Love's Edge: Why Relationships Fail and How to Fix Them

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
     -Dylan Thomas

This is an idea I am passionate about and have been thinking about for years now, so I am happy to finally begin to share it. The question is what is at the heart, the center, the core truth, of why love relationships fail. And I am only thinking of relationships where two people truly have love for one another. If there is love, then where does it go wrong?

The answer is simple, though resolving it is not. The answer is what I call Love's Edge. Love's Edge is the line inside us between where we love ourselves, and where we don't. I experience it and witness it more like an over and under, or outside and inside. On top or outside, we love ourselves, and down deeper and deeper inside we still love ourselves, and then, somewhere in there the love stops, and we reach a place at our core where we don't love ourselves. We all have it. Some of us have touched that core, and worked to heal it, and may have experienced great love and bliss for ourselves in a moment of truth. But for all of us it is still in our bodies, and is a life's worth of work to heal.

So here is what happens in love relationships: We fall in love, and get closer and closer. The love deepens. The love penetrates further into us. The other person sees more of us, loves more of us. At some point, their love for us reaches the edge of our love for ourselves. This is the moment when relationships get into trouble. All relationships reach a crisis at the point when our lover loves us more than we love ourselves. 

When the relationship reaches Love's Edge, there are three basic reactions. We can either fight, flee, or hunker down. These are the possible strategies of a person who is cornered. Fighting might show up as defensiveness, or direct and unexpected attacks. Fleeing is usually disconnecting from the relationship by cutting it off. Hunkering down is emotionally growing cold or becoming stoic.

Many strange dynamics arise at Love's Edge. One curious one is when the person whose edge has been reached begins to distrust their lover. The lover then tries even harder to make them feel loved, and the distrust worsens, which is usually mysterious to the lover. "If I could just love you enough, you would trust me," they think. And the more they try, the worse it gets, in a downward spiral. Why? Well, what is the person at their edge thinking? It can go something like, "You say you love me, but I know the truth. The truth is that I am not lovable, so you are lying." What they believe to be the truth about themselves, and what their lover are saying, are incongruous. So they conclude that their lover is lying, not that they are living with an untruth inside.

What is the way out? The fourth option when cornered is surrender. The only way out is to acknowledge our edge, and work with it. After all, we are in relationship to get to Love's Edge, so we can see it, and heal it. 

When a relationship is in crisis, it is a great starting point to ask, "How am I not loving myself right now?". I always find it wonderfully freeing and a great relief when I ask the question, and find it in myself. Because then I can clear out the old pain a little more, and feel more fully the love that I am and the warm glow of the love my lover is giving me. We live thinking down deep inside we know the truth of who we are, and we develop strategies to hide that truth, but it is an untruth, or even a lie. The truth---that we are pure love---always sets us free because the real truth is always beautiful. The real truth is always beautiful.

So again, the way out of the crisis is to first acknowledge Love's Edge inside us. This is the key from which all else follows. It may be the hardest part. It gets easier the more experiences we have of acknowledging it and going through the process where we get relief at the end. Then the next time is not so scary, since we know the way to happiness is by crossing this scary edge.  The second step is to notice when we hit it, and be able to say "This is me not loving myself". The third step is to take the knowledge that Love's Edge is at best an illusion that has been created inside us through something painful we lived through as we grew up, and at worst a huge lie, and carry it with us as a light into the darkness of the places where we don't love ourselves, the places we got hurt, and use it to power the courage we may need to face those old painful places.

And what better time and place to do our healing work than with someone who truly sees us, truly loves us? That is relationship at its best. That is what we are all here to do. So do not go gentle into that good night. Go with the grace of knowing who you truly are. And take your lover with you.