Their actions not being symbolic of how much they can love

Today I'm thinking about the idea of acceptance of another person.

We had to put our dog "to sleep" this morning, and my spouse and I have been talking a bit about we grieve so differently. Like she cries a lot at the time (didn't want to bring in the dog herself because she knew she'd be crying through it) whereas I'm more stoic and calm at the time but get waves of grief in future weeks or months. She slept upstairs with sad insomnia and I slept well downstairs on the sofa so the dog didn't have to sleep alone its last night of life. I brought the dog in to the vet myself, and it was peaceful. It's nice that we (spouse and I) are being able to accept that when it comes to things like this we're just different; we're not interpreting each other, feeling threatened by the symbolism of it, feeling like the other person is too emotional or not emotional enough, worrying about how they show love, etc.

It reminded me of the difference between being in a more AP-sort of state of mind and how when I'm seeing through that lens view the other person's actions through what it means about their capacity to love and stick around, and it can seem threatening. I had a friend once who I had a lot of feelings for, but we were basically stuck in some sort of AP-DA pattern (or AP-FA? FA-DA? Something that wasn't very secure), and it's what basically drove me to these boards. Anyway, she had this motorcycle she loved. She drove hundreds of miles to buy it, fixed it up, loved it, but at some point in the instability of our rather intense friendship, she decided to sell this motorcycle. I remember in some ways feeling threatened by that, like if she could clearly love something and then just give it away, it didn't bode well for our friendship. She'd disappeared before; I was never confident she wouldn't disappear again, and my behavior in the friendship was always clouded by trying to cope with that. Everything she did became symbolic of her ability to love and leave or care and disassociate, etc.

So I was thinking of that this morning, and how when you work to get secure with someone, you are able to better accept that their actions in life are not symbolic of the ways that they might love you too much or too little, or representative of their likelihood of sticking around or leaving. You become better able to accept people for who they are. I'm not overwhelmed by my spouse crying about putting the dog 'to sleep' this morning; she's not threatened by the fact that I'm not crying about the dog.