To The Man Who Made Me Realize I Need To Learn To Love Myself

In reality, I was probably just a summer fling that you expected to show off to your friends and enjoy a week of fun with. I know that was the plan with me.

Thank you for making me feel special, even though I didn’t follow your plan.

Whether I was or was not that special to you, I will never know. I really believed I was, when I was with you. My confidence became codependent on your approval. It isn’t healthy and now I see that. Feelings are fleeting and so is confidence that is dependent on someone else’s approval. It ebbed and flowed with your satisfaction and dissatisfaction with me.

I wish I could talk to you and tell you everything was great with life and mean it. But I don’t have a healthy relationship with you. Not having your approval ruins my day. It ruins my day that someone that saw so much in me sees so little in me now.
One day a few months ago, I told you that you reminded me of my dad. You hated that.

Let me explain- you are a man that once loved me, saw so much potential in me, and then all of the sudden, in the blink of an eye, the love stopped.

You distanced yourself and gave up on me. I wanted you so badly to love me, give me attention and support me. I would have done anything for you to wake up and realize that I was the apple of your eye and that we should rekindle whatever relationship we had. It doesn’t sound so different from the relationship of which I had with my dad.

In my mind, you were a man of valor, intelligence, love, compassion, family, and healthy relationships, how could you possibly fall for me? Maybe I’m not as damaged as I had imagined myself to be. Maybe you could save me from myself.
This thinking is flawed.

I could’ve told you this thinking was flawed the entire time I was infatuated with you, but I didn’t really know it to be true. Infatuation is what I really felt with you. Infatuated with how special you made me feel and mostly the idea of you.

Infatuation is a funny thing- it isn’t sustainable yet it feels so much like love at the time.

Truth is, I needed you to help me through my first heartbreak—the pain of my father leaving my family. And now I know that I never needed your love, your acceptance, your fancy apartment, your powerful friends, your words to inspire me, nor your robust bank account.

I do not love you, nor have I really loved myself.