How do I help someone without wearing myself out?
I respect your wounds. I protect myself.
Understanding why he does it is no reason to put up with it.
“I respect your wounds, but I protect myself.”
Chapter 13 — The Mountain Saga
When it happens to you
You’ve finally understood where it comes from. His childhood, what he’s been through, why he reacts like that. And ever since you understood, you can’t get angry any more — or leave. You take the blows with compassion, which is even better for taking them for a long time.
Why understanding disarmed you
Understanding tells you what’s going on, not what you accept. They’re 2 different questions, and we nearly always mix them up: the first is about him, the second is about you. Answering the first doesn’t let you off answering the second.
Rule
The explanation looks at his past. The limit looks at your present.
How to hold both, in 4 steps
- Write the 2 sentences, one under the other. “I understand why he does it.” Then: “This is what I won’t have any more.” Seeing them together on paper is enough to show they don’t contradict each other.
- Say them together, in that order. “I can see where it comes from, and it’s no small thing. And this, I can’t do any more.” The “and” matters: no “but”, which cancels out what came before.
- Separate soothing from repairing. You can soothe someone; you can’t repair anyone. What you’ve been doing for months is repair work, and that’s why it never ends.
- Check who else is there. If you’re the only person helping him, that isn’t intimacy: it’s a full-time job nobody applied for.
⚠ Understanding is still precious
This guide isn’t telling you to stop listening or to turn hard. Understanding the other person is what keeps a relationship alive, and you don’t want to lose that. It just says that understanding has never been an obligation to carry — and that someone who’s suffering needs a professional, not an exhausted partner.
What it changes for you
You get back the right to say no to someone you love and whose story you understand. That’s exactly what was missing: until now, understanding took that right away from you, and so took away your choice.
How to practise
Once, on one specific situation: write what you understand about him, then what you won’t have any more. Two paragraphs. Reread them a week apart.
Remember
I respect your wounds. I’m not your sticking plaster.
You may be wondering
Isn’t that abandoning him?
No. You’re not withdrawing your affection, you’re withdrawing from a role you never had the means to fill. They’re two different things, even if at the time they look alike.
He’ll say I don’t understand.
He might, and it takes nothing away from what you’ve understood. You don’t prove you understand by accepting everything.
And what if I’m the only one he listens to?
Then that’s a reason to point him towards someone whose job it is, not a reason to stay. One person can’t be someone else’s entire emergency service.