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To the Relationship Workhorses: It’s OK to Say ‘Enough’
Your relationships are not mirrors of your worth or lovability.
You might not know it from our physical appearance, but some of us can carry an entire relationship on our shoulders for months or even years at a time.
We are the friends/siblings/romantic partners who take charge of keeping the lines of communication open; monitoring every slight alteration in the other person’s mood and adjusting our behavior accordingly; and suppressing our own needs to focus exhaustive energy on what we can do for the person we care about. We do this hoping to receive love and consideration in return, of course, but we will keep doing it long after the other person stops putting in effort.
Ironically, all that heavy lifting doesn’t make us stronger; instead, it often makes our sense of self frail and sickly. And here’s the worst part: in the end, it usually fails anyway — because a relationship can only exist for so long when one person is doing all the maintenance work.
When an unbalanced relationship (romantic or otherwise) ends, it can feel like a personal failure on the part of the individual who was more actively invested. We wonder, “If I gave this my all, and it still wasn’t good enough, what does that say about me? Perhaps I myself am not…
