I can’t think of a worse feeling than watching the person you love stop loving you. It’s like someone is digging into your chest and tearing you apart. You’re helpless and scared. You feel like nothing is within your control, that you have done your best but it was still not good enough. You would have done anything for them, loved them harder than anybody ever had and ever will, but still, they did not choose you. You lost the one person you thought you could depend on, the one who knows you more than anybody else, the one who meant the world and more. All you wanted was for them to stay, to love you as much as you loved them. But no matter what you did, you still came up short.
Or did you?
Listen. You need to leave your destructive relationships. You need to cut the dead weight. Even if they did care, the amount they cared didn’t come close to the amount you did, and it wasn’t going to anytime soon. Maybe they did love you with their heart, but they couldn’t love you with their actions. They took advantage of your love, of your support, of your sacrifices. They stuck around for the good and abandoned you during the bad. They were not dependable. Do you really want that in a partner? In someone you would spend your forever with, eat all your meals with, share a bed with, go home to? What happens if you can’t pay your bills? Or if an emergency happens? Or if you’re grieving and at your lowest and completely inconsolable? Would they be the one to stay beside you or leave you to deal with it on your own?
You may not realize it yet, but you’re dodging a massive bullet.
It is not romantic to yearn for someone who does not love you the way you deserve. It is not romantic to devote yourself to someone who doesn’t treat you with respect, or patience. It is not romantic to hurt the way you do. They are selfish and unkind and you do not need their coldness in your life. The fights you have now will be the fights you have down the road. And do you really need all this pain and anxiety on repeat?
You grow with every relationship and learn from every mistake. You learn what you need in a partner, and the red flags to immediately avoid. You learn to walk away.
Please walk away. It hurts, but if you keep going back, it will not end. Staying with them or longing for them will only lead you down a slippery slope. What you are doing is willingly drinking poison. And while poison may be a cure for thirst if that’s all you’ve ever drank, it doesn’t make it water.
And if you’re looking for that petty revenge? Well, you shouldn’t. Because that’s you focusing on the pain. They are a scab, and you need to stop picking the scab before it turns into a scar. You need to let it heal. That petty revenge that you want so bad? You’ve already got it by leaving them. They will regret losing you because they will never meet another person who will put up with their lackluster way of conducting themselves in a relationship as much as you have, or are as good to them as you are. All that effort you had put in to make the relationship work is going to sting when you are gone. They will always miss you, but it will be too late. You will have moved on.
Now, be the bigger person, the high-value individual that you are. Live your best life, and everything will fall into place.
Leave and let live.
By Angela Lim for ThoughtCatalog