps we also need to ask whether it is becoming the kind of relationship we actually need. Not just one that is different from what hurt us, but one that actively supports our healing and growth.
I say this with grace because learning to recognise healthy relationships is a process. One that might require unlearning the idea that expressing a need creates a problem, that disagreement threatens connection, or that we must keep everyone comfortable to preserve our place in their lives.
The absence of chaos can be a beautiful beginning. It just doesn't have to be the end of our understanding of peace.
As I continued to reflect on this, I was reminded of Ephesians 4:15, which speaks about speaking the truth in love. I love how this Scripture holds together two things we sometimes separate. Love calls us to consider the dignity of the person before us, but it doesn’t require us to pretend something is okay when it isn't. Without truth, we may preserve the appearance of harmony while allowing hurt to go unaddressed, and without love, honesty can become an excuse for harshness. But when truth and love work together, we create room to be honest without being cruel and to receive correction without treating it as rejection.
Romans 12:18 also reminds us to live peaceably with others as far as it depends on us. That qualification matters because we are responsible for our contribution to a relationship, but we cannot do the work of two people. We can choose to listen, communicate with grace, and take responsibility for our mistakes, but we cannot manufacture mutual respect or accountability on our own. Simply put, peace requires participation.
And that applies whether we are building a marriage, nurturing a friendship, navigating family relationships, or learning how to relate to ourselves with greater compassion. We can do our part to cultivate peace, but healthy relationships require a willingness to participate from everyone involved.
So, what kind of peace are we building?
I still think there is something beautiful about the idea of marrying someone who feels like peace. But perhaps this is a question worth asking of every relationship we hold dear.
When I say someone brings me peace, what do I mean?
Is it that we never disagree, or that we have learned how to disagree without tearing each other down? Is it that we never feel disappointed, or that we can express our disappointment and work through it together? Is it that we never have difficult conversations, or that we trust each other enough to have them?
And perhaps we should ask ourselves the same questions about the peace we offer others.
Are we people who make room for honesty? Can those we love tell us when we've hurt them without immediately having to defend their feelings? Are we willing to take accountability, respect boundaries, and make changes when necessary?
Because peace is not simply something we hope to find in other people. It is also something we have a responsibility to cultivate in the way we love them.
I am learning that peace is not always the absence of noise. Sometimes, it is the presence of enough trust to tell the truth, enough humility to hear it, and enough love to do something meaningful with it.
Perhaps the goal is not to build relationships where nothing ever goes wrong, but relationships where honesty, accountability, and love give us the foundation to work through what does.
And perhaps that is the kind of peace worth building, together.
With grace and truth,
Nandi
