04/28/2025
When Love Isn’t Enough to Change Them
If you’ve ever loved someone who treated you terribly and still found yourself holding on, hoping they would change, you are not foolish.
You are not weak.
You are not broken.
You are not alone.
You are a deeply empathic human, beautifully wired for compassion.
But even the most beautiful traits can be used against us when we do not yet see it happening.
People on the outside might wonder,
Why don’t you just leave?
How could you still care about someone who hurts you?
Why do you keep giving them another chance?
The answer is never simple.
Because when you love someone who is abusive, narcissistic, or manipulative, there is a battle raging inside you.
You are not just holding on to who they are now.
You are holding on to who they were when you first met them.
Or at least, who they showed you (or pretended) they could be.
And you are waiting for that version of them to come back.
You are fighting to believe the best.
You are fighting to give grace.
You are fighting against your own instincts, because walking away from someone you love feels like a betrayal, even when they betrayed you first.
(And if there’s kids involved, it makes everything 1000 times more complicated.)
And that is the cycle that keeps you trapped.
Hope versus reality.
Memory versus truth.
Potential versus pattern.
Sometimes, the abusive behavior even feels strangely familiar.
Maybe you grew up with someone who treated you this way.
Maybe the disrespect or manipulation does not feel as shocking as it would to someone who had not been trained to tolerate it as a child.
(I will talk more about that in a future post, but I want to offer it as a potential explanation for you to consider.)
If this is where you are, or where you have been, hear me:
You are not foolish for wanting to believe in someone’s best self.
You are not weak for hoping people can change.
You are not a bad person for trying to keep your family together in the midst of chaos.
Your compassion is not the problem.
But staying stuck because of who someone could be, while they continue to hurt you as they are, will slowly destroy your soul.
Healing begins when you can say,
I see what was good.
I see what is real.
And I choose to rise toward truth, even if it breaks my heart.
Compassion is a gift.
But when it is weaponized against you, it is time to stop waiting for the version of them that may never come back,
and start rescuing the version of you that has been waiting inside this whole time.
You are allowed to stop explaining your feelings.
You are allowed to honor the good memories without staying loyal to the pain.
You are allowed to decide that your life shouldn’t only be pain and sadness.
You are allowed to say, “I’ve had enough.”
You are allowed to rise.