Stay Where You’re Wanted, Leave Where You’re Not
How to stop wanting people who don’t want you back
Being stubborn has its advantages. It’s helped me build the career that I always wanted. It’s been essential to crafting a life as a single mother. It’s seen me through times I wasn’t sure I would survive. It has served me well in so many situations. But it’s also been my downfall in relationships.
Blame attachment issues. Blame past trauma. Point the finger in any given direction, but I can admit that I stayed in relationships where I was no longer wanted.
Deep down, I knew the end was coming, but my innate stubbornness kicked in. If I didn’t want change to come, I would just ignore it until it went away. It’s the kind of magical thinking we don’t articulate or even consciously embrace, but any time we stay in relationships that no longer serve us, we’re doing exactly that.
There are many reasons we stay in unhealthy relationships. Attachment, trauma bonding, familiarity, fear, and even love can factor in our decisions to stay when it would be best to leave. Stubbornly staying has only ever resulted in more heartache, and yet, I stayed anyway.
I’m learning to cultivate grace for the way I stayed and suffered inside those relationships. I have a better understanding of how I let it happen. I also have a better understanding of why it’s unlikely to happen again.
Prioritize Grief and Trauma Recovery
I’ve had a lot of time to think about my failed relationships. Instead of ruminating on the pain or nursing outrage, I’ve been examining how we got from Point A to Point B. How do some relationships begin with such respect, admiration, and love and end in animosity?
When we fail to fully grieve and heal from past relationships or to recover from past trauma, we unload that baggage in the next relationship. We all have baggage. Some of us are actively working to heal it. Others lug it around from relationship to relationship, merely adding to the weight.
When I look back on my one-sided relationships, I can see that my unhealed trauma was often the reason I found it impossible to leave. I had years of hurt and unmet needs taking up the space where my self-worth should have lived. I couldn’t let go because I was locked in a trauma cycle.
Sadly, the pain of being unloved felt familiar — strangely comfortable even. I knew how it felt to have to earn love and to be constantly judged for failing to measure up. When I encountered that feeling in relationships, it didn’t send me a cue to leave. It sent me into the same anxious pattern of previous trauma where I kept trying to be better and to earn back the lost affection.
If we want our relationships to be healthy, we have to get healthy. We need to prioritize our healing, process past grief, and get help to recover from past trauma. Jumping from relationship to relationship with no time in between doesn’t work. Neither does ignoring the problems by distracting from them. Only when we sit with our feelings can we actually begin to heal.
Healed people won’t sit in relationships that are no longer healthy.
Begin to Nurture Self-Worth and Self-Love
As I dealt with past pain, I made room for self-worth and self-love. Both are necessary to healthy relationships. It’s hard to look back at the relationships where I was giving all the love and receiving none in return and realize that this was only made possible by an underlying feeling that I didn’t deserve to be loved. I thought I had healthy self-esteem, but my actions didn’t reflect it. Instead, it was obvious that I lacked enough self-love to leave where I wasn’t wanted any longer.
As we begin to love ourselves more, we simultaneously connect with a deeper sense of worthiness. When spaces become toxic, we don’t sit inside them and make ourselves comfortable. We either initiate change within the relationship or take ourselves out of them.
We won’t allow other people to love us less than we love ourselves.
Nurturing our own self-love doesn’t mean we have to nurture hate toward the other party. It’s unnecessary. In fact, the more self-loving I became, the more forgiveness I was capable of granting others. Realizing that I deserved better than a relationship where I wasn’t loved also meant acknowledging that the other person also deserved a relationship that made them happy. Choosing myself wasn’t a rejection of the other person involved; it was a way of honoring my own needs.
Set Boundaries and Match Energy
Part of the process of growth has involved cultivating better boundaries and matching energy. Please note that I’ve prioritized recovery and self-worth before boundary setting and energy matching. Without healing from the past, we’re unlikely to have the skill set we need to create stronger boundaries with others.
After my last relationship ended, I felt broken. I had loved this partner completely and to the best of my ability. I fell more in love with him even as I watched him fall out of love with me. It was crushing, but it was the push I needed to go straight into therapy. I knew I could never allow myself to endure that kind of heartache by staying in spaces where I could sense I was no longer cherished.
By the time I began dating again, I had embraced energy matching. I’m far too straight-forward for game playing in relationships, but I did note the amount of energy expended by potential partners and only gave as good as I got. I wasn’t going to convince anyone else to love me or spend time with me. I got better at putting boundaries in place and realizing that people who want to be in our lives won’t need to be chased or persuaded to be there.
When I observed actions that indicated a loss of interest, I lost interest myself and moved on.
My boundaries got better in other relationships, too. I learned to speak up when I encountered conflict and to be clear about my needs. I stopped tolerating passive aggressive and other toxic behaviors. Since I’d done so much work on healing trauma, I was able to do this calmly and protect my boundaries firmly.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stay in a relationship where I sense I’m no longer wanted. I’ve done too much trauma healing to ever go back down that road. I’ve learned that it’s better to be alone than to be in a relationship and feel that way.
Of course, leaving relationships where we’re no longer wanted doesn’t cut off the love. If only! I’ve learned to love other people safely and from a distance. I’ve also learned that the love I feel doesn’t really belong to other people. It comes from me, and I take it with me when I leave. I can hold love in my heart and still refuse to be party to toxic relationships. That’s where self-worth and healthy boundaries come in.
I also stopped dwelling on the person who doesn’t want me to share his life. I can’t put my energy into that anymore. It doesn’t mean I don’t miss him or that I don’t wish we could have stayed connected as friends, but it does mean that I don’t trip myself up trying to rewrite the ending into a love that lasts.
I know that a love that is meant for me will choose me.
I started putting all the energy I used to put into lugging my baggage around or dwelling on that person back into my life. I took a look around and asked myself how I wanted my life to look and, more importantly, how I wanted my life to feel. I began to take steps to cultivate good things in my life — even with a broken heart.
Sometimes, I still feel sad about what I’ve lost, but I don’t feel like my heart stayed broken. I focus on the way forward. I keep my head up and my eyes ahead. When my thoughts wander back into the past, I allow it to teach me something I needed to learn, and then I thank it for having done so. I move on. I stop wanting people who don’t want me back. I love myself enough to get better. I never stop loving myself.
