We have all felt it… something ends and we feel like we are left to pick up the pieces. We feel wounded/hurt/ broken hearted. These are emotions that often cause us to feel victimized by a person or experience. We fall in love with someone and then it all falls apart. We often have a valid reason for feeling wronged by another party but the truth of the matter is that ultimately we are not guiltless.
When you are in a relationship (and when I say relationship I mean any interaction with another person because you do have a relationship with everyone in your life) you are there because you decided that you wanted to be there. You made a conscious decision to associate with every person in your life for better or worse. As some of these relationships become more intimate you find yourself making some serious decisions. You are investing more in your interactions with a given person. To do this several things need to be present, trust, respect and security.
When one or more of these important elements of a real relationship aren’t present and you decide to proceed anyway you are putting your happiness and your emotional well-being at risk. No one can make the choice to proceed for you. You and you alone decided that one of these important key elements to a strong relationship wasn’t necessary. You decided that your relationship could work without it.
So when you come to the realization that it in fact could not… who is really to blame for the days, weeks, months of emotional pain you’ll have to work through to move forward? If your partner has lied and you’ve let it go you decided that trust was something your relationship could survive without. If your partner disregarded your feeling during an argument; told you were over-reacting and you shook it off; you decided respect was something that wasn’t key to your relationship.
There are always these seemingly minor occurrences that happened in your relationship that you ignored or disregarded. These little things are indicators of issues that can become major problems further down the line. When this willingness to overlook does become a much bigger issue and you start to feel hurt by the lack of trust/respect/security, you really need to consider who is truly at fault.
By overlooking your partners unwillingness to give you what is at the core of every relationship you are teaching him/her how to treat you. You are telling him/her that his/her behavior is acceptable because you didn’t do what you should have when you realized that something was wrong. You didn’t speak up. You didn’t leave. You are showing your partner that you don’t truly believe you are worthy. You are letting him/her know that you are willing to deal with (if only temporarily because these relationships will end) less than what is necessary to sustain a relationship. Actions speak louder than words. We have all had someone tell us they love us but then do or say something that was juxtaposed to that sentiment.
If you stay in a relationship that isn’t giving you what you need, what you have to have to be in a relationship then you are truly responsible for your pain. You decided that some mistreatment was acceptable and that you truly don’t believe that you deserve even the basic requirements of a healthy relationship.
I don’t mean to imply that any of this excuses someone treating you poorly. Anyone you treat well should have the decency to reciprocate. But if you decide that isn’t necessarily needed then you are really the reason you are hurt. You can’t expect someone to treat you better than you treat yourself.
