Love Is Not a Burden

A Woman Ironing by Edgar Degas

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I’ve never been fully convinced by the way we romanticise love — as if it’s all candlelight and grand declarations.

Love, in my experience, is rarely so performative.

It’s not a vow made once in front of a crowd, but a series of small, difficult choices made in private.

It’s the showing up when you’re empty.

Staying when everything in you wants to run.

It’s the willingness to carry what can’t be fixed.

Real love — the kind that endures illness, grief, trauma, the mess of real life — isn’t soft. It’s resilient. Sometimes quiet, but never passive. And it isn’t always shown in tender gestures like holding hands. Sometimes love looks like choosing your battles wisely, and sitting beside someone whose pain you can’t touch, much less solve.

And yet, even when we do love deeply — when we show up again and again — there are moments when the weight of someone else’s pain feels like it might sink us.

Not because we don’t care, but because we do.

Because we’re already carrying so much of our own.

It’s in those moments that a question creeps in, quiet but cruel:

Am I a burden to the people I love?

It’s a question I hear often — from clients, friends, and if I’m honest, from myself.

The fear of being too much.

Of tipping the scales.

Of needing too often, or too deeply.

We don’t talk about it much, this fear. Especially if we’re the kind of people who are used to being the strong one.

The listener.

The one who holds it together.

We don’t want to impose, so we carry things alone.

We wait for a “better time.”

We convince ourselves that love means silence.

That asking for help is taking something away from someone else.

But love isn’t a competition in self-denial. It’s not about who can carry the most without flinching.

In a world that praises self-sufficiency, it’s easy to think our pain must be privately managed. That we are only lovable when we’re easy to deal with — cheerful, grateful, tidy in our distress. Especially if we’ve grown up around people who were stretched too thin to handle our needs.

We learned early not to be “too much.”

And it stuck.

But here's the truth, quiet and unglamorous as it is:

Being human is messy.

Struggle is part of the package.

And no one — no one — gets through life without needing help.

Love is not a constant transaction of strength.

It’s not about being the least demanding person in the room.

It’s about being present with each other, even when it’s hard.

It’s about witnessing.

Sitting with.

Bearing with.

Not fixing, not rescuing — just being there.

Yes, the line between supporting someone and feeling swallowed by their suffering can feel painfully thin. I see it in my work all the time. A client will speak about their partner’s depression or a parent’s chaotic needs, and I hear it in their voice —

the guilt,

the fatigue,

the quiet question they don't want to ask:

Is it wrong to feel overwhelmed?

No.

It isn’t.

Sometimes the people we love are struggling so deeply that we find ourselves holding our breath, day after day, trying not to add to their load. But when we silence our own needs, when we flatten ourselves in service of someone else's survival — we disappear.

And disappearing is not the same as loving.

It’s ok to need space.

It’s ok to admit you're not coping.

It’s ok to need something back.

That’s not betrayal.

That’s boundaries.

That’s love with spine.

And here’s where therapy comes in — not as a substitute for connection, but as a space to breathe. A room where you don’t have to explain why it’s hard or perform how well you're managing. A space where you can put the box down for a while and look at what’s actually inside it.

Therapy isn’t about dumping your load on someone else. It’s about learning how to carry it differently — or deciding which parts aren’t even yours to carry anymore.

It’s where you get to stop pretending.

Where you get to say, “I’m tired,” without anyone flinching.

Where you get to stop being useful for a minute, and just be you.

There is space for your dusty boxes in therapy.

All of them.