Gary Ruiz17 said:But see, here’s where the real trouble starts for me... I’ve had a few different relationships in my life, and it felt like every single one of them just left me more bruised than the last. Eventually, I decided to just be on my own for a while, moved from my hometown over to Chicago, and I actually started to feel like myself again—like I was finally blooming. Then, I met this girl, and man, I felt that spark instantly; after being solo for a few years, I was genuinely ready to dive back into something serious. We dated, and let me tell you, it was an absolute nightmare. This relationship was incredibly traumatic because she would break up with me multiple times a week over the most trivial, nonsensical reasons or tiny little arguments, and then I’d find myself practically begging her to stay, trying to patch things up just to keep us afloat for a few more months. When it finally did fall apart for good, things were okay for about a month, but then something inside my head just... snapped. I suddenly realized that this simply wasn't it; I couldn't be with someone with that kind of temperament, and just like that, all those feelings of being in love just evaporated.
And now, because I have this tendency to be a total people pleaser, I hit this incredibly paradoxical wall—I needed to be the one to betray, reject, and walk away from someone who was insistently telling me they loved me. It was supposed to be my first time ever being the one to initiate a breakup, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it... there was so much fear, so much misplaced pity... and in the end, I just suppressed everything, trying to ignore the red flags and burying them deep inside myself. I tried talking to her a couple of times, but it was useless, and because of her volatile nature, it always spiraled into these massive, exhausting fights—and on top of that, I didn't have the strength or the guts to admit what the real issue was, so we just ended up circling the drain indefinitely. Paradoxically, it actually felt easier when she was being horrible to me for no reason, because I felt like that's what I deserved; I’d actually feel a sense of relief when she was being mean, yet I felt terrible whenever she was being sweet to me... Finally, after one particularly bad blowout, I just broke, and I ended things in a really blunt, almost rude way via a text and a phone call. After that, I actually saw her a few times to try and explain myself, but it went nowhere. To make matters even worse, once the breakup happened, she tried everything to reel me back in, and it turned into straight-up harassment—hundreds of calls, her friends calling me to say she was getting shots at the hospital and feeling miserable and that I was being heartless for not answering, showing up at my apartment building, waiting outside my place, even faking a pregnancy...
Once the dust finally settled, I gave myself some breathing room, and eventually, I tried going out with a few different women, but it just wouldn't work. Even though there weren't any actual problems with them, those old feelings of anxiety, that sense of suffocation and helplessness, would come rushing back almost immediately. And I'd just have to end it 😢 After those attempts, a year has passed since that mess, and about two years since the relationship itself. So, where am I now? How do I learn to relax and truly give someone else a fair shot? What really eats at me is whether I even HAVE the right—being this psychologically wrecked, this emotional wreck—to enter a relationship with a perfectly normal girl and dump all this heavy baggage onto her shoulders through no fault of her own? I have a thousand questions, and just being alone isn't the solution; it's just an escape... The one bright spot is that I'm tired of running, and I truly want to take action and fix this part of my life that feels so fundamentally broken 😢
YOU DON'T HAVE THAT RIGHT. However, you do have the right (and indeed, the obligation) to prioritize yourself by sorting out the mess in your head and exorcising those demons first. It’s easy to just say, "Someone broke me; I'm damaged goods, my luck has run out, and all I can do now is ruin someone else."
I'm not just saying this to you, but to everyone facing similar struggles:
stop playing the victim! I categorically refuse to be a victim. I am not some object that random passersby in my life can crush so thoroughly that I become useless or nothing more than a burden to others. I am not a broken toy.
When a person views themselves as having inherent value, they realize that temporary failures don't define them. I leave those broken toys to someone else. I approach people with positive expectations and a smile; I give people the opportunity to be good, and if they miss it, it's their loss, not mine.
In short: less self-pity, more action.