Growing up, I thought screaming matches at 2 AM were how couples communicated. I thought silent dinners where nobody made eye contact were normal. And I thought staying together despite clearly despising each other was what commitment looked like.

For forty-three years, my parents modeled a version of love that looked more like a prison sentence than a partnership. They never divorced, but they never really loved each other either. They just… endured.

And here’s the kicker: I spent most of my adult life recreating exactly what I’d witnessed. I’d meet someone, feel that familiar sense of obligation and discomfort, and think, “This must be it. This must be love.”

It wasn’t until I was 31, sitting in my first therapy session, that I realized I’d been choosing partners based on a broken template. Every relationship felt like work because I thought that’s what relationships were supposed to be.

Love isn’t supposed to feel like a chore

I remember my first serious relationship in college. We had absolutely nothing in common. She loved clubbing; I preferred quiet nights reading. She was spontaneous; I planned everything. She wanted to travel the world; I was focused on building my career.

But there was this heavy feeling between us, this sense that we should make it work. It felt familiar. It felt like home.

Looking back, I realize that heaviness wasn’t love. It was obligation. The same obligation I’d watched my parents carry like a cross for four decades.

We stayed together for three years. Three years of forcing conversations, pretending to enjoy each other’s hobbies, and feeling relieved when work kept us apart. Sound familiar?

The thing about growing up in a loveless home is that you don’t know what healthy love looks like. You think tension is passion. You think incompatibility is just something to work through. You think that grinding feeling in your chest when you see their name pop up on your phone is butterflies.

The pattern becomes your normal

After college, the pattern continued. I’d meet someone, feel nothing particularly special, but notice that familiar weight of obligation. She seems nice enough. We should probably date. This is what people do.

I became an expert at relationships that looked good on paper but felt hollow in practice. We’d go through the motions. Dinner dates where we’d scroll through our phones. Weekend trips where we’d barely speak. Sex that felt like checking a box.

At 30, I was in another one of these relationships. I’d just started my own business and was working insane hours. She complained I was never present. She was right. But honestly? Work was my escape. It gave me a legitimate excuse to avoid confronting the fact that we were two strangers sharing a lease.

The irony is that I was recreating my parents’ dynamic perfectly. Different circumstances, same result: two people staying together out of duty rather than desire.

When obligation masquerades as love

Here’s what I’ve learned: when you grow up watching obligation masquerade as love, you develop some pretty messed up beliefs about relationships.

You think love means staying even when you’re miserable. You think commitment means enduring rather than enjoying. You think that wanting to leave makes you weak or selfish.

My parents finally divorced when I was 22. After forty-three years, they called it quits. You’d think it would have been devastating, but honestly? It was a relief. The house finally felt peaceful. They both seemed lighter, younger somehow.

But even watching them finally choose happiness, I kept choosing obligation in my own life.

Why? Because that’s what felt safe. Real connection, real compatibility, real love? That felt foreign and scary. I didn’t trust it. Give me dysfunction and duty any day. At least I knew how to navigate that.

The Sunday phone calls that feel like work

Even now, I struggle with this. Every Sunday, I call my mom. Not because I particularly want to, but because I should. We fumble through the same conversations about weather and work. Neither of us really knows how to connect.

It’s not her fault. It’s not mine either. We’re both products of a family system that valued appearance over authenticity, endurance over happiness.

But recognizing the pattern is the first step to breaking it, right?

When I started therapy at 31, my therapist asked me to describe what love felt like. I used words like “responsibility,” “effort,” and “sacrifice.” She gently suggested that maybe I was describing obligation, not love.

Mind. Blown.

Choosing differently means feeling differently

Breaking a pattern this deep doesn’t happen overnight. After that therapy session, I didn’t suddenly start making perfect relationship choices. But I did start paying attention to how I felt rather than what I thought I should do.

Did I actually enjoy spending time with this person? Or did I just feel like I should?

Did conversations flow naturally? Or was every interaction forced?

Did I look forward to seeing them? Or did I feel that familiar sense of dread?

These seem like obvious questions, but when you’ve spent your whole life confusing obligation with love, they’re revolutionary.

I’ve been reading a lot of Esther Perel lately, and she talks about how desire requires space and freedom. You can’t desire something you feel obligated to do. That hit me hard.

All those relationships where I felt trapped? Where every text felt like a chore? That wasn’t love being hard work. That was me trying to force something that wasn’t there.

Rounding things off

If you grew up like I did, watching two people who clearly shouldn’t be together stay together anyway, you might be carrying some of these same patterns.

You might be choosing partners based on who you think you should be with rather than who you actually connect with. You might be staying in relationships that feel like work because you think that’s what commitment looks like.

Here’s what I wish someone had told me earlier: Love shouldn’t feel like obligation. It shouldn’t feel like you’re constantly swimming upstream. It shouldn’t feel like a job you can’t quit.

Yes, relationships require effort. But there’s a difference between the effort of building something beautiful with someone you genuinely connect with and the effort of trying to force incompatibility into something resembling love.

These days, I’m trying to choose differently. Progress over perfection, as I keep reminding myself. Some days I still catch myself falling into old patterns, choosing the familiar weight of obligation over the uncertainty of genuine connection.

But at least now I know the difference.