Pity is the compassionate sorrow we feel towards the suffering of others.
Love can be defined many ways, but for simplicity I will define it as a deep feeling that binds one person to another. It can mean many kinds of love - the love of friends, the love of one’s pet, but it is romantic love we are most interested in and that’s the definition I will address.
You can feel pity towards someone you love, if they are suffering, but if you take the pity away, what do you have left to feel for them?
It is easy to mistake the two. Sometimes, we meet someone for whom we feel deep pity. Compassion moves us, makes us want to hold them, care for them, help them, heal them. So many relationships begin this way. One cares for the other, and it is this ebb and flow of pity and suffering that defines and supports the relationship. It isn’t to say that love cannot grow out of a relationship that begins with pity, but if pity is mistaken for love, again, what remains when the suffering is gone? What is left when the wounds have healed?
Often people fall back from relationships they thought were love, confused and torn because they feel the loss of the relationship and only later realize that it was not love they felt, but pity. They may feel that the love was a lie, but it was that they were confused by their feelings, that what they thought was love might have only been sorrow for the suffering of the other, and after they give each other solace - nothing of substance remains. We often cling long to failing relationships moved by our pity, confusing it for love.
There is in romantic love always the question of endurance to be reckoned with. We ask ourselves if the relationship we are in will endure, whether it should last. We worry whether the love is real, or whether it is some other feeling that feels like love. We wonder what the other feels for us. Great shows of compassion can feel like loving attention, and it can make the giver feel like they are acting out of love - because compassion is a kind of love. It just isn’t that ideal romantic love which we so often compare all love to, and so often find all our loves falling short.
At the end of these confused relationships, we often hear one hurt partner say, “I don’t want your pity.” What they often mean is: “I wanted your love, but all you offer is your pity, and that’s not enough and I can’t stay with you if that’s all you can give me.” The imbalance inherent in the relationship causes it to tip over and break apart, but we don’t always see it until the illusion is shattered. We have mistaken pity for love.
Written by Jason Thibodeau
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