Space to Breathe

Many people remain in relationships long after the joy has thinned. They reach back toward old loves, even when those loves were inattentive, unkind, or unsafe. Even when betrayal was part of the story.

It is not always the person they want.

It is the idea of shelter.

The relationship becomes a stand-in for safety, belonging, continuity. The person inside it quietly turns into a placeholder for a feeling we are afraid we will not find again.

But love, when it is allowed to be honest, does not bargain with happiness. If you truly love someone, you want them to be well. Even if their well-being does not include you.

That realisation can be uncomfortable—not because it is cruel, but because it turns a mirror toward us.

If we cannot wish happiness freely for the people closest to us, it is often because something in us is still hungry. Not for them, exactly—but for the feeling we hoped they would provide.

There is a quiet truth here: the love we seek from others is often the love we have not yet learned to give ourselves.

When we begin to feel whole, generosity follows naturally. Not as a strategy. Not as a moral performance. Simply because fullness spills.

I learned this the hard way.

For a long time, I believed love meant vigilance. Worrying. Anticipating. Protecting others at the expense of myself. I told myself this was kindness. I told myself it was devotion.

Instead, it made me smaller. Tired. Unwell. And in the end, it did not help anyone—not me, not them.

Care that erases the self eventually becomes another kind of harm.

What we wish for others often reveals what we most desire for ourselves. Not in a transactional way, but in a directional one. Our longings leak through our blessings.

A monk is asked why attachment causes suffering. He tells a story of a man crossing a river on a raft. The raft saves his life. When he reaches the far shore, the man hoists the raft onto his back and keeps carrying it—because it helped him once, and letting it go feels ungrateful, frightening, wrong.

The monk asks: “Is the raft helping him now?”

Love, relationships, even identities can become rafts. Necessary once. Lifesaving, even. But painful to carry long after the crossing is over.