I’m trying to sleep so I close my eyes. I can hear the whisper-soft rotation of the ceiling fan above me and feel the slightest breeze across my face. I am cocooned in soft, warm blankets, but I am not at peace. One thought sits heavy on my heart:
Loving harder will not correct the balance.
Sometimes, epiphanies are as simple as a quiet voice late at night that you slowly recognize as your own. This isn’t a new realization, but with all the trauma work I’ve been doing in therapy lately, I know that it’s a realization I need to fully hear and accept. Loving harder will never correct the balance of not being loved enough.
For those of us who have experienced a deficit of love, there is often an underlying instinct to try to correct the balance. Because we’ve felt the lack of love, we sometimes love hard, making sure that no one we love ever feels that lack. In a balanced relationship, our love is reciprocated, and the energy we put out comes back to us in other ways. In the situations where our love is not returned, or not returned at the same level, loving more and loving harder will never make up for the fact that the relationship is out of balance.
Just like we can never do enough work to single-handedly save a relationship, it’s equally impossible to love someone enough to make up for them not loving us enough. It doesn’t correct the balance, but it does show us very clearly that any relationship that makes us feel this way is the wrong one. Of course, knowing this and accepting it are two very different things.
I have spent my life trying to correct an imbalance, but I’ve also been repeating a cycle. I love hard — but I’ve also stayed in relationships where there was no expectation I would be loved in the same way. Looking back, I can see the lack of love likely felt comfortable to me. After all, it’s what I’ve always known. I didn’t demand more for myself because I didn’t expect it.
The point here is that we should expect other people to love us back. We should expect balance in relationships. We don’t have to stay in relationships where we’re all-in, and they’ve got one foot out the door, scanning the next room for a better option. No matter how good we are at loving someone, we can never love them enough to make the relationship right.
As I’ve been working through my early trauma, I’ve experienced a shift in my mindset. While I’ve always been happy to adore the people with whom I’ve partnered, I’ve watched as one after another downgraded their admiration until little was left. I watched affection turn to disinterest, and I just kept on loving. I don’t actually regret the loving, but I know that the person I am now could no longer stay with a partner showing clear signs that they’ve checked out of the relationship. The person I’ve become, the one healing decades of trauma, knows that I deserve so much better.
We want to see loving hard as a beautiful thing about us — and it is. But when we love hard in the face of neglect, disinterest, or abuse, what we’re doing is no longer beautiful. It’s self-harming to love this way. To love someone fully so that they never feel a lack of love is a wonderful way to be. I’m happy that I’ve shown other people how they deserve to be loved, but I deserved love like that, too.
When we can see that our relationships are out of balance, we can either work with our partners to correct the balance (because we cannot do this alone), or we can take the information we’re receiving and leave the relationship that clearly isn’t right for us. The right relationship won’t have us begging for affection. The right relationship doesn’t leave us wondering if they care. The right relationship doesn’t make us feel a lack of love while fully absorbing all the love that comes their way.
I am not angry with past partners for not loving me enough. I am not even angry at myself for accepting what had been normalized in my life. I wish that I had recognized and accepted these imbalances when I first noticed them and been more loving to myself. I wish I could take back years of accumulated pain.
But since I can’t, I’m learning from these experiences. I am learning that relationships require a balance, and without that balance, the relationship isn’t healthy. We deserve to be loved as fully as we love. Full stop.
We cannot love someone enough or appreciate them enough or accept them enough to earn their love, appreciation, or acceptance in return. There is no way to single-handedly correct a relationship imbalance. There is, however, couples counseling and other services and resources available to help couples find their way back to each other.
Today, in the wake of these ever-strengthening realizations, I am giving myself a little softness and grace for the person who could love so much while starving for even a hint of it. I’m not demanding that other people love me back, but I am holding healthy boundaries for future relationships. I will choose to be self-loving, and when a relationship shows an imbalance, I will choose myself.
