Relationship Challenges: When Love Gets Lost in Translation​

​

At the center of most relationship pain, there is something very simple and very human:

the need to feel close, connected, and emotionally held.

Not “perfectly understood all the time.”
Not “never disappointed.”
Just: felt. met. not alone inside the relationship.

And that need is not childish. It’s not weakness. It’s not “too much.”
It is one of the most fundamental needs a human nervous system carries.

We are built for connection. We regulate through connection. We heal through connection.
A person can have a successful career, a beautiful home, a full schedule—and still suffer deeply if they feel emotionally alone.

So when people come with relationship struggles, I don’t start from “what’s wrong with you.”
I start from: your longing makes sense.

The problem is not the need.
The problem is what happens when the need becomes frightened.

Because when closeness feels threatened, we often do one of two things:

• we pursue (push, question, fix, demand, chase, explain)

• or we withdraw (shut down, go quiet, numb out, detach, disappear)

Both are attempts to protect the same vulnerable truth:
I want to feel connected, and I’m scared I won’t.

​

The Fixer Trap: “If I love you enough, you’ll change”

​

One of the most common patterns that grows out of this fear is the fixer trap.

It sounds like love. It even looks responsible.
But underneath, it’s often anxiety disguised as devotion:

If you don’t change, I won’t be okay.
If we don’t fix this, I’ll lose you—or lose myself.

This is especially obvious when someone loves a person who is struggling—addiction, depression, anger, avoidance, chaos. Often the person asking for help is not the person “out of control,” but the person trying desperately to manage them.

They say:
“We have a problem. My ___ is out of control. We tried everything. What can we do?”

And the truth is hard, but freeing:

You can’t solve someone else’s inner world from the outside.

Free choice is the freedom to choose your own behavior—not someone else’s, no matter how convinced you are that you’re right, even if you’re watching them spiral.

And living in fixer mode comes with a serious cost: you lose your serenity, your breath, your life-force. Love turns into martyrdom.

So a better question is:

If there were a way for you to get your serenity back—even if the other person didn’t change—would you want that?

Almost everyone says yes.
Because somewhere inside we know: love shouldn’t require self-erasure.

​

“Let me fix you” is not connection —​

There’s another reason the fixer stance fails: it doesn’t feel like love to the other person.

Even when you mean well, “let me fix you” often lands like:
You are not okay as you are. You are a project.

And this is where one of the most healing relationship principles comes in:

It’s not “me versus you.”
It’s “me and you versus the problem.”

This shift matters because it preserves dignity.

People don’t need to be fixed.
Situations need to be addressed. Patterns need to be understood.
But a human being is not a broken appliance.

When you move from “fixing you” to “facing this with you,” the relationship becomes safer.
And safety is what allows closeness to return.

​

Why people feel alone even when they’re together

A lot of relationship loneliness is not about bad intentions. It’s about missed connection.

Most people aren’t asking for grand gestures.
They’re asking for the small, steady signals:

• Do I matter to you?

• Can I reach you?

• Are you with me?

• Do you want to know my inner world?

That longing is legitimate. It’s not “drama.” It’s not “neediness.”
It’s the nervous system asking: Am I safe in closeness?

When that longing isn’t met, people start doing what humans always do when they feel alone:

They intensify (pursue, demand, analyze),
or they disappear (shut down, detach).

And then the relationship starts feeling like a battlefield when it is actually a grief:
I miss you. I want you. I don’t know how to get back to you.

​

Babel in the living room: two people speaking different emotional languages

 

Sometimes the problem isn’t that someone doesn’t care.
It’s that two people are wired differently—and they keep mistranslating each other’s bids for connection.

We all accept that brains are different: some are mathematical, some musical, some linguistic.
Relationships are the same: some people are sensitive, intuitive, easily drained, needing depth and calm. Others are social, energized, chatty, needing movement and lightness.

Neither is superior.
But if you don’t understand the difference, you interpret the other person’s love as rejection.

So imagine you’re in a marriage where each person is honestly trying to say, in their language:
“I love you. I want to connect.”

One person says: “Good morning.”
For them, it means: I see you. I’m with you.
For the other, it feels empty: There’s no real contact here.

Or one person comes home and says:
“Want to know something fascinating? Did you know there are 200 species of goldfish in the North Sea?”

For them, it means: I like you. I want to share my mind with you.
For the other, it lands like: You didn’t attune to me. You didn’t enter gently. This feels intrusive.

So one person shuts down—
and the other concludes: I tried. You don’t care.

This is how isolation becomes cemented:
not because love is absent, but because love keeps being mistranslated.

​

The three paths (and the one that actually heals)

When people reach this point, they usually choose one of three options:

1. Leave the relationship.

2. Stay, but give up on fulfillment. (“This is just how marriage is.”)

3. Become bilingual.

Becoming bilingual means learning to recognize the other person’s bids for connection—even when they don’t look like yours. It means opening the empathy portal enough to consider:

Maybe the person you think is cold is not cold.
Maybe they’re exhausted from trying in a language you never understood.

Because when people stop reaching, it’s often not punishment.
It’s fatigue.

​

My approach: validate the need, calm the panic, learn the language

​

When I work with relationship challenges, the goal isn’t “how do we get the other person to become different.”

The goal is:

• to honor the legitimate need for closeness (without shame)

• to reduce the panic that turns closeness into control

• to learn the difference between influence and ownership

• to become clearer, kinder, and more emotionally bilingual

​

Relationships don’t become fulfilling because we finally win.
They become fulfilling when we stop fighting the person—and start understanding the pattern.

And often, the pattern is this: a legitimate longing for connection got tangled with fear...and love got lost in translation.