One of my biggest regrets is not seeing the signs sooner and choosing myself.
Choosing myself would have been leaving the negative situations. Choosing myself would have been standing up against the treatment I faced during certain moments. Choosing myself would have been having the understanding that it wasn’t all on me when it didn’t work.
In the end, I learned a lot of lessons — and most of them I ended up learning the hard way. Though there is no shame in learning a lesson in that way, in the end I did get hurt. It takes a while to heal the hurt I felt, and even now I know there will be seasons of healing and seasons of hurting. The important thing is to remember that it’s a process, and there will be hills and valleys.
To move forward, I had to look backwards. Reflecting on my previous relationships was hard, mainly because at first all I could think about was the good. But as I mentioned previously in Coping Mechanisms, thinking about the bad is important too. If you idealize any relationship too much, it just leads to a slower healing process.
As I reflected, I quickly found patterns of behavior that were red flags. Behaviors that were borderline narcissistic and gaslighting. It set off alarm bells in my head, and made me want to dive deeper. So I did.
First thing I want to do is define, in part, some of these red flags: narcissism and gaslighting.
Narcissism is essentially the excessive interest in or admiration of oneself. From a psychological standpoint, it manifests in a lack of empathy, a sense of entitlement, and selfishness. Lots of people can exhibit what is to be believed as narcissistic behavior, but what makes it that way is the extreme nature of it. A narcissist will NEVER be able to see things your way, will never be able to empathize with you or feel bad when they feel as though they are in the right. Everything will be on you, and there will be no care for how their words or actions affect you.
Now gaslighting is manipulating someone using psychological methods where the person begins to question their own sanity or reasoning. An example of this is one partner bringing up how the other made them feel because of how they acted or spoke, and that partner saying “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I am not doing that”, then turning it against the other. They’ll sit there and make you think that you are in the wrong, that you are making things up and they aren’t doing what they say.
Looking back at my own failed relationships, I noticed a few of these patterns of behavior.
There were times when I would express how the tone in which an ex said something or an action that made me feel a negative way. I remember sometimes where he would flip it on me, saying I was just being defensive or insisting that I was just falling back on trauma and blaming him when it wasn’t necessarily his fault if I didn’t “understand how he meant it”. This, for me, made me feel really guilty, and made me focus on the fact that maybe I was in the wrong. When the negative tone was used again, after a while I stopped saying something about it, completely drawn into the false narrative that I was the one who had the issue and he was not at fault in the slightest.
Another thing I noticed in a couple of instances was how self-involved some of my exes were. Anything I would say, any accomplishment I had or something I noticed, somehow managed to turn the spotlight back onto him and his own experiences. A lot of the time there would be a comparison, and my own instances would take a backseat. In the end of one of the relationships, I actually ended up wondering if he even cared about my dreams and aspirations at all, or if he really just remained singularly focused on his own. Moments arose in my minds eye of me sitting back and listening to an ex ramble on about his own experiences, his own life choices, how his future was going to look — which didn’t seem to involve me almost at all.
The biggest disservice I did to myself was not realizing my worth as a partner.
Towards the end of one of my relationships, there was very little recognition or appreciation for what I did, and at times there seemed to even be straight up disinterest in spending time with me and instead just wanted to exist (which I am all for, but engagement is still necessary at some point). At the end of the relationship, I truly realized that he didn’t seem to know me as a person or as a partner. That realization broke my heart.
All of these things broke me in some way. Maybe not entirely, but it created a lot more problems for me emotionally that I then had to continue to remedy as I moved forward. But in recent months, there are a few things that I realized from all the experiences.
Firstly: my feelings do matter!
There were a lot of instances where an ex made me feel like what I felt and how I felt didn’t warrant a second thought, let alone an explanation. What I cannot do is allow anyone to make what I feel and think invalid just because they may not agree or don’t see it the same way I do. We don’t have to agree about the feelings, but we cannot say that they feelings are not there. I know what I feel, and to try and invalidate that or act as though it doesn’t matter isn’t fair to me. I deserve to be heard and respected in my thoughts and feelings, whether my partner agrees or not, and then allowed to have a conversation about it in order to figure out a good solution going forward.
Secondly: it’s not me, it’s them.
Now, this may be an unpopular opinion. It may come off as selfish or rude or insensitive. But I firmly believe that it is NOT my fault that the thoughts and feelings are disregarded. I am, in fact, giving my partner every opportunity to validate them, to listen and come up with a solution with me. However, they are the ones making the choice not to accept those. I can be as communicative or uncommunicative as I want, but not every issue I have will be accepted with an open mind.
Thirdly: it’s not just my job to make the relationship work — it’s a team effort.
I had to quickly come to the realization that a relationship is a partnership and it’s not all on me to make it work. Though a relationship may not always be 50/50, there needs to be some kind of give and take. For me to do everything in the relationship is unfair and not conducive to the growth of the relationship. My partner has to be just as willing to work with me and compromise as I am if they wish to make it work — which they may not.
Finally: it is NOT my fault!
In the end, I have to understand that I am not to blame for the lack of desire to make things work. I do not need to constantly blame myself for it not working if I was in fact doing all I could with no support or help on the other side of things. In the end, I have to accept that I did everything I could, and there would be little I could do to change their mind if they wanted to act the way they did or leave me anyway.
The hardest part of this whole journey was accepting the truth of it.
I wasn’t to blame. I did everything I could. I can stand up for myself now and look back on the person I was with a sad smile and faith that I can get better. There is so much of a process when it comes to healing from a mindset of all or nothing. I don’t need to put in so much effort; they should be putting in the effort too. I should have someone who wants me just as much as I want them, who will show up for me, support me, be on my side, and give me an opportunity to grow not just with them but within myself.
Going forward, I know what I will be looking for — and it’s absolutely not what is behind me.