The longest relationship I’ve been in didn’t start very well and yet I let it go on longer than it should have. The person I was with didn’t treat me the way someone who loves you should. I didn’t see it at the time though.
The person told me I was not beautiful. They told me I was fat and therefore unattractive and unworthy to be loved. They talked me into abusing different substances. They taught me to check out when life dealt me something I didn’t like. They never told me they loved me even though I craved that more than anything from them. They focused more on my shortcomings than what good they saw in me.
Would you not call that an abusive relationship? Well, that’s the relationship I’ve had with myself for a very long time. All the things I’ve just mentioned are things I did to myself and told myself.
Things have changed and some still need to be worked on but the relationship has gotten much better. In outside relationships I went looking for love when the love I craved the most was from myself.
It’s the longest relationship I’ve been in and it was an abusive one. If I told you some of the things I put myself through, you would have told me to break up with myself. I’ve heard how people who are hurting are the ones who hurt others. That was true in my case. I was hurting, so I hurt myself. I turned to drinking and smoking, among other things, to numb the pain, all the while taking my frustrations out on me.
What’s your relationship with yourself like? Have you ever sat down to reflect on it? Would you tell yourself to stay in the kind of relationship you have with yourself right now? If not, maybe something or some things need to change. I didn’t like what I found when I put a microscope on mine so I’m currently working on it.
