The hardest lesson I learned was that love doesn’t always break your heart by leaving — sometimes it breaks it by staying.
A few years ago, if someone had told me that the person you feel safest with would one day make you cry the most, I probably would have laughed.
I used to think love was a place where pain had no entry. But that was my biggest misunderstanding, too.
I still remember that evening. The phone was in my hand, and the screen just showed ‘Online’.
I kept opening and closing the chat every two minutes. There was no fight. No anger either. Yet that day, for the first time, I realised that it’s not always words that hurt a person; sometimes someone’s silence empties you from within.
That night, I made a strange promise to myself. If this relationship survived, I would never complain. But the relationship survived… and the complaints didn’t end either.
After a few days, I began to realise that the person I loved was not deliberately hurting me.
He just did not think the way I did. Where I needed five minutes of conversation, he preferred to be left alone. Where I wanted to share everything, he kept many things to himself.
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We were not wrong. We were just different. That was the thing I took the longest to understand.
I used to always think that if love was true, the other person would understand all my needs without me saying anything.
But now I feel that it looks good in movies, not in real life. Getting hurt in a relationship doesn’t feel strange to me anymore. It only feels strange when two people stop trying to understand each other.
I also realised that we tie expectations to our partner that perhaps no single person can fulfil.
We want them to be our friend, our support, handle our happiness, and also our fears. Maybe under this weight, relationships slowly get weary.
Today, if someone asked me what the most important thing in love is, I wouldn’t say ‘never hurt’. I would say—when you make a mistake, just admit it’s a mistake.
When the other person is breaking down, don’t make them think they are overthinking. And if ever tears come to their eyes because of you, don’t consider it a victory.
Because relationships thrive not on winning arguments but on preserving trust. Now I don’t expect my partner to never hurt me. I just hope that if I make their smile fade, they try to bring it back before I do.
Maybe now I see love as less beautiful than before. But far more genuine.
Thanks for Reading…
Bharti Jha…
