Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Can You Love Someone & Still Be Unhealthy Together? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: Can you love someone and still be unhealthy together? I think that's one of the hardest questions we face in relationships. Because we tend to treat love as if it's this ultimate argument. If you love someone, shouldn't you stay? Shouldn't you sacrifice? Shouldn't you forgive? Shouldn't you find a way to make it work? Before we can answer that, I think we have to Ask a much bigger question. What do we actually mean when we say love? Because love has never been one universal definition. If we confuse love with sacrifice, guilt, fear, responsibility, or losing yourselves, you might end up fighting to preserve a relationship that is hurting the very people inside of it. It gets complicated because sometimes there is no villain. Sometimes there are two people who genuinely care about each other and still bring out the worst in each other. Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we go any further, quick note, this podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's gray areas, especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'm here to offer Framework that helps you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. The Greeks had different words for different kinds of love. One described passionate romantic love, friendship, loyalty, mutual respect, the natural bonds between family type of love and selfless, compassionate kind of love. Other cultures had also recognized that love can take many forms: romantic love, familiar love, spiritual love, the love we have for our community, the love we have for humanity. When we say I love this person, what are we actually choosing? Connection, respect, compassion, commitment, or are we sometimes calling something love? because we've attached ourselves to responsibility of keeping another person okay. There is a difference between I love you and I am responsible for you. Those are not the same things. I think that's where some of our relationships problems begin. Love is not always safe. Sometimes it isn't even the kind of love we truly are wanting. Sometimes it looks like begging to be understood, walking on eggshells. Feeling emotionally exhausted all the time. Losing pieces of ourself to keep the relationship stable. Keep the peace, baby. Confusing anxiety with compassion. Sometimes two people genuinely care about each other and still hurt each other. Love by itself does not automatically create safety, compatibility, emotional health. sometimes we have to ask, what is love costing me? My peace? My self-worth? My emotional safety, my identity, my boundaries. Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught that love is supposed to hurt. Love No, I can't sing that. Love hurts. Love means enduring. Forgiving endlessly. Staying no matter what. Working through everything. even when it destroys you. Who benefits from that? It's not you, sweetheart. Yes, healthy relationships take effort. Effort is not the same thing as self-abandonment. there is a difference between working through conflict together and being conditioned to tolerate harm in the name of love. All you need is love. And it's become an outdated song unfortunately. It's catchy though. It gives all the feels however love needs a little more help than that. It's not as simple as all you need is love. Love sometimes isn't enough. It's wild how people assume abuse and dysfunction looks explosive from the beginning. Most of the time we don't recognize it while we're inside of it. We don't always notice a sabotage right away. How we're being isolated, the micro punishment, the way we slowly stop feeling emotionally safe, the way we chip away at ourselves while hoping they'll change. Because there are good moments Those good moments matter. You remember them. You think maybe this time things are different. Sometimes they do change for a little while. Maybe this time is different. Then life happens. Stress happens, conflict happens, old behaviors come back. Maybe trauma gets in the way, maybe emotional regulation falls apart. Maybe there was no foundation at all. suddenly you're back to the same pattern with them. That's where things get complicated. People can genuinely struggle with mental illness, addiction, trauma, emotional maturity, chronic avoidance, anger, impulsivity, untreated pain. those struggles absolutely are entitled to compassion. Compassion becomes complicated when accountability never follows. eventually you become Their personal reminder alarm. And somehow they're mad at you for holding the mirror up to them. I think this distinction matters. What is the difference between a relapse and a choice? A relapse can look like crap, you're right, I promised. I need to fix this. A choice looks like, why should I own up to this pain I cause? I'm only human. I'm not Perfect. One receives the feedback, takes accountability, and the other avoids it like the plague. People mess up, people regress, people fall into old habits. Healing is messy. The question isn't whether someone is ever going to make a mistake. The question is what happens after the mistake? Do they repair? Do they take responsibility? Do they try something differently? or does that explanation become more important than the impact? They can't because eventually there is always a reason. They might have lost another job. They can't keep friends. They're always fighting with family. They're bad with money. They didn't mean it. Their ex was crazy. Their childhood made them this way. they were triggered. They were stressed. They were having a hard time. And sometimes those are absolutely true. Pain is real. circumstances can be real. Trauma is real. Mental health struggles are real. An explanation for a behavior isn't automatically taking accountability for a behavior, though. Because there comes a point when you don't look at your own patterns that it becomes a choice. Patterns need to be held accountable. This is where I think love can really get confusing. Because yes, grace is great. Giving grace for people's mistakes, wonderful. we have to encourage people to look at the mirror when it becomes a pattern. some people don't want to look in the mirror, unfortunately. You can become so focused on understanding someone else that you stop questioning yourself. Do I even like who I am around them? Do I feel emotionally safe here? Do I enjoy this relationship anymore? Or am I just maintaining something that doesn't work? Am I constantly managing someone else's emotions? Do I genuinely want a future that continues like this? Am I staying because I'm happy or because I'm attached? Do I avoid honesty because I'm afraid of the reaction? have I started shrinking myself to keep the peace? Why do we stay? Sometimes it's love. Sometimes love gets tangled with hope, history, fear, guilt, potential, children, financial dependency, loneliness, trauma, the fear of starting over, the fear what that leaving means we failed. Sometimes we blame ourselves because if we're the problem, maybe we can fix it. So we walk on eggshells, communication becomes forced. or avoid it entirely, eventually the relationship becomes emotionally unsafe. Can you really say no to a parent, partner, or friend without punishment, without guilt? Silent treatments, withdrawal, yelling, manipulation, passive aggressiveness, mocking, threats being made to feel selfish for having boundaries is so diabolical. Because if no isn't actually an option We're not talking about healthy connection anymore. We're talking about coercion and control. Sometimes dysfunctions become so normalized that we stop questioning it. This is where I have to include myself. I've spent a lot of my life trying to understand other people's behaviors. I've made excuses. I've thought they were overwhelmed at their limit, trying their best. I could see their pain. However, Sometimes their pain was real. Eventually it became a choice for them though. It became a pattern. I had to recognize that understanding someone's pain doesn't require me to absorb the consequences for them. I realized something uncomfortable. I had become very good at managing other people's emotions, predicting reactions before they happen, or trying to do damage control. Keeping the peace. Shrinking myself before conflict could happen. I thought that was normal. I thought that's what we were supposed to do. And if you grow up around relationships where love feels conditional, You learn some strange lessons about what love is supposed to look like. You might learn People love you as long as you're not difficult, as long as you're not inconveniencing them, as long as you don't have too many feelings about how they're treating you. that conditioning follows you. Sometimes you meet someone kind and consistent and it feels suspicious. Nothing suspicious. Feels sus. Someone thinks you're smart without interrogating your intelligent. Someone enjoys your presence without you. needing to earn it. Someone allowing disagreements without punishment. you're sitting there like, wait, are you trying to sell me snake oil? Sometimes real love is quieter than dysfunction. It can look boring. Slow, consistent. Showing up without keeping the score. Holding space for a mess without making you feel guilty for having it. Supporting you without trying to control you. That can take some getting used to. For me, some of the biggest green flags are actually pretty simple. Someone supports you whether or not you keep harmful people in your life. They validate your pain without forcing you to villainize others. they disagree with you without punishing you. They respect your boundaries. They let you have your own identity. They try to understand you. And they don't need you to disappear so that they can feel comfortable. Because yes, life is complicated. People are complicated. Sometimes people hurt us deeply and we can still understand why they became who they are. My goodness, it's been a wild ride. I also have to admit something uncomfortable. At one point I was the red flag too. I was bitter, but I would stay in relationships for far too long. I was resentful and at the same time I was hopeful that things would change. I was exhausted and still trying to force things to work. I'm grateful I had people who showed me without controlling me, without shaming me, Kimberly, there's another way to live. You can love people without making yourself responsible for fixing them. You can care about your family while accepting that their dysfunction isn't yours to carry. You can create distance when every interaction leaves you emotionally triggered and depleted. You can stop trying so hard to earn softness from people committed to misunderstanding you. It's okay to let go of relationships where love always comes attached to punishment, guilt, fear, or control. Because care without accountability can still become harmful. I'm doing this because I love you. But I asked you to stop. I'm just trying to help, but your help ignores my no's. But I didn't mean to hurt you, but the behavior keeps repeating. I care about you, But somehow I always leave feeling smaller. I had to learn that I can love people without it costing me myself. This brought me to another uncomfortable question. When is it support? And when does it become enabling? Because I think a lot of us confuse those things. Support says I'm here for you. Enabling can become, I'll keep absorbing the consequences so you don't have to. There's a difference. You can care about someone's mental health. You can understand their trauma. You can recognize their. difficult childhood and at the same time say this behavior is hurting me I cannot continue participating in it you don't have to hate someone to leave you don't have to prove they're evil you don't even have to stop loving them sometimes healing looks like indifference and I know desperate housewifes might have taught some of us that Andrew you can hate me but love and hate aren't opposite of each other indifferences is But you can decide what indifference means. it doesn't mean you have revenge for them, hatred for them. It simply is I don't wish you harm. But I also no longer need access to your chaos to prove I care. let's get to the question I think is underneath all of this. Can unhealthy relationships become healthy? I really think they can sometimes. Only though if both people are willing to participate in the change in good faith. Not one person carrying the emotional labor for two people, not one person endlessly researching communication while the other avoids accountability, not one person sacrificing themselves while hoping that eventually the other person will catch up. And I think this is where the equally yoke line really comes from. Honestly, okay, so side note, I thought it was yoke like Y-O-L-K like an egg. I didn't realize it was actually the mechanism to help horses go forward. So thinking of that, One horse might be fast, one horse might be strong. Momentum is happening. if the other person stops, no amount of pushing forward can get you there. if your partner keeps sabotaging you by not wanting to go forward, or a friendship or relationship that's you're wanting to have to keep you growing, you just can't. Real change requires self-reflection, the ability to say I am part of the problem too. My pain does not excuse my behavior. I need to stop defending patterns that hurt people. Accountability matters, not performative accountability, not I already said I'm sorry, not temporarily making a change that disappears the second conflict returns or they regress again. Consistent change is what I'm talking about. Yes, relapse I'm talking about they get themselves back on the wagon. You don't have to beg for it. The kind where actions slowly start matching words over time. where trust is built patiently instead of being demand immediately. Where safety becomes more important than ego. Emotional safety matters more than I think people realize. Can you be honest without fear? Can you disagree without punishment? Can both people express needs? Can conflict happen without someone trying to dominate, manipulate, shut down, or retaliate? Healthy communication isn't the absence of conflict. It's the ability to move through conflict without destroying each other in the process. people have to eventually stop romanticizing suffering. Struggling together isn't automatically intimacy. Chaos isn't proof of passion. Endurance isn't always love. Boundaries have to become respected. No has to mean something. Space has to be allowed. Autonomy has to exist. Healing cannot be one-sided. One person cannot heal enough for both people. Love alone cannot heal a relationship. Love matters. So does honesty. Effort, emotional safety, self-awareness, accountability, and consistency. I think there's another piece we don't talk enough about. Some relationships heal and some relationships teach us things about ourselves. Some relationships need distance because staying together keeps reopening the wound. Not every relationship is meant to survive healing. Sometimes healing changes what we can tolerate. Sometimes our standards change. that doesn't necessarily mean that love was never real. Some of the hardest relationships to grieve are the ones that aren't clearly evil, the relationship where no one is a full villain. Because some people genuinely love each other and still cannot function well together. How do you mourn someone who also comforted you? How do you acknowledge harm without erasing the good moments? How do you leave someone you still understand? Especially when the relationship was built on shared history, shared pain, shared growth, and shared survival. sometimes the hardest thing is accepting that love being real does not automatically mean the relationship was healthy. Two people can deeply care about each other and still trigger each other constantly, still exhaust each other, still reinforce unhealthy patterns, and still keep each other emotionally stuck. we sometimes ask the wrong questions. Was the love real? Maybe it was. Maybe the better question is, was it sustainable? could this relationship continue on without one or both people slowly disappearing inside of it? Sometimes you miss someone and still know distance is healthier. Sometimes you understand someone and still cannot safely stay connected to them. Sometimes letting go isn't punishment. Sometimes it's acceptance. I think one of the biggest things I've learned is that love does not require you to disappear. You do not have to abandon your identity, your peace, your boundaries, your safety, or your voice to maintain connection. Healthy relationships require more than attachment. They require honesty, accountability, mutual effort, self-awareness, safety. Sometimes loving someone means growing together. Sometimes it means learning healthier ways to communicate, repair, and show up for each other. Other times, loving someone means letting go. Not because the relationship was meaningless, not because every memory was fake. Because not every meaningful relationship meant to last forever. Back to the question: can you love someone and still be unhealthy together? Maybe that's the difficult part about relationships that hurt. sometimes the hardest relationships to understand are not the ones where there was no love. They're the ones where there was love, where there were good memories, where there was history, where there was moments that felt safe, where you could see the person they were trying to be and still find yourself being hurt by the patterns you guys kept repeating together or one sidedly was being repeated. Dysfunction rarely announces itself. It doesn't usually walk into your life and says, Hello, I'm an unhealthy pattern. Nice to meet you. It often starts smaller, a conversation that never gets resolved, a hurt that gets minimized, a boundary that becomes an argument, an apology that happens and nothing changes afterwards. Over time, you can find yourself spending more energy protecting the relationship than experiencing it. I think that's where the confusion happens because we often say, do I love this person? And maybe there's another question underneath it. Can this relationship hold the kind of love that both people truly need? Because love is powerful. Love doesn't repair itself what accountability refuses to address. Love doesn't replace emotional safety. Love doesn't replace honesty. And love doesn't replace two people being willing to look at themselves and say, something about the way we are doing this is hurting us, and we have to change. Sometimes that change is possible. Some people grow, some relationships grow, some relationships transform. And some people learn how to meet each other in healthier places. Sometimes healing also means accepting something painful. That loving someone does not always mean you can keep living inside the relationship the way it exists. I think that is where so much grief lives because we don't simply grieve people. We grieve possibilities. We grieve the version of the relationship we hope would come back. We grieve the conversation we wish we could have had with them. We grieve the future we imagine and sometimes we have to accept that relationship can have been real and at the same time not have been sustainable. it doesn't erase the love. It doesn't erase the memory. it doesn't mean nobody cares. It means that love and compatibility are not always the same thing. What I've learned is this a healthy relationship should not require one person to disappear so the other person can stay comfortable. You should not have to constantly shrink, overexplain, carry the emotional weight for both people, ignoring your own needs to keep the peace. when only one person is responsible for keeping the relationship alive, that isn't connection, that's survival. maybe the question isn't only can this relationship become healthy again? Maybe the deeper question is, are we both willing to become the people this relationship needs us to be? sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes the answer is no. both answers can come with grief. Maybe healing is learning that love was never supposed to require you to abandon yourself in order to prove you had it. Maybe love doesn't ask you to become smaller. Maybe love makes room for both people to exist. I want to leave you with this. Where is the line between fighting for a relationship and fighting against the reality of what it has become? Have you ever experienced a relationship where there was love, but the pattern between you was unhealthy? What happened? What helped you recognize the difference? Whether you leave a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with those questions yourself. I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself. And remember, love should never require you to disappear. The healthier relationships don't ask you to become smaller. They make room for you to exist too. I'll see you in the next episode.