I don’t really want to write about what led to that breakup, especially after coming so far past it all.
And I mean, I can.
I can talk about how I chose to be in a relationship with someone who was fundamentally wrong for me. I can talk about how I chose to ignore the red flags, even though they were waving right in front of my face. I can talk about how much of myself I lost in a relationship that I was sacrificing and losing so much of myself for.
I can talk about how many times I blamed myself for things that were never mine to hold. I can tell you how many times I was gaslit into feeling like I was crazy. I can tell you how many times I was told I was “too much” for the things I asked for. I can tell you so much.
So, I will. Because it matters. Because the breakup is NOT the point. It was the catalyst.
I’ll keep the beginning short and simple.
An anxiously avoidant guy meets an anxiously attached girl, and they fall in love. They decide to build a future and move in together. They live together for two years, and, in that time, they find out things about each other.
Some good. Some bad. Some ugly. Some beautiful.
The beautiful is really beautiful. But the ugly is really ugly.
The anxiously avoidant knows how to escape, and the anxiously attached doesn’t know how to let go or give space.
The anxiously attached wants to talk. To communicate. To figure things out. But the avoidant walks out.
For a few moments? For a couple hours? No.
For days.
One day, the avoidant decides to pull away. Again. And the attached can feel it. The attached communicates it. But the avoidant denies it.
And a month later, the avoidant finally leaves.
Except I didn’t actually find out he was leaving from him. I found out from a text conversation with his cousin, discussing how he needs to escape from a “serious alcohol problem” I have.
The irony was almost cruel. This was something I had already been made to question about myself. I had been convinced that maybe I really did have a problem. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe this was why things were falling apart.
It was something that consumed me. One drink? Fine. Two? You’re absolutely wild. Three? You’re a damn alcoholic, you have a problem, and I’m not dealing with it.
I think my first mistake was allowing someone with a “lightening” tattoo the size of a pea who could only handle Bud Lights in can form too much power and authority.
But I digress…
I remember crying in shame of myself while pouring every bottle I had down the drain, from my beautifully curated bar where I enjoyed making Tiffany Mimosas, just to prove to him that I am not something he drove me into identifying as.
But there was more…
He was going to pack up and leave, and he was NEVER going to tell me. I was just going to walk home one day and find his things gone from our home.
Again.
He denied it, then admitted it, then started insulting me.
The problems were my fault. The differences were my fault. The relationship falling apart was my fault.
Somehow, I was left standing there trying to defend myself against a case I didn’t even know I was on trial for.
Ugh. I want to preface that this all started because of a couch.
No, I’m not kidding.
He really thought it wouldn’t fit. I really knew it would.
He said I was stubborn, I never listen to anybody, and I act like I am better than everyone.
I told him I have been decorating our home, alone, for two years.
Maybe it stung. I meant it to.
Do not be the kind of person to tell me something isn’t going to work out without finding me a solution. Your intention, at that point, is not to help – it is to criticize.
But, I think what stung the most, was that the couch fit and it was perfect.
Because he stopped talking to me after that…
Sigh.
That relationship made me question everything about myself – in a time where I was going through healing my inner child and wounds, navigating healthier relationships with my parents, trying to understand how to emotionally navigate watching my mom’s health deteriorate, going through difficult internal social/emotional changes whilst dealing with external judgment, ongoing grief from losing one of my closest family member – my mom’s brother, learning I have PCOS (renamed to PMOS), being unemployed and having an 8 month legal battle with unemployment only to not favor me because I “voluntarily left to take care of a family member with a disease”, and FINALLY, came to the final realization that I am repulsed by the entertainment industry and I cannot pretend anymore.
And that’s a lot in just two years. My mental, emotional, physical, financial, psychological, and spiritual realms/health were all turbulent at the same time.
He made life difficult when there was already so much pain. There was no possibility of mutual growth because anything against him was met with avoidance and abandonment. When I was with my friends and we were having a great time, he often got mad at me for acting so “out of character”.
Fine. I stopped. It’s okay, I can practice my spirituality on my free time. But what is free time when you have a full time job and a home/life you’re supposed to co-exist with? Well, with the wrong person, it’s calling them up and asking if there’s chicken in the fridge and they don’t know because they have not opened in a week. They don’t know where the spices are, they don’t know what certain things are called, they use the rice cooker spoon to cook scrambled eggs and then burn both the pot and utensils…
Fine. I’ll handle it. It’s okay. I can handle the house… but I won’t be in the country for the move to the next apartment. However, I have everything laid out here with instructions on what to pack and how to pack. Can you make sure it’s good? If you need anything call me, or call these people who will come at a drop of a hat to help.
No. Just going to pack everything in a box, and hope it makes its way. By the way I broke your TV, and I have no idea where half of your clothes and shoes are.
Eventually, he did leave. We talked the next day and he told me things about myself that I knew were not true, but I agreed with him anyway and asked him to please stay with me while I work on it.
“I don’t want to watch you try to get better”
He stayed for two days because he didn’t have anywhere to go, and I was still too nice and still hoping we can work it out. Yes, even after all that.
My final straw, if it was even possible for me to have one, was when I was given evidence of possible infidelity. That’s a non-negotiable. I had two hours before I had to go to work and, in those two hours, I gathered all his things and threw it out for him to pick up.
And I did not look back.
Every single time I think about the incompetence, the blatant disregard, the lies… I just get so upset at the betrayal.
Betrayal is hard. When someone betrays you, it’s like a knife in your back – as we all know. That pain is deafening because it crushes a reality you had set in your mind about this person, this connection, your relationship. The whirlpool of clouds wither away and you’re left with seeing the ruins behind it.
But when you betray yourself? It’s worse. It’s a knife in the front, and the one who put it there may not have been you. But you’re holding it down with your hands. And I felt that too. I felt his knife in my chest, I felt his hands around it. But I felt mine right on top, digging it more and more. That knife may have hurt, but it was the thing that was keeping us together.
There’s no coming back from betraying yourself, and you do not want to. Sitting with yourself and understanding where you could have stopped it brings shame to a whole new level.
I truly believe that the universe will do everything needed to ensure what is not meant for you does not stay. It will make your life so unbearable that you have no choice but to choose yourself.
Looking back, I can see how much that relationship taught me about what happens when you spend so much time trying to prove that you are worthy of being chosen, that you forget to ask yourself whether you even want to be chosen by the person standing in front of you.
Because, at the time, I was screaming to be chosen.
I was screaming to be chosen by someone/something outside of me. I literally did not choose myself.
Maybe that is what the journey is really about. Bringing those darker parts of ourselves to the surface. The parts we may have known were there. The parts we may not have even realized were there.
The journey makes you aware. It forces you to see yourself.
Because you cannot heal what you cannot see. You cannot work through something you don’t understand, or even know how deeply it is impacting your life.
And for me, what I had to see was this:
I was self-sacrificing for a man who kept dimming my light. A man who told me I was the problem whenever I disagreed with him. A man who never wanted to communicate. A man who blamed me for our differences. A man who would leave and not come home for days. No text. No call. Nothing.
The first time something like that happened, I reached a point where I self-harmed.
He saw the scar. He didn’t even care. I still chose him.
I still ignored myself. I still chose him.
That is the part that is difficult to admit.
Because there are certain experiences in life that don’t simply break your heart, they introduce you to yourself.
And sometimes, unfortunately, you have to lose something you desperately wanted before you realize what you were willing to lose in order to keep it.
For a long time, I thought self-love meant loving yourself completely.
Having yourself figured out.
Knowing your worth every single day.
Being confident. Being healed.
Having boundaries. Having the perfect routines.
Making all the right decisions.
I don’t believe that anymore.
I think self-love is much less glamorous than that.
Sometimes self-love is simply deciding that you are not going to abandon yourself today.
Even when you’re confused. Even when you’re messy. Even when you’re not proud of the way you’ve been coping. Even when you don’t understand yourself.
Because the truth is, you don’t have to completely understand yourself to love yourself. You don’t have to be completely healed to be worthy of love. You don’t have to have your entire life together. You don’t even have to like every part of yourself.
You just have to stop treating yourself like someone you are willing to sacrifice.
Those have to be your Terms and Conditions.
Non-negotiable.
And that was something I had to learn the hard way.
After the breakup, there were periods of my life where I was barely surviving. I was still coming up for air after being drowned so many times, I couldn’t believe I was being pushed back into the water.
I was financially struggling to bring home a two-person salary in order to afford a roof over my head, and I would just barely make it.
I was sleeping at odd times and working double shifts, sometimes six days with a side hustle, in order to pay rent. It was insane how I still had nothing left. It felt like a cycle of poverty that was never-ending, despite me having a roof over my head.
The thought of food was a luxury that I did not always have. The only time I was guaranteed food was on the days I worked. Sometimes, if I could afford a meal on my days off, it would have to be a big quantity – something that would last me two meals. When I need to be hungry, I will get myself hungry. When I cannot eat, I will make myself lose my appetite.
My routines weren’t okay. My habits weren’t okay. Some of the ways I coped weren’t okay. But at the time, they were what I had. They got me through. I think we are sometimes far too quick to judge the versions of ourselves who had to survive in ways our present selves wouldn’t choose.
I don’t romanticize those versions of me. But I don’t hate them either. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I thank her.
I stopped having to fight to keep a relationship together, but I had to start fighting to another battle of survival.
I think the hardest takeaway from this phase of life is something I am only now learning to heal. I developed an unhealthy relationship with food that, itself, brought a domino effect of darkness. It worsened my health, suffering with PCOS/PMOS.
But.. what could I do? This was what my surviving looked like.
Sigh…
Let’s take a quick break & a deep breath together, I needed it.
…
…
…
Great, now let’s move forward.
Survival doesn’t look like healing. Sometimes it looks like getting through the day. Sometimes it looks like distracting yourself. Sometimes it looks like people-pleasing because keeping everyone happy feels safer than asking yourself what you actually want. And sometimes it looks like choosing someone you already know isn’t right for you.
That’s the part I had to confront.
Because there is a very specific kind of pain that comes from choosing something you already know better than.
It’s different from being blindsided. It’s different from not knowing.
It’s the pain of your intuition whispering: You know.
And you answering: I know. But I want this anyway.
Because you chose it. You have to follow through. You can’t be a quitter. Even when some part of you already knows you should leave.
That is where karma became very real to me. Not karma as some cosmic punishment system, no. Let’s not take this out of context the same way modern-day spirituality does.
Not, “I did something bad, so the universe is going to get me.”
But karma as consequence. As cause and effect. As the reality that every choice creates an imprint.
When we repeatedly act against what we know is right for us, against our conscience, against our dharma, we don’t escape the consequence simply because we wanted the outcome badly enough.
The universe doesn’t necessarily have to punish you. Sometimes you punish yourself by continuing to live in contradiction with what you already know.
And eventually, reality catches up. That’s what karma can feel like.
Not revenge.
Revelation.
The lesson wasn’t that I should never love the wrong person. The lesson was that once I know someone is wrong for me, continuing to choose them comes at a price.
And that price isn’t necessarily losing them, the price is losing pieces of yourself. Your peace. Your confidence. Your voice. Your boundaries. Your ability to recognize yourself.
And that is a price I am no longer willing to pay.
It wasn’t about learning how to leave a relationship. I learned how to stop leaving myself. And in doing that, I learned how to leave when I needed to.
For years, I thought I was an independent woman. And in many ways, I was. I could handle things myself. I could make decisions myself. I could survive on my own.
But emotionally? I was something else entirely. I was independently dependent.
To be honest, that phrase sounds like a contradiction because it is. If you’ve read The Walking Contradiction, available on the homepage, then you know.
I had learned how to function independently while still making my emotional existence dependent on other people.
Their approval. Their presence. Their happiness. Their perception of me. Their love. Their choosing me.
I could stand on my own two feet while simultaneously needing someone else to tell me that I was worth standing on.
That’s not independence. That’s independence with an invisible attachment cord.
And I didn’t recognize it because I had confused self-sufficiency with self-love.
I knew how to take care of myself. I didn’t necessarily know how to choose myself.
There is a difference.
I had to learn how to move from people-pleasing to self-honoring.
From codependency to interdependence.
Because I don’t believe the answer is becoming so independent that you need nobody. That’s not love either.
We are human beings. We need one another. We are meant to connect. To depend on people sometimes. To be held. To give. To receive.
The goal isn’t to become someone who needs nothing.
The goal is to become someone who can need another person without needing to disappear inside them.
That, to me, is love. And this is where I think I misunderstood self-love.
Self-love isn’t saying: “I don’t need you.”
Self-love is saying: “I love you. I need you. I choose you. And I will still remain myself.”
Because I didn’t want a love that required me to become less of me. I didn’t want a love that required me to shrink. I didn’t want a love that required me to abandon my intuition, my values, my dreams, my voice, my spirituality, my weirdness, my contradictions, or the parts of me I’m still trying to understand.
I would rather lose everyone else than lose myself again.
It’s easy to come back from losing someone, no matter how hard that may seem. It’s impossible to come back once you lose yourself, trust me, I am doing the work.
One thing I knew definitvely though, was that the love of my life could never require me to become a stranger to myself. And if it does? Then it isn’t the love of my life. It’s the lesson of my life.
There is something deeply spiritual about realizing that.
In Sanātana Dharma, there is this understanding that beneath all of the identities we create: the partner, the daughter, the friend, the employee, the successful woman, the wounded woman, the woman who has it together, the woman who absolutely does not – we are something deeper.
The ātman. The soul. The self beneath the roles.
And perhaps my biggest lesson was realizing how often I had been willing to betray that deeper self in order to preserve an external relationship.
I was so busy trying to be loved correctly by someone else that I wasn’t loving myself correctly. And that’s the real meaning of loving yourself before you can truly love another person.
It doesn’t mean you need to become perfectly healed before you are allowed to be loved.
It doesn’t mean you need to spend five years meditating, journaling, drinking green juice, and becoming some enlightened version of yourself before you’re relationship material.
Seriously? Thank God.
It simply means you need enough of a relationship with yourself to know when you’re abandoning yourself.
Because you can enter love unfinished. You can enter love confused. You can enter love with wounds. You can enter love while still figuring yourself out. You can even enter love without fully understanding who you are. But you cannot sustainably love someone while continuously betraying yourself for them.
Eventually, the bill comes due. And mine did.
The breakup was actually my greatest release.
And that release brought me to a love I could have never experienced from the version of me who was willing to abandon herself just to keep someone else.
I don’t think the lesson was that I had to lose one person to eventually find another. The lesson was that I had to lose the version of myself who believed love required self-abandonment.
I went through the pain. I did the work. I came back to self-love. And somewhere along that journey, I became capable of recognizing a love that didn’t require me to leave myself behind.
The simplest way I can say it is this:
The path to love is through devotion to self. I don’t believe love is simply an emotion. I believe it is a vibration. Something we live in. Something we become aligned with.
And when we do the work to become aligned with the kind of love we are seeking, we become capable of recognizing, receiving, and sustaining it when it arrives.
Because if you want love but you are living from fear, abandonment, self-betrayal, and attachment, you can easily mistake the wrong things for love.
You can mistake anxiety for passion. You can mistake being needed for being loved. You can mistake someone choosing you temporarily for someone choosing you completely.
You can mistake surviving a relationship for being fulfilled by one.
Until you learn the difference.
So, how do you find love?
Simple. You don’t. You find yourself.
You don’t abandon yourself for love anymore. You don’t betray your knowing for attachment. You don’t confuse being needed with being loved. You don’t confuse surviving with living. And you certainly don’t confuse losing someone with losing yourself.
Because people can leave. Relationships can end. People can disappoint you. People can misunderstand you. People can choose someone else.
Life can take things from you that you thought you would have forever.
But there is one person you are guaranteed to live with for the rest of your life.
You.
And that person deserves your devotion, too.
So, in the greatest search for your soulmate, don’t forget to come home to your soul first. Because your soul was never something you had to find. It was always there.
Beneath the heartbreak. Beneath the attachment. Beneath the fear.
Beneath every version of yourself you thought you had to become to be loved.
You just have to come home to it.
– nk.
