Those of Us Who Don’t Expect Kindness in Love

Some of us appear to have an above average talent for finding ourselves in unfulfilling relationships. Our unions might begin with a lot of hope – but in time, problems set in: a lack of affection, an absence of intimacy, an emotional chill, affairs. 

When these issues rear their heads, most of us would know to think that – however lovely the start might have been – it is time to leave. And fairly fast. Someone who has messed us around as the partner has, or been as cold, or as sadistic, does not deserve a second or indeed any chance.

But for others of us, this is when we begin to show our distinctive colours. Hope springs eternal. Yes, the partner may presently be somewhat disappointing but soon they may recover. Admittedly, they have become hugely unkind in many ways, but they apologised nicely last week (before repeating their offence) and so there is a decent chance – we believe – that things will be on an upswing over the longer term.

To outside observers, the faith that we have in our partner can appear quasi religious. Why do we keep giving our unreliable companion so much leeway? Why do we hope against hope? Why don’t we cut our losses right now and leave? Why are we so convinced that with just a little more effort on our part, one more discussion, one more long email sent in the early hours, everything will alter? Furthermore, perhaps, why do we keep assuming that we have done something wrong and that it is primarily our role to apologise and make amends?

The explanation is that we grew into hopeful people not by choice but of necessity. We almost certainly spent our childhoods in circumstances where we had no option but to become enormous believers in our parents – and, simultaneously, enormous doubters of ourselves.

When little, we could not afford to think that our parents were simply disappointing wounded people with whom we should not interact too much – and walk away. We were four years old. So we did what children of unfulfilling parents always do. We started to think ill of ourselves, we developed a genius for wondering what was wrong with us and for assembling complicated and overly generous explanations for the bad behaviour of others. We evolved an expectant stance towards whatever morsel of love our parent might throw our way; we became excited by deprivation. All day they might have been ill-tempered and cruel to us; perhaps at night fall, they might say something sweet and ruffle our hair. This became the most exciting (and appalling) ‘game’ of our lives.

As adults, we continue to be addicted to this tension. It has come to seem that this is what love is: the pain-tinged continuous expectation that an unfulfilling person might abruptly turn around and be nice to us again. Love is waiting for someone who was once slightly kind to resume their interest.

It doesn’t strike us that love might actually be something quite different, simpler and less tortured: an ongoing reliable exchange of mutually respectful sympathy and gentleness. And if is not this, that we should leave at once. Indeed, if we have the troubled fortune to meet a reliable soul, we will probably respond to them with a feeling of nausea and bewilderment – and flee in short order (perhaps back to the last unfulfilling partner). 

The toll we pay in terms of wasted years is lamentable. Whereas others among us can enjoy calm, kindly relationships, we will get locked into exhausting scenarios with perturbed individuals who very subtly mess us around, who say one thing and do another, who don’t give us physical affection or blow hot and cold, who may be having affairs and keep promising to change and don’t. And the worst is that, for all our suffering, this somehow excites us, this keeps us on our toes, this feels like what we need to keep doing. We know nothing else.

We have to start to believe what our childhoods never allowed us to think: some people need to be given up on, certain seemingly ordinary and good people are in fact very damaged and will hurt and bully those around them. Some people with a few lovely qualities to them will, considered in the round, work an entirely negative effect on our lives.

It’s not our role to keep second guessing unfulfilling people; to spin elaborate stories as to why they may be doing what they do. We don’t need to think more about their psychology than they care to. We need to look very closely at what they do, not why they might be as they are. 

And conversely, despite our nausea, we don’t need to keep holding it against certain others that they are kind. There is nothing wrong with them for being sweet, there is something very sad about our past that we are so easily sickened by their manner.

If this sounds like us, we urgently need to tell ourselves that the person who has maltreated or is maltreating us will never change. Our boundless hope that they might is not rooted in any reality, it’s the legacy of a childhood which obliged us to keep faith with people who no free person should ever have had to keep faith with. There is one and only one criterion that determines whether we should be with someone: whether or not they are kind to us. If they were but are no longer, we need to leave. If they are only a small percentage of the time, we need to leave. If they show a promise of kindness, but no delivery, we need to leave. We need to break our addiction to a suffering that we were not owed then – and definitely don’t deserve now.