Don’t Stay With Him Just Because You’re Afraid Of Being Alone

This was never meant to be your love story.

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You know what I think we’re most afraid of?

Ourselves.

What’s truly waiting to be uncovered in our heart.

The noisy train of thoughts circling our mind.

And the pile of mess gathered in the corner, which we’ve learned to ignore for too long.

So we go out there into the world and seek someone to cling onto.

Anyone – we’re not fussy. So long as they help numb our minds for a while. As long as they help us forget. As long as we don’t have to be alone.

I see so many women settling for people who feel like a luke-warm cup of milky tea. We know we won’t particularly enjoy the taste as it glides down our tongue and hits the back of our throat. But we keep on drinking. We’re too lazy to make another cup, so we make do with whatever is in our hands for now. And with every sip, it grows a little bit colder.

Just like our hearts.

The broken, battered relationships we find ourselves in are merely another one of the distractions we use to forget how miserable we truly are.

We’d rather live in a make-believe reality, where everything-is-awesome, instead of going through the discomfort of looking inwards.

And the more excuses we make, we get a little more okay with settling for a life where we can’t feel anything anymore. That becomes our normal.

And the deeper we dive down the rabbit hole, the less we expect, the more we settle for less than we deserve, and the number we become.

Lying in his arms as you go to sleep at night might convince you that you’re not alone. But you might feel lonelier than ever before. Because being with someone out of necessity, out of desperation, out of fear, is not what love is supposed to look like.

You’re only with him because you’re petrified of being alone. You wonder, is this as good as it’s gonna get for me? And that whisper in the back of your mind convinces you, yes.

But believe me when I tell you—it’s not.

This was never meant to be your love story.

This was never meant to be anyone’s story.

But we got scared. We craved comfort. And the world got in our heads, telling us two is always better than a lonely one. Telling us that we need to find our person so that we can finally feel whole again.

And it’s far easier placing our happiness in the hands of a handsome stranger. Far easier than stepping up, and claiming and conquering that responsibility ourselves.

But in doing so, we hand over our power to them. We allow them to dictate our happiness.

We allow them to control how loved we feel. We ask them to cleanse us of our loneliness, and our worthlessness.

And every time, they let us down.

It’s not too late though. It’s never too late to take back your power.

To start a new love story, with yourself as the starring role. Thought Catalog Logo Mark


About the author

Shani Jayawardena

I hold a mirror to your soul, so you can see how beautiful you are