If you know that a relationship fail was your fault, Wisdom Amouzou has solidarity to offer, and some suggestions for next time.
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My last relationship ended in December when she snooped through my phone and found misinterpretations and flirtations. Our future ended in January when I decided I was moving to South Africa to pursue a teaching job. And we broke up in August, two weeks before I boarded that plane bound for Johannesburg.
The death of the trust in our relationship set our bond aflame. We spent the next 8 months slow dancing in that burning room. Learning I no longer loved her took an honest appraisal of my behavior, her insecurities, and the downward spiral we locked ourselves into. It’s been almost a year now and I’m ready to start a new relationship with a woman I deeply admire, trust, and care for. We’ve been exchanging ghost stories from relationships past. And as she describes the ways in which she was wronged, I can’t help but think, “I am your ex. I am that piece of s**t. Well, at least, I used to be.”
When they made you feel like you were just too emotional and hysterical.
I would do the same. I would patronizingly make calls for logic, reason, solid arguments and call her crazy whenever she was furious for my failing to meet her needs. I think I was hoping invalidating her emotions would drive her further away so she could do what I was too afraid to do.
What we called “logic” and “rational” was my attempt at controlling my emotions and the fear I felt from both of our mostly violent means of communication. I wish I understood, then, the difference between our dysfunction, our attachment and our love. I wish I knew to trust my heart’s intuition and to communicate clearly and truthfully my emotions rather than casting hers as “crazy.”
When you compromised to make it work and they grew even more indifferent towards your relationship.
That was me. The reality of being a twenty-something is getting caught in this sort of ego-centric predicament. I learned how little I knew of myself and who I was becoming. So I focused on loving myself, owning my truths, healing my pain, and become a stronger individual. As a result, I was also at a stage in life where I was least likely to understand the joy of sacrifice and the necessity of compromise to sustain a healthy, long-lasting relationship.
To defend my independence and identity, when she asked for a degree of compromise, rejected that. I wish I knew, then, how to communicate my own desires and wants. I didn’t know that my inability to tell her I could no longer picture our future together was what kept her locked into a false hope.
I hadn’t experience the sort of deep loneliness that came when I was truly alone and traveling. The sort of deep loneliness which made my soul shudder and my heart cry for intimacy. The sort of deep loneliness which made me understand that above all, what affects the quality and longevity of my mental, physical, and spiritual health is being loved and cared for.
When they betrayed you.
I did that. I no longer loved her more than my urges or my fantasies. I no longer saw her as a source of intimacy, so our physical touch lost its stimulation. I made it about not conforming to monogamy and the institution of marriage. It was all that, but it was also because my love for her was dead. I was too confused to understand it and hadn’t experienced the loss of love before. I was also too much of a coward to end it.
Was I perfect? I’ve shown you the answer to that.
Was she perfect? Not even close.
Regardless of what her friends may say, we both failed our relationship. And truly, we both were twenty-something pieces of s**t learning to love the hard way. No one had ill intentions.
If we wish to heal, we have to forgive ourselves and forgive the people we dated before. Failing to do so means repeating the same sick pattern.
Originally published by Wisdom Amouzou here at Thought Catalog and republished to Medium.
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