The woman who has been to hell and back is not easy to love.
Many have tried. Most have failed.
The weak need not attempt, for it will take more strength than you even know you possess; more patience, more resilience, more tenacity, more resolve. It requires a relentless love, one that is determined and not easily defeated.
For the woman who has been to hell and back will push you away. She will test you in her desire to know what you are made of, whether you have what it takes to weather her storm. Because she is unpredictable—at times a hurricane, a force of nature that rides on the fury of her suffering; other times a gentle rain, calm, still and quiet.
When she is the gentle rain that falls in time to her silent tears, love her.
When she is the thunder and lightning and ferocious winds that wreak havoc, love her harder.
She is a contradiction, a pendulum that will forever swing between fear of suffocation and fear of abandonment, and even she will not know how to find the balance between the two. Because today, although she will never tell you, she will feel insecure. She will want you to stay close, to tuck her hair behind her ear and kiss her on her forehead and hold her in the strength of your arms. But tomorrow she will crave her independence, her space, her solitude.
For while you have slept, she has been awake, unable to slow her thoughts, watching clocks and chasing time, trying to make the broken pieces fit, to make sense of it all—of where and how she fits. She fights her demons and slays her dragons, afraid if she goes to sleep they will gain the upper hand, afraid if she goes to sleep she will no longer be in control. Tomorrow she will be tired, and your presence will smother her. She will need only herself.
When she reaches out to you, love her.
When she pushes you away, lover her harder.
New situations and places and people and experiences will make her anxious. She will be fiercely independent and long to overcome her fears, all the while as terrified as a small child alone in the big world. Sometimes she will need to be courageous, to prove to herself she has what it takes. Other times she will need you to take her hand and hold it firmly in yours. Sometimes she may not know what she needs, and you will need to read her like a book with worn pages and a tattered spine and be what she needs when she does not know herself.
When she is brave and steps into the world on her own, love her.
When she is scared, but refuses to take your hand, love her harder.
She will live in fear of not being enough and always being too much—an endless battle to find the middle ground. Ashamed if the scale falls one way or the other, ashamed to be herself for no one has ever loved her both when she is small and also when she is tremendous.
When she feels too much, love her.
When she feels not enough, love her harder.
Sometimes she won’t hurt and the light will shine from her eyes and her laughter will be a rare and precious melody. But sometimes she will hurt so much from the trauma still in her body; she will ache, she will feel pain and anguish. The light will grow dim and the music will fade.
When she is the light, love her.
No surprise that your readership tends to be 100% against the crap that is being encouraged by your essay. Of course, you hear praise from the afflicted and those who thoughtlessly abuse their partners and excuse their behavior because nobody knows what they have been through and if they did they would understand why they are the way they are.
EveryONE…all of us…have been through struggles and have issues. Sure, some worse than others. But, we have to draw the line when people refuse to accept accountability for causing others pain and continue to do it for selfish reasons and childish reasons.
The first thought I have is that if there were an article that urged women who were victims of abuse, especially physical abuse, to just love their abusive partners harder claiming that ‘they only hit you because they are afraid to get hurt themselves,’ then there would probably be riotous boycotts and internet mobs setting fire to the cyber aether.
Truthfully, if someone wants to love her more, help her work through it all, tolerate what happens, then may they be happy and successful with their partner. But, if someone wants to run, then they should run and run fast. And, by the same token, if someone wants to push back by being aloof, by leaving the second they are told to “Just go”, by answering their abusive games with a well-developed set of counter-measures, then let them have at it with as much support and urge those who are strung about by fleeting men who they can’t figure out and who lead them chasing from one year to the next to just ‘love and chase them harder.’