Love begins beautifully, often existing in a space beyond what the eyes can see. In those early days, we aren’t just looking at a person; we are looking at a feeling, a promise, and a future. But there is a tragic irony in the lifecycle of romance: love often turns awful precisely when the eyes refuse to see at the end.
When we stop looking at our partners with curiosity and start looking at them through the lens of accumulated grievances, we enter the territory of resentment. It is the “sad reality” of love for which many of us have no easy answer.
The Blindness of the Beginning and the End
In the beginning, “love is blind” is a compliment. We overlook flaws because the spiritual and emotional connection is so vast. However, as time passes, that blindness changes shape. We might become “blind” to our partner’s efforts, blind to their changing needs, or—most dangerously—blind to our own growing bitterness.
When a relationship begins to sour, the “refusal to see” becomes a defense mechanism. We stop seeing the human being behind the mistakes and start seeing only the mistakes themselves.
The Human Element: Bitterness and Anger
It is important to acknowledge a hard truth: bitterness, prolonged anger, and the feeling of being wronged are fundamental human personality traits. They are not signs that you are a “bad” person or that the love was never real. They are natural responses to unmet expectations and perceived injustices.
The challenge isn’t to become a person who never feels anger; the challenge is to prevent these traits from hardening into a permanent wall between you and your partner.
Protecting Love from the Weight of Resentment
How do we ensure that our natural capacity for bitterness doesn’t extinguish the flame of affection?
1. Practice “Active Seeing”
If love turns awful when the eyes refuse to see, the remedy is a conscious choice to look closer. This means looking past the immediate annoyance to see the underlying hurt—both in yourself and your partner.
2. Shorten the Half-Life of Anger
Anger is a visitor; resentment is a tenant. To keep love alive, we must lower the “half-life” of our grievances. This requires addressing wrongs in real-time rather than storing them in a mental ledger to be used during the next argument.
3. Separate the Person from the Trait
We must learn to distinguish between the person we love and the human traits (like bitterness) they are currently exhibiting. When we label a partner as “bitter” or “angry,” we stop giving them the room to be anything else.
The Answer Without an Answer
Perhaps the reason “no one has an answer” to the sad realities of love is that love isn’t a problem to be solved, but a garden to be tended. Resentment is the weed that grows in the absence of attention. By choosing to see—even when it is painful—we give love the light it needs to survive the darker seasons of the human experience.
