What If Love Doesn’t Require Me to Suffer?

(Inspired by the first chapters of Fearlessness)

I’ve been listening again to Anthony de Mello, and something very simple yet profound has been unfolding in me. He speaks about life as a banquet — already here, already abundant — and how most of us are starving not because joy is absent, but because we are programmed not to see it.

He speaks about conditioning. About the invisible beliefs we inherit about love, loyalty, success, and compassion. And as I was listening, I began to notice something subtle inside myself — a belief I had never consciously chosen.

When someone very dear to me is going through hardship, something in my body tightens. Not as a clear thought, but as a reflex. As if there were an unspoken contract that says, “If they suffer, you must suffer too. Otherwise you are not truly loving.”

I never consciously believed that love requires suffering. And yet, when I looked honestly, I could feel that this programming was there — quiet, almost noble in appearance. It felt like loyalty. It felt like depth. But it was attachment.

At the same time, I realized something that became a mirror. When I sit with my clients, I love them deeply. I am present with their pain. I feel their emotions. But I do not absorb their suffering. I do not collapse with them. I do not become chaotic inside. And yet the connection is real — sometimes even more real because it is clear.

That contrast revealed something important.

Perhaps love does not require me to be disturbed. Perhaps compassion does not require me to suffer in order to prove itself.

De Mello says that when the eye is unobstructed, it sees. When the ear is unobstructed, it hears. When the mouth is unobstructed, it tastes. When the mind is unobstructed, it perceives truth. When the heart is unobstructed, it naturally feels love and joy.

Nothing new needs to be created. Only the obstruction needs to fall.

One of my obstructions was the belief that emotional fusion equals love. The belief that loyalty means absorbing. The subtle pressure to regulate, stabilize, or carry someone else’s emotional state in order to feel connected.

When I saw that clearly, something softened.

I didn’t stop loving. I didn’t stop caring. I didn’t stop being present. What changed was the inner resistance — the quiet effort to control, to change, or to make the other feel the way I believed they should feel.

And in surrendering that effort, something unexpected happened.

Presence deepened.

When I allow someone to feel exactly what they are feeling, without trying to fix it or redirect it, there is more wisdom available. There is more clarity. There is real connection. Not connection through shared chaos, but connection through grounded love.

This is how it feels with my clients. And now I see that it can be the same in my personal relationships.

To be present in love and total acceptance of the other — of their emotions, their timing, their process — without controlling, without absorbing, without resisting — brings a different quality of intimacy. It is quieter, but deeper.

Perhaps joy is not the absence of difficulty. Perhaps joy is the absence of inner resistance.

The banquet was never missing. My programming was covering it.

And when one belief falls — even gently — love remains. Cleaner. Lighter. Freer.

What if love does not require us to suffer? What if real compassion begins when we stop resisting what is?

These questions are not abstract anymore. They are lived.

Katiana