Some partners have yet to mature to overcome themselves despite how much we may truly love them.
I haven't suffered heartache like you describe, and of course I hope I never do, but I have been rather close a few times. The only thing that kept me and my wife together through those difficult arguments and fights was acknowledging how much sacrifice there is left for both of us in this relationship and the willingness to honor our commitment.
Sacrifice is suffering, and to sacrifice means to surrender our selves. Because of our need to control, grasping at life in hopes for controlling it, we suffer when that need is detrimental to the other person and we have to surrender it. For example, however much we want to help and fix things there is a overshadowing quality to that. Instead of recognizing it, we force our help onto the other person one way or another, unbeknownst to us, and the significant other is usually left without a choice to decline our help as we impose it and expect they simply adopt our advice or prerogative.
The egg analogy is an excellent tool here: an outside force cracking the egg kills life, only a force breaking through from the inside is capable of taking the next step in life. We must be cautious to not impose our will on our partners, that conflict has little if any sustenance to a lasting relationship and offers no credence for the potential of our partner to recognize their own shortcomings. We must sacrifice our need for control in order to thrive on surrendering ourselves to the commitment and life we strive for.
It's not about compromising ourselves by relinquishing our free will and becoming robots, but compromising over situations and circumstances, we need to recognize the need to bend and adjust, growth is not guaranteed but without surrendering our need for control, completely at times, we adhere to the arrogance that we have figured out or comprehended the many facets of situations, relationships, and ultimately people, and that arrogance is deluding us and inhibits further growth or evolution.
In the end there is only so much we can do, and having exhausted all modes maybe the only thing left is something very radical, but the more radical the higher the risk and hardly a semblance to the recognize and adapt Bruce Lee philosophy of "be like water". We must be cautious of the path we take or we will suffer the consequences if we give into desperation or when we don't recognize desperation in others and push them further down that path.
It is better to realize that we cannot live onto ourselves, that if we don't extend our surrender we will never have surrender extended to us, and the parable of the long spoons exemplifies how when forced to eat with very long spoons we will starve if we don't treat one another well.
Ahhhh ... many wise words from the @baah on this day of long spoons - I'm a big fan of that parable. I did eat with a long spoon for many months after the split. Only now do I eat with the small spoon having been transformed into a much kinder person, and to make peace with not just myself, but with my ex-partner. If she wishes to continue to eat with the long spoon that is her choice. Right now I must now attend to my own boiled egg ... with a short spoon! Thank you for passing by my friend :)
@baah having my heart broken lady year this comment speaks wisdom to me following you and @mindhunter so I can completely walk away from. My past