This week while, while reading a devotional about love, the opening question caught me by surprise… “How has fear dominated my life?”
Wait! Fear?? I thought this was supposed to be about love, but as I kept reading it dawned on me…
I can’t tell you where these messages came from or when they got so ingrained in my psyche, but (like a lot of women) somewhere in my youth, I “learned” several things:
1. Me… just being me… wasn’t “enough” for me to be worthy of someone else’s love.
2. It was my responsibility to keep the people around me happy.
So… If I wanted to be loved… If I wanted to “be enough”, I needed to never stray from doing everything in my power to keep others happy… Anything less was viewed as selfish and, hence, made me unlovable… And I was terrified of not being loved.
This, then, became a vicious circle that just kept expanding as I grew older, especially in my first marriage where the abuse instilled it even further – I wasn’t lovable because he wasn’t happy. It didn’t matter that I had no control over most of the things that frustrated him. It didn’t matter that he struggled with self-control and accountability. Due to the messages of my youth, fixing it was all up to me… or so I thought.
As I have written before, it finally reached the point of no return. I simply couldn’t do it (or take) anymore, and I left. I didn’t care if I went to hell… I was already living there. I needed find some peace… somewhere. I needed to learn how to be responsible to me, and I had no idea where to start. I had been a people pleaser for as long as I could remember. I didn’t know any other way to “be” …
… Until I met Bruce… This man… This loving, gentle man changed my world. He was always grateful when I did kind things or went out of my way to make him happy, but he also made a point of letting me know that it was not expected. He never saw his happiness as my responsibility, and even encouraged my independence.
Because of this, even though we were married, we kept a lot of things separate – not because of a lack of trust, but because we were two independent people… We kept separate bank accounts, (although we each listed the other on the account in case of emergencies); I kept my maiden name; we bought our own groceries, and (usually) cooked our own meals (although we ate together); we did our own laundry… and the list goes on.
So why bother being married? For us, the answer lay in the fact that we were two independent people who were hopelessly in love and wanted to spend as much time together as possible, while still living within our own morals… No judgement on how someone else chooses to do that – this was just the way we chose to do it.
I remember one rainy Sunday afternoon; we sat cuddling up on the couch. Bruce was watching sports of some kind, while I read a book. We were both doing our own things, and still able to enjoy just being together. Per normal, I was reading some kind of self-improvement book, (remember – “never enough”). I paused reading during a commercial and asked him what he needed from me as his wife… What I could I do to make it easier for him to love me?
Bruce took the book out of my hands and placed it on the coffee table in front of us, pulled me closer, looked me in the eye, and said, “You don’t need to do anything for me to love you. I just do. It is that simple… And all I will ever ask of you is to love me back.”
That stuck with me… Granted, the people pleasing had become a habit, and it was a hard one to break. Yet, over the years, with his encouragement, I started apologizing less and less for things that weren’t mine to own. I started learning to let others have their feelings and figure things out for themselves. Due to the habits I had created, this caused definite shifts in some relationships, but with time, these also found a way to exist in a healthier manner.
Then, he died… I was alone… My support was gone… The unconditional love that had given me confidence was gone. I felt abandoned, unloved, and unlovable… all the things I have always feared and more… So, I did what I had always done – I went back to the old habit of taking on everyone else’s happiness in order to be loved in some way… any way… no matter how small.
Throughout all of this time, I had been in and out of therapy. I would go for a while, start to feel better and thinking I had a solid plan, I would stop until something else popped up… and so on and so on. A couple of years ago, though, I started again, only this time, I have stuck with it. I have found help in the rough patches and growth in the good.
I have learned that my feelings of not being enough aren’t that unusual… Neither is my propensity for people pleasing. I have learned that “bad” things just happen in life. Each person’s response to that is up to them. We all have the choice to either accept it, reject it, or to try to micromanage the situation.
If we choose to micromanage it, we can either try to micromanage the actions of others to align with our own – using love and rejection as the “prizes”, (also called abuse), or we can micromanage ourselves using people pleasing to “buy” their love/friendship (also called enabling). Neither one is healthy and neither one can create a healthy relationship.
This is why my relationship with Bruce was so good… so healthy… because with him, I learned to accept the things I couldn’t change, as well as the things that weren’t my responsibility to fix. I learned that healthy relationships come by allowing each person to be who they are and respecting our differences… finding balance in my life by setting boundaries for myself (no one else) … because, after all, that is the only part of my world where I have any real control… myself… and only myself.
This last year, I have learned that I can be kind without losing who I am. I have, also, learned that by allowing fear to dominate my life, I lost my ability to be me. This meant others couldn’t love me because they didn’t know me. It really was a vicious circle. Now, though, my relationships, however they stand, are at least honest on my end. If someone loves me for me, GREAT! If they can’t, I am sad and it hurts, but I accept it… No more changing who I am to try to become someone else’s version of me.
I have learned how to love and how to be loved… Thank you, Babe, for your legacy which has supported me on this road. <3
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Grief changes us. This journey is not an easy path for anyone. That is why I share the mistakes I have made, as well as what I have felt and learned along the way. Even sharing our stories of love and life can be helpful on this journey. We know learning to function on this new path is hard, and it is easy to lose our way or forget that we don’t have to do it alone. I don’t think any of us chose to be here… I know I didn’t. Yet, this is where life has landed us for now… This is where we are. Our lives are now filled with challenges we never imagined and emotions that feel overwhelming at times. So often, I think I have it all figured out, only to find that isn’t true at all. Despite the years since Bruce passed, my life is still filled with challenges, as I am sure yours is too. Learning to take it one day/moment at a time is all any of us can do.
Thankfully, I know I am not alone… None of us are… We have each other. It is our love for those we have lost that brings us together into this space where we can share our experiences. I believe the sharing of our stories is so important… I believe it is healing. Do you have a story to tell? I believe we can find courage and strength in one another’s stories. I believe we can offer each other empathy when we open our hearts to one another. I don’t know about you, but it makes me feel better knowing there are others out there who understand what I mean, and what I feel. It’s nice to know I’m not alone… Maybe this strikes a chord with you too. We would all love to hear your thoughts or your story. If you would like to share your experience or if you need a helping hand or maybe a virtual hug, let us know. We are here for you.
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