Letting Go of Forced Connections: Choosing Peace over Obligation - My other POV
For a long time, I thought effort meant forcing myself to stay connected to people, no matter how heavy it felt. While I’ve put it out there that I was a master at forcing and ruining any created relationships, I still believed in some of those cases that if I tried harder, showed up more, explained myself harder than I should have, or made myself smaller, things would eventually feel easier. Instead, I felt exhausted, anxious, and disconnected from myself which led to destruction of some of those relationships.
There’s this quiet pressure to keep relationships alive simply because they’ve existed for a long time or short relationships that became strong. Family, old friends, people we’ve outgrown but feel guilty walking away from. I used to think letting go meant I was weak or selfish. Now I understand that forcing relationships can slowly damage your mental health in ways you don’t notice until you’re already burnt out.
Lately, this has been sitting heavier with me for a different reason. I’ve been watching my child navigate disappointment that no child should have to make sense of. We recently moved several hours away, and for the first time, distance has made something painfully clear to him—that effort doesn’t magically appear just because love is supposed to exist. He’s started noticing who reaches out, who checks in, and who doesn’t. He’s begun asking quiet questions that don’t have easy answers.
As a parent, there’s something uniquely heartbreaking about realizing your child is learning, far too early, what bare-minimum effort looks like. Not through big moments, but through silence. Through missed calls. Through the absence of initiative. And while I can protect him from many things, I can’t protect him from the truth that relationships require showing up—and some people simply don’t.
Effort is important, but effort should not feel like emotional self-harm. It shouldn’t require constant justification of your feelings, endless forgiveness without change, or sacrificing your peace just to avoid disappointing others. When you’re the only one carrying the emotional weight, that’s not effort anymore—that’s survival mode.
Some connections are meant to change, fade, or exist at a distance. That doesn’t erase the love or history—it simply honors reality. Protecting my mental health has meant setting boundaries that once felt uncomfortable but now feel necessary. Protecting my child’s emotional well-being has meant modeling those boundaries, even when it’s hard.
Putting effort into life doesn’t mean pouring yourself into everything and everyone. It means being intentional. It means choosing relationships that feel safe, reciprocal, and grounding. It means investing energy into healing, rest, and growth instead of obligation and guilt.
Letting go isn’t failure. Sometimes it’s clarity. Sometimes it’s choosing peace so your child can learn what healthy love looks like by example, not by explanation. I’m learning that effort should feel like alignment, not exhaustion—and that protecting yourself, and your child, is one of the most important efforts you’ll ever make.
