This Is What You Need To Know When Someone Makes You Feel Like What You Have To Offer Isn’t Enough

You’ve already done the brave thing. You’ve already loved.

Even when you love the wrong person, even when you try to mold all the parts of them into something that might be good enough for forever — you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Trying and failing is a thing that comes before trying and succeeding.

Still, it hurts to be rejected. And it’s important that you understand it hurts everyone. That girl you think you could be — the one who’s perfect and always looks put-together gets dumped too. The most beautiful women in the world get rejected. The smartest, kindest, most likeable women in the world get rejected. Whatever shortcomings you think you have are not at fault for this.

If being deserving of love was about being perfect, the entire world would be single. It only takes a few minutes of delving into the romantic history of whatever women you admire to understand this.

There are less mysterious forces at play: people have conceptions about the kind of life they think they should have and they want someone who fits that picture. They have baggage, they have preferences, they have fears — and these all affect the outcome of your relationship without ever taking into account how good or bad or deserving you are. Sometimes you really do screw up, but you’d already know if that happened, wouldn’t you? Take solace in knowing the break is more about him than about you.

This is a hard time where you have to hold your head high. Allow yourself to hope for something better than the imperfect thing you need to let go of. Know that the difficult feelings won’t last, even when they seem like they will. Everything is downhill from this moment when you understand that what happened is natural and normal and temporary.

No one tells a story that starts with the happy ending. This is what you need to do right now to get to where you want to be. Keep going.