The Family Myth I Grew Up Believing
I grew up believing my family had the secret to love all figured out. It wasn’t written down anywhere, like a recipe for Grandma’s biscuits, but the message was as clear as sunrise on a Sunday morning: love is supposed to be hard. Like coal-mining, boot-scuffing, sweat-on-your-brow kind of hard. It’s a lesson passed down like an old pocketknife, its blade dull but sacred. And for a while, I took this myth to heart. I thought good relationships were meant to test your mettle daily. If you weren’t suffering, were you really in love?
Spoiler alert: I was wrong.
It took me years of living, loving, and heartbreak to realize that this myth wasn’t doing me any favors. In fact, it had me chasing all the wrong kinds of relationships. And in the spirit of honesty—and perhaps saving you some headache too—I want to unpack not only why I bought into this myth, but also how I learned to let it go. Because while love does take effort, it doesn’t have to feel like you’re digging a mine shaft every day.
Chapter 1: Love as Labor
In my family, “love is hard work” wasn’t just a mindset—it was a mantra. Growing up in rural West Virginia meant everything was steeped in grit. My parents’ own love story was built on resilience. My dad worked the mines; my mom kept house and wrangled the four of us kids. Money was always tight, tempers shorter. But they stuck it out. Their love didn’t have a fairytale shine—it was more like an old truck that sputtered on occasion but still managed to get you home. “We made it work,” my mom would say, usually followed by the requisite, “and it wasn’t easy.”
What I didn’t realize as a kid was that their “making it work” came with caveats. Some loud arguments, doors slammed, and silences stretched too thin. Love, to me, seemed synonymous with sacrifice. If you weren’t bending until nearly breaking, could you really call it love?
So naturally, when I ventured out into the wild world of dating, I approached it like a job you clock in and out of: relationships come with pain, struggle, and an unspoken obligation to bear it all. If things felt smooth, well, I figured the storm just hadn’t hit yet.
Spoiler alert (again): things got messy.
Chapter 2: The Reality Check (or, When Love Became a Soap Opera)
I carried this myth into one particularly ill-fated relationship during grad school in California. Let’s just call her “Julia,” as in Julia who’d ghost you after tempestuous fights only to come back with love poems and café macaroons.
One evening, after yet another shouting match in our cramped apartment (she thought my love of Bob Dylan was overrated, I thought hers of Freud was pretentious), an older neighbor pulled me aside. “You two sure know how to keep things... lively,” she said, her lips pursed like she was holding back more than words.
That night I sat on our futon, surrounded by piles of unfinished term papers and leftover Thai takeout, and confronted an uncomfortable truth: I wasn’t happy. Sure, Julia and I had “passion.” We made things work, didn’t we? But by “work,” all I’d been doing was tilting at windmills, convinced that the drama meant depth. That night, I Googled “healthy relationship red flags,” which I don’t necessarily recommend doing alone with Chardonnay. But it was a start.
Chapter 3: Love Isn't Meant to Be a Sledgehammer
The breakthrough hit me like one of those corny motivational posters people put in offices—the ones with waterfalls and bold quotes. Sitting in therapy a few years later, my counselor said, “James, love is a mutual investment. It’s not meant to be punishment.”
Mutual. Investment. Those were the words that cracked the myth wide open. The idea that love and difficulty weren’t synonymous hadn’t occurred to me. Sure, relationships require effort, but there’s a stunning difference between effort and outright misery. It’s like the difference between learning to make sourdough bread (which requires patience) and climbing Everest without gear (which requires, um, survival instincts).
Gradually, I saw healthy love for what it was: something that should lift you up more often than it weighs you down. This realization shifted my whole dating philosophy. I started asking myself questions like, “Am I growing with this person, or just surviving them?” And let me tell you, that single question alone spared me a lot of bad dinners and awkward post-breakup retrievals of my things.
Chapter 4: Unlearning the Myth (And How You Can, Too)
If you’ve ever been fed this myth—or one like it—here’s some good news: you can rewrite your definition of love. But it takes some unlearning, which is not unlike renovating a house—you’ll have to knock out some walls, but the foundation will thank you later. Here’s what worked for me:
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Reality Check Your Role Models
Just because a relationship lasts doesn’t make it healthy. Look at the relationships you once idolized and ask yourself: Did these people grow together, or just stick together out of habit or pride? Longevity isn’t always the gold standard. Spoiler: even my parents, with their decades of “sticking it out,” would say now that a bit more balance could’ve done them some good. -
Effort Vs. Sacrifice
Think about effort as planting and tending a garden. You water it, you give it sun; sometimes you prune. Sacrifice, on the other hand, is uprooting the tomatoes every time they need fertilizer because you think they’ll grow better inside. It’s neither sustainable nor kind to your well-being. Ask yourself if your love is draining your soil or enriching it. -
Check Your Drama Levels
Conflict happens. But there’s a difference between healthy disagreements and full-blown soap opera theatrics. If you feel like an extra in “The Real Housewives of [Insert Your Hometown],” you might want to reassess. Drama doesn’t mean passion, and peace doesn’t mean boring. -
Seek Encouragement Over Endurance
A good relationship should make you feel seen, heard, and encouraged—not tested as if love were an episode of Survivor. Look for someone who cheers you on rather than drags you into bouts of turbulence just for the thrill.
Conclusion: The Truth About Love? It’s A Partnership.
It took me years—and more late nights of overthinking than I’d like to admit—to figure out that love isn’t supposed to feel like heavy lifting all the time. Sure, it takes maintenance, but it should also feel like a safe place to land after a tough day.
These days, I don’t believe the myth that “love is hard.” Love, real love, takes effort and care, but it shouldn’t strip you of joy or peace. It isn’t always easy, but it isn’t meant to leave you in pieces, either.
So if you’ve been carrying around your own inherited myth about love, it might be time to set it down. You don’t have to clutch tight to a pocketknife no longer sharp. Trust me, there’s a better tool out there—one that makes the work worthwhile and the love unforgettable.
