After being in an abusive relationship, you start to see life differently. It feels like the life you knew collapsed before your eyes and you need to carry on living as if nothing happened.
So many people are clueless and don’t understand what you’re going through, and you don’t have enough strength to explain.
You met a man you thought was the love of your life. He was everything you hoped for, everything you dreamed about.
You were thinking about spending your life with him… only to find out he was the worst thing that happened to you soon after.
Some find out sooner, others later. Toxic people can be excellent manipulators and liars.
It’s a soul-crushing moment. There’s nothing like it. You suddenly feel so ashamed, naive, powerless, and desperate. Even if it’s not your fault at all.
After this life-changing experience, you learn about life more than any other time in your life. Unfortunately, it’s mostly about love and its dark side.
Here are the truths I learned about love:
Love isn’t what you think it is. I’m sorry, but sometimes that’s the truth.
Sometimes love isn’t true, unconditional, all-conquering love. Sometimes it’s weak, fake, scared, indecisive, quiet, demanding – not what they teach you when you’re growing up.
I know that ultimately nothing less than unconditional should be counted as love, but the reality is we accept the love we think we deserve and make our own definition of love based on that.
You can’t predict love. You can’t be sure of anything in life.
Not after abuse. It’s scary to think something that once meant comfort and happiness turned out to be everything but that. It’s hard to relax and not to question every love that comes after that.
It keeps you in a constant state of tension.
Love makes you blind. You heard this many times but didn’t know what it meant. Now you know.
When in love, we do unimaginable things. We let another person completely control our lives.
We make compromises that later become regrets and we totally lose ourselves.
Love shouldn’t be painful. Some of us are raised thinking love is painful and full of sacrifice.
Maybe that’s why some of us attract toxic partners. Maybe we subconsciously search for love as we know it.
That’s why we need to work on changing our own perception of love.
Love is always a risk. No matter how afraid and hurt we become, we still crave love. We still want to be safe and loved.
It’s almost contradictory to think of love as something that makes you safe while knowing you can’t predict what will happen when you let it into your life. You’re always taking a risk.
The risk of being hurt. The risk of your heart and life being shattered.
There’s no fear in love. If love is as it should be – there should be no place for fear.
If someone is making you feel scared, they don’t love you – they want to control you. Don’t let that happen. Don’t let them win.
Loving yourself is the most important. This is crucial. As we learn to truly love ourselves, we become less likely to be scared and controlled.
The best thing, though, is that you can always decide to start practicing self-love. It’s not always easy, but everyone can do it.
When you start loving yourself, that’s when you start getting your life back. You start living fully.
No one who truly loves you will make you feel like you’re not good enough. You are always good enough.
Whenever you start asking yourself about whys and ifs, remember that your past doesn’t define you. You’re the one who gets to decide.
You’re the one who lived through all of the struggles. You can do it.
Decide to step out. Decide to start over.
Decide to embrace everything you are and learn what love is again and again until you find the real one.
