Outgrowing People You Still Love

I was thinking about them today. Not because I miss the relationship, but because I remember who I had to become to survive it. I remember the version of me that kept shrinking just to keep the peace. The version of me that believed I was the problem because they told me I was. The version of me that thought if I just loved harder, softer, quieter—maybe they would stop breaking me.

And because no one prepared me for love—not in the right ways—I didn’t have a blueprint for what care was supposed to feel like. I didn’t grow up watching love that nourished. I grew up around survival partnerships. Resentment framed as loyalty. Hurt people calling it commitment.

So when I met someone who gave me attention, attachment, intensity—I mistook all of it for love. And I was so hungry to be chosen, I didn’t even realize I was choosing myself last. Constantly.

And here’s the part that still stings:
I still loved them. I didn’t stop loving them when they hurt me. I didn’t stop loving them when I lost myself in the process. But love does not justify harm. Love does not excuse the wound. Love is not supposed to cost you yourself.

And realizing that was the beginning of my becoming.

Here’s what this ending taught me.

I didn’t have language for it at the time, but I was disappearing in real time. Bending. Folding. Playing small. I made myself easy to tolerate because I believed that was the only way to be loved. And when they blamed me for their harm, I believed them. Because anxiety taught me to assume fault. Because being AuDHD taught me to mask. So I molded myself into whatever made them comfortable—even when it hurt. But love that costs me my voice, my joy, my wholeness, is not love. It is erasure. And I refuse to erase myself ever again.

And hear me out — I’m not pretending I was perfect in any of this. Anxiety makes me run too. Not run away from accountability, but from the fear of being too much. I’ve disappeared mid-connection before. Ghosted without warning. Shut down when the pressure got too high. Not because I didn’t care, but because my nervous system interpreted intimacy as danger.

When my feelings got big, I froze. When someone got too close, I panicked. When I felt misunderstood, I shut the whole system down like a power grid in a thunderstorm. And then came the shame. The guilt. The replay. The “why am I like this?” loop on repeat.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to stay.
It’s that I didn’t know how to stay with myself in the moment.
My body was reacting to every version of love that once hurt me.

So while yes, I was bending and shrinking to be loved — I was also disappearing to avoid being hurt again. Two sides of the same wound. And both were survival. Both were me trying to protect myself, the only way I had ever been taught.

And I’m learning now that healing isn’t choosing one or the other.
It’s learning how to stay present without abandoning myself OR losing myself.

People love to say, “If you really cared, you’d work through it.” But some things cannot be worked through. Some harm can’t be undone. Some betrayals change the shape of your heart. I had to learn that loving someone doesn’t mean they get to stay. I can honor the part they played without inviting them back into rooms they’ve proven they will destroy. I had to learn to leave with love—for them and for myself. Because love does not mean access.

Sometimes, long after the love has settled in, you realize you’re incompatible. You cannot love them the way they want to be loved. They can’t love you the way you want to be loved. And sometimes another variable comes into play that fractures the entire dynamic, even when neither of you meant for it to.

Maybe it’s trauma waking up in the relationship and demanding attention.
Maybe it’s old wounds speaking louder than present intentions.
Maybe it’s the version of you they got too comfortable with — the one who didn’t ask for much, didn’t have boundaries, didn’t have a voice yet.

And when you finally grow? When you finally ask for more? When you finally start telling the truth about what you need? The relationship can’t hold it. Because the love wasn’t built on truth. It was built on comfort. On familiarity. On survival. On patterns you never agreed to, but performed anyway because it felt safer than being alone.

Healing didn’t require me to stop loving them.
Healing required me to stop offering myself up as proof that they could do better.

I used to spiral over every conflict, analyzing myself into dust, trying to figure out how I could be easier. Smaller. Softer. Less “sensitive.” Less “intense.” But the truth is, I was loving someone who did not know how to hold me. Someone who mistook my depth for difficulty and my softness for weakness. Someone who weaponized my empathy because they didn’t know what to do with it. And anxiety told me that if I just tried harder, I could fix the connection. But you cannot fix what was never built to hold you. I was never asking for too much. I was asking the wrong person.

And listen… I’m not innocent in any of this. I had never been in a dynamic like that before — the kind where you’re not just wanting connection, you’re starving for it. I was aching for belonging. For sisterhood. For “these are my people.” And nobody warns you that the older you get, the stronger that ache becomes. We talk a lot about romantic loneliness, but nobody talks about how adult friendship loneliness can swallow you whole. How you can be surrounded by people and still feel like nobody actually sees you.

So when I finally found a space where I felt held? I clung to it. Hard. I poured myself out. I adjusted. I softened the edges that weren’t even sharp to begin with. I molded myself into something I thought would be easier to love. And for a while, the season was sweet. It gave me joy. Laughter. Memories I’ll keep. I won’t pretend it was all pain — it wasn’t. It was real, until it wasn’t.

But seasons have endings. I just didn’t realize ours had already shifted.

I am not grateful for the harm.
But I am grateful for the clarity.

Because I survived it.

I got to the other side of something I genuinely thought would break me. I found myself again inside the grief. And what I learned is that endings aren’t failures — they’re course corrections. Sometimes God says, “This chapter is done,” and your nervous system is the only one still trying to reread it.

It is okay for some things to end.
Even when you loved them.
Even when you miss them.
Even when a part of you still wishes it could have gone differently.

Love does not require proximity.

And peace is not something I am negotiating anymore.

So, to close her out… you can still love them.
And never give them access to you again.

Those two things can be true at the same time.

Stop being so fucking forgiving.
You’re not healing. You’re overlooking the disrespect.

Be good, always. 🤎

Affirmation of the Day
I can love someone and still choose myself. I release what harms me, even if my heart remembers.

demi wilde