Have you ever gotten into a rut where you find yourself scrolling through and watching dozens of videos on social media of people giving advice? Dating advice, self love advice, healing advice, etc. Now anyone will confirm, I am as skeptical as they come. I don’t believe anything anyone tells me without having seen it for myself. Especially the shit you see online. However, almost every single video I watch is giving me the same message, just in different words. The videos speak on settling for less than you deserve. They talk about noticing unacceptable behaviors and walking away immediately. They talk about loving someone, but not allowing them into your life if they disrespect you, cross your boundaries or repeatedly refuse to change. And most of these videos are targeted towards speaking to a female about a male partner. I often see videos on gaslighting and narcissism, how allowing someone to give you less then you deserve is a betrayal to yourself. Men and women speak on red flags in a relationship, how to know when it’s time to walk away, how to choose yourself above anyone else.

Don’t get it twisted. This is not a post talking about how those people are wrong. In fact, almost every video I watch, I can relate to in the relationships I’ve allowed to be a part of my life. There is more truth in the advice spoken than I even want to admit. And honestly, I don’t disagree with the concept in the slightest. I think it’s amazing that you can go online and hear stories of experiences that you can relate to. I think it’s a beautiful thing to watch so many creators who are encouraging people to recognize their worth. To stand up for what they want and need and to feel pride rather than shame in leaving any kind of relationship that makes them feel unworthy of the love they deserve.

I obviously have been someone who has not followed that advice in many of my relationships. I have allowed people that I love to mistreat me, over and over and over again. I haven’t been able to let go of the empathy I have for people about why they act a certain way, and the hope I have for them to grow and to change. I always envision it ending with someone finally healing from their pain, taking accountability and feeling the kind of love I didn’t get. I envision me walking through all of the disrespect, the lies, the hurt with them, only to come out the other side with someone who knows at least one person didn’t give up.

That at least one person saw the good in them and held on.

It takes a lot for me to actually walk away from someone. I find myself constantly justifying someone’s behavior based on their childhood and the trauma they haven’t processed. My heart breaks for people who were forced to survive as a child and now have no clue how to have a healthy relationship with someone else because they were never shown an example of one. If I love someone, it’s very difficult for me to believe that there is no hope. It’s hard for me to leave someone to deal with that pain on their own, even if they are hurting me in the process.

Now typing this out it sounds like a classic case of someone who is in denial. Someone who doesn’t recognize that they deserve better, and that they aren’t a bad person for not allowing that type of mistreatment into their life. Maybe one day I will agree.

I’ve always been very emotional. I’ve always been hyper aware of my own feelings and the feelings of others. That was the survival technique I developed as a child. Having a father that was so unstable left me feeling like I was constantly walking on eggshells. I had to learn to read his emotions within seconds to know if I could approach him or if I needed to go into my room and lock the door to avoid a painful encounter. My self awareness is something I usually am thankful for. Living with bipolar disorder can make it very hard to recognize if my emotions are based in reality or not. If the way that I feel is genuine or coming out of a manic or depressive episode. I’m still not perfect at it, but I believe being able to feel all of my emotions so strongly has saved me a few times. I often comfort my daughter, who also lives with a disorder that causes huge highs and lows, that when we are in that low state and we are angry that we feel things as strongly as we do, that at least we get to experience the highs. Some people live their whole lives in a state of neutrality; never allowing themselves to feel too sad or too happy.

I sometimes find myself when I’m in the lows, wishing I had the ability to do this. In the last few years of my marriage I would spend hours looking up ways to emotionally detach, but I could never master it. I have never been able to choose how I feel. I live a life of being completely out of control of what my mind thinks about, and I have never been able to overcome it.

If I love someone, it takes an incredible amount of time and pain for me to feel that I can walk away. And the deeper the love goes, the harder it is for me.

When I commit to someone, when I let them into my world, into my family, I rarely feel in my heart okay with choosing my peace over my commitment. It took a years of being manipulated and emotionally abused for me to leave my ex husband. I have to be certain that I can not wait any longer or fight any harder for the behavior I believed they were capable of.

Typing this out, it really does look like I’m just someone who does not know their worth. I know people will assume that when I eventually find it, I wont tolerate the disrespect that I allow from the people I hold so close to me

But the truth is, I know my worth. I definitely didn’t for a long time. Living with a narcissist depletes all ability to see yourself as worthy and lovable.

The truth is, I didn’t start to realize how much I deserved until I adopted my two daughters. I started to realize that by allowing myself to be disrespected consistently was sending them a message that they too should settle. The love they showed me made me realize that I was a better person than I had grown to believe. That the little girl inside me who day dreamed of that kind of love deserved more than feeling alone lying in bed next to her partner every night.

I know I’m a good person. I know I’m deserving of relationships that aren’t one sided, that give me respect and care without me begging for it. That make feel secure.

But I also know that I haven’t always been easy to love, and still am not. My mental illness causes me to act out sometimes in ways that I can’t control. My trauma has made me so insecure and anxious about abandonment that I sometimes come off as controlling or too emotional. I need constant reassurance and I struggle to really trust that someone means what they say. 

I am far from perfect. But my entire life, all I have wanted was for someone to see underneath all of that. For someone to see the love I am capable of giving, the selflessness that I show to others. I’ve wanted relationships that love the parts of me that most would rebuke. Someone that says no matter what you do, I see you, and your worth fighting for. Someone who would never leave.

The times where I have gone against my heart, and followed the logic of the situation, it has been a harder period of confusion and what if’s and grief. It doesn’t even matter if my head ended up being right and I ended up heartbroken. I have always tried to pick that hope and love I have in a person over every single logical reason of why I should let them go.

I have never regretted when I chose my heart; even if doing so left me utterly broken.

I know I am worthy of someone who truly gives me unconditional love. Someone who doesn’t walk away even if I’m pushing them. Someone who protects my heart. 

I guess my view point is, if I deserve it, why doesn’t someone else? I don’t want all the times I have been hurt, lied to, taken advantage of, to change who I am. I don’t want want to be someone who chooses being logical over giving someone a chance of recieving a love I’ve always wanted.

I won’t allow my heart to harden. I know it probably isn’t the right choice, and maybe I truly am not as healed or healthy as I think I am becoming. But I can’t force myself to give up. Not until they show me there is no hope left, and even then a small part of me will always believe there’s a chance for change, for healing. Hell, I still can’t give up hope that the man I was with for ten years, who promised to honor me, that ended up stealing my home, my car, gave up his 3 adopted kids and has continuously degraded me and tried to harm me even this week, will change and come back into his kids lives and be the co parent they deserve.

It’s not really advice I would give to anyone else. To choose to be hurt over and over and hope that what I’m seeing is not just the signs of being manipulated is scary. 

But it’s all I know. And somewhere deep inside of me, I have hope that one day it will pay off. That one day, I will meet someone who maybe wouldn’t meet social media’s standards based on the way they act but in reality all they needed was for someone to see who they were underneath the mess, to know that how they are as an adult was shaped by unfair things that happen to them as a child and they were trying to survive, just like I was from my dad. For someone to choose to stay even if it hurts. Unconditional love. Idk maybe I just daydreamed too much as a kid, maybe it’s the Christian upbringing, but I really believe in it.

Maybe I’m in denial, but this is who I am. I want to trust myself, I want to believe in myself. Denying what my heart is so strongly guiding me to do, feels more of a betrayal to myself then following a set of standards that someone has has decided I should live by. I can’t expect someone to value my worth if they can’t even recognize their own. And I have changed. I don’t choose to allow unacceptable behavior because I think that’s all I deserve anymore. I choose to stay with someone because I believe THEY deserve grace too.

Until my heart changes, I won’t change. I have seen a lot of darkness in my life and I do consider myself a pessimist, but I just can’t shake this feeling that a selfless, genuine, love exists. I would go through a lifetime of disappointment if it gave me a shot at it. 

That kind of love has just has always seemed worth it.