On higher standards, quiet phones, and learning to let go
Lately, it feels like my phone has gotten quiet.
I keep noticing it. Not because I am waiting for one particular person. I am not.
I think I am waiting for proof. Proof that somebody misses me. That somebody is thinking about me. That somewhere, someone has looked at the absence I left behind and thought, I really lost something there.
I wish somebody cared that they lost me.
It is not an especially comfortable thing to admit.
There have been several endings lately. Some mattered more than others. Some involved love. Some never had enough time to become love. Some were relationships I stayed in for years. Others were possibilities I held onto because I wanted to see what they might become.
Different people. Different circumstances. But I have been noticing something they all have in common.
Me.
More specifically, the way I have behaved when I wanted something to work.
I stay. I accommodate. I explain. I forgive. I reconsider. I convince myself I can live with things that make me uncomfortable. I tell myself nobody is perfect. I tell myself relationships require compromise. I tell myself I am being understanding.
Sometimes I have been understanding.
Sometimes I have just been abandoning myself very quietly.
For years, I confused my ability to endure something with evidence that it was worth enduring. I could tolerate it, so I did.
I stayed in situations that made me uncomfortable because I loved the person in them. I told myself I could handle complicated dynamics. I could be flexible. I could be patient. I could ask for less.
So I did.
I made my needs smaller because sometimes it felt easier than risking the relationship altogether. I convinced myself that if I were understanding enough, patient enough, accommodating enough, eventually I would feel secure.
Sometimes I stayed for years.
Other times, I stayed emotionally invested in something much shorter because the beginning had felt so intense that I kept waiting for that version of it to come back. I kept trying. Kept reaching. Kept hoping there was still something there to save, even when I was getting very little in return.
I have spent a lot of time hanging on after there was barely anything left to hang on to.
And even when I finally left, leaving was rarely the end.
I thought about going back. A lot.
Sometimes I did.
I have reopened doors I had already closed. Reconsidered decisions I had already made. Missed someone so badly that I began rewriting the reasons I had left in the first place.
Distance has a funny way of softening the parts that hurt. You remember the affection. The inside jokes. The familiar voice. The person you reached for automatically. You do not always remember, with quite the same clarity, how lonely you felt while they were still there.
I am trying to learn the difference.
Missing someone does not necessarily mean I made the wrong decision.
Loving someone does not necessarily mean I should be with them.
And wanting something to work does not mean I can make it work by wanting harder.
That last one has probably been the hardest. I love deeply. When I am in, I am very in. I am loyal. Devoted. Affectionate. I pay attention. I try to understand the person I love. I want to make their life easier. I want them to feel cared for.
Those are qualities I like about myself.
But I am beginning to understand that they can become dangerous when I offer all of them to someone who is giving very little back. Devotion can turn into over-functioning. Patience can become permission. Understanding can become an excuse I make on someone else’s behalf. And loyalty, without reciprocity, can keep me somewhere long after I should have left.
I have done that. More than once.
But lately, something has started changing.
I have walked away from things that hurt. And more recently, I walked away from something before it had the chance to hurt me in the same way.
There was no giant betrayal required. No dramatic final offense. No moment that would make everyone immediately agree that leaving was the obvious choice. There was simply a situation I looked at and thought, I know myself well enough to know this will make me unhappy.
And instead of waiting until I was deeply attached, resentful, or years into trying to convince myself I could live with it, I left.
That was enough.
I am not sure it would have been enough for me before.
I used to think I needed a very good reason to leave someone. Now I am learning that something being wrong for me is a good reason. Something making me consistently uncomfortable is a good reason. Something requiring me to ignore my own needs is a good reason.
And sometimes, simply wanting something different is a good reason.
This sounds empowering when I write it down. In reality, it has been lonely as hell.
Nobody tells you that raising your standards can make your life lonelier before it makes it better.
There is no immediate prize for deciding you deserve more. Sometimes there is just an empty space where a person used to be. Sometimes there is a quiet phone. Sometimes there is the temptation to reopen a door simply because you hate the silence on your side of it.
That is the part I am learning to live with now.
Not every empty space needs to be filled by the person who used to occupy it. Not every silence means I should reach backward. Not every ache is an instruction.
Sometimes I miss people I should not be with. Sometimes I still love people I should not be with. Both things can be true.
And sometimes I miss people I never loved at all. I miss the possibility. The excitement. The chemistry. The version of the future that existed briefly in my head.
That does not mean I need those people back either.
I think what I am really longing for is something I have not quite had yet.
Someone who loves me the way I love.
Not identically. People show love differently. But with the same seriousness.
Someone who does not need to be convinced that I am worth showing up for. Someone who cares when something hurts me because it hurts me, not because I have finally reached my breaking point. Someone who does not suddenly discover my value once I am halfway out the door.
Someone who cares about losing me.
I have spent enough time wondering whether someone will come back after I leave. For a long time, I thought that was the proof that I mattered: the text someone finally sent. The apology. The realization. Someone deciding, after I was gone, that losing me had been a mistake.
I do not want to wait for that proof anymore.
I do not want to spend my life hoping someone realizes what he lost after I am gone. I want someone who cares about losing me while he still has the chance not to.
Until then, I am trying to believe that the quiet is not emptiness. It is space I stopped giving to the wrong people.
I am not all the way there yet. I still look back. I still miss people. I still question myself. But looking back does not have to mean going back.
I can miss what was good and still admit that something was not enough. I can care deeply and still decide I need more than I am being given.
Maybe that is what is changing: I am learning to believe that wanting more is not asking too much. Maybe it is finally asking enough.
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