When Your Love Is Not Enough

If someone wants you, they will make it known. You can be the right combination of all the checked boxes and still won’t be enough for someone who isn’t willing to put in the work. You will adjust yourself to the point of destruction. The sacrifices you’ll make will haunt your dreams and your waking moments. The excuses and lies you told yourself would be greater than the ones you told your loved ones. They will see the pain, destruction, and devastation long before you are ready to admit the inevitable. Nothing you do will be enough.

Relationships like this usually begin with a clear imbalance. One person is completely smitten and the other puts in just enough. Just enough time, displays of affection, and effort to skate by. Have you found yourself wondering when their enthusiasm will kick in? It probably isn’t going to kick in because it doesn’t need to. You are doing the work for both of you. The desire that you have to please this person absolves them of reciprocity. They don’t need to rise to the occasion because you’ll accommodate and reward them for their mere existence. The glimmer of effort once in a while is enough to keep your hopes up but, truly, you are allowing withdrawals to be taken out of your emotional bank with no penalties. You’re being depleted daily and absolutely no deposits are being put in place. Your emotional bank is bankrupt.

Despite your efforts to provide the best quality of life for this person, there will be no appreciation. Furthermore, the arguments will be about their dissatisfaction and your shortcomings. You’d be the scapegoat and the source of why the relationship isn’t working. There will be manipulation tactics, infidelity and outright abusive behavior stemming from them, but you’ll be the one who has to carry the burden of guilt. Each passing day will be one more blow to your already aching heart and soul. Your days will be spent trying to bandage the wounds of this other person while your sense of self is bleeding out all over the floor. Your time will be spent figuring out how to please someone who has no interest in being pleased by you. Your light is being crushed by someone who gains from your darkness.

There will come a moment where you’ll have to choose; yourself or them. They’ve already chosen themselves. The pain that you’re feeling will pass IF you stare it down and admit that it’s real. Only you can come to own the truth about your personal destruction. You know in your heart that this is NOT the love you deserve. You have to decide when you’ve had enough because a taker will take for as long as you allow that to happen.

Giving away energy you don’t have will hollow you out and destroy everything that makes you whole. Today is a great day to take one small step towards reclaiming your personal dignity. Start by giving yourself permission to do something about that pain you’re feeling. Acknowledge it. Tell yourself the truth about your situation. Face it head on and identify where you’ve traded your self-love for scraps. Today is the day you begin your road to healing and wellness. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. What you’ve been giving away is not love. You’ve been displaying your lack of self-love and perpetuating your story about being unworthy. This has never been about love, this is a clear sign of your trauma spilling over and a lesson needing to be learned. Your love will never be enough for them because you don’t believe you’re enough as you are. Marinate on that.