Your Love (Alone) Will Not Transform Me

Part 4: The Ways We've Been Taught to Love Aren't Okay. They're Traumatizing.

Hello dear ones,

Back in July, I wrote a post called “The Ways We’ve Been Taught to Love Aren’t Okay. They’re Traumatizing.” I then followed up that post with part 2: “The Healing Power of Friendship,” and then part 3: “From Codependence to Interdependence.” Unlearning the toxic ways we’ve been taught to love is one of my special interests, and so I wanted to share some new writing, unpacking the ways in which we’ve been taught to romanticize staying in unsupportive, unhealthy, harmful, and even abusive dynamics — believing that our love will enable the other person to change.

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A collage by Margeaux featuring a still from the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I used to think that there was nothing more romantic than loving those who hurt me. I would find myself in relationships with boys who wanted so badly to be loved, but pushed away the love I gave them. This often resulted in them breaking up with me, and me begging and pleading with them to get back together.

In my early 20s, I was dating S. A talented artist and also a workaholic. Whenever I’d go over to his place for a date night, he’d inevitably be on his computer working. About three months into dating, I got into the shower and felt swollen lymph nodes the size of tennis balls all along my pelvis. When I got out of the shower and went to pee, it burned worse than any UTI I’d ever had. That’s when I realized that I had an outbreak of vaginal sores.

I immediately called S — who didn’t answer — and got in a cab to the hospital. When S called back and I told them what was happening, he said that there was no way he could come and be with me. He was too swamped at work. And so I called a friend, who showed up and held my hand while I had the most painful pelvic exam of my life. The doctor and I both had a sense of what was going on: herpes.

Later that night, S called and I asked him more questions about the last STI test he’d done before we started sleeping together. He then told me that his last partner had herpes, but nothing came up when he was tested (as I’d later learn, most STI panels do not test for herpes because it’s just so common and you need to be having an active outbreak or do antibody testing to get a diagnosis. *The more you know*). Clearly, S did not bring these concerns to their doctor, and didn’t know they he had contracted herpes — and now passed it on to me (I don’t entirely blame S for this. Our lack of comprehensive sex ed is also to blame here).

It is at this point that he tells me that we need to break up. He just can’t be there for me, emotionally, physically. He’s got too much going on in his life and I deserve someone who can be there for me. He tells me that he’s just a horrible person and I’d be better off without him. I cry and beg and plead, but he is resolute.

Over a week later, I ask S to get back together. I tell him that I can accept whatever he has to offer. And so we become a couple again. I wish I could say that this was the first time this happened: me begging a boy who doesn’t have the capacity to be in a loving relationship to be in a loving relationship with me. But, dear reader, it was not. I’d long learnt to tuck away my need for emotional and physical support, to hide my authentic self away in a dark corner in my heart, convinced that this was the only way to receive the love I yearned for. Every boy I dated became another test to find out if they could love me as much as I did them. I wish I could tell you that they passed.

Seven months later, I end my relationship with S. I’m a total anxious wreck. I can’t function. Over the course of our relationship, he would snap at me at the slightest provocation, like me changing the television channel while he was working without consulting him. During our last fight, he was angry at me because I’d told him how a man I was friends with helped me open my bottle of wine at the New Year’s Eve party that S was too busy to attend with me. S needed to know if I was flirting with him, if he was interested in me.

After I ended things with S, he emailed me to say that he’d heard I was on a date with someone, but wouldn’t say who. Through the details he gave me, I was able to put the puzzle together and realized that he must’ve been talking about a coffee I had with one of my best friend’s partners. There was nothing remotely romantic about it. But S wouldn’t believe me, try as I might to convince him. He needed to blame me for our relationship ending, and so he made up a story that could enable him to take zero accountability for how he treated me.

It took until the end of our relationship for me to realize how much emotional abuse I suffered in our relationship — both before and after we got back together. And so I stepped into my new therapist’s office, ready to unpack this pattern.

Over the three months that we worked together, I have that moment of revelation that feels deeply annoying in its truth: I have chosen to be with people who either remind me of my father (totally emotionally shut down) or my brother (totally emotionally volatile). I believe that if I can just love them, love them at their worst, then they will change and we will have the loving relationship we were always meant to.

But it goes even deeper than that. Because really my dad and brother — and all of these boys I dated — are stand ins for me. I wasn’t loved at my worst by my family — the people that are supposed to love you unconditionally. And so, if I can just love these boys that mistreat me, then it will heal my wounds of not receiving the unconditional love I should’ve received. I’m trying to rewrite the script.

It doesn’t help that we romanticize this narrative of my-love-will-transform-you-if-only-I-stay-long-enough. We make vows to love each other, “for better or for worse,” when really, what feels more romantic to me now, is to love each other for as long as that feels loving and kind for both of us. Because here’s the hard truth, a pill that I’ve struggled to swallow: Your love will not transform me unless I am willing to do the work to transform. 

A still from the show Euphoria, where our narrator tells us “it was the fact that she knew no matter what he did she’d still love him”

I used to believe that the most loving thing I could do was love someone even when they hurt me, harmed me, abused me. But what I was doing was enabling the harm. There were no consequences. My pain wasn’t enough. Sure, they’d apologize. They’d tell me that they wouldn’t do X harmful/abusive behavior again. And then they did. I want to believe that they genuinely wanted to change. But the gap between desire and capacity was too big. No amount of my love will make you change unless you want to change. Love transforms us when we are both committed to breaking the cycles of hurt, harm, and abuse.

I remember the first time I read bell hooks’ All About Love. It was through her words that I realized that love isn’t just a feeling — it’s a practice. hooks will go on to proclaim that love and abuse cannot co-exist. Initially, I was resistant to this argument. In part because I’ve never loved an either/or. But also because hooks’ proclamation would mean that my father didn’t love me — and wow did I not want to believe that.

What I see now is that someone can love you — as in feel love towards you; love as a noun, a feeling — without being loving towards you — love as a verb. Love, then, is a commitment to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, to nurture, care for, and see one another, fully.

Eventually, I got to the place where I was able to leave these relationships and this pattern behind. It took a lot of time, so, so many years, but I did it. Now, when I see the red flags, I know that I have to name what I’m seeing and ask the person I’m in relation with if they want to change. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they want to but they just can’t. Nothing breaks my heart more than this.

I’m deeply invested in our capacity to change, transform, and break cycles of harm. I believe that this is possible for anyone who wants it. But wanting isn’t enough. You have to be willing to do the painstaking work of shining a light into the dark crevices of your most harmful behaviors and deep traumas to uncover why you’re causing harm in the first place.

Once you have the “why,” then you need do the healing necessary to change your behavior. Again and again, what I see within my community on the radical left, is a deep wanting. But the gap between desire and capacity is too great to cross. Eventually, people opt out of relationships that require them to do this work, and then they repeat the cycle of harm.

What I know now is that the most loving thing I did in those relationships was leave. It was loving towards myself and toward the person I was with. In leaving, I stopped the cycle of harm, even if it was temporarily. Because being abusive towards others harms us too. 

We cannot wait around forever for someone to change. I’m done romanticizing that story. I know that love is transformative. That love is healing. And I can no longer make myself the martyr for someone else’s journey — not when they aren’t able or willing to take on their part. To do so is to sacrifice myself. And despite the ways we romanticize selfless love, I’m done with that too.

I want a love that is committed to transformation, to growth, and to loving each other as a practice. I want a love that is kind, soft, and sweet. I want a love where we’re both equally committed to healing our wounds so that we don’t create new ones. I want a love that is transformative, but not self-sacrificing. A self-full love. I want a love where we inspire each other to be the best versions of ourselves. I know that this love is possible. And the most loving thing I can do now is no longer accept anything less.

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Culture Diary

1. If you don’t know about Heartstopper, I need you to drop everything you’re doing, head to Netflix, and watch this show. I devoured season 3 and miss it already. I get super emotional every episode because these teens are in such loving relationships, are such great communicators, and are getting to be so gay and so trans. It’s the tv show I wish I’d had growing up.

2. I’ve been keeping up with Love is Blind and will say spoilers ahead. Wow, it was soooooo hard to watch Hannah continue to belittle Nick and I was so happy to see them break up. I worry about Marissa and Ramses compatibility, would be heartbroken if Taylor and Garrett don’t make it to the end, and am pretty sure we can bank on Ashley and Tyler saying yes.

3. I don’t know how I didn’t know about the gay/trans cowboy movie National Anthem, and so I wanna make sure that y’all know about it. The film follows Dylan, the son of a mother who’s never around, and older brother to Cassidy, as he spends time working on a ranch populated by queer and trans rodeo performers and cowboys. The acting was stellar, the film was beautiful.

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HEARTBREAK MOVING SALE: 20% OFF EVERYTHING ON MY WEBSITE!!

For the next week, everything on my website — and that includes webinars, is 20% off with the code MOVING. (More on why I’m running the sale here.)

One thing I want to specifically shout out is anchored: a deck for healing as there are now just 80 copies left in stock before it’s gone (maybe forever?).

Photo by Alexandra Kacha

ICYMI: I’ve made A LOT of things!! On my shop page you’ll find:

• Two chapbooks and seven zines, full of my personal essays

• Three different coloring sticker packs

• Art prints of my collages

• A coloring book of your fav memes

• Digital products (including anchored and my coloring book)

• All of my previously recorded webinars.

Appreciate y’all so much for being here xoxox