I witnessed something quite unsettling a few weeks ago.
A couple I know, who from the outside seemed stable, secure, deeply content, engaged and about to be married, suddenly broke up.
The wedding was called off. Just like that.
When something like this happens, most people react instinctively:
If I were her, I wouldn’t have done that.
If I were him, I would have handled it differently.
My first reaction was perhaps too romantic:
Why didn’t they fight for each other? Especially after all that time together, when they were so close to tying the knot.
I don’t know the full story of why they ended. Maybe they did fight. Maybe they were simply tired.
It made me wonder what emotional effort looks like today, and what has replaced it. I started thinking about what we are actually afraid of when we say something is too hard.
Strangely, my mind went back to something from childhood.
What We Do When Things Get Hard
When I was younger, I was terrified of fireplaces.
I wouldn’t get close. I wouldn’t even poke the logs with the metal stick hanging beside the broom. To me, fire meant danger. Worst-case scenarios. Getting burned.
So when my mother lit the fireplace, I stayed curled up on the couch as far away as possible.
Until one day, I sat a little closer.
Still cautious. Still tense.
But closer.
And something unexpected happened. The closer I got, the calmer I felt. Warmer. More grounded.
Eventually, I began to understand that the fire was not there to harm me. It was there to sustain something.
Fighting for someone you love feels similar.
A relationship, like a fire, needs tending —logs, oxygen, attention. It also requires the willingness to come close to heat, to intensity, to moments that feel uncomfortable or even risky.
Of course, fire can burn. It can damage if left untended, get out of control, and leave scars.
But when you step back, what you see is often not destruction, but something steady. The glow. The crackle. The warmth that keeps you alive.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve grown less patient with love.
Perhaps what replaced it is... abundance. The constant availability of alternatives: dating apps, social media, the sense that something else is always within reach. The grass is greener mentality.
When options feel endless, staying begins to feel optional (unless, of course, you believe you’ve found your forever).
The Kind of Love That Stays
What part of you still believes love is worth the effort?
I ask this as someone who believed she loved unconditionally, but who struggled when love stopped feeling easy. When things feel too hard, something in me shuts down. I stop reacting. I stop speaking. My mind goes blank, and I withdraw. And in doing so, I leave the other person alone in the heat.
And that is when I realized something.
To love unconditionally is to remain present when things feel uncomfortable. To stay without abandoning yourself or the other at the first sign of heat.1
Maybe the question isn’t whether love still exists, but whether we are willing to stay when it grows uncomfortable.
I don’t believe we’ve stopped longing for a love that stays.
I believe we’ve grown afraid of the heat that creates it.
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1 There are many valid reasons not to fight for a relationship: abuse, violence, ongoing harm. That is not what I’m talking about here. I’m speaking about emotional effort.