He tugged at his loosened tie, half-drunk, and said, If you’re here, I know at least one person in the world truly sees me.
Why, in that moment, did the words taste like honey?
The night his discord sounded like music to me
Each flicker of the underground parking lights pushed us deeper into the dark. In the glass we looked like a couple dried hollow by years. He was still waiting for the lover who never left the office, and I was waiting for him. Our romance survived by trading wounds.
“This man might die without me.”
Whenever the thought surfaced, a shiver of pleasure ran through me—delusion that I held a card no one else could play.
Dissection of Desire
To dream of a future with someone you cannot heal is, in the end, the paradox of wishing you yourself could be healed. The fantasy: if I rescue him, I will be rescued.
But we only keep gathering each other’s broken fragments, endlessly.
A story that feels too real 1: Soo-jin, 32, serial savior
When Soo-jin met her fiancé Hyun-soo, she already knew he’d handed over an entire apartment’s value to his ex and hovered at bankruptcy. Instead of alarm, she whispered to herself, I will do it differently.
Six months into marriage Hyun-soo returned to gambling. Soo-jin changed every password, froze accounts, opened new ones. Still she believed happiness was possible.
One dawn at 3 a.m. he came home and said, You’re exhausted now, aren’t you? I know I’ve ruined your life. Soo-jin ran to the bathroom and wept—not because of the words, but because an ugly relief washed over her: He still won’t leave me.
A story that feels too real 2: Min-jae, 29, endless rehab project
When his girlfriend Ha-yeon lost her license for drunk driving, Min-jae swore off alcohol that very day. Ha-yeon simply replaced liquor with pills. Min-jae wrapped his arms around her while she wore a nicotine patch and murmured, I will cradle every hurt you carry.
She let him hold her, but his embrace grew heavier each time.
One night Ha-yeon nearly ran someone over while driving drunk again. Only then did Min-jae see the truth: the person who needed fixing wasn’t Ha-yeon, but the part of him that insisted on fixing her.
Why we are drawn to this
Psychologists call it sacrificial love, yet its truer name is a corrupted form of self-pity. We project the unhealed self onto another, hoping to redeem ourselves through their salvation.
A darker layer exists: power. The intoxicating certainty that he cannot live without me.
In the end, to dream of a life with someone we cannot repair is arrogance: the claim to be the sole light in an unending disaster.
The final question
Is your urge to heal him truly for his sake?
Or is it the most beautiful deceit—hiding the desire never to shatter yourself?