It comes a moment in your life when you have to decide whether you continue the “charade” you have been playing for some time with your own life, or take and keep the ropes in your hands and change direction.

Are You others want You to be?

When thinking you love someone, you give up a lot of things for that person, and at some point, feeling empty inside, you understand you were not living your own life. You understand that making many compromises in that relationship you are not the person you have thought you were or want to be, but the person who wants your partner to be. Moreover, You can not live through someone else’s eyes, even if that person is your partner.

I have previously written that one day, while I was working in another country, I realised that working for money and things I had, it was not what I wanted, for they were not my motivation to live where I was and work what I was doing. Following that, my decision to return home was paid with breaking my family. From my experience, any new thing requires to let go something old, but at that moment I did not understand that the “old” thing was my marriage.  

I can say that my pain was huge because I was still afraid to see myself without a husband, without a man in my life because it is what I was taught, that I am not worthy as long as I do not have the “other half”, that a woman is not worthy unless she has a man beside her.

My return to my home country led me to the understanding that I was not “a half”, that I was never like that, but a whole, and I have the right to live my life how I feel it. I understood that I had lived according to the social patterns without listening to myself. I understood that my marriage was only a compromise of not being alone, a compromise with a man who lived just like me, between limits, and imposing each other our limits, for we were two “halves” looking for love, without knowing that we can not give what we do not have for ourselves, without knowing that a “half” cannot give what a “whole” can. We did not know what and how true love is.

When you love yourself, you can not accept someone else’s limits, you set up your own barriers where and you are aware that you keep being a “whole” without accepting someone else’s control and manipulation.

Photo of me

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are the Person You Like to be

I have been told many times by most people I know including “friends,” colleagues, that my return is “foolish”. I was leaving a lifestyle I had, a job, a house, cars, money, I was losing that so-called marriage, and I went back to my home country, where I had almost none of the above but a couple of people who believed in me and myself. Indeed, everything seemed crazy, but I never felt more free and worthy than at that point. I did not know what I was going to do, where I will go, how I will live, but all felt into place, step by step.

After passing the pain and thousand rivers of tears left by separation, I was able to see only the beautiful part of the time spent with my ex and the fact that we both were a tool in each other’s lives, to teach each other that nothing is forever, that everything can be taken from the beginning, that things can be done again, that a person who has been your partner for a while can become a good friend, and most importantly, that you can fall in love again.

When you begin to build your self-confidence, confidence you did not have it before, because you were not encouraged or helped to have it as a child, it is your ongoing work with yourself. I did the same, taking that inner struggle with myself and seeing that I do not need academic degrees to see my own value, for a human’s worth is not in those papers, it does not stand in what others think about you, is not even in your partner, but you, in your soul.

In my opinion, when you really love yourself, you love your partner for you think of and love him completely, with his dreams, his desires, and his decisions which make him happy, not within the limits you set up for, through your perception, your eyes.

Actually, in a couple, each one can be a whole, and build together a life.

It always takes two in a tango, each one making own steps, but following the same rhythm.

I feel I am loved when my partner loves me as a whole person without trying to change me in who he wants/ likes me to be.

Real love does not mean control but the freedom to be who you are. True love does not need control of the ego. It does not impose conditions setting limits for ego satisfaction, it is not a prison of marriage, it is an act of respect and trust between two whole people, between two souls who can see and love each other for who they are. 

Photo of me

“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.” – Leo Tolstoy

My lesson: When you truly love, you do not impose your limits on your partner but respect him for his courage to show you the limits he sets for himself and because those limits are part of who he is, the person you love/ want to love.

Photo by Couleur from Pixabay 

With Love,

Disclosure:  This post contains affiliate links. It means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small portion of any sales at no additional cost to you.  I only share products I like, have ordered, and products I want.