The Pattern of Loving Men Who Loved My Silence More Than My Soul

I spent years mistaking endurance for intimacy.

If I could hold my breath long enough, tolerate enough, love hard enough, maybe the relationship would magically become what it should’ve been from the start.

The terrible part is… I was good at it.

Too good.

He was unbothered watching me lose pieces of myself trying to hold the relationship together. There was no urgency, no reflection, not even a flicker of concern. I was falling apart, and he was somehow perfectly comfortable in the wreckage.

And I kept calling that love.

It took time, and a lot of unlearning, to realize I wasn’t fighting for a relationship;

I was fighting for a pattern.

One that felt familiar, predictable, almost biological.

Somewhere in my past, I learned to love men who loved my silence more than my voice.

I learned to love people who were incapable of loving me back.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to make myself responsible for other people’s healing while quietly bleeding out.

And he fit that pattern so perfectly that it felt like fate.

Except fate doesn’t leave bruises on your spirit.

The truth was simple:

He was broken in ways that were never mine to mend.

And I was breaking myself trying to fix someone who had no interest in getting better.

Healing forced me to face the brutal clarity of Step 5:

What you tolerate isn’t just what you allow; it becomes what you teach.

I was teaching people that I would stay, no matter how small I had to become to keep the peace.

Not anymore.

This is the step where the fog lifts.

Where romanticizing someone’s potential finally loses its shine.

Where you stop blaming yourself for not being enough and start realizing the relationship was never designed to work unless you kept abandoning yourself.

I see the pattern now.

And once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it — and you sure as hell can’t keep participating in it.

A Slice of Humble Pie

I wasn’t losing him. I was losing a pattern I had mistaken for love. Letting go didn’t break me — holding on did.

Reflection

Where have I confused my capacity to endure with proof that someone cares? And what would it look like to let my needs speak before my hope does?

Affirmation

I choose relationships where my peace isn’t the price of admission.