On Loving Someone Who Is Bad For You

It’s all consuming and perfect when you meet someone and think you finally got something right. We all get swept up in this fantasy of forever, meeting the right person and spending our life with them. We ignore the things we shouldn’t because we don’t want to lose it, even when it’s slowly killing us from the inside out.

All the nights we spend waiting for them to give us the same energy we put out. Suddenly a text message is the most crucial part of our day. We respond in minutes while they take hours. We drop everything to help them while they would never lift a finger for us. It becomes our own personal hell of going back and forth. We start to make excuses like “Oh, they’re just busy,” and “Oh, they’ve been through a lot so they don’t know HOW to love us,” and “It doesn’t matter if they treat me badly because at least we have them.”

The affection only comes when drunk thoughts are on their tongue. They only touch you when you’re vulnerable. They only tell you they love you when they want something from you. This becomes your norm. Anybody giving you anything without expectations is suddenly unheard of. 

They ask you to come over at 2 a.m. and you consider this love. They ask you to give you money when you barely have any of your own but you tell yourself you’ll figure it out. They tell you you ruined everything while giving them every ounce of love you have. You are a shell of who you used to be before you ever got involved with them, but you are too far in to let yourself leave.

You consider yourself the problem, because how else could all this fighting be happening? Maybe you just need to get used to the way they act. Maybe you could fix it all if you got smaller and smaller. Maybe if you learned how to not talk, how to not express yourself, things would go back to how they were in the beginning. Maybe you could finally fit into the crack they want you to be in. Maybe if you became the most willing, the most flexible, the most accommodating, you wouldn’t be having these problems. 

So, you try to do just that. You become quiet. You become accommodating. You pounce at any opportunity to be their superhero. Suddenly, your worth is based solely on how they feel about you and if you’re doing enough for them.

But nothing ever changes about them. You’re still put at the bottom. They still get drunk every night and they still tell you they love you with empty promises about how the future will be perfect. Everybody else is still put above you, and all you have to show for it is how empty you’ve become.

The problem was never you. You were with someone who wanted everything from you while giving you nothing. You were with someone who wanted you to remain silent, while there are so many who starve for your words and your honesty. You never needed to change. You needed to leave them alone with their manipulative love. Someone who loves you would ask nothing from you but for you to be okay.