You believe love always ends in pain, so why bother
You have concluded that love always ends in pain — every love you have known has hurt you, and so you have decided it is not worth bothering with, that the pain outweighs the joy and the safest thing is to stop trying. You have closed yourself off to love, protected from its pain but empty of its joy, convinced that love is simply not worth the suffering.
I loved knowing full well what love costs, and loved anyway, joyfully — so let me speak to your why-bother. The belief is drawn from your wounds, not from love itself — your loves ended in pain, which is real, but that yours did does not mean all love must, and building a universal law of love's inevitable agony from your particular hurts is a distortion grief makes convincing; plenty of love endures and nourishes and lasts. Even the love that ends in pain was worth having — the ending's pain does not erase the joy and richness of the love while it lived, so to have loved and lost is genuinely more than never to have loved, the pain the price of a real good, not proof the good was worthless. And the why-bother protects you from pain and from life both — it guards against love's pain by keeping love out entirely, and so from love's joy along with it, sentencing you to a loveless life, which is its own permanent grief. Set down the shield, for love is worth the bother. What made you decide love wasn't worth it?
What changes unlock by starting
- You see the belief comes from your wounds, not love's nature
- You recognize even painful love was worth having
- You see the why-bother blocks love's joy too
- You set down the shield and risk loving again