When loving someone might hurt them.

How do you determine if loving someone might actually be hurting them more than helping them?

I have been asking myself this question a good deal lately. I love a man with all of my heart, but I think that perhaps our relationship and his need to please me might be detrimental to his psyche and health. He is already spread thin, having many, many responsibilities in his life outside of his relationship with me. I try not to make any demands of him, but still he feels that he should do things for me. It is great, and he is great, but the added stress and responsibility seems to wear on him.

I feel like I make him happy, but is that enough in the grand scheme of things? He says that he worries about me and that he wants to make me happy all the time - admirable, but difficult. No one person can be the instrument of another's happiness.  I want to share a happy life with him. I want to be happy with him. Sometimes what we want is not what is best. I have to be the bigger person and set him free, but I find it impossible.

I was always sad for my mother that she did not have enough time to realize her dreams of happiness with her love, and I watched my aunt search for her first love, only to locate him only months before her death. Both women died without knowing that true happiness they so longed for. Am I slated to follow in their footsteps? It is not like I will walk away and find another. It is not that I even want that. It IS about being selfless though and allowing "J" to walk away, guilt free and unfettered by worry for me. One man, one person, can only take on so much without finally falling to pieces. I do not want this for him.

So how do I find the strength and the courage to let him go? How do I move forward while feeling such a loss? I have already had so much loss in my life. Is it fair to hold on to someone who is not mine?