When Love and Pain Coexist: Understanding the Complexity of Human Connection
by Jessica Anne Pressler, LCSW
My father was my hero. He was brilliant, compassionate, protective—a man who could fix anything and make me feel safe in an unpredictable world. He taught me to value education, to stand up for what's right, and to see the beauty in small moments. When he was sober, he was everything a daughter could want in a father.
But my father also lived with demons I couldn't understand as a child. When he drank, he became a different person —mean, depressed, unfaithful. The man who protected could become harsh and unpredictable. As he aged, the drinking increased, and so did the anger and depression. I watched the hero of my childhood begin to slowly disappear behind a veil of addiction and pain.
How do you reconcile loving someone who also hurts you? How do you hold space for both the father who taught you to ride a bike and the one who caused you wounds? This is the painful complexity that millions of us navigate—loving people who are flawed, wounded, and sometimes destructive, even as we recognize that their behavior is never an excuse for the harm they cause.
The Science of Complex Love
Recent psychological research confirms what many of us know intuitively: human relationships are far more nuanced than simple categories of "good" or "bad" people. As Western societies become more complex and human interactions occur in multiple contexts, a deeper and broader understanding of love and its implications becomes necessary, researchers note in recent studies on the psychology of love.
Love is a powerful, complex emotional experience that involves changes in your body chemistry, including your neurotransmitters (brain chemicals). It impacts your social relationships in varied ways, affecting how you relate to others around you. This biological reality helps explain why we can simultaneously feel deep love and profound hurt toward the same person.
The research on attachment theory provides crucial insights into these complex dynamics. Early attachment experience creates internal working models as "life-long templates." These templates create an affective as well as cognitive matrix for future relationship patterns. When our primary caregivers are sources of both love and trauma, we develop what researchers call "disorganized attachment"—a pattern where we simultaneously seek closeness and fear harm from the same person.
My relationship with my father was one of kindness and love but I also had to make sense, as a child and an adult of the times when he would cheat on my mother and become mean as he drank which increased as he aged. I had great empathy for the pain he was feeling and at the same time had to cope with my own pain from his words and actions toward me and others. When the learner is unable to predict when they will get the reward, learning is maximized. Similarly, the intermittent expressions of affection and care are unexpected, and the inability to predict them makes them more sought after.
The Reality of Wounded People
It's crucial to understand that recognizing someone's complexity doesn't excuse their harmful behavior. My father's alcoholism, unkind words, and destructive choices were likely rooted in his own trauma and pain—but that doesn't make how they affected me and others any less harmful. Recent research on childhood trauma and adult relationships shows the impact of childhood trauma on romantic relationship satisfaction among college students, focusing on the mediating role of attachment and the moderating role of social support.
People are products of their experiences, their wounds, and their choices. Early experiences shape attachment styles, affecting how we form and maintain relationships. Emotional Neglect: When parents ignore or fail to meet their child's emotional needs, the child may develop insecure attachment. Understanding this can help us develop compassion without excusing harm.
Many people carry what psychologists call "internal working models" that were formed in childhood. These models influence how they see themselves, others, and relationships. Someone who experienced neglect or abuse might develop patterns of:
Difficulty trusting others
Fear of abandonment
Problems with emotional regulation
Tendency to recreate familiar but unhealthy dynamics
When Love Hurts: Setting Boundaries with Compassion
Sometimes relationships bring pain that harms our well-being. When loving someone hurts, it usually signals the need for setting boundaries. This is perhaps the most difficult lesson for those of us who love complex people: we can hold compassion for their struggles while protecting ourselves from their harmful behaviors.
Boundaries aren't walls—they're guidelines that help us maintain our own emotional and physical safety while still caring for someone. With my father, this meant:
Recognizing that I couldn't control his drinking or choices
Accepting that love doesn't require accepting their destructive actions
Understanding that his pain explained but didn't excuse his behavior
Finding ways to honor the good parts of our relationship while acknowledging the harmful parts
The Aftermath: Grieving Complex Relationships
Understanding the underlying commonalities between physical and social pain unearths new perspectives on issues such as … why it 'hurts' to lose someone we love. When we lose someone who was both a source of love and pain, our grief becomes equally complex.
I grieved not just the loss of my father, but also:
The father he could have been without his demons
The relationship we might have had if he'd been able to heal
The parts of myself that were shaped by both his love and his dysfunction
The fantasy of ever receiving the apology or acknowledgment I needed
This kind of grief doesn't follow neat stages or timelines. It's messy, contradictory, and deeply personal.
Moving Forward: Integration and Healing
Healing from complex relationships requires what therapists call "integration"—the ability to hold multiple truths simultaneously. My father was loving AND harmful. He was wounded AND responsible for his choices. I can honor what he gave me AND acknowledge what he took away.
Recent research emphasizes that by understanding the connection between trauma and attachment, individuals can embark on a path of healing and growth, reclaiming their lives with the support of therapy and secure attachment bonds.
This integration allows us to:
Break cycles of dysfunction in our own relationships
Develop healthier attachment patterns
Find meaning in our experiences
Create the kind of love we wished we'd received
A Message of Hope
If you're struggling with loving someone who has hurt you, please know that your feelings are valid. You don't have to choose between love and truth, between compassion and boundaries, between honoring someone and protecting yourself. Complex relationships require complex responses.
The goal isn't to demonize or idealize the people who shaped us, but to see them—and ourselves—with clear eyes and open hearts. We can acknowledge their humanity while refusing to accept their harmful behaviors. We can break generational cycles while still finding gratitude for the lessons they taught us, intentionally or not.
Your story matters. Your pain matters. And your healing matters—not just for you, but for all the relationships yet to come.
The Neurobiology of Complex Love
Understanding the biological underpinnings of these complex relationships helps validate our experiences. Research from the Association for Psychological Science shows that social pain and physical pain activate similar neural pathways in the brain. When we say loving someone "hurts," we're describing a literal neurological reality.
Studies have found that social support could relieve the intensity of physical pain — and that the supportive person didn't even have to be present for the soothing to occur. This research helps explain why we can feel both comforted and wounded by the same person, sometimes simultaneously. The brain's attachment system is designed to keep us connected to our caregivers, even when that connection becomes toxic. This isn't weakness—it's biology attempting to ensure survival in an impossible situation.
Breaking Intergenerational Patterns
Recent research emphasizes that childhood trauma significantly impacts romantic relationship satisfaction, with attachment styles and social support playing crucial mediating and moderating roles. This means that our early experiences with complex relationships don't doom us to repeat them—but they do require conscious effort to heal.
The concept of "earned security" offers hope. Some adults achieve a secure attachment status despite reporting significant problems from their early relationships with parents. This attachment status is referred to as "earned secure" and indicates a developmental transition from initial "insecure" to "secure" later.
This transformation happens through:
Therapeutic relationships that provide corrective emotional experiences
Conscious relationship choices that prioritize emotional safety
Developing emotional regulation skills through practice and support
Creating meaning from our experiences rather than being defined by them
Building secure relationships that can serve as models for healthy connection
The Role of Forgiveness—Complex and Personal
Forgiveness in complex relationships isn't simple or linear. It doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior or reconciling with people who continue to cause harm. Instead, it might mean:
Accepting what happened without minimizing or dramatizing it
Releasing the fantasy of the parent/partner/person you wished they could be
Recognizing their humanity while maintaining your boundaries
Choosing peace over the exhausting burden of resentment
Honoring both the gifts and wounds they gave you
For me, forgiving my father meant accepting that he was a wounded person who did his best with limited tools, while also acknowledging that his best caused harm and pain. Both things can be true.
When Professional Help Becomes Essential
Sometimes relationships bring pain that harms our well-being. When loving someone hurts, it usually signals the need for setting boundaries. If you're struggling with complex relationships, certain signs indicate that professional support could be transformative:
Repeatedly finding yourself in similar harmful relationships
Difficulty distinguishing between love and dysfunction
Chronic anxiety or depression related to relationship patterns
Substance abuse or other self-destructive behaviors
Inability to trust your own perceptions or feelings
Persistent feelings of emptiness or unworthiness
Professionals who specialize in recognizing and treating complex post-traumatic stress disorder and the aftereffects of abuse, can often have the biggest impact on people working to overcome this specific trauma.
The Ongoing Journey
Healing from complex relationships isn't a destination—it's an ongoing process of growth, self-discovery, and conscious choice-making. As Western societies become more complex and human interactions occur in multiple contexts, a deeper and broader understanding of love and its implications becomes necessary.
Some days, the grief feels fresh. Some days, the anger resurfaces. Some days, the love feels pure and uncomplicated. All of these experiences are valid parts of processing complex relationships. The goal isn't to "get over it" or “forgive them,” but to integrate these experiences in a way that serves your growth and wellbeing.
Your story—with all its complications, contradictions, and pain—matters. By sharing it, by healing from it, and by choosing to break harmful cycles, you're not just healing yourself. You're contributing to the healing of generations to come.
If you're currently in an abusive relationship, please reach out for help. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) offers free, confidential support 24/7. You deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and there are people who can help you find safety and healing.
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References
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