Why can love make strong people feel vulnerable?
Imagine helping your grown child pack for a move they have wanted for years. You have encouraged them, listened when they doubted themselves and helped where you could. Now the room is full of bags, and you are pleased that the move is happening.
You also keep noticing what will be absent. Their voice from the next room. The conversation that begins while one of you is looking for something in the kitchen. You knew they would leave, but knowing has not made these ordinary things feel small.
Love has helped you support a change that will hurt you in some ways. The pleasure and the ache come from caring about the same person.
A Spark from The Vision
Love reminds us that we are strong and weak, and hopelessly dependent, even in our self-sufficiency. It reminds us that we are human.
In Love is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness too, Innocent describes love as a source of motivation and inspiration that also leaves him exposed. The people and things he loves do not always coexist peacefully. His family, his work and his own well-being can make competing demands on him.
That conflict matters. Vulnerability is not always a sign that something has gone wrong between people. The child’s move may be welcome and freely chosen. You may trust each other. Still, their leaving affects your life because their presence has mattered to it.
Being capable does not undo that connection. You may be able to manage the house, do your work and arrange your days without them. None of those abilities makes you indifferent to whether they call, whether they are happy or when you will see them again. Practical independence and emotional attachment answer different questions.
There can be strength in admitting both. You can say that you will miss them without asking them to abandon the move. You can help with the packing while recognising that the quieter house will take some getting used to. You need not become entirely cheerful to offer sincere support.
The difficulty grows when you make being strong mean having no needs of your own. Perhaps you keep offering more help while putting aside work you care about or rest you need. Each offer is loving in intention, but the combined demand may be more than you can sustain. Other parts of your life matter too; they have not become disloyal simply because your child is leaving.
Nor would the depth of your feeling entitle you to decide their life for them. Missing someone is real. Making them responsible for preventing every experience of loneliness is a different demand. Love exposes you to another person’s freedom as well as to their absence.
The source gives this exposure a place within being human. The things that inspire effort also have the power to disappoint, frighten or grieve us. We cannot keep all the meaning while ensuring that none of it will touch a vulnerable part of us.
As the bags leave the room, you may feel proud and sad without being confused about whether you wanted the move to happen. You wanted something good for a person you love. You are also living through what that good change asks of you.
Related lessons
AI-generated from Innocent Mwatsikesimbe's writing.
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