My love life, over the last few years, has been one with quite a few bumps and hurdles. Don't get me wrong, I'm in a great relationship now. To get here, though, I had to go through quite a crazy ride - and as they say, kiss a few frogs.
A few years ago, after graduating college, I moved to a new city. I was excited. What could I possibly not have been excited about? It was a brand new start; my first job, my first own real apartment - I was finally getting out into the real world. The prospect of having to start over and meet new people and make new friends was a little scary, but it was also something I was looking forward to.
Sure enough, after I started my first job, I got to meet a bunch of new people and making friends suddenly seemed like the easiest thing in the world. Through these new friends that I had made, I met who I thought at the time was the love of my life.
We met through common friends and then bam - a month later I was in love.
It all happened so fast. I don't remember the details of the beginning - what I do remember, though, is becoming so emotionally dependent that I thought, I really thought that if we were to ever break up, I wouldn't be able to survive it. 3 years later, we did break up - and here I am - alive and kicking.
See, I had let his world become mine. I was just happy to be doing anything, as long as it was with him. We had problems, so many of them, but I thought that was okay. I grew up looking at my parents who also had problems but always found a solution because they cared enough about their relationship. I thought that was how it was meant to be. Perhaps it is, but the real issue was that I was the only one trying to find a solution to those problems. Anyway, to cut to the chase, here's what I'm trying to say - because I let this person become the root cause of my happiness and sadness and because I let my moods be controlled by his moods, I let him calling me crazy actually drive me crazy, because I let his interest and sometimes even just his friendships with other women make me so insecure - I lost myself.
I am someone who has always had a very strong sense of self - but the truth is that I knew all of this for 3 entire years and I let myself go through it. One day, I got tired of my own crying voice and tears. It just wasn't me. I wasn't the same happy, strong-headed, opinionated, loving, caring person that I used to be. All I was was anxious and insecure. All my mental and emotional strength had been spent on trying to figure out why he wouldn't do for me what I would do for him in a heartbeat.
All of this, now I know, stemmed from fear. Not love, only fear and insecurity about not being with the person whose companionship I had grown used to. It wasn't the fear of losing love, it was fear of losing someone whose life was basically my life.
We broke up after 3 years and as luck would have it, I suppose, I met my boyfriend only 3 months later. I was, for the lack of a better word, interested. I didn't think it would go anywhere - I was still quite a wreck from my breakup and emotionally just all over the place.
It, obviously, went somewhere - and it didn't take me long to understand what my grandmother always told me. "Finding the right partner will change your life. Find the right partner and you'll find yourself". I did find myself, and every day I find myself a little more and I love myself a little more.
Losing yourself in a relationship becomes easy when you forget your own voice just because your partners' might be louder. It becomes easy when you start to doubt your own self and your judgement because they say you're crazy. It becomes easy when you lose your friends because hanging out with his friends is more important. It becomes easy when you start to compete with everything they do and everyone in their life because you want to be placed ahead of everything. It becomes easy when the need for that person becomes more than the want.
I have been there and I have done that, but I came out of it smarter.
I attribute my happiness in my relationship right now to having created a balance in my life, where my life is actually mine. My boyfriend is an important part of my life, but he is not my life. He and I love doing things together - together being the key word here - but we also love doing things individually or with other people. It's not about me doing for him or him doing for me. It's about us, doing the things we like together and sometimes just doing things for one another. We meet his friends, but we also meet mine. We go out to the restaurant of his choice that I don't love, but then we make sure that I get my favourite dessert after. And when there are things that only one of us wants to do and the other absolutely doesn't, we find other friends to do it with; and no one holds a grudge for even a minute.
It took a lot for me to finally understand that loving someone, really loving them, will never allow you to lose yourself. It's constantly fearing what would happen if they stopped loving you that does that. So just remember who you are and don't give up on the things and the people that you love; even when you're crazy, madly, deeply in love.
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