You Love Them With Everything You Have. So Why Is Nothing Getting Better?

On the difference between loving and enabling — and the question worth sitting with

'Once you start pouring into yourself in all of the ways that you ask others to, you'll be the ocean that no longer has to ask.'

— Maia

Walking a road with those we love are not always easy.

Most of us have someone in our lives — perhaps more than one — whom we love deeply and genuinely, but whose choices make life extremely difficult. I am not talking about the ordinary friction of being in relationship with another imperfect human being. I am talking about something more serious than that.

I am talking about the people who do not seem to love us back with the same capacity we love them. Who are not able — or not willing — to show up with kindness, care or accountability. Whose choices are destructive, not only to themselves but to everyone around them. The person who chooses drugs. The partner who is unfaithful. The parent, sibling or child who uses physical force, or emotional cruelty, as a way of navigating the world.

These people have fallen out of love. And we — who love them — find ourselves asking the same desperate questions over and over again: what can I do to make them turn around? If I just love them more, will that be enough?

Enabling, not Loving

Here is something that took me a long time to understand — and that I have watched cause enormous suffering in the lives of the people I have worked with over two decades. Loving someone more does not change them. In fact, when love is offered without accountability, without honesty, without the willingness to name what is actually happening — it often makes things worse. It enables.

I think of a parent who loves their adult child completely and without reservation. The child has started a business that is not working — not because the idea is wrong, but because they do not yet have the skills, the knowledge or the discipline to make it work. And crucially: they are not open to hearing this. They see themselves as right and everyone else as wrong. They are not interested in developing, learning or changing.

They weaponise love. By insisting on doing what they are doing, strongly resisting anyone who challenges their direction, and becoming angry when someone does — viewing it as a personal attack — they expect the people who love them to simply be there, unconditionally. To support them no matter what. To accept them for who they are, even if that includes harmful words or deceitful and destructive behaviour. It is important to give this way of operating a name: it is called manipulation.

And the parent who genuinely loves this child is slowly drawn into a distorted version of loving — one where love flows only from one side. More money. More chances. More conversations ending with: don't worry, we will make a plan. And the years pass. The child is in their forties, having used the family's retirement savings on a business that was never going to work — not because of a lack of love, but because the one thing that was truly needed — honest accountability — was never welcome.

Incompetence is not a sin. What becomes destructive is the attitude that refuses to look, to learn, to be open — left unchallenged, continuously supported.

We may also be avoiding the honest conversation from our own side, out of fear. Fear of rocking the boat. Fear of the conflict we know will follow. We rationalise our silence — we tell ourselves we shouldn't push someone who is already in a vulnerable place. But in choosing comfort over that difficult conversation, we may be protecting them from the very consequences that might finally cause them to stop and look.

Loving, not Enabling

Write your loved one a letter that they can go back to when they need it.

I want to say something that may feel difficult to hear, and I ask you to hold it gently before you decide what to do with it.

When someone in your life is doing things that are destructive — and you have been brave enough to have the conversation, but they are not willing to examine what they are doing or its impact — the most loving thing you can do may be to allow them to walk that path alone for a while. Not out of punishment. Not out of rejection. But out of a clear-eyed understanding that your continued pr

esence and support on a destructive path is quietly communicating that what they are doing is not that serious.

That difficult conversation sounds something like this — in your own words and your own way, perhaps with a hand-written note they can hold onto: that you love them dearly and cherish the bond you share, but that you cannot go further down this path with them. That you will be right here, looking forward to receiving them, if they choose to return. That you will always be willing to sit together and look honestly at what is happening. But that until they are willing to do that, you cannot give your money, your time, your energy or your emotional resources to sustain a path that leads toward their own undoing.

I know this sounds hard. It is hard. It is some of the most difficult work any of us will ever do. And if you are not yet able to have that conversation or take that stand, then simply noticing where you are and what feels possible is already real awareness. From there, you can stretch yourself gently toward one small step forward.

There are no simple answers here, and every situation has its own tangle of love, guilt, pain and obligation. Many people find it helpful — necessary, even — to walk this road with a counsellor or therapist who understands family dynamics deeply. I would encourage that wherever possible.

But perhaps, as a gentle starting point, we can ask ourselves: can I stop looking away? Can I begin facing, with honesty and courage, the reality of what is happening? And then — can I begin asking whether what I am doing in the name of love is truly serving the person I love, or whether it is serving my own need to feel that I am doing something? That I have not given up on them. That they are okay.

Something we rarely consider

There is one more thing I want to offer — something that rarely gets said, and that I think matters deeply.

When you allow someone to behave in ways that are harmful to you — when you absorb the consequences of their choices and continue to show up without naming what is real — you are not only harming yourself. You are storing up something for them.

Because one day — and it may take years, but it comes — they will wake up. They will open their eyes and see what they have done. They will see what you allowed. They will see the cost of it to you. And they will have to carry the weight of that guilt. Perhaps even what feels to them like an unforgivable sin.

If you had drawn the line earlier — held it with love — then when they wake up, they only have to face what they have done to themselves. That is already a heavy enough reckoning. They do not also need to carry the guilt of what they did to someone who loved them so completely and so silently sacrificed everything.

Consider that removing yourself — backing what is truly needed with love — may be one of the kindest

things you can do. Not only for yourself. For them.

~ ~ ~

 These reflections are drawn from my forthcoming book Let Truth, Love and Light — lead the way, which explores what it means to live with an open heart — in our relationships, with ourselves, and with Life itself. I would love for you to be among the first to know when it is available. Come find me at lilyrennie.com.