Ever watched someone you love endure an abusive relationship and wonder why they still choose it everyday? It’s always easier to say you’d do things differently if it were you right? Well, maybe..but it’s not so black and white.

If you’ve had a somewhat normal upbringing and you had a great example of what a relationship should look like from your parents, then you can’t even begin to understand how someone can’t see the red flags until it’s too late. What’s normal to you, isn’t normal to someone else. Can someone see how unhealthy their relationship is? Of course. But the desire to stay isn’t rooted in rationality. It’s all a feeling. And feelings can overpower your common sense.

Highs and lows are addicting. Why? Let’s go with a simple example. If you’re on a diet, but allow yourself pizza once a month, isn’t that the tastiest pizza ever? Don’t you count down the days til your next cheat day? But if you had pizza several times a month, all of a sudden pizza isn’t special anymore. It’s still good. But you don’t savor it in the same way. That’s how I see it. Love feels great. It really does, but if everything’s too perfect all the time, don’t you start taking it for granted?

How exciting does it feel when someone else other than who you’re with talks to you and makes you feel special? For someone who experiences the world as intensely as I do, highs feel so much better than regular, everyday, even keel emotions. If this doesn’t make sense to you, you probably grew up with consistency and stability. In my family, extreme displays of emotion, good or bad, translated into how much someone loved you. So, I find comfort in chaos. I 100% understand that this is stupid. What I need, is a stable home. What I need are good, dependable people around me. But what I want at a subconscious level? That’s not up to me. That was determined for me a long time ago. The good news is that now that I’m an adult, I can see that it isn’t healthy and I can change it. It doesn’t mean it’s easy though, and it doesn’t mean it’ll feel good. But it’s a choice. And I’m consciously making that choice everyday.

Whether we like to admit it or not. We choose this. Maybe I didn’t know then, because I was stuck on autopilot. But now that I’ve woken up from that haze, it’s me. I’m choosing people like this because it feels familiar. I don’t deserve good relationships because I ruin them. I ruin everything. So the goal is to undo all the damage from my past and be better so that I deserve better. I need to believe I deserve better, and when I do, most of the people in my life will no longer be a part of it. My therapist asked me why I’m unable to let go of people when I know they don’t meet my needs. I thought about it for a bit and said that I was afraid I’d never meet anyone again. I told her I’d rather have shitty people around me than to have no one. She looked at me and said, “do you know how rare you are? People want to be in your space because of how you make them feel. It’s a gift. Own it..beacause of that, you’ll never be alone.” It sounds nice, but the truth is, if we don’t believe we are special, we will always allow abuse, in any form…in every relationship. 

My wish is to believe that I am worthy of good people. I’m worthy of reciprocity but more importantly, I allow good things to happen instead of dismissing them because of my own irrational fears.