OverFlow: Staying for the Hard Parts of Love
What is love but staying for the hard parts? No one wants to participate in difficult conversations—but your tolerance for stuff like this is almost unlimited for someone you love.
OverFlow is what happens when I overthink, overflow, and over-everything. When my feelings have nowhere to go, I write about them.
First, some words from my StarCrossed box: Congratulations for surviving both the eclipse sandwich season and the sort-of-concurrent Mercury retrograde. It ended last April 24, although the post-retrograde shadow period ends on May 13. The next one doesn’t start until August!
What is love but staying for the hard parts? No one wants to participate in difficult conversations or get saddled with chores they don’t like—but your tolerance for stuff like this is almost unlimited for someone you love.
Why? I don’t claim to be an expert at this, but being with the same person for almost 20 years affords me a unique perspective. Raf and I have been together since 2005—our journey has included two countries, three dogs, and four residences, and will consist of countless days to forever. We celebrated our 19th anniversary yesterday. When I say that love is staying for the hard parts of life, I mean it because I’ve lived it.
What’s the Hard Part?
Every married couple will agree that marriage isn’t easy. Sometimes, you don’t like your partner—whether it’s because of someone going on in your brain or a new irritation. But this isn’t the hard part! It’s staying together despite not being motivated to do so. Love, as they say, is more than a feeling. It’s a belief that you are meant to be together no matter what.
No matter what includes almost everything you can think of—anxiety, depression, emotional outbursts, financial problems, grief and loss, reinvention, relocation, travel, sicknesses… you name it. You know you love someone when you are ready to face these difficulties together as a team instead of running away and avoiding the hard parts to preserve your peace.
But you know what’s the hardest part for me? To stay and know deep inside that I’m doing it for love, not people pleasing.
What’s a People Pleaser to Do?
People pleasing was tough to let go of when I first started therapy, but it became more manageable when I saw it from an outside perspective. Yes, I aim to please, and I am always happy to help, but why? It turns out that what I hated the most was an overt version of what I was doing without realizing it: manipulation. Deep down, that’s what people pleasing is. You’re nice because you want people to like you, need you, look for you, and hopefully consider you in the same way you consider them.
That’s a recipe for resentment, so healing the childhood wounds and trauma that brought about my people pleasing tendencies was paramount. While going through the most challenging parts of healing these wounds, I wondered about this love I’ve been part of for almost 20 years. Should I stay? Should I leave? Should I finally prioritize myself and discover who I am without a partner? I must have spent weeks on this decision, meditating to sleep and when I woke up to find the answer. But it was as clear as the summer sky: I should stay because I love Raf and I want him in my life.
What Comes After Staying for Love?
Well, that’s easy—the rest of your life. I want to always be in Raf’s orbit and the other way around, too. I know that with him, I am a better person than I am when I’m alone. He balances out what’s lacking in me and doesn’t mind when I’m too much. When I overflow, overthink, over-everything, he compensates. And I don’t mind doing the same for him. How did I get so lucky?
What’s your experience with love? Tell me all about it. Talk again soon!
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
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