The Paradox of Loving Someone You Can’t Keep
- Karen Di Gloria
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
Part 1 of 3 — When You Love Someone Who Isn’t Meant to Stay
There’s a specific kind of heartbreak that doesn’t get talked about enough —
the kind where you love someone for exactly who they are,
and still know they are not meant to walk the whole road with you.
It’s not the dramatic “we never worked.”
It’s the quieter ache —
We did work. And that’s why letting go hurts in a way that doesn’t make sense to the mind but feels like truth in the soul.
The conundrum:
How do you honor love without imprisoning your evolution?
How do you love someone deeply and still choose yourself?
And the brutal reality?
They often won’t understand.
They’ll tell you you never loved them.
They’ll say you didn’t try hard enough.
They’ll rewrite the story to soften their wound — not because they’re cruel, but because they can only see the truth from where they’re standing.
We don't grow at the same altitude, even if we once walked the same ground.
And here’s where things get messy:
When you’re the one who awakens first —
you become the villain in someone else’s hero story.
Not because you harmed them,
but because you stopped feeding the fantasy they needed to feel safe.
You stopped defending.
You stopped explaining.
You stopped shrinking yourself to make the relationship fit.
Exhaustion is always where misalignment reveals itself.
The growth gap hurts.
One heart loves from awareness.
The other loves from fear, projection, or potential.
And when they say:
“You didn’t love me for me.”
What they often mean is:
“You stopped mirroring the version of me I wanted to believe in.”
That’s the grief of consciousness:
Once you see, you can’t un-see.
And a love built on future fantasy collapses the moment you're honest about the present.
Why don’t more therapists teach this?
Why is there so much “communication skills” and “attachment style talk”
and so little shadow excavation?
Why aren’t there more guides who will look people in the eye and say:
Your relationship isn’t struggling.
Your identity is resisting evolution.
Yes, shadow work is uncomfortable.
Yes, it threatens ego, control, certainty, and the fantasy of “forever.”
But what the fuck are we paying for if not truth?
Reality TV — and the parts they never show
I watch dating shows not for entertainment —
but to study the psyche in real time.
I watch the moment someone abandons themselves for connection.
I watch the micro-hesitation in the eyes,
the nervous laugh,
the attempt to override intuition because they already imagined the wedding hashtag.
And I see my old self.
The version of me who once gambled my reality for potential.
I used to risk myself
to see if love could become what my hope imagined.
Now I risk nothing but the truth.
When you do the work, you choose differently
When you meet your shadow,
when you stop outsourcing love,
when you stop performing worthiness —choosing becomes effortless.
It’s not cold.
It’s not avoidant.
It’s not “too picky.”
It’s clarity.
It’s the frequency where your soul stops apologizing for its standards.
And here’s the sacred part:
Not shaming or blaming the person who couldn’t meet you there.
Not projecting the shadow back onto them.
Not needing to be right — just willing to be true.
They were part of your becoming.
A chapter, not the ending.
A mirror, not the destination.
And that?
That is still holy.
The real paradox
Loving someone deeply
and still choosing to walk away
isn’t betrayal.
It’s reverence.
It’s honoring that your path is calling you further than they’re willing or ready to go.
It’s loving enough to not make them your limitation —
and loving yourself enough to not make them your home.
Sometimes love is real.
And still, it’s not the path.
And you get to choose the soul over the story.
Every. Single. Time.
If any part of this touched something inside you, I’d love to know.
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With soul-led devotion,
Karen Di Gloria ✨
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