Unhealthy Love.

“What is the epicenter of your pain?”, I asked my friend going through a recent break up. He started to mumble something about how even after a year of knowing him, she still told him that he was quiet and weird, but stopped mid-sentence to say — “It never grew”.

“It never grew from you are quiet and weird to I have slowly begun to understand you better and enjoying your quirks.”. “Yeah”, he said with a pause. “ It was stuck, in a limbo!”. My friend’s voice grew heavy with emotion. “Limbo, of what sort?”, I prodded. “ Well I lost sleep sometimes when she treated me cold, and I told her that passive aggressiveness is not the right vocabulary in a healthy relationship. I hoped more than ever that while I would work to do less of what frustrated her, she would give me a broader berth and find better ways to express it. I was always blindsided. There was always a new reason”, he said.

It stuck me. The vocabulary of healthy relationships. How do you express your angst, fears, expectations or disappointments to your partner? Are you able to frame it, sometimes playfully, but always with kindness and hope in the other person? Can you say “This is what I remember from our conversation”, and not “You don’t have to lie to me!”.

“It lacked a certain kindness and trust”, he said. “ The way she could tell me — I know you felt treated like shit all day and ruthlessly continue on her rant about why I deserved it all. The way she could use every boil up from the past as a weapon to boost her argument and never really move on. She can ask for the truth but will never believe you.”

“Sounds like a line from some Billy Joel Song. Why did you let it happen?”, I asked him. Silence ensued. “I did not want to give up on her ! I don’t know. I always thought we would grow.”, he said.

“Something though was always off. I really trusted her while we were together, but now I feel slighted for putting up with a lot of it. Sometimes I could hear her in the other room talking to this guy she told me flirted with her and I could hear the things he would say. She tried to hide those from me. Nor would she tell him that we were dating. Nor would she stop leading him on. I think our bond lacked that basic respect and humility. It was unhealthy and toxic. I did not question any of it then, and it makes no point questioning any of it now.”

“Our arguments were weird. Every incident could be twisted to make you the one who should be taking blame. Every word could be excused under a veil of anger. It was never about communicating a need. It was in an unnatural way about winning the argument, never taking responsibility for your own role in the conflict until it got too late. In the end there was no victory.”

“But that is my biggest takeaway from this”, he said.

“What?”, I asked. “To look for signs of healthy growth and work to build the right vocabulary of conflict. We are not perfect. It is a lot about how charitable, kind and forgiving we are to the blotches we all have. That is what makes for love, not romantic or ideal but long lasting and healthy.”