Time to get vulnerable…
“The hardest part about walking away from someone is the part where you realize that no matter how slowly you go, they will never run after you.”
There it is. That’s it. That’s my biggest heartbreak.
Can you relate at all?
In my early years of romantic relationships, I made a lot of mistakes (didn’t we all!).
Before I realized why I did the things I did, I would behave purely according to how I felt. And I wasn’t behaving in an assertive way, let me tell you! Emotions will make us do crazy things…
If I felt someone pulling away, I would grasp tighter.
If I was feeling abandoned, I would wait and wait and refuse to be the first to reach out and call or text… and then I would get angry when they did call and demand an answer for why they didn’t call me sooner! (Talk about teaching people how to treat us! That probably taught them NOT to call at all!).
After a conflict or argument, I would “test” people to see if I was worthy enough for them to follow me and make amends (even if I was in the wrong). Talk about passive aggressive…
I would push people away and then wonder in anguish why they weren’t coming after me. It was a sad sad state of being. And I felt sad a lot of the time. It was very painful.
I actually dated a guy once because he literally ran after my car as I started to drive away. I stopped the car because no one had ever done that for me before!! That intrigued me. I didn’t find him especially attractive or interesting, but we dated for quite a while because he actually cared. That was all that mattered.
And here’s what I learned from all this heartbreak:
You stop attracting certain people when you heal the part of you that once needed them.
Once I was able to heal the part of me that didn’t feel worthy or good enough, I wouldn’t date the guys that would abandon me anymore.
I wouldn’t commit my time to the people that would just let me walk out of their life without a fight.
I think the quote at the beginning should be written more like this: “It’s easy to walk away from the people that abandon you, disrespect you, leave you, and abuse you. You don’t want or need them in your life anyway. If they don’t put up a fight to keep you, let them go and strive to find the people who will.”
That being said, we still have a responsibility in this arrangement to keep our side of the street clean and communicate and behave in a respectful way with everyone.
We can’t just feel entitled to be brats and then when people walk away, say “fine, leave” passively aggressively… That isn’t cool.
It’s so important to learn how to calmly express how you feel, instead of storming out in a huff while you wait for them to come after you.
It’s important to check in with yourself to see how you’re feeling and keep taking your emotional temperature (and excuse yourself if needed) to avoid doing and saying things you’ll later regret.
It’s crucial to know that you’re worthy of good treatment, from yourself and others, simply because you’re alive. Everyone has that right.
Our responsibility is to learn how to communicate kindly with others and to know ourselves best and what we deserve and to heal from abandonment and shame.
Do you have a similar story? Care to be vulnerable and share?
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