The Obstinacy of Love: When Forcing the Pieces Together Doesn’t Work

I don’t like not trying, giving up at the first sign of change. I refuse to accept things as they are right from the start. Although it may be hard, I’m going to put all my effort into it so that everything works. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m confused and what I consider to be an attempt to make everything work out right is just the simple obstinacy of love.

Love is effort and it is self-sacrifice. Love is not easy, it is sacrifice. How many times have we heard those kinds of phrases? Words that seem banal, but that are engraved in our minds. Suddenly, we are fighting for an impossibility. This is what we are taught. To fight, to wage war, not to stand there with our arms crossed. In this way, the other person can get an idea of how in love we are.

We don’t realize because we are afraid of feeling bad over not having made an effort. However, all the obstinacy of love ends in a great failure.

The obstinacy of love causes great disasters

There are many couples who don’t know why there comes a day when they wake up feeling different. Those butterflies in their stomach are dead now. The necessary time has elapsed for the idealizations to have broken down and for their hopes to have grown weaker. Now we see reality and what we feel is great discouragement.

Some people don’t realize this until many years have gone by. When they have a family with children. A united group…happy? Until now, everything seemed that way, but everything shows that is not the case. Suddenly, differences have reared their ugly heads. You aren’t the same, but this doesn’t have to be negative. Where is that saying now about how “opposites attract”?

A saying that leads us to disaster, to believe in lies that are not true. The differences and being too different does not bring us together, but rather separates us. With living together, the bad experiences, the most stressful situations, all of this confuses us and sometimes it seems to get easier, until the moment comes again when it is unbearable.

However, sometimes the past can be reason enough not to give up yet. “We didn’t go through so many good and bad times together just to throw in the towel now.” We hold onto that to avoid losing what we have won. Not to feel like a failure and to show that we love our partner, that we want everything to keep moving forward.

We refuse to accept that the relationship has run its course. However, strengthening it and trying to keep it alive, no matter how, does nothing more than further undermine it.

The youngest ones in the home will experience rather unpleasant experiences. Arguments, reproaches, and many more moments that are the fruit of this obstinacy that is nothing more than a terrible fear of accepting the end of the relationship. It’s over and you are denying that. But the pieces don’t fit anymore and the fear of what is outside that circle where you have been living for so many years paralyzes you and pushes you into a state of inertia.

Not fighting is the same as not wanting to

We are wrong in thinking that giving up the fight and accepting this situation is a synonym for the other person not mattering to us anymore. It is quite the opposite. It is proof of maturity, of knowing how to accept when the end has come and not wanting to skirt around it.

Now you are aware that your pieces don’t fit together and haven’t for a while or maybe they never did. Your good intentions from the start masked a situation that, over time, showed itself as it really was. You are not compatible and nothing is happening.

You can drown yourselves in a dull relationship, where you even hurt one another without meaning to, because the circumstance where you find yourself is uncomfortable for both of you. You will not achieve that happiness you so desire and, little by little, you will find yourselves becoming bitter in the senselessness.

What happens with a puzzle when that piece doesn’t fit? No matter how much we force it, the only thing we will manage to do is bend it, pinch it, and make it look strange. This is what will happen with you partner. The worries, pressure, and discomfort will be the new descriptions that best fit your relationship.

In the obstinacy of love, there will always be someone who comes out hurt. The lack of acceptance will lead to the reality of a painful failure.

Don’t be afraid of nothing going right. Things don’t always turn out the way we want them to and things can change at the moment you least expect it. That’s life and that’s how relationships are as well. Unpredictable, changing, but we can learn a lot from them. Leave that obstinacy of love aside and accept that everything isn’t always going to be the way you want it to. But above all else, never think that this means that you didn’t care at all about the person.

Images courtesy of David Hockney, Timothy Clark, Gordon Johnson