There's a version of love that exhausts you
You give more. You soften more. You become more useful, more agreeable, more available. You track his moods and adjust accordingly. You shrink the parts of yourself that feel like too much and amplify the parts you think he needs. And you call it love because it looks like love from the outside.
But you're trying to become someone who deserves to be here.
I see this with women almost every week. Remarkable women. Women who are generous and self-aware and trying so hard. And underneath all of it, a quiet belief that they haven't quite earned their place yet. That if they can just get the formula right, the relationship will finally feel safe.
It won't. Not through that door.
Because what you're looking for isn't something he can give you. What you're looking for is the experience of being enough. And that's not a feeling someone else creates in you.
You already are what you're trying to become.
I know that sounds simple. It is simple. Simple doesn't mean easy. There's a whole architecture of old decisions built on the assumption that you weren't, and that architecture doesn't come down in a moment of insight. It comes down slowly, choice by choice, as you practice responding to yourself the way you'd respond to someone you actually love.
That's growth.
Remembering what was already true.
You are so freaking loveable.
