How many times have people been left for someone else? A lot. There are even cases, like the Scott Peterson case, where a man has killed his wife because he wanted to be with someone else. (There are more, so much more and recent, but this is the one top of mind). Women too, women leave because of other people too — but what I don’t see, is the people who aren’t in monogamous relationships leaving their partners to be with someone else.
This is how the 80/20 rule works.
You can’t get everything you need from one person. No one can. That’s why people say you have to truly love yourself and know who you are before you love someone else. Because those people don’t end up hurting their partners in the long run. In a relationship, you will probably only get about 80% of your needs met, the other 20% comes from within. But some people think, that 20% is going to come from someone else. Which is where I am in life right now.
I was left for the 20%.
My partner decided that my 80% wasn’t enough for him and left me for the 20% he says he wishes I was.
She wasn’t having it. She didn’t want him and now he is heartbroken all over again. He fell in lust with this 20% and decided that she was what he wanted. He didn’t know she was only 20% he thought she was the whole 100 and he was just told that “No, we’re just friends” and crushed by it. But now he is in some serious pain and in need of much more healing than before. Could I have let his 20% come to him in the form of non-monogamy? Maybe. I asked him once if that is what he wanted. At the end of the day, his infatuation with women stemmed from mommy-issues, but could I have fostered that by letting him explore and having the open-relationship and severe communication that comes with it?
. . .
I don’t think I could have because I believe in monogamy to the fullest extent. I admire those who don’t need it or seek that amount of validation, but I want mine to be mine, and I can’t allow myself to stray from that belief. It may be a possessive way of thinking, but there is something about a man being with me and only me making me feel special.
I can make myself feel special on my own as well, but hear me out.
. . .
Back to the 80% thing. I did all I could for one person. I did it all. I cooked, I cleaned, I did all the sex stuff he wanted — but I wasn’t enough. At the end of a decade, he still wanted more. He wanted less emotional reliance (more on this later) and more “confidence” (way more on this later because the confidence he wanted me to have was more of an Instagram model style confidence and not the confidence that I have). That was the basis of his argument. Only weeks later to find out that he was just missing the 20% of another woman’s body.
What happens when they don’t get fulfilled by the 20%?
I can’t answer that question yet. I only know that he didn’t get the results he thought he would and now, nothing. But the evidence of other relationships show that they always come back realizing they really messed up. and whose to say that I wont find my 100% in myself or in someone else.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen. But as always, I’ll keep you posted.
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love.
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