But he said he loved you...

We often fall in love and when we do, we give that person our all. We want to see that person succeed so badly, we tend to look past the flaws or rather the warning signs and bad gut feelings because we believe this too will pass. We fall in love with the dream rather than the reality which is right in front of us.

The jokes seem to cut a little deeper than we wish, but we laugh them off in the presence of others and cry about them when we’re alone. The questions of our whereabouts or what we’re doing started off as a genuine care or concern, but turn into an interrogation. We’re accused of lying and for making the other person feel bad, yet we’ve done nothing wrong to deserve this. Still we burden all the blame and the hurt. We try to justify these small changes, the gradual changes we can feel but don’t want to believe by saying, “Oh, I love him. He’s only acting that way because...”

Because I didn’t let him know my work plans changed. Because I was a bad communicator. Because he’s having a bad day. Because he was cheated on before so I need to make sure he doesn’t feel that way again. Because I wasn’t strong enough to help him. Because I’m strong enough to handle this. Because he loves me and sometimes he tries.

The because and justification becomes stronger and stronger the worse you feel. Your excuses are over compensating for your emotions because you’re a rational human being and can make sense of anything, but there is never making sense of an unhealthy relationship.

Leaving starts to become so scary because you’ve become familiar with the pattern. You’ve become familiar with the pain, and you’re familiar with the hurt. Why would you trade that in when there could be worse out there? Why would you search for something new, when really, if it came down to it, you know you’ll always be financially sound. After all, he always made an effort to make sure you had everything you needed. Really an effort to make sure you know you needed him. But something is still missing. You’re not even completely comfortable any more. Just familiar. So the unknown seems incredibly uncomfortable. But so is the fighting.

We’re told to fight for the ones you love, so you think this is what they meant. But fighting for the ones you love turns into fighting with the ones you love. Then you don’t even really know what you’re fighting about and the fights never seem to end or resolve. But you know you shouldn’t go to bed angry, so you forgive him. The thing is, he’s not the only one you’re sleeping with. No, you’re not cheating, despite him always making you feel like you are… no, you sleep with yourself too. You can’t quite find a way to forgive yourself for not speaking up more or standing up for yourself more, but he said he loved you and that it wouldn’t happen again.

Your fighting never stops, and when you finally stand up for yourself, it’s your fault for letting the relationship get to that point. You didn’t do your part. You’re not even fighting for him anymore, you’re fighting against what you know and what you want. You’re fighting for his attention, but only fully getting it when he’s trying to keep you. When he’s making a grand gesture to make up for all the emotional damage he’s done to you. Obviously that means he loves you. And you want to believe it’ll get better. So you put benchmarks on moments.

We have this planned, so I’ll see if we have a good weekend or not. I’m excited for this event and he got tickets so I’ll stick it out and by then we should have it figured out. Hey, if I don’t drink that much he won’t worry and we can have fun. If I turn my notifications off he won’t constantly ask who I’m talking to and get jealous. If I post this picture of us on social media, no one will question if I’m happy for not. If. If. If.

If I can recognize this cycle, I’m strong enough to get out. If I can recognize these signs, I’m strong enough to overcome it. If I can recognize his demons, I can be the one to fight them. But you can only fight the demons within yourself. It’s not the monsters under the bed, those don’t exist, it’s the ones in your bed you need to fight. The ones inside of yourself and the ones you invited in. You can’t help someone who doesn’t love themselves, but you can remember to love yourself.