We are not compatible any more

We didn’t grow apart.

We ran out of safety.

There was a time when silence between us felt normal.

Not peaceful.

Just familiar.

Arguments were never really about the dishes.

Or the messages unanswered.

Or who forgot what.

They were about something neither of us could name.

When he shut down, something in me panicked.

When I spoke, my voice sharpened before I could stop it.

We both thought the other was the problem.

But underneath that…

there were two people protecting very old wounds.

I wasn’t fighting him.

I was fighting the feeling of not being heard — a feeling I had known long before this relationship.

And when he withdrew,

he wasn’t abandoning me.

He was surviving the way he once had to.

No one teaches you this while you’re inside it.

You just keep trying harder.

Softer.

Quieter.

More accommodating.

More explaining.

Until one day you realise —

love isn’t failing.

Your nervous systems are exhausted.

That realisation didn’t save the relationship.

But it saved me.

Because for the first time, I stopped asking

“Why are we like this?”

and started asking

“What inside me is still waiting to be met?”

That’s where things shift.

Not dramatically.

Not cleanly.

But honestly.

If this feels familiar —

if relationships leave you confused, tired, blaming yourself or the other —

it doesn’t mean you chose wrong.

It means something old is asking for attention.

I sit with people in that space.

Quietly.

Without rushing conclusions.

Without deciding whether to stay or leave.

And I train practitioners to learn how to hold this kind of space too —

where wounds aren’t pathologized,

just understood.

Sometimes healing doesn’t look like fixing the relationship.

Sometimes it looks like finally meeting yourself inside it.

And from there…

whatever comes next is clearer.