Can a Romantic Relationship Heal My Heart?: When We Look for Substitutions

Our soul is addicted to relationships of any kind: family bonds, romantic affairs, professional networking, school comradely, sports teams’ brotherhoods, fraternities and sororities, political parties, religious communities, you name it. To be related one to another is written in our spiritual and emotional DNA, since the moment God said in the Genesis: It is not good for man to be alone. Society itself is based in relationships, being family the core of it all. Relationships define humanity per se, and the survival of humankind have depended on the human bonds we have created through the centuries.

In this era, in the year of our Lord, there is one type of relationship that has been advertised even to the roots of our mind, and have transformed the way we see human behavior itself: romantic relationships. Media, in most of the cases; have been the one indoctrinating people concerning the “importance” of a romantic relationship (being straight or queer, in their variations, respectively), and its teaching is targeted to the missing parts of our heart: “In order to be happy in life, you need a romantic relationship.” “If you don’t follow your heart concerning that person, you will be miserable forever”, and so on.

One of the motivations to get involved in a romantic relationship is to feel the high emotion a person can live within it; but there is always more.

As I say in the beginning, humankind is based in human relationships of all kind. And as we live in a fallen and sinful world, not all of them have worked for us. Let’s face it: Some of us are awful sons, or we have awful parents. Some could have had bad experiences with siblings, former partners. Some could even have had issues with public society, a church community, and have got hurt in the process. The point is that because of those setbacks with other people, our emotional spectrum could be damaged. Our heart could have empty spaces that are supposed to be filled with love, forgiveness and empathy.

People look for romantic relationships as a substitute to other important relationships in life.

How does it works? You can see examples of it all the time: The girl who became a lesbian because daddy was a drunk and an abuser. The girl who got pregnant on purpose because she wanted to keep the guy, for she doesn’t want him to leave like her mother did. The boy who is attached to porn because he is bullied at school. The guy with commitment issues, because of his bad relationship with his parents. The not-yet-married couple who is having sex outside marriage, living together and holding a grudge, because a whole church community threw shade on them because they slipped once… The examples are endless, and it is not repetitive to say this: we can’t cover the open wounds of one relationship with another one, pretending that it will heal it by magic. Love doesn’t work that way. Life doesn’t work that way.

Love is simply: to be as vulnerable as possible, to the point of dying to yourself. If you can’t put yourself in a position of dying to yourself, in order to necessarily mend an issue, you are still not ready to take that next step, and you are going to put a pressure into that other person, that he or she doesn’t deserve. A romantic partner is never going to substitute the love of a mother. A romantic relationship based in trust and confidence is never going to top a siblings’ relationship. Doesn’t matter how good you get along with your partner, if you don’t know how to get along with friends. We need to give each and every thing its own place and its own value.

The Sermon of the Mount tell us a little story about relationships:

23 “So if you are presenting a sacrifice[h] at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, 24 leave your sacrifice there at the altar. Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God. (Matt. 5:23-24, NLT)

Let’s check a little context: Giving a sacrifice in the altar was an act of worship. When we worship God, we are working in our relationship with Him. This is Jesus talking about our relationship with God. But look how right off the hook, Jesus is telling us that if we have something against somebody, we better get things right with that person in order to have a better relationship with God! God is telling us, that in order to move on and grow in our relationship with Him, we need to set things clear with those empty spaces we have in our hearts. We can apply it to any romantic relationship too. How would you take all the baggage of a destroyed relationship with a parent, and demand your romantic partner to fill the void? How would you take the pain, the grudge and the shame of a broken friendship, and then force your partner to be ‘that friend’ who gives you consolation? Or easier: are you getting into another relationship because of the “nail takes out the older nail” principle?

Work toward that spiritual and emotional freedom. It will take time, but it is worth the fight.

Think for a second before taking decisions based in your pain, your losses, your hate and mercilessness. Be mature enough to face your demons. Be gracious enough to look forward forgiveness! Jesus taught us to pray like this: “Forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who sinned against us”, and we need to live it! Let’s not hurt the person we love by throwing at her/him a load she/he doesn’t deserve to carry. A romantic relationship ought to be a clear, fresh space of oneness, confidence, trust, freshness and intimacy; not of replacement, neither guilt or blame. No person involved in a relationship deserves to try to heal other people’s consequences in the heart. Is a titanic task.

You can’t fit a Rubik Cube into a 100-piece puzzle. It’s just ridiculous. First solve the Cube, and then look for the piece that’s missing.

There is hope in all of this. There’s one person who is able to take all that emotional toil and load into his shoulders, and deal with it. His name is Jesus. He took all that pain and consequence upon that cross, and He was nailed for your peace. He died for forgiveness, He died for redemption. He is the One who listens to you right now, and the One who calls you to go to Him, to start over, and to get to work within your heart, and on those people you need to deal with.

No. A romantic relationship won’t heal your heart. But healing will lead you to a great, driven and eternal relationship with everyone in your heart.