Avoiding Desperate Hope By Accepting the Present Moment

Hope is a good thing, isn’t it? After all, it’s one of the “Big Three” along with faith and love: the theological virtues that serve as the foundation for all human virtues. Yet even virtues can be taken too far or twisted out of proper alignment. This often happens in toxic relationships, when—despite years of abuse and little or no authentic remorse—a spouse continues clinging to the hope that her partner will finally change.

The theological virtues have their focus on “God as their immediate and principal object, and are infused by Him … by faith we believe in God and believe all He has revealed, by hope we hope to possess God, and by charity we love God and in Him we love ourselves and our neighbor” (Catechism of Saint Pius X).

When we focus our hope not on God, but on things of this world—including other people—we inevitably open ourselves to disappointment, resentment, regret, and even harm. In toxic relationships we may cling to a false hope—what I call “desperate hope”—because it helps us feel safe or keeps us from facing painful truths. But this kind of hope doesn’t set us free; it keeps us bound to illusions and expectations born not from God, but from our own fears and imagination.

This isn’t to say that our hope for something good in the future will always prove faulty or misguided. However, clinging to a relationship solely in the hope that someone will change—while years pass with little or no real progress—slowly drains the soul and wears down the mind. This is a unique sort of agony, a tug and pull of our hearts and our rational minds. There’s no resolution to the dilemma as long as we remain attached to the “what ifs.”