ALL BECAUSE I LOVE YOU...

OLITZ

Part of the Love & Legacy February Series

Before you continue reading, I need you to listen to Halle's song "because i love you" in its entirety. Allow yourself to be consumed.

---

I'm on my millionth rewatch of Scandal, and this time around it has been hitting differently. Maybe it's because I'm a bit older. Maybe it's because I've lived through enough of my own chaos to recognize the patterns. But watching Olivia Pope and President Fitzgerald Grant spiral through seven seasons of "I love you" dressed up as destiny has me finally seeing what I couldn't before: their chemistry was never the problem. The problem was how they let love become permission for everything else.

I started listening to Halle's album "love?... or something like it" around the same time I was rewatching the episodes where Liv and Fitz are at their most charged—those moments where passion and destruction are so intertwined you can't tell which is which anymore. And when "because i love you" came on, I was reminded of Olivia and Fitz dynamic on the show. Because Halle wasn't just describing a dynamic. She was soundtracking Olivia and Fitz's entire relationship.

There's a particular kind of love story we don't talk about enough—the one where "I love you" becomes the most beautifully destructive phrase in your vocabulary. Where affection transforms into ammunition, and devotion becomes a permission slip for chaos.

Halle captures something uncomfortably real: the intoxicating dance between love and recklessness, between genuine feeling and calculated provocation. This isn't a song about falling in love. This is a song about testing love's limits, about weaponizing vulnerability, about the dangerous comfort of knowing someone will always catch you when you fall —even when you're the one jumping.

And if you've ever watched Olivia Pope destroy her life (and everyone else's) while whispering "we're inevitable" to a married president, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

The Architecture of "I Love You"

The narrator doesn't stumble into bad behavior; she orchestrates it. Getting drunk at a birthday party, climbing on the Maybach dashboard, starting "a little brawl" with diamonds— these aren't accidents. They're performances. Each one designed to trigger a specific response, to confirm what she already knows: that her partner's love means unconditional forgiveness, that protectiveness will always override frustration, that "I love you" can absolve almost anything.

Olivia does this too, just with higher stakes. She sabotages Fitz's marriages, derails his presidency, compromises her own reputation — all while framing it as something she has to do because the love is too big to ignore. The affair isn't presented as a choice; it's presented as destiny. And destiny, unlike choice, doesn't require accountability.

Watch any season of Scandal and you'll see the pattern: Olivia does something reckless (often involving Fitz), spirals into self-destruction, delivers a monologue about how much it hurts, and then... does it again. Because she knows Fitz will always take her back. Because she knows "it's handled" applies to her own chaos too.

And here's what makes it complicated: the love is real. The chaos is real. The apology is real. But so is the pattern.

When Sanctuary Becomes Prison

There's something deeply human about needing to test the bounds of love. We all want to know: Will you still love me when I'm at my worst? Will you still choose me when I make it hard? Will you protect me even from myself? These aren't villainous questions. They're the whispers of every wounded person who ever needed proof that love could survive their messiest moments.

But there's a difference between testing boundaries and exploiting them. Between seeking reassurance and manipulating devotion.

The narrator in Halle's song knows this. She admits it outright: "maybe I planned this, sweet intentions / I know what I did and I know that you would've listened." This is self-awareness without self-correction. Knowing she's the architect of her own chaos but building it anyway because the alternative—trusting love without proof—feels too terrifying.

Olivia knows it too. There are moments throughout Scandal where she acknowledges she's the problem, where she admits she uses people, that she's damaged, that she keeps choosing chaos. But knowing isn't the same as changing. And Fitz's response is always the same: "I'll wait." "We'll figure it out." "You're worth it."

Which sounds romantic until you realize it's also enabling.

The Partner Who Enables

We need to talk about the other person in this dynamic. The one who "always puts [her] first / Even when I'm the worst, even when I make it hurt." On the surface, this sounds like unconditional love. Look deeper, and it is complicity.

True love doesn't mean absorbing every blow without boundary. It doesn't mean being so protective that you never hold someone accountable. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is refuse to participate in someone's self-destruction. Sometimes caring means saying: "I love you, but I won't enable this."

Fitz never says that. He leaves his wife for Olivia—twice. He starts a war for her. He uses the full power of the presidency to protect her, even when what she needs protection from is herself. His love for her is presented as noble devotion, but really? It's fuel for the fire.

The partner's patience isn't a virtue here; it's complicity. It reinforces the cycle. It teaches the narrator that recklessness has no real consequences, that "sorry for my actions, all that I projected" can be a refrain instead of a turning point.

In Halle's song and in Scandal, the person who keeps forgiving enables the person who keeps destroying. And both people convince themselves this is what love looks like.

The Luxury of Recklessness

We can't ignore the context: Maybachs, diamonds, high fashion, parties that start at 8:30 pm. This kind of chaos exists in a bubble where consequences are cushioned by wealth and status. Where getting drunk and destructive doesn't mean losing your job or your apartment. Where "I motherfuckin' love you" can be whispered from the dashboard of a car that costs more than most people's homes.

Olivia and Fitz exist in this bubble too. She runs the most powerful crisis management firm in D.C. He's the President of the United States. When they destroy things, other people clean it up. When they make reckless choices, their privilege protects them from the worst consequences. The messiness is high-stakes — national security, political careers, human lives — but they're never the ones who pay the real price.

This matters because legacy — what you build, what you leave behind — requires more than just wealth or access. It requires the discipline to use what you have to create something meaningful. The danger of this kind of love isn't just what it does to the relationship; it's what it prevents you from building beyond it.

Think about what Olivia could have built if she wasn't spending every season tearing herself apart for a man who couldn't choose her without conditions. Think about what the narrator in Halle's song could create if she stopped orchestrating chaos to prove love's durability.

Breaking the Cycle

Here's the hardest truth: you can love someone deeply and still be the person who hurts them most. You can feel everything and still cause damage. You can apologize sincerely and still repeat the same patterns. Awareness without change is just performance.

The question isn't whether the love is real — it clearly is. The question is: what are you willing to sacrifice to keep it? And what does it say about your legacy when the only thing you're known for building is chaos?

Real love, the kind that contributes to both people's growth rather than mutual destruction, requires something this narrator hasn't quite mastered: the courage to be loved without testing it. The discipline to accept care without exploiting it. The maturity to recognize that proving love's durability by constantly breaking it is not the same as building something that lasts.

Olivia never learns this. Even in the finale, she and Fitz end up together, but only after seven seasons of wreckage. They call it a happy ending, but I call it exhausting. Because the show never asked them to change, only to wait until the circumstances changed around them.

That's not growth. That's just time passing while you stay the same.

All Because... Or Not Because?

The refrain "all because I love you" rings like both explanation and excuse. It's meant to justify everything—the drinking, the drama, the deliberate provocation. But here's the wordplay we need to unpack:

All because I love you = Love as the reason for chaos

Not because I love you = Love as the reason for growth

The difference isn't in the depth of feeling. It's in what you allow that feeling to excuse.

Every time Olivia makes a destructive choice and frames it as inevitable love, she's choosing the first "because." Every time Fitz starts a war or leaves his wife and calls it devotion, he's choosing it too. They use love to justify the worst versions of themselves instead of using it to inspire the best.

That's where legacy enters the picture. Not in grand gestures or inherited wealth, but in the daily choice to build rather than destroy. To heal rather than wound. To grow rather than regress.

Halle's narrator might love fiercely, might feel deeply, might apologize genuinely. But she's trapped in the wrong "because." She's making love the cause of her worst behavior when it should be the cause of her best self.

Real legacy-building means asking: What am I doing because I love you?

Am I:

• Testing your patience because I love you?

  Or protecting your peace because I love you?

  
  

• Proving you'll stay because I love you?

  Or proving I'm worth staying for because I love you?

  
  

• Making you clean up my messes because I love you?

  Or making something beautiful together because I love you?

  
  

The word "because" is a cause. Love should be the cause of your evolution, not your destruction. When you shift from "all because" to "what because," you shift from pattern to purpose.

And purpose, unlike patterns, is what builds legacy.

Watching Olivia and Fitz now, I don't see romance anymore. I see two people who loved each other enough to ruin each other. I see what happens when "because I love you" becomes an excuse instead of an inspiration. I see seven seasons of proof that chemistry without growth is just addiction with better lighting.

Halle's song captures this perfectly — not as celebration, but as confession. The beat is intoxicating, the vocals are beautiful, and the subject matter is a warning sign.

Until next time,

Tricky Sol