19/05/2023
Sometimes you may be dating a person and even planning on settling down, and then something bad happens in their life. Perhaps they get a diagnosis for a chronic condition, or their family suffers a bereavement. Naturally, your instinct is to be there for them and weather that storm together. Because you love them, you want to come through for them and somehow use the situation to strengthen your relationship.
This is the right thing to do, as long as they're thinking like you as well.
If they're including you in everything that's going on and they're allowing you to support them, you two will most likely emerge better after the whole experience. Your union will have been tested by fire. And it doesn't mean there can not be moments where someone is overwhelmed and they're not responding to you. As long as these are just moments and not the order of the day.
But pain often reveals another side to people. Pain tests our fortitude, and many fail the test. The moment something happens, they withdraw from you, and they shut you out. At first, you keep trying and waiting and hoping the shock will ease and they come back, but they don't.
Understand this; the pain is understandable, but the disconnection from you is not. That tendency to isolate from loved ones during trying times is a fatal weakness, and until they unlearn it, their relationships will never stand the test of time.
It may be the hopelessness of the situation and the trauma of what happened, but if they're able to talk and interact with other people, they should be able to talk to you as well. Otherwise, your love wasn't that real to begin with, or they're still too immature for love and life. You should ask yourself whether you want someone who handles stress like that? Is that how they will react when a crisis hits you as a family in the future? What if you're the one who gets into a problem, who will stand with you if they will just collapse and shut down?