my swedish is improving, but my speaking still lags behind

for a while i thought my problem with speaking is just that i didn't have the courage to speak. i mean, that definitely is part of my problem. it's just not the whole story. 

more specifically, i don't have the courage to speak unless i know what i'm saying is right. this holds me back from improving, but i've decided to stop beating myself up for it. 

i know myself. i know my strengths, and i know my weaknesses. and i know that even when a weakness wields its wild head, i forge a way forward and it all works out in the end. 

it's okay if i wait until i'm confident that what i'm saying is right. i'm okay with the consequences of my (in)actions! 

the stark asymmetry between my different languages skills (listening vs. speaking, for example), used to frustrate and torment me. but now that i've pushed through that even a little bit more, i can see how much i improve just by continually immersing myself, and that speaking will come in its own time, too. 

i haven't even taken a full course! i did one "intensive" beginner course that was a few hours each weekend for three weekends. and i missed one of the weekends! the rest has been learning on my own and simply exposing myself to the language. 

people keep telling me that i'll improve much quicker than those without swedish partners, because with a swedish partner, you can speak swedish at home! but the actual advantage to having a swedish partner feels more like the constant exposure to hearing them speak to other people, even if i'm not even involved! 

family group chats, of course, are also great exposure to natural speech—and a lower-stakes arena for producing swedish myself than in-person conversation. recently both my mother-in-law and sister-in-law expressed surprise at how natural my messages sounded, and thought my fiancé must be helping me write them. 

frankly, i'm just as shocked! i type the messages out myself, then have my fiancé check them. he has yet to correct any. it feels like magic that i've somehow just picked it up and can finagle my way into natural sentences, even if they are brief and infrequent. 

so i am confident that my speaking will follow a similar trajectory. eventually. and for now, i'm fine with having surprisingly-not-that-strange bilingual conversations, as i understand the swedish part and answer back in english.