HOME BLOG QUOTES FUN & INSPIRING FORUMS ADVERTISE

SUBMIT A POST SHOP 

What to Do When You Love

Someone Who Hurts You Enter keyword

By Lauren Erickson-Viereck SEARCH

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we

TRANSLATE
need to know.” ~Pema Chödrön Select Language
Powered by Translate
There is a person in my life who I love with all my heart, but in
this relationship I struggle to keep a full cup myself. They are
family, the situation is complicated and tender. But learning to
have compassion for this other person begins with having
compassion for myself. FREE
A nasty divorce spanning most of my childhood set the stage DOWNLOAD:
for our current situation. My mother was deeply emotionally
:
 wounded by my father, and carried that pain into her
BUDDHA
parenting of my sister and me.
DESKTOP
Contact with the ex (my dad) dropped to nil—maybe a week a
year, far below what the court had decided. WALLPAPER
Any efforts on our parts to connect with our absent parent,
even recounting fond memories, were seen by our mother as
attacks on her legitimacy and a discounting of her pain. And
what emotional intimacy we shared was often exploited—it
kept us locked into the family unit, not believing we could
have our needs filled elsewhere, least of all with our absentee
father.

A few short years prior, I felt part of a happy, perfect family.

Suddenly one parent was effectively gone. My relationship RECENT FORUM
with the other became a labyrinth of confusion—love down
TOPICS
this path, hurt down the other, and at my young age I couldn’t
find the rhyme or reason to it. I am really struggling
Need to Do a Short
Childhood gifted me a number of unhealthy survival
Interview with a Buddhist
mechanisms, which still follow me around today: a deep self harm
fear of conflict (because conflict often meant someone What is some advice for
would leave), constant apologies and guilt for things I’m an almost 32-year-old
not truly responsible for, and a voice in the back of my virgin?
mind telling me no matter what I do, who I am, who I Wonderlust
become, it will never be enough. Ex fiancé wants to meet
Is this a temporary ebb in
Growing up, I realize that those mindsets that helped me
friendship ?
survive as a child, in the trenches of grief, inadequacy, and
Taking a break
parental loss, no longer served me. Becoming a healthier
Should I stay or end the
person showed me how unhealthy this particular relationship
relationship?
really was.
Blank Canvas
Healing with my mom—communication about the past,
forgiveness, and moving on together—has not taken place. You Learn to Live with
Attempts to bring up my own hurt and pain are minimized and Loss
shut down. My words, invariably, have been met with
responses like “I can’t do this right now, it’s a bad time,” “I
can’t believe you’d do this to me,” or “It all came from a place
of love.”

So, in interactions with my mother, I keep my guard up. I

:
 know she still hurts, and seems timelessly stuck in her own
grief, but it would take a great degree of emotional wholeness
on my part to absorb each new wound with simple
forgiveness and empathy. I see where my path might point
toward such healing in the future, but we’re not there yet.

Many of us have experienced relationships like this: someone

we love acts toward us in ways that continually damage.

It’s one thing to forgive and move on from a wound we

received in the past, and another animal entirely when we
GET MORE FUN & INSPIRING
get hurt again and again, in the same place, a scab not
IMAGES & VIDEOS.
quite healed over before it’s ripped off again.

We all have histories, wounds, scars. Most people carry deep LATEST POSTS
tender spots that have never truly healed, and some use all
their actions to self-protect. The fear of vulnerability leads
The Amazing
them to cover those places, distract from those places.
Power of
Listening to
Attempts to wear the heaviest of armor results in getting Your Inner
“bitter” rather than “better,” and those who are too thick- Critic
skinned start to lose their delicate abilities to empathize. They
How to Find
project their fear of getting hurt into decisions that may
the Gold
themselves, unintentionally or intentionally, cause others to
When
suffer.
Everything
Here lies the difficulty: in a relationship with someone who Falls Away
continues to act in hurtful ways, how do we toe the line 4 Powerful
between loving them and interacting with compassion, and Ways to
protecting our own heart? Master the
Art of Living
We can save no one but ourselves.
with
Real shifts in our psyche, our inner being, do not come from Uncertainty
outside pushes. Change will never stick unless the changer is The Most
ready. Our worldly circumstances will nudge us here and Useful
there, and we ultimately respond by either softening or Mindfulness
embittering our vision, our paradigms. Technique I
Know
If we’ve allowed experience to push us toward a scared,
closed off, hardened heart, things can only be different when How to Prevent Your Ego
we are ready to make our own intentional choice to be from Running Your Life
different.
:
 We cannot throw another person over our back, or carry them
in our arms through the fire. That cannot be our job. Be there
for them, be support, hold space in time of need, even be a
guide when asked. But always, the true work will be theirs
alone.

Being love does not mean being a doormat.

Compassion for others begins with compassion for ourselves.

Loving someone should not mean getting hurt time and again.
There will always be need for forgiveness, but not at the cost
of healthy boundaries. Here, love might mean taking a step
back.

I’ve realized that sometimes, forgiveness is not about

absolving someone of their actions—it means we have given
ourselves permission to move on with our lives, deciding
“what you did no longer holds power over me.” It’s okay,
necessary even, to set up firebreaks, to say, “Enough.”

We can’t resolve hurts from unstable

ground.

If someone has hurt you, chances are they’re suffering

themselves. When both parties feel pain that they believe the
other caused, they will already be on the defensive. I believe
the only place from which we can work through those old
woundings is one of stability, of love and trust.

Yet closure in the sense of reconciliation, communication, and

healing together may never happen. If someone doesn’t
believe they have wronged you, arguing your point will only
drive the relationship rift further apart.

If we can find common ground in our love and words, it’s

possible to move forward together into resolution of hurts. But
if one party isn’t ready to look at themselves truthfully and
engage in painfully open communication, resolution must
come a different way.

Putting things to rest can be one-sided.

Here’s the tough truth: closure won’t come from someone
:
 else. It happens when we are ready to let things go.

In her book Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa
Pinkola-Estes uses the concept of descansos, death-markers,
the white crosses seen on the side of roads in the West and
Southwest, as a metaphor for marking, blessing, and moving
on from trauma, grief, little “deaths” in our lives.

By tenderly identifying our own descansos—things in our lives

which haven’t gone as planned, dreams we’ve had to leave
behind, expectations we’ve put aside in exchange for the truth
—we give ourselves a unique means for closure.

“Be gentle with yourself and make the descansos, the resting
places for the aspects of yourself that were on their way to
somewhere, but never arrived…

Descansos mark the death sites, the dark times, but they are
also love notes to your suffering. They are transformative.
There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they
don’t follow us around. There is a lot to be said for laying
them to rest.” – Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

Surround yourself with people who love

you.

This one is easily said but sometimes complicated to walk

out. Family doesn’t always go hand in hand with blood:
people we are related to may never truly be good for us, while
the friends we’ve chosen might be more dear and positively
impactful than any relatives.

A great relationship inspires and brings out the best in us, and
the love shared there has few strings attached.

Great friendships should be sounding boards for the good and

the bad in our lives. We need people to see our inner truths,
hold our hands in the dark times, exhort us in times of
abundance—and we must recognize those people as gifts.

These are hard lessons for me. It is sad to let go of a fairy-tale

ideal, what I expected this relationship to look like.
:
 But after a process of grieving, it can be so much healthier
and more fulfilling to live with reality, to send out love without
expectation of what we “should” get in return, to have
compassion for someone without a constant eye for what they
“should” do for us.

We take back our power, creating graceful resolution for the

future where it wasn’t available in the past.

May we all learn to love without contingency; in the meantime,

may we learn to walk our path in self-compassion. Loving
ourselves is our dawn into the light of truly loving others.

Fighting fingers image via Shutterstock

About Lauren
Erickson-Viereck
Lauren is a Montessori teacher in
Bozeman, Montana, where she
lives with her partner of five years
and their furry rescue mutt. She
loves to be on the wild earth,
from warm oceans to alpine
peaks, and treasures human
connection across background
and experience. Lauren believes
in writing and breathing through
pain and peace.

More Posts

See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it!

Did you enjoy this post? Please

share the wisdom :)
:
 Related Posts:

The Problem with Forgiveness

and What I Now Do Instead

Developing Self-Compassion &

Learning to Be Nicer to
Ourselves
:
 5 Crippling Lies About
Forgiveness (and the Truths
That Set You Free)
27 Comments 
1 Login

Join the discussion…

LOG IN WITH

OR SIGN UP WITH DISQUS ?

Name

 8 Share

Best Newest Oldest

star − ⚑
8 years ago

thank you, i really needed this article today. It was

beautiful and I identi9ed with this sooo very much,
this made me feel 100 times better about my life.

4 0 Reply ⥅

Sandhya Ramraj > star − ⚑

7 years ago

Exactly! And my situation is pretty

similar..any kind of communication or
activity with dad is seen as a Jan to the
pain she has gone thru...
And yes..the only person you an save is
:
 And yes..the only person you an save is
yourself

0 0 Reply ⥅

Alpha − ⚑
> Sandhya Ramraj
5 years ago

Chat me up on whastapp
+2348136149188

0 0 Reply ⥅

Crystal Ramirez − ⚑
8 years ago

Honestly, this article FOUND ME at the right time,

on the right day, and at the exact moment that I
needed it. This speaks to my soul, my truth in such
a deep way. Thank you so much for this article.

4 0 Reply ⥅

laurenericksonviereck − ⚑
> Crystal Ramirez
8 years ago

Crystal - thank you so very much for

sharing that! It's a big piece of my heart
and life to send out into the void, but
messages like yours are exactly why I
chose to share. Sending my love to you.

4 0 Reply ⥅

Kathleen Rolfe − ⚑
8 years ago

What a beautifully written piece. Thank you for

going into your depths to share for our greater
good, it must not have been easy and so I want to
thank you for what you may have needed to go
through to hit 'publish' on this blog post.

I resonate so clearly and deeply with this. A

personal earthquake 5 years ago shattered my
world and my relationship with my family is in ruin.
I miss them but I do not miss how we were as a
family when I see the situation with a new
:
 family when I see the situation with a new
perspective. It's hard to know we can't just '9x'
things.

The thing that keeps me going is to remind myself

that living in reality is better than living in the
illusion and that I am a much stronger person
that's capable of more that I give myself credit for.
I choose con9dence.

Thank you again.

Love and light

Kathleen

4 0 Reply ⥅

Riding72 − ⚑
8 years ago

I feel this Was written just for me. I thank you for
your insights.

2 0 Reply ⥅

laurenericksonviereck
8 years ago
− ⚑
> Riding72

Thank you for your kind words, it means

to world to me that this is helpful. We're
all here for each other, in more ways than
we know, and I guess sharing our stories
speaks to hearts we didn't even know
were hurting. My love goes to you!

1 0 Reply ⥅

sb33162 − ⚑
8 years ago

Thank you.

2 0 Reply ⥅

laurenericksonviereck
8 years ago
− ⚑
> sb33162

Thank you for your kind words!

1 0 Reply ⥅
:
 Donnie − ⚑
8 years ago

Wonderful article Lauren!

2 0 Reply ⥅

laurenericksonviereck
8 years ago
− ⚑
> Donnie

Thank you Donnie, that means a great

deal!

1 0 Reply ⥅

Jamylah − ⚑
7 years ago

I read this because my husband says I am

constantly destroying him. I don't know how it is
happening. I have a mental health background, so I
have tried to use strategies I've learned to 9ght fair
and communicate clearly. I never wanted to hurt
him once- let alone destroy him repeatedly! So I
have been constantly changing and trying to better
myself, but apparently the damage toward him
continues.

When I try to talk to him about what is happening,

the pain he has stirs up and the conversation
becomes a sensitive argument that ends up
resolving nothing. I don't see a clear pattern on my
side that is "destructive", so I haven't been able to
effectively stop the harm. At this point, we are
moving toward a divorce to be 9nal next month.

I know he and I still love each other. I don't know

what I can do to make the difference, and I don't
get the sense he is not being sincere about how he
is taking what he gets from me. It's clear to me he
really feels hurt from whatever it is I'm doing and
has himself tried to work with it and bear it and
whatever else, until it has now reached a point it
can't be taken anymore.

I really don't understand how someone with good

intentions, hard working efforts, and genuine
:
 intentions, hard working efforts, and genuine
openness to correction and cooperation could be
someone so terribly destructive to another human
being. Everything about me wants to be a blessing
and withhold harm from others, so how can this be
happening? Does anyone have any ideas how I
might see what is happening so I can stop? My
husband says I am being unfair, and that seems to
be the common denominator in all the events, but
what leads to that "unfairness" can be anything
from having a too emotional moment to asking for
emotional nurturing he is not capable of giving, to
not seeing a situation clearly or from an objective
view when needed, and many other things. How
can the result of something with many different
doors or causes be changed without being perfect
or all knowing? What is your take on working with
a destructive person who sincerely wants to and is
trying to change, but still is destructive? How
should that go?

Sorry for all the confusion, I am just beaten by it all

myself.

1 0 Reply ⥅

G > Jamylah − ⚑
5 years ago

Hello Jamylah, I don't know you and you

don't know me. It's allready been 2 years
since you posted this. But if you do see
this, I want you to know that it's not
always your fault. I have gone through
something I think is similar, and I didn't
know what to do either. I was hurting the
person I loved deeply and I didn't even
know how. He said I changed, I didn't
know where it came from. He broke
things up later without even giving us the
chance to talk about it. I don't know if
what I'm saying is going to be helpful for
you. But I really believe that sometimes
when people are hurting, they expect
their loved ones to solve it for them. They
search reasons for why they are hurt
:
 search reasons for why they are hurt
because they don't understand it
themselves. If he really understood and
knew the effort you took to try and help
him, understand him, support him,.. If he
wasn't so blind for everything you tried,
and for how much you loved him, then
he's not worth it. You can only do so
much to try and save things. But if people
ask you to be saved, but they don't want
to be saved, then there is nothing you can
really do. Don't blame yourself for
something that is out of your hands.

0 0 Reply ⥅

Lucas Leach − ⚑
7 years ago

I came here looking for something to help me and

you encapsulated everything I needed to know and
wasn't looking for.

1 0 Reply ⥅

Marsha − ⚑
7 years ago

I had a similar experience growing up and had to

basically leave the past behind. Contact with some
of my family members only replayed the same
hurts. Also other family members had different
ideas of what happened to me in my childhood
and I realized I could not resolve anything with
anyone because they believed otherwise. It only
opened more wounds. It is very hard when you
want the love of family but can not 9nd closure. It
takes a certain amount of bravery to let go and
travel your world on your own.

1 0 Reply ⥅

Oluwafunmi − ⚑
a year ago

i need person to talk to

0 0 Reply ⥅
:
 Nadine L − ⚑
6 years ago

You really helped me today, thank you for this

article.

0 0 Reply ⥅

Gr − ⚑
6 years ago edited

I always get hurt from the person Iove each and

everytime. What should I do it's really killing me
inside

0 0 Reply ⥅

Betsy K Williams − ⚑
7 years ago

This is a profound and amazing writing. It helped

me to have a vision which is allowing me to move
forward from a very painful stuck place of loss and
grief. I'm ever so grateful

0 0 Reply ⥅

This comment was deleted. −

MJ Heiser > Guest − ⚑
8 years ago

It sounds a little bit like your mother may

be an undiagnosed narcissist. The tells
are there. I am a survivor of a narcissist-
run household; it's a very damaging place
to be, because they are the true black
holes of affection: Love goes in and
NEVER comes out.

3 0 Reply ⥅

laurenericksonviereck − ⚑
> MJ Heiser
8 years ago

Thank you MJ for sharing this &

reaching out to fellow hurting
hearts. The bravery it takes for
:
 hearts. The bravery it takes for
people to step out of the
shadow of what has been and
into the unknown always
inspires me. I hope your life has
brought you to a place where
you receive back the love you
give.

2 0 Reply ⥅

Kathleen Rolfe − ⚑
> MJ Heiser
8 years ago

This is exactly what I thought

MJ. This website has helped
me tremendously.
http://www.daughtersofnarci...

2 0 Reply ⥅

Kaytalin − ⚑
Platt

> Kathleen
Rolfe
8 years
ago

Thanks for the link, I'll

check it out. I've
always felt that she
was narcissistic. She
is also obsessed
about her looks and is
very bitter about
aging. She openly
expresses anger at not
being young anymore,
and I think she
projects a lot of it onto
me and my sister. You
are also right about
love going in and
never coming out.
:
 DISCLAIMER WHO RUNS GET MORE CREDITS &
This site is not TINY TINY COPYRIGHT
intended to provide
and does not BUDDHA? BUDDHA Hosting by PressLabs
constitute medical, Design by Joshua
legal, or other  Twitter Denney
professional advice.  Facebook
The content on Tiny Copyright © 2024 Tiny
Buddha is designed to
 Youtube Buddha, LLC
support, not replace,  RSS Feed
medical or psychiatric
treatment. Please Though I run this site,
seek professional care it is not mine. It's ours.
if you believe you may It's not about me. It's
have a condition. about us. Your stories
and your wisdom are
Tiny Buddha, LLC may
just as meaningful as
earn a!iliate income
mine. Click here to
from qualifying
read more.
purchases, including
from the Amazon
Associate Program.
Before using the site,
please read our
Privacy Policy and
Terms of Use.
Click to opt-out of
Google Analytics
tracking.

Back to Top
: