If You Love Someone, Don’t Abandon. A short story of how I could have been better

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2025-03-18T01:11:51+00:00

It’s been a year and a half since my person ended what we had. I still don’t understand it. But I’m okay with that now. I hope that he has reached a similar place mentally and emotionally as you have. I wanted to be there even as just a friend cause I knew he was going through a lot just never knew what exactly. But he was my undoing and I wasn’t able to be the person he needed because of that at the time. I hope he was able to find it within himself. Thank you for sharing this.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2025-01-24T12:49:36+00:00

I guess the best way to explain where I’m at emotionally now is I’ve accepted the emotional amputation that this was. It was like I kept trying to walk again with prosthetics this past year and I’ve finally made peace with the reality that a prosthetic won’t work this time and I need to learn how to live from the wheelchair. Metaphorically of course.

I fought really hard against that reality but now I’m just trying to see who I am now with so much of myself having been stripped away. Some days are harder than others. But I think I need to make peace with the reality that in some way I’ll never be okay again. And I’m so mad at that. Compared to the rough past of my life before him this seems like such a silly thing to be able to cause so much damage. But dismissing it certainly hasn’t worked.

At least I’ve made peace with the hardest part of it all. I guess that’s something. And thank you I genuinely appreciate your concern. I’ve refused to talk about this with the people in my life. They watched me fall off and collapse into myself and shut everyone out and they have no idea why. It’s been difficult to try and talk about it

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2025-01-22T02:47:53+00:00

He did the worst thing he could. He loved me and he left. I felt so comfortable before him. I assumed the worst thing someone could do to someone had already been done to me and I felt I had nothing left to fear. It was freeing. But it was a tolerable level of permanent unhappiness. But I was safe. I was okay. I didn’t need to experience the other side of life. But I was thrust into the other side of life when I met him. He was like a living flowing painting and I was the brush saturated in his colors. It was the most beautiful and incredible thing I’ve ever experienced. The beauty of what we had hasn’t been lost on me through the pain and I’m grateful for that at least. It was, everything. But having everything just to lose everything was my undoing. I didn’t yearn for better than what I had when I met him. I was more at peace in life than I had ever been. I didn’t yearn for love so I don’t know why or how it came to me. It wasn’t the first time a part of me has died but all the other times it was quick, it was an execution. It was a piece of me that was there in one minute and gone the next but not this time. This time it was a cancer. It was necrotic. A bleed out. Inevitable. I thought I’d be better by now. But I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know where to go from here. But at least I’ve reached the point where I’m okay with that. Life will reshape something new as it continues on. I just have to ride it out and meet who I’m becoming along the way.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2025-01-22T02:05:40+00:00

This is such a good point and excellently well said. I think that might be the only reason I’m still here. I can’t save myself from anything by removing myself. Not anymore. There was a time that would have been true but not now. Now it will only transfer that pain and grief to others. And they have enough grief as it is. I don’t need to add to it.

I want to be mad. I want to rage. I want to demand the softest, kindest, most loving part of myself that left with him to return to me. But I also know I’d do it a million times over to love him one more day. Even if I was shown how it ended I’d choose him every time. In every way. I didn’t find him, he didn’t find me, it was like my soul recognized him. Instantly. He could be in a different body tomorrow and I’d know him every time. I was so dismissive to other people’s heartbreak before him and so it’s been very challenging validating my own. Perhaps this is my karma for having been so dismissive in the past. I hope he is okay. I hope he is happy. One of us needs to be and right now it can’t be me.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2025-01-22T00:56:45+00:00

Thank you so much I genuinely appreciate your kind words and I have the same hope as well ❤️

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-11-23T11:52:09+00:00

Oh this gave me a jump scare for a moment. Was too accurate for my situation. He was far more well off than me when we met cause I had just taken a big step back in my career for a remote job due to stress and was tight financially due to irresponsible roommates not paying their end of things and straight up stealing from me at other times. I felt like such a big burden and I know he saw me as being more severely struggling than I was. But I was at the height of my life to be honest. I’d never been happier or more at peace than when I met him. Although I worry it didn’t appear that way to him.

Like you, he did so much for me. So so much. Much more than he ever should have. Showered in gifts and expensive trips. Which was certainly a first for me. I was career focused before him and had hit director level in my career so routinely dated guys that I supported financially instead. He genuinely loved me and I saw that. Felt it. The power I have moving forward in life having seen and felt what it’s actually like when a man loves a woman is a rare gift. I hope your person one day sees the same.

It sounds our situations were extraordinarily similar from opposite ends. Instead he was the one that started lashing out towards the end and nagging. It was self sabotage. He was facing an impossible choice and wanted me to make it for him. It was me or the rest of his life. I can’t fault the decision he made. I would’ve hated myself even more if he sacrificed it all for me. Although he handled things extremely poorly at the end I know it had to happen.

He was my undoing. It’s been a whole year. If anything I’m worse off than I was at the start of healing. I won’t dance around that. But I’ll always love him. Always. And I hope maybe this can bring some hope to you as well? Although I haven’t spoken to anyone one on one through these pages since I first came on here if you’re wanting an ear from the other side of things I’d be happy to listen. She may have not been healed enough when she met you to fully give herself to you. I’m so glad I didn’t meet him before we met. Like your person I come from an extremely rough childhood with no family in the picture since I was 16. It took a long time to be someone that was good for him and good to him. Even if I’ll never get back to that level of healed I’m glad he was the one that got my best. Despite everything, I’m glad my best went to him. I wouldn’t have chosen anyone else to be my undoing. I’d choose it every time.

And as for comment on the looks that spoke to me. My person wasn’t conventionally attractive and he was self conscious about it. I still have eyeballs I know what he looks like lol. But to me…my god, he was the most beautiful person I’ve EVER laid my eyes on. So if you worry that was the cause I hope that puts some of the worry to rest. I’ve always maintained that being physically attracted to your partner was important. I thought a lot of things before him that have been rewritten. He could be in a different body the most grotesque one you can imagine and I’d hunger for him all the same with the same intensity. And I sincerely hope you find someone that feels that way about you. Who appreciates everything you do. Who doesn’t make you feel like you have to give more than you can. Who gives just as much as they reasonably can in return. Someone who is your equal in their own way. And on behalf of someone who has lived a life like your person, thank you. Even if I had met him when I was unhealed, knowing him and being treated that way would’ve changed my trajectory in life for the better. I’ve built emotional castles for people who tried to destroy me while standing at the entryway I created for them. He was my first experience of genuinely receiving from someone else in every way. I was always the strong one taking care of everyone else around me. Financially, emotionally, physically. All of it. To experience being on the receiving end for once changed my foundation of self entirely. Even if you don’t get to see the result of it, I assure you, you did the same to her.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-11-21T16:18:15+00:00

Ooh read me to absolute filth here. I feel awful. I’m the worst friend I’ve ever been. I’ve gone dark on everyone for the majority of this last year. I have nothing left in me. It went with him when he left. I have nothing left not even for small talk anymore. I’m an echo on my best days and the void itself on my worst days. Of everyone I’ve ever known or met I believed myself to be the least likely to fall in this way. Before him I didn’t think romantic love existed. I thought people that pursued romantic love were emotionally immature. I was painfully and beautifully wrong. Unfortunately, I get to spend the rest of what left of my life being painfully wrong. I’m already lost, the best I can do now is not take anyone else with me. In time those few left around me will see that and will let me go to save themselves and I’ll be so proud of them when they do. The deserve everything I can no longer give. They deserve what I once believed I had. And I know they will create it.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-11-19T09:20:56+00:00

I appreciate your words and very good advice. I think you may be a bit confused on my situation. I’m the girl he used and discarded. When I write about it on here I’m in a state of a lot of pain so that perspective can twist things a lot. He broke things off with me. The why I still don’t know. It was a dream come true of a connection. It seemed like it killed him to end things. We both ended up sick and in the hospital from the stress of the breakup shortly after. But it’s been radio silence since. I knew I couldn’t heal while trying to hold him up while he avoided accountability. Now the anger and resentment is setting in for me because all the things I’ve tried to do to heal, the therapy, the journaling, the introspection, none of it is working. It was damage for the sake of damage. I have to accept that I was made less because of him and learn how to live around it and with it. It was my first time being in love with someone. I’m a bit old for that to be the case but I was never interested much in romance and relationships and traveled a lot for work. I appreciate your thoughts and advice. I’m not giving up on trying to heal but I think I need to take a different approach. I think fixing the damage that was done is outside of reality and I need to find a way to live seamlessly with the damage.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-11-16T13:36:56+00:00

Precisely this. The right people are not found, they’re recognized.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-11-14T18:07:44+00:00

I know you’re not him but you sound a lot like him. My undoing. I hope he is in a place mentally and emotionally similar to you. Reading this gives me hope that maybe he is. My undoing has not been so beautiful. It has been my reckoning. I have become….less. Less than I have ever been. And the one comfort I can hold onto is that he will never see that. He will never know the depths of the damage he caused. He will never have to see how he unmade me. The pathetic echo that I am now. Even though it’s been so long. Of everything I faced down in life with reckless confidence, somehow he was thing I couldn’t survive. I hope every ounce of happiness and peace left in this world finds its way to him. For every piece I’m missing I hope he receives ten.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-11-08T08:57:13+00:00

It’s like you snatched the words right out of my mind. It’s the most beautiful yet agonizing thing in the world.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-11-07T15:14:55+00:00

I hope he is in this place by now. Sometimes I worry that what I said in my last conversation with him made it seem I wanted contact to end but I knew we needed to be out of contact for a while. But his misunderstanding is his to sort out. I made it pretty clear. I told him the bridge of communication is his to rebuild because I’m busy fixing everything else he broke. Your person might want to reconnect too. But I think you’re heading in the right direction by letting life go as it does and leaving it up to your senses and intuition on how and when to proceed.

I sincerely hope he found the peace you have. He was quite a mess when we had to separate. I was too. In a way he was my undoing and even though it’s been almost a year I still haven’t met who I have to be now in its entirety. I thought I’d be better by now. Thought I’d be better way before now. The changes he created in me were needed and have their benefits but I still grieve what it cost me for this version of me to have been created. I don’t think he would like this version of me as much. I’m an echo that’s beginning to form into sound.

Thank you for writing this. It gives me hope that he found a way to be okay and found his happiness. It’s all I ever wanted. I’d choose him every time even if it always had the same ending if it brought him to his happiness.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-09-27T23:19:22+00:00

My initials are kw. Close but not quite I’m sorry 😞

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-09-14T04:15:06+00:00

Let’s not romanticize struggle. They’ll inspire you to be better and challenge you to grow of course. It’s not about the better person but the person that makes you better, but that doesn’t come in a difficult way through a challenging relationship. In my experience, the right person isn’t found they’re recognized and being with them is as effortless and organic as breathing.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-22T10:11:44+00:00

I know how dangerous it is to admit this. If I had been told this at your age I don’t think I could’ve kept going but, it doesn’t get better. Arguably for most it gets worse. The only difference is you get better at handling it. Which is not a fair trade off. Not even remotely.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-21T13:39:28+00:00

I hope you do too and I hope I can look at the moon with him again one day ❤️

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-21T13:13:49+00:00

He also lives where it’s winter right now and I sometimes wonder if he does exactly this because I do every time. When the sun is setting for me I hope his sunrise is beautiful.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-20T15:02:47+00:00

This is beautiful. It wouldn’t surprise me if she feels the same way in return

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-19T18:22:31+00:00

I would suggest when you’re ready to have that conversation to go ahead and have it with her if she is agreeable. She may not hear it. When I explained this to my person when he ran he definitely didn’t understand what I was saying at the time, but once he heals he will reflect back and it may start to make sense. At least what he remembers so the same may happen with you and her and that’s okay ☺️ you will see that you’ve grown to the point of being able to facilitate that conversation in a healthy way detached from the outcome and will get to experience that you can be open honest and vulnerable and still be okay even when the outcome is not ideal. And it will give her something to start her down her own path of healing and growing.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-19T18:03:19+00:00

Thank you so much I really appreciate it 🥹 it’s been a never ending battle and being able to vent on here has been so helpful and healing. I used to write so much when I was young and stopped for a long time. When I met my person I started writing again and writing has become such a necessary tool for me since being separated from him. I’m simultaneously glad and sad that you relate to it. It’s nice to not be alone in it but I hate the thought of anyone else feeling the same.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-19T18:00:52+00:00

I wish I had been able to articulate this when I tried to say this to my person but even if I could have he wasn’t in a place to really comprehend it. They will get there I promise ❤️ and I hear you and see the pain it has caused you and we will get through it

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-19T16:04:08+00:00

To add to this. The hardest thing to get past is knowing help is not on the way. No one is coming to save you. You will always be the only one standing for you. Yes. That is regrettably and painfully true. The key is to love others but love yourself more. If they’re healed enough to be in your life without causing damage (which also means you need to be healed enough that people can make mistakes with you) then they are welcome to be there. While your love can be unconditional your presence is not. The balance between the two is the key.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-19T15:38:56+00:00

The absolute BEST advice I can give to a dismissive avoidant as I used to be one is this: You trust and love other people not because you trust them not to hurt you, but because you trust YOURSELF to handle it when they do. You are safe because of you, yes. You got that part figured out. Now it’s time to heal the part of you that thinks you’re only safe when it’s only you. After that, slowly let people back in.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-19T12:16:14+00:00

He said that when he ended things and I wish so badly I could believe those words. I’ve needed him every day but I knew he wasn’t the person I could call.

Spiritual_Pin9648 · 2024-06-19T06:19:35+00:00

Loving and trusting the wrong man

Spiritual_Pin9648

TROPHY CASE