My article:
How do you leave when you are still in love?
This was one of the toughest questions I ever
had to ask myself; and it was necessary. I had to find a way to leave because I
was in an abusive relationship. You know what the hardest part is? When you
love someone and you know they love you back but you can’t stay because the relationship is unhealthy.
It is very difficult to leave someone
when there are good aspects to the relationship, like: company, good sex, a
luxurious lifestyle, friendship. In my case, it was the love and companionship.
In my heart, I really wanted to make it work. He was fun, great company, he
understood me and he loved me; but you can’t make it work with someone who is
in denial about the severity of their behavior; and you can’t make it work with
someone who is not willing to improve.
There are people who say that if someone
loves you, they wouldn't treat you in certain types of ways. I don’t feel this is
necessarily true. There is a difference between feeling love and knowing how to
express it well. Knowing how to treat someone in a kind and loving way is a
learned behavior. People treat you as best they can based on who they have come
to be and what they know. So when it comes down to it, it’s not a question of,
does this person love you. The question is: Are they capable of treating you in
the way that you want/need to be treated?
This is what makes it so difficult. I
think what happens a lot of times is people connect love with behavior.
However, think about this: Someone could treat you like a queen (or king),
showering you with gifts and complimenting you but that doesn't mean that they
love you. That behavior could merely be a result of having parents who taught
him/her that that is the way you
treat a lady/man. Shoot, rappers do it every day and they “don’t love dem hos!”
Ha! In the wise words of Tina Turner, “What’s
love got to do with it?”
So how do we do it? How do we leave when
we’re still in love? Well the first thing you have to ask yourself is, do you
really want to leave? Then you have to answer that question honestly. Then make a choice and stick
with it. If your choice is to stay, then make that choice, deal with the
consequences and stop complaining to people about how poorly the person treats
you. (And yes, you are allowed to change your mind after you make a decision.)
If you decide that you do want to leave, then you have to ask
yourself, why haven’t you left yet? Are you staying because you don’t like
being alone? Perhaps it’s because you don’t have money to leave. Is it the
great sex? Are you staying because of the children or love?
There are many scenarios and I am not
going to get into all of them but I will do my best to express to you the
mentality you will have to develop in order to leave. Everybody’s situation is
different. The fact is, you can’t do shit with your stuff if you are dead. So
if you are in an abusive relationship, there’s no question… you have to get
out.
However, whether you are in a serious
situation or not, it’s really a matter of knowing that something has to be done
and doing it. Once you make the decision that you are going to leave, then no
matter what is keeping you in the unhealthy relationship, you need to find a
way to overcome it.
When you need to lose weight, what do
you do? You eat healthier and you work out. If that doesn't work, you might increase
your work out and start counting calories. Then, if necessary, you’ll start to
do research on how to change up your lifestyle and workout for optimum results.
If you’re still having trouble, you might go to the doctor to see what he
thinks or you might join Weight Watchers; but here’s the deal, if you really
want to lose that weight, can’t hell or high waters stop you. And losing weight
can be tough, lengthy, tedious and take months, if not years to accomplish.
Then, on top of all of that, you have to keep the weight off.
This is the attitude you have to have when
leaving someone that you still love and if you don’t have it, you have to
develop it. There is something that was said to me before by a counselor. She
said, “You don’t have to have all of the
answers now. You don’t have to cope emotionally now. You can leave first and then cope. You can leave first and then get answers”. You can deal
with the fact that they hurt you and all of the “whys” after you have separated yourself from the unhealthy relationship.
What we have to do as people (especially
women), is accept the situation for what it is and not what it could be. We
have to recognize what situation we are in, accept it, make a decision and then
work toward that goal and not stop until it is reached. Trying to change
someone isn't going to work. People are who they are and they change when they want to change because they want to change. The fact of the matter
is, they might very well change… just not while they’re with you and that can hurt to see but at the
same time, your leaving them is probably what propelled them to change.
Also, you cannot wait forever on people
to change. There is a difference between waiting on someone to change and trying
to change them. I never tried to change my Ex. I was waiting on him and working
with him to change, per his request. I told him what was not going to work and
he assured me that he was working on himself and that I should be patient. This
was logical to me because I agreed to be committed to him and commitment is
about patience and team work, but once I realized that he was taking advantage
of my patience, it was no longer logical.
He used to say to me all of the time, “We have our whole lives to work on it,”
and I would always say, “No. We don’t. We
have to fix it now because our life is happening now”.
With his type of
attitude, nothing ever gets done and by the time you decide to work on it, you
are tired, old and set in your ways. Waiting on someone that is not going to
change or is changing very slowly is a waste of your time and you deserve to be
treated well NOW. You shouldn't have to wait. Besides, what they are saying, in
effect is, “Your time is not valuable to
me. You can wait a few years longer while I treat you like shit and then, when
I feel like being better, I’ll work on it… if I’m not too old and set in my
ways.”
Now for those of you who are reading
this and saying, “Well, it’s not that
easy,” then I suggest that you go back up to the suggested questions and
review the one that asks: Do I really want to leave? In fact, I will do you one
better and say that that question should be: Do I need to leave? Because you may not want to, I didn't want to, but I needed to; and so I did. You can too.
XOXO
Lola K.
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