Here’s Why You Fall In Love With People Who Make You Feel Small

Why do you think you attract someone who isn’t ready for you?

Trace back your past relationships and you will find a pattern in the type of person you choose and the way they make you feel about yourself.

You’re drawn to people who give you just enough but never more than that. You chase the kind of love that seems hard to get and hard to keep. You romanticize drama in relationships that too often make you question your worth and wonder where you stand.

There is a reason why you’re the one to get attached, the one who cares a little more, gives a little more, feels a little more.

You are shrinking yourself into relationships that are too small for you. You’re not allowing yourself to claim the space you deserve.

Keeping ourselves small is a way of protecting us from being our most authentic selves.

Do you give yourself permission to be exactly who you are and ask for what you want? Do you stand up for yourself and express your needs unapologetically?

Most people don’t because they never learned.

We’re scared to embrace everything we are and can be because we think it’s too much for anyone to handle, and our romantic relationships reflect that.

We refrain from people who would meet our innermost needs and desires and keep choosing the ones who won’t.

This doesn’t imply that the people you fall for are necessarily toxic. Sometimes they are genuinely trying to be what you need, doing their best to love you with all they have, but they can’t. They can’t, because they aren’t ready, and you aren’t either.

You can’t blame them for not being what you don’t know you’re worthy of.

‘Settling for less’ ultimately isn’t about them — it’s about you.

You are settling for less because you’re simply not asking for more.

You are settling for less when you feel the need to prove your worthiness. You are settling for less when you are compromising on your emotional and physical needs as you don’t want to come on too strong. You are settling for less when you have to earn their attention and approval. You are settling for less when you can’t be your most authentic self around them.

You are settling for less when you have to make them love you.

Precisely, you are settling for less when you know deep down being with them isn’t healthy, not because they’re trying to hurt you, but because you’re completely missing the point.

The people you fall in love with are a reflection of the parts of yourself you haven’t learned how to love yet.

The truth is, you’re not looking for love — you’re looking for someone to give you permission to love yourself.

Read that again.

You’re not looking for love. You’re asking for permission to love yourself. You’re looking for someone to tell you you’re good enough in this world and that things are going to be okay.

You’re looking for someone to fix what you’ve deemed unworthy a long time ago. The parts of you that have been bruised and scratched in the past. You want for someone to hold your broken pieces and make you feel whole.

What you need to understand is that no one can do that for you.

As long as you don’t excavate those parts, examine them gently in the light of day, and mend them in all their fragility, you will engage in relationships that feed your fear of inadequacy and incompleteness.

In the end, you know it’s never the ones who aren’t ready to love you that make you feel small. It’s you.

You are going to have to ask yourself why you want to feel that way.

You are going to have to learn how to hold all of your pieces on your own.

You are going to have to give yourself everything you need and deserve.

You are going to have to teach yourself that you are good enough.

You are going to have to give yourself permission to love yourself exactly the way you want to be loved, and when you do, you will attract someone who is ready to do just that, because it is simply inevitable.