Love Is No Longer Enough to Justify Harm
There’s a sentence I reached only after loving past my own limits:
“I love you, but love is no longer enough to justify harm.
If your behaviour doesn’t change, you will not have access to me.”
I didn’t arrive here easily.
I arrived here exhausted.
I stayed longer than I should have.
I explained myself more times than was necessary.
I kept believing that if love was real, it would eventually be met with care, responsibility, or change.
What I learned instead is this:
Love does not correct harm on its own.
Love does not make someone accountable.
Love does not protect you if you are the only one doing the work.
When Love Becomes the Excuse
I was taught that love means endurance.
That loving someone means staying soft even when you’re being cut by their behaviour.
That leaving is cruel, and boundaries are punishment.
So I tried to love harder.
I tried to understand more.
I tried to absorb the damage quietly.
And all that taught the other person was that they could keep me without changing.
That’s when love stops being mutual and starts being used.
This Is What I Know Now
Love is a feeling.
Access is a choice.
You don’t lose your love when you step back.
You lose your availability.
And that’s not a threat — it’s self-respect.
I can love someone and still decide:
-
I won’t stay in harm
-
I won’t negotiate my safety
-
I won’t keep explaining why pain matters
-
I won’t disappear to make someone else comfortable
That doesn’t make my love smaller.
It makes my life survivable.
One Way Love Doesn’t Work
(a poem)
One way love doesn’t work
is when I keep bleeding
and you keep calling it patience.
One way love doesn’t work
is when my pain becomes
the price of your comfort.
One way love doesn’t work
is when I’m asked to stay
but you’re never asked to change.
One way love doesn’t work
is when silence replaces repair
and hope does all the labour.
One way love doesn’t work
is when I have to love myself less
so you can love yourself more.
That’s not love.
That’s disappearance.
This Boundary Is Not Cruel
It is not cruel to say:
I will not stay where harm continues.
It is not abandonment to say:
Love doesn’t entitle you to access.
And it is not my responsibility to suffer quietly so someone else doesn’t have to face themselves.
If my absence is what finally makes the pattern visible, then the pattern was never sustainable to begin with.
What I’m Choosing Instead
I’m choosing love with limits.
Love that doesn’t require self-erasure.
Love that coexists with dignity.
Love that doesn’t need me to disappear to survive.
And if that means loving someone from a distance — or not at all — then that is the cost of staying whole.
I love you.
But love is no longer enough to justify harm.
Without change, you will not have access to me.
That sentence didn’t end my heart.
It gave it somewhere safe to land.
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