Relationships should feel like burdens...and other essential truths

At times, romantic relationships can and should feel like burdens. When we are close to others, we are called to carry some of their weight. This idea is at odds with a culture that romanticizes connection, as we are surrounded by narratives that make success and happiness seem easy to attain.

In reality, when we merge lives with someone, we each carry a full backpack of history full of the old hurts and wounds that came from long before. Many of us attempt to hold our partners responsible for our healing, believing that if we find the “right person” it shouldn’t be hard, but instead love will just flow like a river without rocks. The truth is, most people struggle in connection—friction happens when two things rub up against each other.

“If we cannot always be entirely sane in our relationships, the kindest thing we can do for those who care about us is to hand over some maps that try to chart and guide others through the more disturbed regions of our internal world.”
–Relationships, The School of Life

The hard and worthwhile work comes not from convincing a partner to change, but rather the willingness to become familiar with who we are, how we came to be that way, and owning our truth aloud. Being in relationship necessitates making hard and conscious choices. When we choose a person, we also choose their trauma, their wounds, and their defensiveness. While we can commit to a shared goal of learning to love one another from a place of vulnerability and not survival position—leading with the things we yearn for instead of pointing out a series of qualities they lack—we must also lean on the belief that relationships are a series of trade offs: things we get and things we give up. 
 
Love is not an emotion but rather a participatory action (Bell Hooks). It takes practice, understanding, softness, resilience, and patience. We come together to learn how to navigate the complexities of relationships by understanding our own unique stories.
 
Co-written by Caitlen Tschann, LMHC and Lia Avellino, LCSW