I was a high school student when I imagined the ideal romantic relationship: we’re best friends, we play basketball and soccer together, we talk about anything and everything, and our love is free. My “person” would be self-confident, trusting (not jealous), and I would be free to flourish as I wished.
I knew I had it in me to not be jealous because it was modeled on me: I grew up witnessing my parents do long distance without a single scene of jealousy, or even the slightest hint of distrust. But, because I didn’t see them too often in one space for very long, I didn’t know what it was really like to have a no-distance relationship.
The next decade of my life came to contradict every bit of my imagined ideal relationship. I dated jealous guys who would lament, “It’s not jealousy, it’s love!”–and I believed them. I met insecure guys who told me, “I wish you didn’t have to go abroad by yourself, I want you next to me”– and I wanted to reassure them so badly that I almost gave up the greatest opportunities of my life: a PhD and a music career.
I wanted to be loved so badly that I accepted being loved badly.
I normalized it, through the tearful justifications, the wardrobe changes, the career near-sacrifices. As long as I was someone’s someone. At the end of the day, I was embraced by another being. I was in another being’s thoughts.
I let myself be held down in the name of emotional connection, mutual admiration, and what I thought to be interdependence. In retrospect, it was blatant codependence: endless phone calls, shaming for past relationships or professional ambitions, a constant need to be reassured that they’re the only one… the list goes on.
Finally deciding to put space between myself and the person I was sure I’d marry, the distance caused me to listen to my inner voice. I could think more clearly. I could notice patterns I didn’t want to see before. I could see my future unfold before me and, this time, I wasn’t envisioning a happy union.
Leaving a relationship based on constraining love is difficult because it means refusing an extremely familiar paradigm without any guarantee that a better one is possible.
You leave one relationship and stumble onto another, and you start to listen to yourself a tiny bit more, which helps you realize a little bit more quickly when something’s not right about how each new relationship feels.
You start accumulating evidence of what you don’t want in a partner. You meet neglectful people, disloyal people, disrespectful people, people who think you’re too smart, or the self-absorbed people who expect you to fold their laundry so they can achieve their dreams.
When you’re in a relationship that constrains you, you’re likely to learn that loving this person means constraining yourself. You no longer want the things you wanted before. Your career ambitions fade away, along with your self-care.
But love is liberation. Love is not being held down. Especially not holding yourself down. Thankfully, I learned that it’s possible to re-learn how to love yourself and be loved.
I wrote the song Solace when I exited the longest, most constraining relationship I’ve ever been in. I found true solace in the fact that I was able to be more myself by not being in that relationship anymore. I didn’t know what was coming next, but I knew one thing: I was a lot closer to finding the relationship I once daydreamed as a teen.
What dream are you answering today?