Our love is not a weakness, but a test of strength

What hurts me so badly is that every time I've fallen in love it turns out bad.
It's not always the relationship that falls apart either, sometimes it's that my family and friends don't approve. They're the one's pulling and pushing.
I understand that they care and have concerns, but some of the reasoning for me being entitled "runaway heart" is due to the fact that they push me to leave if there are problems, rather than fix them. To them, there is no fixing it.

Let me explain...
I am truly,madly,deeply,unconditionally in love with my partner...
He is mentally ill.
Allow me to also explain ; we just had a child together, and he wasn't there the entire time that we were in the hospital.

His condition causes emotional detachment and mood swings that usually result in him not being overly empathetic. He's steadily been taking his medication to help balance himself, but medication for the mentally ill is a crutch, not a Band-Aid. It doesn't "fix" the condition, it makes it more tolerable to the person afflicted.

My family thinks that because he's been flighty and hasn't shown a hole abundance of emotional support, that I should just dump him and disassociate with him.

" You love him, but we don't approve and we're too ignorant to understand your relationship. dump him."

That's pretty much what it comes across like.

There are times when his condition causes him to be zombie-like and he grins when I cry and get upset. He doesn't show the appropriate emotion. Does that make him a heartless jerk? no. It makes him emotionally unbalanced and he sometimes loses all sense of who he is. Note ; he is not a danger to anyone, so please don't assume such things.

I made vows to him, no... we aren't married but I still made an oath, a vow , a promise. And I intend to keep it.
I vowed that any time he loses his way, I will help him find his way back. Any time that he drifts away, I will guide him.
I love him. If I were mentally ill I would hope he'd do the same.

There are sweet sides to him that only I've seen, and I think perhaps that's some of the reason my family/friends are not overly convinced that he can show emotions.

I've had days where I've become so emotionally drained that I curled up into a blanket and sobbed. Well, you know what? He wrapped his arms around me, rocked me and told me it would be okay. He wiped away my tears, handed me a tissue and told me that I was still beautiful.
Any time I've been upset he's held me, gazed into my eyes and said " I see you." And that's our own code. That means that We acknowledge each other's presence, that we see each other's emotions and we are taking them into consideration.

" I see you."
Hey, I see that you're hurting. I see that you're angry. I see your efforts, I see your heart, your soul, I see you for who you are, I respect what I see. I see what I see, and I know that I cannot change it, I accept it. I see you.


There's been times where we've called it quits and after a few days we realized we couldn't give up on each other. There's been times when I've practically had to drag him out of his friends house and force him to talk to me and explain why he's been distant, there's been times where I asked him why he hasn't been around and he didn't seem to care that I was upset.

Those times sucked.

But, there's also been times where he's stayed up all night talking to me, comforting me after I had nightmares, there's been times where he's made me dinner when I was sick, rubbed my back when it was sore, handed me all of his money to ensure that I'd have enough groceries when times were hard, there were times when he held my hair while I had severe morning sickness, there were times when he'd calmly tell me to breathe when I started having severe labor pains. There were times when we picked out baby clothes together and his whole face glowed. There were times when he held our daughter and sang to her, told her how much he loves her. There were times where he'd gush about how happy he is to be my partner and to be a father.

I don't stay for the hard parts, I stay because I know that we can get through the hard parts, all the challenges. I stay because after all this time, we still write love letters to each other, we still grin like idiots at each other, we still hold hands, we still kiss, every night before bed we say "sweet dreams, my love", I stay because I love him. Because the hard times aren't easy, but the good times are what make it all worth it.

I stay because there's no other choice. When you love someone unconditionally, you don't run away.

I'm done being a runaway heart.
I am a determined,staying heart, and a forgiving, guiding soul.