Dating : 7 Times When Love Isn’t Enough

We can’t always make it work.

A little part of me still loves all of the men I’ve been in love with. I think I always will. That doesn’t mean I want to try and rekindle what we had, though, because I know it most likely wouldn’t work. There was too much wrong that I don’t think can be fixed. Love is beautiful, but a relationship is so much more than just love.

Sometimes, love isn’t enough.

It’s not something most of us want to admit. When you love someone so much, you want to be able to work things out and never lose what you have. But there are some things even love can’t overlook.

Of course, therapy is always a great option when you and your partner are struggling. Sometimes the therapy comes too late though, and sometimes you and your partner just don’t fit the way you want to.

If you’re in an abusive or unsafe dynamic, love definitely isn’t enough. Non-negotiable. Love will never be enough.

There are other factors that are more subtle. We think love will be enough to work through them. More times than not though, it isn’t.

There are things you aren’t comfortable telling them.

Honesty and communication are the main keys to a healthy relationship. If there are some significant things you talk to your friends about that you aren’t comfortable talking to your partner about, that may be an issue.

If you’re not telling them things because you’re afraid of how they might react, consider giving it a try. They may surprise you.

If you’re not telling them things because you know how they’ll react based on their beliefs and who they are as a person, that’s not good. You shouldn’t have to keep things from your partner in order to make the relationship work. That’s not a working relationship. That’s a lie.

Along those same lines, if you’re not comfortable doing certain things or acting a certain way around your partner, that’s also probably not good. Your partner is supposed to be the person you can truly be yourself around. If you’re a completely different person with your partner than you are with your friends, you need to figure out which group you’re putting on a show for and adjust accordingly.

Your needs surrounding sex and intimacy are too different.

We all have different wants and needs when it comes to sex and intimacy. When we’re with a new partner, we sometimes have to adjust these wants and needs slightly in order to make things fit. As long as you’re not comprising yourself, that’s ok. There are little, inconsequential things we may be willing to change or forego for the right person. There are also things we may be willing to add into our sex lives for the right person, too.

That’s not always the case though. There are times when someone’s needs surrounding sex and intimacy are just too different from our own.

Some people don’t think sex is a reason to end a relationship. But if you’re not being fulfilled in your sex life, and a fulfilling sex life is something that’s important to you, that’s an issue.

Sometimes you can work through it. If you can’t though, if what you want when it comes to sex and intimacy is just too different, you may need to accept that you need to move on.

You’re not a bad person for prioritizing a healthy sex life. It’s allowed to be important to you.

You want different things in the long run.

At first, this doesn’t always seem like a big issue. You’re having fun and you have such deep feelings for your partner. Why does it matter that you don’t want the same things later on? Later isn’t now.

There are plenty of relationships where two people know they don’t want the same things long-term, but it’s ok because their relationship is just “for now.” It’s just for fun. It’s harmless.

But maybe it’s not.

When does “for now” end? What if for now just keeps going and going, until both people end up way more hurt than they would have been if they’d ended things earlier. What if for now goes on so long that it becomes too late for someone in the dynamic to get what they really wanted.

A lot of people stay in the for now because they hope what their partner wants will change. They hope they can change them.

Even if what your partner wants does change, if they’re only doing it because they don’t want to lose you, it isn’t going to last. Change only sticks when we do it for ourselves.

Sure, there are situations when continuing to see your partner “just for now” works. Everyone is different. But it’s important to keep checking in with yourself and keep communicating with your partner about it. Assuming you’re on the same page can lead to issues.

Your relationship styles are too different.

Everyone’s relationship style is different. Conventional, straight-forward monogamy doesn’t work for everyone, nor does it have to. We all have different needs that can’t always be met by every relationship style.

There may be some cases where you and your partner have slightly different styles, but they match up enough to make it work. If your styles are vastly different though, love isn’t going to be enough to work through that.

If your partner is very monogamous and you’re very non-monogamous, that’s not going to work unless someone completely changes their style. And even if one person is willing to do that, the relationship probably won’t be healthy, because one of you is doing something that doesn’t come naturally and that they don’t truly want.

Square peg, round hole. Sometimes it just won’t work, no matter how badly we want it to.

You have the same destructive habits.

Similarities are a great thing to have in a relationship, but similar destructive habits are not. If you’re both super heavy drinkers, for example, and it’s become an unhealthy habit, you may be less likely to address it because it’s something you both do. It becomes a point of bonding, and therefore may not seem like as big of a problem as it actually is.

Drugs and alcohol aren’t the only destructive habits you can have in common. Sometimes it’s more subtle than that.

If you’re very alike in all the wrong ways, you could end up feeding off of each other, rather than taking time to actually address the issues.

One of you isn’t willing to heal.

We all have issues. We have unresolved traumas and stuff we’ve got to work through, and that’s totally normal—as long as we’re willing to do the work.

If your partner isn’t willing to confront their issues and work on healing, then the relationship isn’t going to work long-term. If one of you is growing, healing, and moving forward and one of you isn’t, that dynamic is going to become unhealthy very quickly.

There’s a saying that people go to therapy to learn how to deal with people who won’t go to therapy. Sometimes we go to therapy to learn how to walk away from the people who won’t.

You start to grow in different ways.

In reality, we spend our entire lives growing into ourselves. Who we were at 26 is not exactly who we are at 32. We’re constantly discovering new things about ourselves and learning how to cope and do better, and that’s great.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to expect that we’ll always grow in the same direction as our partners.

Sometimes, you or your partner might grow in a way that doesn’t fit the relationship anymore. You grow in ways that are too fundamentally different. It doesn’t mean the growth is wrong. It just means that in the process of growing into yourselves, you accidentally grew out of each other.

When that happens, it’s really sad. The relationship was working so well, and it’s hard to accept when it isn’t anymore. Sometimes our default is to pretend it’s still working even when it’s not. You stick around because there’s history there.

But history isn’t always enough, either.

Sometimes there are ways to work through it. Sometimes there are ways to adjust to these new versions of each other. And sometimes there aren’t.

All relationships take work. It’s also important to know when to walk away.

Ending a relationship when you love someone so much is awful. It’s hard, it sucks, and no one is denying that. But sometimes we need to walk away from the love we’ve outgrown to find the love that’s going to stick.