Have you ever been in a relationship where you often felt you needed to fix your partner?
Do you often find yourself falling for a person in need of rescue, offering to be their ‘’knight in shining armor’’ and help change their bad ways?
If so… did you ever stop and wonder what it does to you, and how much it drains you unnecessarily?
There is absolutely nothing wrong in feeling compassion towards a person you’ve come to care about and wanting to help and rescue them but never to the extent of harming yourself in any way.
When you’re always focused on helping others and putting that burden on yourself, you risk putting your welfare in danger and neglect making sure that YOU are okay.
It’s one thing to be there for your partner when he needs you, but it’s a whole other story when you’re in the business of saving their ass on a daily basis and taking that responsibility upon yourself day after day.
Stop for a second and ask yourself why you keep finding people in need of rescue, and how that ultimately prevents you from leading a more carefree life.
If you exhibit these 4 signs that prove you are the constant rescuer in your relationships, it’s time to reevaluate your love life and make necessary adjustments for your own good.
1. Your self-worth is contingent upon your ability to ‘’fix’’ your partner
You pride yourself on your ability to fix and help your partner which is a key component of your relationship persona.
Instead of finding a partner who is emotionally stable and fulfilled, you seek those in need of rescue in order to fulfill your quenching need to be their savior.
You are drawn to those with heavy emotional burdens, which makes it difficult for you to focus on your own well-being and healing.
2. You have unresolved abandonment issues that you are now projecting on your partner
You come from a home where you had to take on too much responsibility at a way too young age.
You took on a parental role because one (or both) of your parents struggled with addiction or a similar issue, so now you’ve projected their needs onto your partner. Since no one came to rescue your parents, you now feel it’s your obligation to rescue others.
This signifies a slightly unhealthy obsession with other people’s problems that gives you a sense of fulfillment, and it could end up harming you in the long run.
3. You idealize those who appear needy and troubled
By doing this, you infantilize them, making them appear delicate and incapable of taking care of themselves.
In doing so, you encourage your partners to constantly rely on you for the tiniest problems, making you the responsible one for their happiness.
You burden yourself with destructive behavior that will inevitably drain you of your energy and sound mind, until you realize that every individual is responsible for their own happiness. Placing it entirely in your hands is unhealthy, unfair, and frankly, too much to handle.
4. You end up controlling your partner’s life under the pretenses of helping them
You are too focused on what your partner should and should not be doing, and you end up micromanaging their way of life.
What this shows is the lack of control you have of your own life which you compensate for by trying to ‘help’ your partner, even when they don’t ask for help.
You delude yourself into believing that you are rescuing them and bettering the quality of their life which allows you to escape your own plights and issues that you are not ready to deal with.
If you feel like any of these signs relate to you, it’s important that you evaluate your relationship, yourself as an individual, and any issues that may stem from earlier stages of your life.
Realize that you are projecting your own unresolved insecurities/issues/wounds onto your partner, and that by doing so, you are only prolonging your own inner problems that need to be brought to the surface and dealt with.
Stop trying to save people, regardless of them asking it from you or not. It is not your job to be anybody’s rescuer. That is on them.
While you’re so busy trying to save everybody else, you easily forget the one person who needs to be saved the most – YOU.
