There are women who organize the day, absorb the bad mood, forgive the repeated mistake, and call it love. After a while the people around them stop seeing it as a choice. It becomes the way the house works. She is praised for being strong. The praise is sometimes a way of not having to help.
Strength can be a woundLink to this heading
Being able to endure is not the same as being unhurt. A person can get so practiced at not complaining that they lose the reflex to notice their own pain. That is not maturity. It is a household that trained someone to disappear a little.
Celebrity arguments and family arguments use different furniture and the same pattern. Someone is always composing themselves so the other person does not have to. If that someone is always the woman, the relationship is not balanced just because it is quiet.
Love that can seeLink to this heading
Love, if it is going to be worth the word, has to be able to see the person who is doing the seeing. Ask who ate last. Ask who remembered the thing nobody thanked. Do not wait until strength turns into numbness and then call the numbness peace.
The point is not to keep score out loud every evening. The point is to refuse a love story in which one person's pain is the other person's convenience.