There’s no gift like peace of mind.
A video posted to TikTok by user Debra Reisinger has gone viral after she shared a candid clip of her fiancé gifting her a cozy setup to ease her pre-wedding anxiety—including a chair, a scented candle, and a rose—based on the 2024 film Inside Out 2. Reisinger, 34, and her now-husband, Ryan Erkins, 35, spoke to Newsweek about the act of care and how it reflects the kind of relationship they are growing.
“So, this is for you. Remember how they gave Anxiety a chair in the movie?” Erkins said to Reisinger in the video, referring to the film. “This is your chair.”
Erkins instructed his wife to light a candle and sit down with a drink, next to her favorite color rose, and “just relax.”
On a poster board, he had printed images of the Anxiety character from the animated film about emotions. “I tried to copy the picture as much as I could,” he said.
Erkins told Newsweek that he gave his wife the gift during the week of their wedding when Reisinger was stressing about “literally everything.”
“Knowing that anxiety is already something she struggles with, it reminded me of the movie Inside Out 2,” he said. “She was going back and forth between almost completely spiraling and baseline anxiety, so I wanted to do something nice for her to ease her mind and the idea just popped into my head.”
Despite all the nerves around the wedding, Erkins said he was determined to remind his wife of one thing: “The most important thing was that we were committing ourselves to each other and the rest would fall into place.”
As for Reisinger, she never expected the intervention.
Earlier that day, Erkins, a teacher, had asked her for help printing inspirational posters for his classroom. Eventually, he asked her to “go away” so he could finish them on his own.
“I did not think much of this nor anticipate that this is what he has up his sleeve,” Reisinger said. “I just began to intently listen and follow his directions. I knew he was serious about me needing to take a break. I think I was so caught off guard by the gesture…I did shed a few tears.”
Since the gift-giving, Reisinger said she has been using the chair and even hung up the film poster above it as a reminder. People in the comments have hailed Erkins’ effort as a certified “green flag.”
‘One of My Biggest Support Systems’
Reisinger said she and her husband have worked in mental health for many years while managing their own mental health conditions. The couple are committed to supporting each other and have been for the 13 years they’ve been together, she said.
“Both of us have our own therapists,” Reisinger said. “We both help each other manage our symptoms using the skills we’ve learned over time…he has been one of my biggest support systems in managing my anxiety, even when he may have caused some of it.”
Despite their success in mutual support, the couple are the first to admit it didn’t happen without major effort.
“What we think a lot of people might not understand about this one sweet moment in time is the amount of work it took for us to reach it,” Reisinger said. “Thirteen years is a long time, and it took a lot of dotting our i’s and crossing t’s…it didn’t just happen, it was worked for by both of us.”
Moments like this, they said, can only come true because the pair have worked on themselves individually, too.
“It’s interdependence that’s healthy, not codependence,” Reisinger said. “When both people in a relationship bring mental health conditions to the table like us, it is easy for codependence to appear. It was not until we both sought out working on ourselves as individuals that moments like this really came to fruition.
“Overall, I think it represents the work we’ve put into getting to a healthy place in our relationship, how we’re sustaining it, and the hope to continue to grow together in love.”
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