Choosing Someone Who Doesn't Choose Us

Some time back, a client asked me, “Why do I keep choosing this person who doesn’t love me the way I love them? I keep wishing things could be different. But somewhere, I already know that the way I imagine us being together is probably never going to happen.”

And I think the hardest part of being in a relationship like this is not always knowing that something is wrong.

Sometimes, we know.

We know which conversations we keep having. Which promises we keep waiting for. Which parts of ourselves we keep putting aside because asking for what we need feels like asking for too much.

And yet, we stay.

Because the good days are so good.

There are moments when they hold us close, look at us with tenderness, make us laugh, remember something small about us. And for those moments, we feel it all again.

This is why I love them.

This is what we could be.

And when the bad days come, we hold on to these moments. We tell ourselves that the person who loved us like that is still there. That perhaps they are tired, struggling, distracted. That perhaps things will be different now.

We don’t even need to convince ourselves that everything is fine.

We just need to believe that the good days will come back.

And they do.

And then they disappear again.

Somewhere along the way, we stop asking whether we are happy in this relationship. We start trying to figure out how to get back to the days when we were.

I think this is what makes it so difficult to leave.

We are not necessarily waiting for something we have never experienced. We are waiting to feel something we have experienced just enough times to believe we can have it again.

But I keep wondering about something deeper.

Why does this particular person’s love become so difficult to give up, even when we know it is hurting us?

Sometimes, I wonder if we are waiting for more than love.

Perhaps we want to know that we matter enough for someone to change.

That if we explain ourselves one last time, they will finally understand. That if we are patient enough, loving enough, less demanding, less hurt, they will finally choose us without our having to ask.

And maybe, somewhere inside, we have begun to believe that if this person finally loves us the way we need to be loved, it will settle something much older than this relationship.

Perhaps we have spent a long time trying to be enough for people.

Learning when to speak and when to stay quiet. When to ask and when to adjust. Learning to understand everyone else’s difficulties while quietly making our own needs smaller.

We may not even recognise this as a pattern. It may simply feel like loving someone.

Until we find ourselves in a relationship where we are doing all of this again.

Trying to understand why they pull away. Trying to find the right words. Trying not to ask for too much. Feeling relieved when they come close again.

And perhaps the relief is what keeps us going.

Because for a little while, we don’t feel unwanted anymore.

We don’t have to wonder whether we matter.

We can breathe.

And we may begin to chase that feeling without realising how much of ourselves we are losing in the process.

I don’t mean that the love isn’t real. The beautiful moments may be entirely real. The person may have qualities we genuinely love.

But someone can have beautiful qualities and still be unable to give us the relationship we need.

And that is such a painful thing to accept.

Because then we cannot simply tell ourselves that we chose the wrong person and walk away feeling certain.

We have to grieve the good, too.

The laughter. The tenderness. The moments when we felt close. The future we imagined because, for a while, it didn’t seem impossible.

And perhaps we have to grieve the hope that one day, all our waiting will finally make sense.

That one day, we will be able to say, See, it was worth it. We made it. They finally understood.

What happens when we begin to accept that this day may never come?

I think sometimes, that is the loss we are not ready for.

Not just losing the person.

Losing the possibility that this person might one day become everything we have been waiting for.

And so we stay a little longer.

Even when we are tired.

Even when we know.

Even when we have already had this conversation with ourselves a hundred times.

I keep thinking about what my client said. She could see the difference between the relationship she had and the one she wished for. And still, she wished.

I don’t think we can simply tell ourselves to stop hoping.

But perhaps we can begin by asking ourselves something we may have been avoiding.

If this person never changes, what am I afraid that will mean about me?

And perhaps another question.

Am I holding on because of what this relationship is giving me today, or because I am still waiting for it to become what I have always needed?

Sometimes, we are not ready to let go of the person.

Sometimes, we are not even ready to let go of the hope.

And perhaps we need to be honest about that, too.