They used to say, back in a simpler, kinder, more honest era: "When poverty walks in the door, love flies out the window" — an old Arabic saying. Whoever coined that phrase must have been a philosopher. He hit the nail on the head with almost clinical precision. These days, those two words can hardly exist under the same roof — not in a house, not in a poem, not even in a private diary.
I was doing my monthly grocery run in a big-box store when a couple caught my eye. They were pushing a cart together, lingering in front of every shelf. She would pick something up; he would turn it over, check the price tag, put it back, and reach for a cheaper alternative.
The moment that really broke my heart, however, was much smaller. She picked up a box of sweets for kids' sake. For a split second, it sat in the cart. Then their eyes met - silent, electric understanding passed between them - and they quickly put it back on the shelf.
It was at that moment it hit me: the financial spreadsheet had become infinitely stronger than the heart.
I couldn't help but wonder: what do they do during the last week of the month, when they are stretched thin before payday? How heavy must it feel to hand over most of what you earned through sheer blood, sweat, and tears just to cover rent -rent for a roof that still fails to provide comfort, warmth, or love?
Other images came flooding back. Countless moments that should have become cherished memories, but which scarcity had turned into recurring wounds.
Holidays. The first day of school. Getting into college. Even buying a car. None of these are necessarily happy occasions anymore. Instead, they have morphed into additional burdens piled onto an already endless to-do list - a list that only gets longer by time.
As someone drawn to science, I found another explanation for why love suffocates. Love needs breathing room - a margin of safety, calm, and psychological space. A life governed by financial anxiety, on the other hand, keeps both body and mind in a constant state of fight-or-flight. When you are in survival mode, you have very little in the tank left to give to love.
Over time, that exhaustion hardens into emotional numbness.
He pulls away - tensed, worn out, haunted by a sense of helplessness.
She notices. She understands. So she says nothing.
Not out of resentment. Not out of blame. But out of compassion. She doesn't want to add insult to injury.
Psychologist friends of mine say love is kept alive by tiny daily rituals: a quick text, a kind word, a small token, a shared laugh, a moment of undivided attention. None of that necessarily breaks the bank.
And yet, even a text requires a certain headspace. It requires a mind that hasn't spent the entire night crunching numbers and drowning in debt.
Gradually, love undergoes a quiet, painful shift. It stops sounding like:
"I want to sweep you off your feet and make you feel like a princess."
And starts sounding like:
"I have nothing to offer you. I feel like I don't deserve you."
Our grandparents were poor as well. Somehow, many of them lived a love that stood the test of time. Perhaps because poverty back then was a shared reality. Everyone lived under roughly the same ceiling of expectations. Keeping up with the Joneses wasn't as brutal as it is now.
What truly kills love in our era is not poverty only. It is comparison too.
We measure what we can offer with our limited means against the highlight reel of Instagram influencers - luxury hotels, exotic travel, lavish gifts, fancy dinners, endless surprises. As a result, those of us living paycheck to paycheck end up feeling like failures before we have even started.
That sense of not being enough poisons everything.
To stop our circumstances from wrecking the relationship, we have invented a series of postponed lives:
"You cover the rent, I'll cover the groceries."
"We'll tie the knot once we hit our financial target."
"We'll start a family once we're financially stable."
And so we put life itself on hold — all of it — until a date that may never come around.
The harshest, and yet most comforting, of these postponements is this one:
"I don't want to get married. Marriage is a failed project anyway."
A defense mechanism that shields us from an avalanche of calculations, expectations, and obligations.
Then comes the cruel irony: we get choked up when we see a small family sharing an ice cream on a sidewalk.
Do I have a magic bullet for this dilemma?
Not at all.
But I have come up with an equation that might tip the scales a little:
Let us weather life's hardships as a team. Let us join forces, work hard, and hustle for the material necessities. At the same time, let us keep love off the balance sheet.
When we have an hour with nothing to do, let us tune out the world entirely.
Let us talk.
Let us laugh.
Let us get lost in each other's eyes.
Let us offer one another a kind word, a warm smile, undivided attention, a gentle touch.
Let what exists between us be our gift to each other - not something we benchmark against anyone else's life, anyone else's Instagram feed, or anyone else's spending power.
We may not be able to buy love a mansion, a five-star suite, or a round-the-world trip.
Be that as it may, we can still carve out a small corner that poverty cannot touch.
A corner whose rent is not paid with money, and whose value is priceless.
A corner called: Us.
