The person I am now is obviously very different from who I was 3 or 4 years ago. With that being said however, I feel as if I'll never get over this personal transformation I've been through simply because I feel like I am a better person now than I was then. At the same time however, when it comes to my dating life, I do believe that I could have done a lot better.
Sometimes I have these lingering thoughts in the back of my head that say "you deserve a love that isn't this challenging. You may genuinely love him and he may feel the same way, but the two of you still have a long ways to go- plus you've done a lot of hurtful things to him." The thoughts go on and on and if I'm being honest here, I sometimes wonder what I did to deserve someone who's so kind, patient and understanding towards me. Be it, the worst of what we've been through is in the past now and for the most part, I have moved on from that phase of our relationship. It just strikes me as funny how this is the only real relationship I've been in and for the first year and a half, it definitely felt more toxic than it does now.
I've come close to cheating on him once, then knowingly did it a second time two months afterwards only to come back to him moments later because this other guy I was getting to know dumped me. Not only that, but in the first year of our relationship, I blamed him for a lot of things that simply weren't his doing, but were primarily my doing. It's like every time I did something that he believed to be wrong, I would automatically deny it and say "I wouldn't have done this if you hadn't said this or that". This is honestly just a surface explanation of everything we've been through. Some things are meant to be private, but one more thing that I can reveal is that I was emotionally manipulative towards him in the first year of us dating. I kind of find it weird though that I had that ability inside of me. It's like for every good thing he did for me, I would end up doing something to ruin it. That one quality our relationship had back then is something I hardly ever think about now.
So for the most part now however, I've become more mature with how I handle my boyfriend's criticism towards my behavior. He knows me well enough to know when I don't sound like myself or if I start to throw a fit of frustration. Despite me saying all of this though, I wouldn't say that we were always bonded together. I can remember when he broke things off with me this one time, but I can't remember why exactly (we can probably just assume though that it was because of how I acted towards him). I can also remember going through a couple moments of separation, but we still talked to each other as just friends. That was probably the hardest thing for both of us to get through, and needless to say that that phase didn't last long for us. We knew deep down that we just wanted to be together despite everything we had been through back then. What really didn't help with this though was that his friends were judging me for how I was treating him, and I kept wanting him to stay instead of just asking him to leave, even though I have tried that a few times. I can still remember to this day all those talks of encouragement, telling him that he should just listen to his heart and not let his friends' judgments get in the way.
Looking back on two years ago, I ended up in a state of intense remorse and regret. I didn't know how to deal with it, so that lead to a series of break-ups on my end, but some of them didn't stick with us. He kept pushing on as hard as he could simply because he was finally able to see just how damaged and weak I was feeling. All he wanted to do was help me to see that I'm worth it in the end, but of course, I had an even more difficult time believing it in that time back then. Talking to him on any level just felt painful and would drive me to tears, but it wasn't until last year that I finally forgave myself and decided to trust him on a more personal level.
I know what most people in society would think about a relationship like ours. They would say "how are they still together?" or "that poor young man probably doesn't have a high opinion of himself to be toughing it out for that long". You know what I have to say about that, though? I DON'T CARE. I never expect people to fully understand what we've been through together or separately as individuals. We might have endured a lot of pain and suffering, but because of all of that, it has brought us closer together now. I know that I'm not perfect by any means, but I feel genuinely grateful every day to be with someone who's able to see my worth deep down. I feel incredibly lucky to have someone in my life who reminds me of how important I am and encourages me to be a better person now than I was back then. However unpleasant those memories of the past are, I do the best I can to just move forward and let myself heal from all the damage that's been done; it's the least I can do to help better myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment