When Loving Someone Keeps Us Stuck

There are moments on our journeys where, no matter how much we love someone, we can’t walk the path for them. As much as our hearts ache, some roads we must walk alone.

This lesson has been one of the hardest (and most freeing) truths I’ve learned through my own experience with addiction and recovery.

The Hardest Part of Loving Someone

Watching a loved one suffer is gut-wrenching. If you’ve ever been there, you know how powerless it feels to witness someone you love spiralling, hurting, or staying stuck in cycles you desperately want them to break.

During my own battle with addiction, I learned this the hard way. No one could have told me to stop drinking until I was ready. It was not anyone else’s timing.

This is what I remind myself now when I want a loved one to change (for their own good!! LOL)

The Trap of Codependency

When we stay tangled up in the need for others to be okay, we keep ourselves in suffering too.

It looks like:

• Waiting for someone else’s breakthrough before you allow yourself to feel peace.
• Believing their happiness is your responsibility.
• Carrying guilt or shame when they don’t change.
• Over-giving your time, energy or money when you yourself are depleted.
• Trying to rescue someone from their challenges.
• Overlooking your own needs and obsessing about circumstances or outcomes for others.

Truth talk. That’s not love, it’s codependency.

True love allows space. It trusts timing. It honours that every person must come to their own turning point, in their own way.

Coming Back Home to You

If you’ve been caught in the cycle of wanting someone else to change (even when you know it would be better for them!), this is your invitation:

Come back home to you.

Your work isn’t to carry the weight of their choices, lessons or outcomes. Your work is to notice where you’ve abandoned yourself in the process—and return home to you.

Because the truth is, the more rooted you are in your own Joy, peace, and alignment, the more you actually model what’s possible for the people around you.

An Invitation

If this resonates, I want you to know—you’re not alone. Every single one of us has been tempted to fix, rescue, or carry someone we love. But real freedom comes from reclaiming our own energy and practicing Joy from the inside out.

That’s why I created The Joy Nest—a soft place to land and practice coming home to ourselves over and over again. Together. Have a look and see if it speaks to your heart.