This Is What It’s Like To Be The One Who Gives Too Much In A Relationship

When someone goes from being your entire life.. to not being a part of your life at all, in what seems like overnight… it’s an unbearable, crushing pain. You have to discover who you are without that person, and you have to find yourself again. But, at the same time, you’re fighting yourself. There’s a war going on inside of you because you don’t WANT to know who you are without them. You don’t want to discover that you are actually okay without them. You don’t want to let go. Because when you let go, you are admitting to yourself that that part of your life is over. And it’s not coming back. And you know that once you accept that, a whole new wave of crushing pain is going to consume you. So you fight it. You fight like hell. But, you’ll lose. You’ll always lose.

If you’re anything like me, then you’ll admit that you found yourself in a love, in a relationship that completely consumed you. You found yourself in a relationship that swallowed you whole, and spit out an entirely different person. You found yourself lost in the relationship. Every decision made, was made for him. You sacrificed huge pieces of yourself so that you could fit with him. And you told yourself that it was okay because, “I’m not doing it for him, I’m doing it for US.”

But, did you ever stop and look around and ask yourself, “what sacrifices is he making for me?”

More often than not, the answer is none. He may have seemed invested, but he was more focused on looking out for himself.

After three years of being in a relationship, my boyfriend- whom I had been living with for the past 6 months- told me he signed up for the Marines. There was no discussion. My feelings were not even taken into consideration. It was something he wanted and he did it.

I’m not saying there’s anything particularly wrong with that- he was making plans for his future. But, this is someone who had talked about marriage with me. Who had made plans with me. Someone I put off going to university for. Someone I rearranged my entire life for… and he didn’t think I deserved to be considered in the decision-making process of something that was going to change both of our lives.

We stayed together for another 3.5 years… long distance. And again, I put off going to school because I was expecting to move out with him wherever he was stationed and I didn’t know when that would be. I stopped going out with friends because it made him uncomfortable. I was constantly told that my feelings didn’t matter- that if something wasn’t important to him, it wasn’t important at all. And then after another round of breaking up with me and then begging me to take him back… he decided I wasn’t worth it anymore- and left me for the girl he told me I “had nothing to worry about.”

So, this is a message to the young girls giving up parts of themselves to be with a boy who has promised them forever. Stick to your goals. Focus on becoming who you want to be. Let that boy be a PART of your life, not the entire thing. Because when you chip away too much of yourself for someone, and they decide they don’t want you any longer… rediscovering yourself without them may damn well be the hardest thing you will ever have to do.