Love Isn’t Enough

Love is a great foundation for a relationship, but it isn’t enough.

We need other things too. Like understanding, respect, safety, security, care, connection, desire, excitement, freedom, adventure. The list goes on.

One of my clients recently felt frustrated because they’re not getting what they need in their relationship. Quality time. Attention. Connection. Sex. Even more frustrating is that they know their partner loves them. Very, very much.

I’ve been there too - many times.

After several years of being in an abusive relationship with an alcoholic, I felt so drained from our cycle of abuse. He’d get drunk. Abuse me in some way - physically, sexually, emotionally, verbally. I’d threaten to leave. He’d beg me to stay, because he loved me so much he didn’t want to lose me. If I insisted on leaving, he’d tell me he’d hunt me down and kill me, because I was his and no one else could have me. And then we’d make up. He’d apologize. Tell me how much he loved me. Promise to change.

He didn’t.

Santos and I repeated this pattern over and over again. For 9 years. I felt defeated. Resentful. Drained. Miserable. Depressed. Homicidal. I literally fantasized quite often about setting our bed on fire, with him in it. I despised him and what he demanded I tolerate because of his “I love you so much” pleas. I felt like a piece of property, not a person.

At one point, I went to a battered women’s shelter for a workshop on love. Me and the other women at the workshop made a list of things we wanted in a relationship. My list had things like respect, trust, understanding, safety, security, fidelity, compassion, healthy sexuality, communication, and companionship.

You know what didn’t make it on my list?

Love.

Fuck love. 🖕🏼❤️ It just wasn’t enough.

I left that marriage. Three days shy of my 28th birthday.

So…

What’s love got to do with it?

Not too long ago… Nothing. Marriage was (and still is in many cultures) a practical thing based on the choices of parents or family. Not a “love” thing. But that’s another blog post for another day. Given that love is an important factor for many of us in selecting our mates…

What’s love got to do with it?

I’ve thought about that a lot. Love. Lust. The separation of the two.

Love is total acceptance

My favorite definition is “total acceptance.” To love someone means to accept them. As they are. Flaws and all. But just because we love someone or they love us, doesn’t mean we have to tolerate things like abuse and neglect, or other dealbreakers. We often tolerate these things because, well, we have some shit to work through and these situations and circumstances are showing that to us.

Relationships are for growth and healing

We enter relationships with unresolved issues from the past and conditioning (either helpful or unhelpful) from our family, culture, religion. Our relationship baggage. And it’s in our relationships that we get to begin to unpack that baggage. In this way, relationships are containers for spiritual growth. And the purpose of relationships is to reveal those unresolved issues so that we can work through them. So that we can liberate ourselves from unhelpful conditioning and bring awareness, healing, and integration to our unresolved issues.

Love shines a light on our dark places

When we’re in a relationship long enough, love shines a light on us so that our soul can do a little burlesque show to reveal those things hidden inside of us. Love is the light that shines on our dark places. That baggage. Those fears, behaviors, patterns, beliefs, conditioning, or unresolved trauma from past experiences. Love brings them to the surface. And compels us to explore them.

Love and shadow work

So love nudges us to do our shadow work. There’s nothing quite like love, or the fear of losing it, that compels us to look into our shadows.

I am a romantic at heart. I want life to have a happy Bollywood movie ending. Where two people meet but they’re engaged to marry other people. They feel a connection and love grows. But, alas, they have many family and cultural obligations so they can’t be together. 😢 But, in the end, love wins. 🥳 Because they confront the conditioning and do whatever they needed to do so that they could be together. So that love wins.

Yay for love! 🎉🩷

And sometimes, love doesn’t win.

My husband loved me. Very much. He just had his own monsters to wrestle with. Like my mom, he became an alcoholic at a very early age. Late teens. With his own history of abuse. He wasn’t able to dive into any of that when we were together. So he drank. Lashed out at me. Abused me. And still wasn’t able or willing to deal with whatever circumstances caused him to become an alcoholic.

On the day I left, he sincerely and deeply apologized for being a terrible husband. We both cried. It felt heartbreaking to me so see someone suffer so much. And for me to have suffered so much.

This wasn’t my first experience like this. Nor was it my last.

Wounded people hurt other people.

If we don’t want to hurt other people, then we need to go to the dark side and wrestle with our monsters.

Love isn’t the issue, per se. It’s the monsters we don’t deal with that are the issue. Our inability or unwillingness, or lack of capacity to wrestle with them.

So, let love off the hook. It’s not love’s fault.

Let love off the hook

Sometimes I think we put too much emphasis on love.

If my mom loved me, she’d stop drinking. No. Her drinking behavior had nothing to do with her love for me. It had to do with her inability to do the deep inner work necessary to unearth the root cause and deal with that.

If Santos loved, me, he’d stop drinking. Ditto.

If he loved me, then this. If she loved me, then that. If they loved me, then the other thing.

Well, sometimes love loses.

Sometimes we don’t have the ability and willingness to overcome our barriers; they seem insurmountable. Or our partners don’t. Sometimes the monster wins - like with my first husband who was unwilling and unable to deal with the root issues for his alcoholism and abusive behavior. Sometimes the monster wins and then love goes away.

Just because someone loves us doesn’t mean they’ll know how to behave according to our expectations. Or love us in a way that we can experience feeling loved. Or be able to meet our needs. Or help us achieve our relationship desires.

These are things we learn. When we’re committed and devoted to our growth as individuals. And our growth as couples. To venturing into the darkness together. Each lighting the other’s way to wholeness. This is where love comes in.

Our love for someone - or their love for us - can compel us to do our own inner work and outer work. To seek and find all the places where they have barriers to love and intimacy. To grow, heal, integrate. And love it can be a great foundation from which to support our loved ones, and to be supported by our loved ones, while doing it. Because, if we don’t, these barriers get in the way of connection. Of intimacy.

So, let love off the hook.

What other things are on your list?

Hit reply and let me know.

Your intimacy host,

Heidi

Learn more about me here: About Me