One Simple Question To Ask Yourself When You Love Someone Who Keeps Hurting You

Figuring out how to break up with someone you love is painful and complex, and no matter how many questions you ask yourself, deciding what to do is a struggle at best and pure torture at worst.

You can't control the depth or intensity of a wound that another soul inflicts on your own, and there is no choice involved when it comes to heartbreak and the feelings that we feel as a result.

Whether we are the perpetrator of the events that lead up to the heartbreak, or we are the afflicted whose life is wrenched out from underneath us, how we feel as a result, and the spectrum of these emotions are all far beyond our control.

Love is a funny thing. Some feel it at first sight and often, while others claim to never have felt it or to have only experienced it once.

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It can disappear without warning, or appear in the most inconvenient of places. It can soothe, heal, empower, break, and destroy us, and yet above all, we crave it. It isn’t something that is dependent on time or how well you know someone or even if you find them physically attractive. It is an uncontrollable, unquantifiable force that bulldozes into our lives and then takes off running in the other direction without so much as a word of warning.

It doesn’t matter who the object of your love is, or whether you have known them for a day or a decade. How much we feel when we're in it and how much we grieve when it has gone is as unique to each of us as we are to ourselves.

I am currently embroiled in a protracted cycle of breakup-->lets make this work-->argue-->make-up-->askwhatareweevendoingtoeachother, i.e.,  drama of cataclysmic proportions.

From what I can see, I believe he has fallen out of love with me and hasn’t admitted it to himself yet. He stopped caring, stopped being concerned, stop thinking I was this wonderful, beautiful, clever woman, and became complacent and cold.

After weeks of bickering, followed by the most miserable Christmas and birthday on record (no card, no flowers, no “I love you”, no effort), I felt that I had nothing left to give, as if an emotional vampire had sucked every last bit of love, feeling, and happiness out of me, leaving me with nothing but bitterness and anger simmering away in my bones.

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We have talked at length, sometimes more successfully than others, but I still cannot wrap my head around what is going on and whether I should give him time because I love him or whether I should cut my losses and move on because I am just going to end up getting hurt. I keep telling myself that loving someone is not a reason to stay with them, and while I have offered to be patient as he works through his issues, he offers me nothing in return.

I am trapped in this emotional no-man’s land in a foreign country, surrounded by strangers, wondering why I gave up the simple but comfortable life I had before him.

I cannot describe the pain I feel when I think of what I sacrificed for this relationship and then compare it to what I have received in return. The closest I have had to any support from him has been him telling me if I can’t stop crying, I need to at least go somewhere else, because the sight of my tears makes him want to be far away from me.

As though he thinks I have control over these feelings.

I keep telling myself that just because I love him, that doesn’t mean that I should be with him.

I should be with someone who:

• Is proud to be with me
• Wants to take cute pictures of me and with me 
• Wants to have sex with me
• Wants to know how my day was
• Wants to hold me if I am sad
• Wants to do activities with me 
• Wants to give their heart to me
• Wants to be romantic with me
• Wants to do small things here and there to make me smile
• Wants to be sweet to me
• Wants to fall asleep next to me
• Wants to tell me he loves me
• Wants to see me 
• And would do anything to fix a problem between us instead of, well, not

After all, these are all things I expect myself to put into a relationship as a standard.

I asked myself one simple but crucial question, and the answer told me everything I had known but never wanted to admit: Is it too much to ask for the same in return?

The answer: No. It is not too much to ask. In fact, these things should be the baseline all of us look for in any romantic relationships.

My realization of this has made me understand that while yes, I feel awful, yes, I am sad, and yes, I am heartbroken, I deserve so much more. My conclusion is that it is better to be alone than to be with someone who makes you feel alone when you are together.

For that reason, I am going to learn to love myself again. Alone.

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