When it comes to love I tend to believe that you don't necessarily deserve any specific type of person. You don't deserve someone amazing just because you're a good person who does good things, and you don't deserve someone less than amazing because you have a hard life or get into trouble a lot. Just because people think I'm intelligent, loyal, or kind doesn't mean that I deserve to be with a saint. Love is about who you want to be with, not what you deserve. It's about who makes you happy and who you choose to love. If you deserve anything, it's to be with the person you love.
While I still hold quite firmly to that belief, I have come to realize that there are things that people do deserve when it comes to a significant other.
Every girl and every boy, every man and every woman, no matter who they are, what they've been through, or where they are in their life, deserves to be respected, especially by a significant other. You deserve to be happy, to be with the one that you love, but you also deserve to be with someone who respects who you are and how you feel. Respect is important in any relationship.
I spent a year and a half with a boy whom I loved very much. I say boy for a reason, even though he recently turned twenty-one. There was more than one time when he tried to break up with me. His excuses were that I deserved better than him, or I should try to date other people. I didn't believe either of those things. I fought to keep us together because I loved him more than I had ever loved before. I didn't care that we fought all the time. I didn't mind his pig-headed tenacity that caused so many of the fights. I was more than willing to put up with his childish comments and persistent offensive behavior because I loved him. Ultimately, my love for him was all that mattered to me. When he told me that I deserved better than him I disagreed because I believed that I deserved to have the person that I was in love with.
I failed to realize then that I wasn't receiving the respect that I deserved from him. Every time we fought he ended up making empty promises to change. He promised to stop brushing off my complaints - that he was ignoring me, that he wasn't taking me seriously, that he was talking rudely to me - as if they were jokes. He promised to stop swearing at me as much. He promised to stop smacking my butt and grabbing my breasts constantly, though especially in public. In the end, he broke every single one of those promises, and more. In the end, he tossed me to the curb and refused to speak to me, as if all of our problems were my fault. When he ended things I begged him for two weeks to take me back, without even so much as a "no" from him. He ignored every message, every plea. I loved him more than anything or anyone, and he had said that he loved me the same. Then suddenly he turned his back on me. I was lost, confused, and hurt.
At first I thought that I might wait for him to change his mind and come back. Then, when he continued to ignore me (at this point I was trying to get his Sprint account and pin number so I could switch my phone off his plan), I realized that I really did deserve better. Yeah, I loved the guy more than anything in the world. I would have gone to hell and back for him. But I realized that, no matter how much I loved him, he wasn't worth my time anymore. Maybe I did deserve to be with the one I loved, but I did not deserve to be tossed to the curb while he was still claiming that he loved me and wanted to be with me forever. I didn't deserve to be completely ignored by the person I loved so much. Love isn't always worth that kind of pain.
I made a big decision in the third week after he ended things. I decided that I deserved a man, not a boy. I deserved someone who could handle relationship problems maturely and who respected me and my feelings. My ex had stopped showing me respect months before he broke things off. I should have ended things then and there, but I was caught up in wanting something that was less than what I deserved. In a sense, I was settling for the first thing that came along that seemed to satisfy my need to love someone.
The last message (apart from the ones when I was trying to get those damn account numbers!) I sent to him was this: "You were right. I do deserve better. I deserve someone who respects me." After I switched my phone back to my parents' plan I removed his number, deleted him from Facebook, and removed any remaining message threads I had from him. I still think about him every day, and he will always have a place in my heart. But if I had to choose between him and being alone for the rest of eternity, I would choose to be alone. I know that I deserve something better than him, no matter how much I love him.
It's not just about who you love. It's about who loves you enough to treat you with the respect that you deserve.
No comments:
Post a Comment