Meaningful Suffering

Is the hurt you are experiencing from your loved one providing the meaning and purpose to your life?

Your life needs meaning and purpose. It makes your life worthwhile; it indicates your existence matters. That’s important. Sometimes, it’s the only thing that keeps you going. It’s something you can be proud of.

Meaning and purpose will organize your life. You know what you have to do when you wake up in the morning. It dictates the things you do during the day. It determines the choices you make and makes those choices easy. You find meaning and purpose by doing things that are worthwhile: raising children, taking care of sick people, providing for those in need, pursuing social justice. The harder these things are, the more meaning and purpose you get out of them.

Letting a homeless person move in with you is more meaningful than giving a dollar to one on the street. You find the most meaning by trying to do impossible, or nearly impossible, things.

Living with someone who beats you up, while trying to rehabilitate him, is an impossible thing. Trying to keep a marriage together for the sake of the children while your partner is doing everything he can to blow it up is impossible. Being patient with an elderly parent who never was patient with you is impossible. Trying to earn money faster than a compulsive gambler can lose it, or a compulsive shopper can spend it, or a drug addict can smoke it, or an alcoholic can drink it is impossible. If they are not impossible, they are certainly really hard.

You get a lot of credit for trying to do impossible things. Not everyone has the pluck, the grit, and the intestinal fortitude to attempt the impossible. Riding with the six hundred into the valley of death ennobles you. Keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs makes you a man, my son. You become a hero, and your suffering, heroic suffering.

Heroic Suffering

I use the word hero in the most complimentary, non-sarcastic way and I don’t mean the sandwich. Being a hero is the whole idea of looking for meaning and purpose.

Heroic suffering grinds you down while it dignifies the sacrifices you make. You forget yourself, put your own needs on the back burner and do whatever is necessary. Heroic suffering will kill you and you know it. It wouldn’t be heroic if it didn’t.

Your friends will see how trying to do the impossible is grinding you down and they won’t like it. They’ll try to warn you and say you’re crazy for trying it. They’ll call you codependent; but, they don’t understand this is what you do to have a meaningful life. They’ll go on about how impossible your partner is, thinking it’ll convince you to leave; but it’ll only make you more heroic and more attached. They’ll say they want to see you happy; but you don’t want to be happy, it’s not about being happy. It’s all about doing something that matters.

Let no one talk you out of trying the impossible. You may need to take a stab at the impossible. Lord knows, there are many impossible things that turn out to be possible once people try them. But, if you try to do the impossible, keep a lookout for what the impossible is doing to you. Trying to do the impossible might turn you into an impossible person.

How to become impossible

You start to be impossible as the impossible wears you out. You secretly resent the sacrifices you make. You have your days when you’re infuriated that you get nothing in return, feel entitled to collect on kindness. You start belittling and disparaging any attempts your partner has towards growth and you feel threatened if your partner doesn’t need you. You create desires that only you can fill. You so need to be needed, you meddle, hover, and guilt, and call it love.

When you start thinking you’re indispensable, you’re making things more impossible than they would be without you. Keep going and you become so intent in propping up a fiction that you’re a hero, you can’t see that your “self-denying heroism” is manipulative and self-serving. You’ll don’t understand how domineering and coercive you can be. You’re no longer part of the solution; you’re part of the problem.

Try to do the impossible, but please, don’t turn into someone impossible while you do it.

Turning into an impossible person because you are trying to do the impossible is only one of many ways that being hurt by someone you love can change you to the worse. It’s important to not stay victimized for long and get on the road to reconciliation, or, at least, personal peace, before the experience deforms you. Becoming an Impossible Martyr is not the only malformation that occurs when people spend too long a victim. As we go on in the series, we’ll look at others.

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Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice and the author of The Road to Reconciliation: A Comprehensive Guide to Peace When Relationships Go Bad, from which this article is adapted.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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