The Hardest Part

There have been countless stories, songs, movies, plays and tv episodes written about love.  We have seen love portrayed in a way that makes it feel like the thing that we need to be truly happy and fulfilled and that without it we become a hollow husk of a human and very Scrooge-like.  However, much less is written or said about how badly love can hurt, how confusing it can become and how it can be weaponized in a way that leaves us feeling empty and utterly alone in the world.  The instances we have where this is portrayed often show the person who does the harming as a monster and like a very rare person we encounter.  Where a cautionary tale may have been, instead we see something more akin to a thriller or even a horror tale that feels closer to fantast rather than reality because we do not want to sully the idea of that perfect romantic love where a couple endures and triumphs over all the adversity that was keeping them apart.  We look to stories like Romeo and Juliet where teens made impulsive decisions and while we call that a tragedy, we also view it as a romantic tale, and it is often an early entry point for us as what romance and love can look like because of it being in many school curriculums.  Spoiler, while it is a great story (and should be something we still teach) it is NOT an accurate portrayal of what healthy romantic love and partnership should look like, but rather what teenage love can look like. 

When we think about romantic love and attachment to someone, we may look at other stories about love and feel a sense of yearning to be “completed” by another person.  Not having a partner sometimes can feel isolating and make us question our worth and value as many of our friends are in relationships and we are suddenly the odd person out.  We wonder what makes us not enough for a partner to be in our lives and begin to long for that sort of connection.  While a partnership can certainly be something we aspire to and even desire, it does not ever define us.  In fact, if we do allow partnership to define us it can ultimately hold us back and create a dynamic where we are so desirous of a relationship that we wind up compromising ourselves and our values in such a way that we may not even recognize ourselves.  Over time, that can turn into a relationship where we are bitter or resentful or in some cases, that can even open us up to an abusive relationship where one person exerts control over the other, either through emotionally manipulative tactics or through physical abuse and intimidation, perhaps all of the above.  These types of relationships happen far more commonly than many of us even realize and can leave a long-lasting impact that is extraordinarily challenging to shake.  It takes an exceedingly long time to get to the point where someone can leave, even if they have recognized how much they are being harmed, simply because they have created this attachment to the person who is harming them.  For some, it will take their abuser leaving for them to finally be free.  Sadly, in the aftermath of a relationship like this can also leave us questioning ourselves even more than we may have on the outset.   

Outside of unhealthy depictions of love and the dynamics of an abusive relationship, we can also see relationships that are simply not fulfilling.  Where a partnership would have give and take and a healthy sense of each person as an individual, there are some relationships where there is also a lack of mutual investment or prioritization.  That is not to say that someone in the relationship is inherently bad or intentionally harmful towards the other person, but rather is just not the right fit.  Inevitably, this leads to ongoing frustration, questioning and may end in resentment, anger and a terminated relationship because someone has hoped and prayed that their partner will meet them where they are, but wound up ultimately disappointed by the relationship and feels that they would be better off alone or better off finding another partner.  They may grapple a long time with that relationship and what to do because they are not being actively harmed, but they are also not being actively loved in a way that resonates with them, and it feels more like emotional neglect than fulfillment.  The last thing they want to do to their partner is to hurt them though, so they may try to wait, they may try to have a conversation or find a way to nudge their partner into action, but often the dynamic is such that the partner may not fully grasp the level of need and the urgency with which they should take action to address the missing pieces in the relationship.  Often, in these scenarios they don’t understand until the relationship has ended, and then they may have a moment of recognition.  Whether they work on the parts of themselves then may determine if they can attempt to rekindle that relationship eventually, but often they just make promises that they cannot keep, because they have not done work to change.

In these depictions of romantic partnership, none of them is truly a healthy version, and none of them are sustainable. For most people who have been in a situation like these, the real work begins upon the conclusion of the relationship. That is when the doubts and questions creep in along with the uncertainty as to whether they have made the right decision. There will be moments they stand with their chest puffed up confident that yes, indeed I have made the right choice for me. But in the more calm and still moments, the times where the introspection butts right up against a sense of isolation or loneliness they may delve much more deeply and feel a sense of confusion over if they have made the right choice. This is where love becomes something that is painful and where sadly as adults it may take us years to really figure out if we made the right choice. Even following the end of an abusive relationship, where we have been harmed over and over, we may question why we were not enough, or if we had worked a little harder, maybe they would have loved us more. But in the end, when it comes to romantic love, the hardest part is losing the person we loved. Whether we genuinely lose them, or whether we lose our connection to them, loss is loss, and it hurts like hell. There will always be moments where we will long for someone, and there is no easy way around that. So, I always tell clients if love is important to you, then you also must be willing to potentially endure some deep pain too, because there are no certainties when it comes to love.