pain that pretends to be love

We don’t hurt the people we love
because we want to.

We hurt them
because we love them through the lens of our own pain.

Unhealed pain doesn’t disappear.
It adapts.

It learns to look like care.
It wraps itself in logic.
It speaks in warnings and overreactions and sudden silence.

It says:
“I’m just trying to protect you.”
But it’s really trying to protect itself.

This is how generational patterns work:
✧ We love from trauma, not clarity
✧ We confuse control with safety
✧ We react to echoes, not what’s in front of us
✧ We don’t feel safe unless we’re sacrificing or being saved

And when the love starts to feel too close —
we don’t soften.
We tighten.

We reenact our pain instead of releasing it.

Not because we don’t care.
But because no one taught us another way.

✧ quiet prompt:

What part of you is still trying to keep love safe by keeping it small?

🌒 go deeper:

→ read: trauma reenactment, love distortion, and emotional patterning → chapter: decoding