By Dr Nicholas Jenner | Safe Harbour Therapy and Counselling
How many times have you heard that love will last when you just find the “right” person? Someone who will complete you, and the result is “happy ever after?”. Yet, love doesn’t last because you think you have found the missing piece of your life’s jigsaw. It endures when two people choose, over and over, every day, to meet each other honestly and stay open, even through the hardest of times. Love is a verb and a choice. It’s not something pre-ordained, nor does it drop in your lap from a great height from the universe, no matter how long you try to manifest it.
Most relationships don’t fail for lack of attempted love but for a total lack of understanding. Beneath every argument, cold silence, loud voice or demeaning comment is an old story trying to be heard. We love it when the confident, caretaking and loving parts of our partner turn up, and we wonder where those parts have gone in conflict. They haven’t disappeared, they have just retreated to be replaced by fear. Fear usually steps forward to protect the wounded child within. The part that once felt unseen, unheard, unworthy and unlovable.
In Parts work (IFS), we know that love leads from the Self. The calm, compassionate, curious centre that can deal with both pain and connection. When each partner can recognise they are speaking through a protector part that is protecting them from a situation that no longer exists, they can create a window where empathetic communication can happen. Then two nervous systems conditioned to protect stop defending, start listening and healing becomes mutual.
What truly makes love last is not the elusive compatibility or chemistry we all seek, it’s willingness. The courage to repair after dysfunction, the courage to reach out rather than retreat and remembering that every time we can do this, love is renewed. Every conflict becomes an invitation to understand, not win or score points.
Lasting love is not built in the “heady” early stages of a relationship as we would love to believe. It grows quietly and stronger over time. We learn that two flawed, imperfect humans can build something sustainable if they are just willing to look inside themselves. Real, true love doesn’t ask for perfection. It asks for presence, honesty, courage and curiosity. It asks you to treat yourself with compassion and then offer that same compassion outward. It doesn’t last when it stays easy, but when it stays honest inside and out.
Journalling Prompts
When conflict arises, which parts of you take over, the critic, the child, the rescuer, or the avoider?
What are those parts protecting you from feeling?
What would it look like to lead those parts with compassion instead of reacting through them?
How have your early experiences shaped what “love” feels like in your body, safe, chaotic, conditional?
Therapist Insight
Love that lasts isn’t found it’s built between two people who are doing their own inner work.
In IFS language, it’s the Self in each person learning to speak to the other’s parts with curiosity instead of control. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the only kind of love that grows stronger over time because it keeps choosing honesty over comfort.
