There is a particular kind of heartbreak that does not come from betrayal or cruelty, but from loving someone who truly cares, yet cannot love you in the way your heart needs.
This is the love that stays for a while. The love that returns. The love that feels real… but never becomes safe. I will never say she didn’t love me, because if she didn’t, she wouldn’t have stayed in my life at all. But love is not only about feeling. It is also about capacity.
Some people love deeply… but they do not love steadily, sacrificially, or consistently. And when your heart is built for covenant while theirs is built for survival, the connection can feel intense, yet unstable.
This is where confusion lives. This is where longing grows.
Two Hearts, Two Capacities
We assume that if two people feel the same depth of emotion, they must be capable of the same kind of love. But Scripture, and life, tells a different story.
There are hearts that love from safety. There are hearts that love from fear. There are hearts that love from commitment. And there are hearts that love from the moment.
When a covenant heart meets a survival heart, the relationship is powerful… but it is rarely peaceful. It isn’t that one person is lying. It is that one person cannot remain.
God Has Always Used Temporary People to Create Permanent Change
God’s Word is filled with relationships that were meaningful, yet not meant to last.
Abraham and Lot loved each other, but they could not walk the same road (Genesis 13).
Paul and Barnabas loved each other, but their paths divided (Acts 15).
Even Jesus was loved by many who could not remain when the cost became real (John 6:66).
God does not measure love by duration, He measures it by transformation. Some people are not sent to stay. They are sent to awaken.
The Lie That Keeps Us Stuck
We believe that if it was real, it would have lasted. But seasons are still sacred. Moments are still meaningful. And love that changes you is never wasted, even when it ends.
What if the love you lost wasn’t meant to complete you, but to reveal you?
To show you what your heart is capable of. To clarify what you truly need. To prepare you for the kind of love that can remain.
Why God Allows It Anyway
Because love that cannot stay can still teach you how to stand. It teaches you:
• how deeply you can feel
• how fiercely you can hope
• how much you are willing to give
And sometimes, the greatest act of faith is releasing someone you still love, because you trust God more than the future you imagined.
When Love Grows Beyond Its First Form
Out of the necessity of hope, and I know many feel this as I do, just because something is removed does not mean it cannot grow, heal, and return in a different form.
People can change. Capacity can expand. What once felt impossible can become real, with time, healing, and humility. But hope must never become a chain.
You are allowed to believe in redemption without organizing your life around the possibility of return. If God ever allows two hearts to meet again, it will not look like the past. It will be something new, something healed, something whole.
Until then, you walk forward, not bitter, not closed, but open to the life God is still unfolding.
Release Without Resentment
They did not fail you. They reached the edge of who they were. And God will never ask you to shrink your heart to make someone else comfortable.
You do not have to hate them. You do not have to forget them. But you also do not have to wait.
Some love is meant stay or to return, while some love is not meant to remain. It is meant to refine.
And when you step forward, you carry the truth of what that love awakened, not as a wound, but as a witness to the person you are becoming.
Troy P Zehnder 