12/28/2025
Tikkunim Are Deeply Annoying
A letter to anyone who has ever tried to fix
There is a truth most of us brush up against eventually, usually with tenderness and resistance at the same time.
Love cannot fix another human being.
Not a partner.
Not a child.
Not a parent.
Not a friend.
And knowing that doesn’t make it easier.
Most of us come into love wanting to help. We give perspective, patience, empathy, steadiness. We listen deeply. We explain gently. We hope that if we love clearly enough, consistently enough, something in the other person will soften or shift.
This isn’t manipulation. It’s humanity.
We want to give. We want to ease suffering. We want our love to matter.
And sometimes it does. Love can soothe. Love can inspire. Love can create safety for growth. But there’s a quiet line we cross without realizing it, where love stops being love and starts doing work that doesn’t belong to it.
Love cannot do someone else’s inner work.
It cannot replace accountability.
It cannot override avoidance.
It cannot mature someone on their behalf.
When we forget this, love turns into fixing. And fixing, no matter how well intentioned, eventually costs us something.
I’ll share this personally, briefly. I’m a Four on the Enneagram. That means I tend to believe that if we just understand each other deeply enough, things should move. That insight itself is transformative. That emotional truth is a kind of medicine.
That lens has given me depth, empathy, and meaning. It has also taught me, slowly, that understanding alone is not the same as shared effort.
If you’re curious about your own patterns in love, it can be illuminating to look up your Enneagram number. Not as a label, but as a mirror. It often helps people see where they over give, over carry, or over function in relationships without realizing it.
And here’s the invitation I want to offer gently.
Ask yourself:
• Am I trying to help, or am I trying to fix?
• Do I believe my love can compensate for someone else’s lack of readiness?
• Am I staying engaged with who this person is, or who I hope they’ll become?
• Do I confuse empathy with responsibility?
These aren’t accusations. They’re human questions.
The idea that love cannot fix doesn’t mean love is powerless. It means love has limits. Sacred ones.
Sometimes the most loving act is letting someone be exactly who they are, without fusion, without carrying, without rescuing. And that opens the door to some very real, very brave questions:
Can I love this person as they are, not as I wish them to be?
Can I stay connected without abandoning myself?
If I stop fixing, what remains between us?
Is there mutual effort, or only mutual feeling?
Here’s the part people don’t talk about enough.
Sometimes, when fixing stops, something beautiful happens.
Without fusion, intimacy can deepen. Without pressure, desire can return. Without over functioning, two people can meet freshly, as equals. There can be a rekindling. A new romance. A lighter, truer connection because no one is being carried.
And sometimes, something else happens.
The relationship clarifies. Without the glue of fixing, the gap becomes visible. And while that can be painful, it can also be honest. Clarity is not cruelty. It’s information.
None of this is a failure of love.
In fact, it may be love in its most mature form.
Love that doesn’t control.
Love that doesn’t rescue.
Love that doesn’t disappear into effort.
Maybe the ultimate expression of love is allowing someone to be who they are, and then answering, with courage and care, the questions that truth brings forward.
That work isn’t easy.
It’s deeply human.
And yes, it’s often deeply annoying.
But it’s also where real relationship begins.
