Love Is for the Imperfect
When we talk about healthy living, we usually mean what we eat, how we move, and how well we sleep. These matter, but the research on well-being keeps pointing to something less measurable: the quality of our closest relationships. Few things shape our daily stress, our mood, and our sense of purpose as much as how we live with the person nearest to us. A marriage 0r close relationship that is a source of safety can steady a person through almost anything. One that is a source of chronic tension can wear down even the most disciplined diet and exercise routine.
After many years of sitting with couples, I have come to believe that most relationship tension begins with a misunderstanding about what love is. We arrive at marriage with a fantasy, and we expect the fantasy to be the real thing. It is not. What is called love when the relationship is new is mostly a fantasy that can hold the relationship together long enough for the partners to learn about themselves and each other. Learning to love does not occur overnight. It takes a long time. Some say the first seven years is a test of the strength of a relationship and is when the fantasy fades and the reality of the relationship takes hold.
The first thing couples must give up is the project of changing each other. The purpose of trying to change the other is to make them conform to the fantasy. If you enter a relationship hoping your partner will become what you imagine them to be, the only thing that may change is the status of your relationship. People change, when they do, because they have come to see themselves differently, not because someone else has issued a list of improvements. Meanwhile, the energy spent on that project is energy not spent on the only person you can actually change. That person, of course, is you.
Here is a thought worth carrying into every difficult moment: the person we are finding it difficult to live with has to live with us. This is not a scolding. It is an invitation to see yourself as your partner must see you, with your moods, your habits, your defensiveness, your silences. Most of us are far more patient with our own flaws than we are with anyone else's. Remembering that we are someone's difficult person is the beginning of humility, and humility is the beginning of growth.
This leads to a deeper truth: our knowledge of love deepens with our knowledge and acceptance of our self. We cannot be loved if we believe certain aspects of our self makes us unlovable. That tends to make us hide pieces of our self. The people who dislike themselves cannot believe in anyone else's affection. Every expression of love is filtered through the self-image of the person receiving it, and a harsh self-image rejects the gift at the door.
And what gets in the way is the second fantasy, not about our partner but about our self: the fantasy that tells us we must be perfect to be loved.. Trying to be without flaws is the most poignant trap of all. The person who tries to be perfect in order to be loved knows they are not perfect and so never feels loved. And their determination to be perfect also makes them judgmental of their partner’s imperfections. Think about the logic. If I believe I am loved only because of my flawless performance, then every moment of affection is really addressed to the performance, and I know exactly how much of me is hidden behind it. The love, however sincere, lands on a mask. Love is never for the perfect but only for the imperfect. Only imperfect people exist and are actually present to be loved.
Likewise, a person who derives their value from the love of another is not worthy of the love. That sounds severe, but consider what it describes: a person who has made their partner the sole judge of their worth has turned the relationship into a daily examination. No one can relax into love under those conditions, and no one can offer it freely to someone who is quietly demanding to be certified as valuable.
Self-regard has a counterweight, and this is where many couples stumble. Caring about yourself and caring about others are often in conflict. Doing either one to the exclusion of the other is not healthy. The person who gives and gives until nothing is left becomes resentful and eventually unavailable. The person who protects their own interests above all becomes isolated and unreachable. Health lies in the ongoing negotiation between the two, a negotiation that never fully ends and that a good marriage conducts with honesty and some good humor.
What, then, is love? It is helpful to say first what it is not. Love is not approval. Approval is the reward for a good performance. We are in control of approval. We can make another person approve of us. All that is required is to do exactly what another person wants us to do in exactly the way they want us to do it. But we are not in control of love, we cannot make another person love us. Love comes as a gift, and it is recognized as love precisely because it is unearned. Those moments of being seen at our worst and held regardless are the ones couples remember, and they are the ones that teach us what the word means.
Love is not affection. Love is not respect. Both are wonderful, and both are valuable, but both depend on characteristics: the way someone makes us laugh, the competence we admire, the kindness we enjoy receiving. And those characteristics change, fade, and sometimes aren’t there. Love is less for what a person is doing and more for their being. Love is seeing the person behind all those characteristics for which we have affection and respect. It is the recognition of a whole, particular, flawed human being, and the choice to stay in relationship with that person. This is why love is almost always experienced when we feel we least deserve it. It arrives in the moment after we have said the unkind thing, failed to show up, or fallen short of our own standards, and our partner stays anyway.
For anyone working on a relationship, the practical path runs through all of these principles at once. Stop waiting for your partner to change. Get curious about what it must be like to live with you. Build a steadier relationship with yourself, so that your worth does not hang on another person's moods. Balance your own needs against theirs without sacrificing either. Put down the exhausting effort to be perfect. And when love shows up on a day you do not deserve it, accept it, because that is what it is for.
