Love Me? Let Me Live

Ok, just wondering…

What was your idea of love growing up?

You do not have to tell me, but I will tell you mine.

I was a hopeless romantic!

I did not entirely believe in fairy-tale romances, but I believed there was a real-life version of it.

Two people meet.
They fall in love.
They respect each other.
They decide to build a life and, perhaps, a family together.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it does not.

And when it does not, perhaps they walk away bitter or better. Perhaps they heal eventually and even become grateful for what once was.

But they walk away alive.

In recent times, I have spoken with people who are living in, have survived, or know someone caught in deeply toxic relationships. What troubles me is how easily dysfunction can begin to resemble normalcy when someone has lived inside it long enough. Abuse does not always announce itself loudly. It comes in different forms, and sometimes the person experiencing it does not recognize how dangerous the situation is until they are already deeply entangled.

For generations, conversations about intimate-partner violence understandably centered heavily on women as we were considered “the weaker sex”. But recent tragedies are terrible reminders that anyone can become a victim.

Just a week ago, there was a story circulating of a Ghanaian-born Southern Illinois University professor Kofi Akamani who was fatally shot by his estranged wife in her driveway during a scheduled visit involving their children. How was he supposed to have known his life will end like that with no warning? They were in the middle of a divorce.

A few months ago, there was the devastating story of the former VA Lt. Gov. who killed his wife and committed suicide with their children inside the house. Before the incidence, I used to admire Fairfax and his wife because they were both so fine! But alas, violence is not written on any of these faces. They were in the middle of a divorce, and she trusted him enough to live in the same house with him. The incidence happened a few weeks prior to a judge’s deadline for him to move out of their house.

And in Pennsylvania, at the beginning of the year, a former Ghanaian parliamentary candidate was charged with attempted homicide after allegedly stabbing his wife multiple times. Her family said the violence followed a discussion about divorce and alleged that he had threatened to kill himself or her. He chose her.

Just this year alone, there have been so many crimes of passion that it is heartbreaking to count or follow. It could be the effectiveness of news reporting and social media that is shinning light on these or an actual increase in such crimes just because people have just become too brazen to care about consequences.

Different people. Different circumstances. Different stories.

But there is one question I cannot shake:

When did love become something we believe gives us ownership over another human being?

Perhaps that is why I asked you about your idea of love.

When we say the words, “Till death do us part,” are we giving another person the mandate to become the judge and executioner at will?

Love cannot mean, If I cannot have you, nobody else will.

That is not devotion.

That is possession.

The most heartbreaking part is that the consequences rarely end with the two adults involved.

There are children.

Children who hear things they should never hear.
Children who see things they should never see.
Children who lose one parent, sometimes both, in a single horrifying moment.

Traumatized and scared for life. Then we expect them to grow up and somehow understand what healthy love looks like. May we not turn the younger ones into psychologically broken individuals because of a fleeting moment of anger or the realization we are about to be alone.

I am a champion for mental health, and while I may not be a proponent of divorce, I am an advocate for life and the living.

Sometimes a relationship ends.

That ending can hurt and humiliate us. It can dismantle our dreams and leave us angry, lonely and afraid of starting over.

But an ending does not have to become a funeral.

Sometimes walking away means everybody gets another morning.

Another birthday.

Another opportunity to heal.

Another chance to become better parents, better people, perhaps even better versions of ourselves.

Maybe we need to begin teaching love differently.

Not simply how to fall in love, but how to endure disappointment without becoming destructive. How to hear “I don’t want this anymore” without translating those words into “You don’t deserve to live.” How to separate without destroying. How to grieve relationships without making our children inherit the wounds.

Love is supposed to be many things.

Complicated? Yes.

Messy? Certainly.

Painful sometimes? Absolutely.

But love should never be deadly.

May our generation, and those coming after us, understand that and learn to be kinder to one another, even when staying together is no longer possible.

May we remember that the person we once loved is still a human being worthy of life.

And when love ends, as some love stories inevitably will, may we have enough grace to let each other go.

Alive.