Sometimes we love most the ones with whom we suffer the most.
We miss a person who disappoints us.
We wait for a message from someone who can be silent for days.
We return to someone who once makes us feel like we are the most important person in the world, and a moment later makes us wonder whether we mean anything to them at all.
And then the question comes:
Why?
Why does a person who gives us so little peace take up so much space in our head?
Why is it sometimes easier to leave someone we no longer love than to leave a person we love deeply but with whom we suffer more and more?
In her next text, Magdalena Feminine Movement does not seek one diagnosis or a simple slogan.
She tries to look at it a little differently.
Because the heart does not always attach itself to what is good for us.
Sometimes it attaches to what is familiar to us.
To what we strongly desire.
Or to the hope that one day we will finally get from the other person what we have been waiting for from the start.
We confuse intensity with the depth of love
Strong emotions make an impression.
When someone is once very close and then suddenly pulls away, we begin to think about them even more.
We analyze conversations.
We go back to messages.
We wonder whether we said something wrong.
We wait.
And when the other person appears again, a huge relief comes.
And it is this relief that is very easy to mistake for proof of great love.
“If I missed him that much, it must mean something special”.
“If her absence hurts that much, it means I really love her”.
Maybe we love.
But the intensity of emotions alone does not settle anything.
Sometimes it stems from love.
Sometimes from uncertainty.
Sometimes from the fear of rejection.
And sometimes from constantly wondering whether the other person will still be there tomorrow.
Love doesn't have to look like an emotional roller coaster to be real.
It doesn't have to take away our sleep, peace, and self-worth.
Sometimes we also fall in love with who someone could be
This is one of the most difficult moments.
Because the person we love may have many good qualities.
We may truly see goodness in them.
We remember the first conversations.
The first meetings.
Tenderness.
Promises.
The moment when it seemed to us that something extraordinary was just beginning.
And later, even when reality begins to look completely different, we still carry that person in our head.
Or the future version of the person we have beside us.
We think:
They will open up eventually.
They will understand eventually.
They just need a little time.
When they sort out their affairs, everything will change.
When they stop being afraid of intimacy, it will be different.
When he sees how much I have done for him, he will start to make an effort.
And it's very easy then to start loving the possibility more than the reality.
We can perceive someone's potential.
We can believe that a person is capable of change.
But potential is not the same as readiness.
Who someone could become someday is not always who they are for us today.
Why do we want so much to be chosen?
Sometimes we experience the greatest hunger for love precisely where we receive the least of it.
When someone gives us little attention, we start trying harder.
When they pull away, we try to find a way to bring them closer again.
When they hurt us, we look for an explanation that will allow us to believe once more:
Next time will be different.
This does not always come from a lack of self-respect.
Sometimes there's a very human need behind it.
We want to be noticed.
Chosen.
Appreciated.
We want to feel:
“I'm enough for him”.
“I'm enough for her”.
And then the relationship starts to be something more than a connection with another person.
It becomes an exam of our own worth.
If I make them choose me, I'll prove to myself that I'm worthy of love.
But do we really have to convince someone who cannot give us what we need?
Does the fact that someone cannot create a safe relationship with us really mean there is something wrong with us?
Empathy can keep us stuck for a very long time
Sensitive people can be great at explaining others.
He had a difficult childhood.
She was once betrayed.
He is afraid of intimacy.
She can't talk about emotions.
He needs time.
She just shows feelings differently.
And often part of these sentences is true.
People do carry their own stories with them.
They have wounds.
Fears.
Defense mechanisms.
Not everyone who hurts us does so consciously.
But here a very important question arises.
Does understanding the cause of someone's behavior make its consequences stop hurting us?
No.
We can understand a person and still not agree to the way we are treated.
We can sympathize with their history and at the same time protect our own.
Empathy does not mean giving up boundaries.
Love should not require that we be the place where someone unloads all their problems for years, without taking responsibility for what they do to us.
Sometimes we fear loss more than suffering
This is a moment that's hard to talk about.
Because it happens that a person knows perfectly well that they are not happy in the relationship.
But they also know how much they fear its ending.
What will happen afterwards?
Will I be alone?
Will I meet someone else?
Were all those years for nothing?
Do I really have to throw away everything we built now?
A thought appears:
“I've already given so much”.
“I've already forgiven so much”.
“We've been through so much together”.
“I can't leave now”.
But the time we have already invested in something should not automatically decide how many more years we should continue to spend there.
Leaving does not mean earlier feelings were meaningless.
It does not mean everything was a mistake.
Sometimes it simply means:
What was between us was important.
But how things are between us today is no longer good for me.
Who do we really miss?
This question can hurt.
When a relationship falls apart or we try to leave someone, we often say:
“I miss him”.
“I miss her”.
But what exactly do we miss?
The way that person treated us in recent months?
Or the beginning?
The first conversations?
The touch?
The shared evenings?
The hope?
For the future we had imagined?
Sometimes we also miss the version of ourselves from that time.
For the person full of excitement.
Hope.
The feeling that something beautiful is just beginning.
That's why it's sometimes worth asking:
Do I miss how this person actually treated me, or do I miss how much I wanted to be loved by them?
This is not a question that is meant to shame.
It is meant to help separate the person from the dream of them.
Love should not require losing yourself
Every relationship requires work.
Healthy relationships also go through difficult periods.
People make mistakes.
They say things they later regret.
Sometimes you need to forgive.
Sometimes give space.
Sometimes make compromises.
But there is a huge difference between going through a crisis together and carrying the whole relationship on your own.
Between forgiving a mistake and forgiving the exact same behavior for the tenth time without any change.
Between giving space and living for months in uncertainty.
Between accepting someone's flaws and giving up your own needs.
A healthy relationship is not one without conflicts.
It is a relationship in which both parties can see the problem.
Talk.
Admit a mistake.
Make amends.
Change behavior.
And remember that the other person's feelings also matter.
We don't need a perfect person.
We need a person with whom we don't have to constantly convince ourselves that things will be okay someday.
How to stop clinging to a person who hurts us?
It doesn't start with a resolution:
From tomorrow I will stop loving.
That's not how emotions work.
You can decide to leave and still miss them.
You can know that the relationship was bad for you and then for many weeks still want to write a message.
You can at the same time understand the decision and grieve the loss.
The first step is rather an honest look at reality.
Not only at the best moments.
At an average day.
How do you feel with this person most of the time?
Calm?
Safe?
Can you say what you need?
Do words match actions?
Are your boundaries respected?
When a problem arises, do you both try to solve it?
Or does the whole burden of maintaining this relationship rest on you?
These are much more important questions than:
How much do I love her?
Because you can love very much.
And still make a decision that protects us.
You can love and say "no"
This is perhaps the most important part of the whole story.
We don't have to wait until feelings completely disappear to leave.
We can miss them and not return.
We can understand and not justify.
We can love and set a boundary.
We can wish someone well and at the same time acknowledge that we don't want to continue building a life with them.
This is not coldness.
It does not mean we have stopped being sensitive.
It is the moment when we begin to understand that our own heart also needs our care.
Calm is not boredom
Sometimes after a very intense relationship a calm person seems strange.
They don't disappear.
They don't provoke.
They don't make you guess.
They don't make us analyze a single sentence for half the night.
They are present.
They respond.
They say what they want.
It listens to what we want.
And that's when the thought may appear:
"Is there even any chemistry here?"
Perhaps over the years we have become used to the idea that love must hurt in order to be real.
But stability is not the absence of passion.
Calm is not boredom.
Reciprocity does not take away the depth of love.
Sometimes only with a person for whom we don't have to fight for our place do we discover how much energy was previously consumed simply wondering whether we are loved.
Maybe the question is different
So perhaps the most important question is not:
"Why do I love the person who hurts me so much?"
Maybe we should ask:
"Why is it so hard for me to believe that I can be loved without constantly fighting for someone's attention?"
You don't have to close your heart.
You don't have to become cold.
You don't have to stop trusting people.
You don't have to be ashamed that you loved.
We can still be sensitive.
Empathetic.
Open.
We can have an enormous capacity for love.
But we can also learn to be a little more careful about whom we allow to get truly close to us.
Because maturity does not always mean that we stop loving the person who hurt us.
Sometimes it means that we stop treating our own love as an obligation to stay.
Not every love we feel is a love we should stay with.
And sometimes the greatest act of love is not another attempt to save the relationship.
It is the decision not to abandon yourself any longer. Pasted Markdown
Magdalena Feminine Movement on love without sugar-coating
This text is part of a conversation that Magdalena Feminine Movement is having about love without idealizing it and without simple formulas.
Not about how to find the perfect person.
Rather about how not to lose yourself when you really want to be close to another person.
Because you can love.
You can miss someone.
You can understand.
And yet sometimes you have to learn to say:
I love you. But I no longer want that kind of relationship.
And how do you see it?
Is it really possible to love a person and at the same time know that you should no longer be with them? We will develop this topic in subsequent conversations Steve Joobs × Magdalena Feminine Movement. Without ready-made solutions, without judging and without pretending that love is always simple.
