When Love is Real But Repair Is Impossible
Why even real love can’t survive when two nervous systems are protecting themselves from shame.
There’s something I want to say to the women who felt themselves crack open reading my recent posts
something that might bring a kind of relief your body has been waiting for.
Your relationship didn’t end because you were too much,
or he was too little,
or because one of you didn’t care enough.
It ended because neither of your nervous systems had the capacity to stay present with shame.
Not just him.
Not just you.
Both of you.
And naming that matters.
Because the ways you protected yourselves looked different…
but the place they came from was exactly the same.
Here’s what I mean when I say shame capacity
Shame capacity isn’t about being “more conscious” or “more healed.”
It’s the ability to feel that hot, rising ache of
“Have I done something wrong?”
and stay with yourself as your body tightens, braces, or folds inward.
It’s being able to remain present inside those sensations,
the breath that gets shallow,
the chest that goes tight,
the urge to disappear,
instead of letting them take you out of yourself.
Most adults can’t do this.
Most of us were never shown how.
So when shame comes, and it always comes in intimacy,
we fall back into whatever once helped us survive.
Not because we’re flawed,
but because we grew up inside a traumatised culture,
raised by people doing their best with bodies that were overwhelmed too.
Let me share how it may have played out between you.
For him, it may have meant going quiet, going blank, disappearing into that inner fog his body knows well.
For you, it may have meant stepping in, holding more, smoothing the edges, shrinking your needs until they were almost invisible.
Different strategies.
Same wound.
Not because he’s avoidant and you’re “more evolved.”
Not because you’re doing the work and he isn’t.
But because both of you reached the same threshold
just from opposite directions.
Why the relationship couldn’t survive it
When someone has low shame capacity, being truly seen can feel threatening.
Being wrong feels unbearable.
Impact feels dangerous.
Repair feels exposing.
And intimacy, the real kind, can overwhelm the system.
So the body retreats.
And you, with years of steadying yourself, keeping the peace, reading the room,
did what your body remembered:
you protected the connection by abandoning yourself.
Not because you wanted to.
Not because you chose to.
But because your nervous system was trying to keep you safe in the only way it knew how.
None of this was malicious.
None of it was conscious.
It was two children, shaped by the same culture, the same absence of repair
trying to build intimacy without the scaffolding that intimacy requires.
The part that really breaks me open is…
Two good people can love each other deeply,
and still never build the kind of repair that love needs to survive.
Not because the love wasn’t real
but because the shame was louder.
For both of you.
I learned this in my bones.
Maybe you’re learning it now.
So if your heart is breaking, hear me gently:
You were not asking for too much.
He was not incapable of love.
You were not the only one trying.
You were both doing the very best you could
with the capacity you had.
And where your healing really begins…
Not in trying harder.
Not in decoding him.
Not in blaming yourself.
Not in carrying what was never yours to hold.
Healing begins the moment you see clearly:
It was never about effort.
It was always about capacity
his and yours.
And from here, your work is tender:
to turn toward the younger parts of you
who learned to disappear to stay loved
the parts who tightened, braced, or stayed silent to keep connection.
To offer your body what it never received:
a sense of safety,
warmth,
someone who stays,
repair that lands,
a place inside yourself where you can finally exhale.
That’s what grows shame capacity.
That’s what reshapes every relationship that comes next.
That’s what makes love survivable.
Shame might have gotten there first
but it does not get the last word.
