Like countless other women, I thought that I could fix him. But we can’t.
Here’s why:
During the relationship
He exists in the relationships of thousands. He’s different, not like other guys— except that’s part of the facade. He manipulates you into thinking he’s special because he makes you feel special, at least he used to. He love bombs you right from the start with grand gestures and loving words, but it’s just to cover up his lack of affection down the line. Once he has you, he gradually stops trying, and you’re left wondering what went wrong. You think that you can make him love you again, but it’s too late. He’s bored of you.
When a man starts treating a woman poorly, she often blames herself. She believes his excuses, makes excuses for him, and takes responsibility when he won’t. She stays with him despite the poor treatment because she loves him and believes that he can be the man he once was. She ignores the red flags and pushes up her rose-colored glasses. She stays to see if he’ll change for her, but he never does, yet she won’t give up.
Falling in love is addictive. The butterflies when you see him, the fluttering of your heart when you get a notification from him— it’s intoxicating— but that euphoria fades. Naturally, the honeymoon phase ends. What replaces that initial infatuation is a deeper love, a bond of trust and connection. It’s an irreplaceable feeling of safety and security that comes with dating your best friend.
Sadly, he only likes the chase. It’s not the love that he’s addicted to, it’s the falling. The sensations are exhilarating, and he can’t get enough of the high. So, her cloud nine begins to rain. Sunny skies grow stormy, and she loses what they once had.
He doesn’t want to let go of the intoxication that attraction offers, so he finds it somewhere else. But he doesn’t leave her, not yet. He can’t leave because he doesn’t want to lose her friendship, her kindness, her love. He wants it all and knows that he can have it because he’s already gotten away with so much. So, he lusts for others, pushes her away and eventually cheats. Of course he denies it all and gaslights her until she lets it go. Arguments abound, but she thinks that she can save their relationship. She tries so hard to be better for him but can’t face the fact that he doesn’t want her anymore.
He soon finds a shiny new toy to play with, and she knows it. She just doesn’t want it to be true. He values lust over love and doesn’t care about how his actions affect her long term, only how he feels in the moment. Yet she clings to the hope that he loves her back.
It’s quite simple, how he treats her is how he feels about her. She tries to decode it and continuously makes excuses but really he acts like he doesn’t care because he doesn’t care. If he truly loved her, then he wouldn’t put her in a position where she wonders why he acts the way he does. It would simply be organic. Unapologetic and innocent.
She becomes increasingly jealous. As a jealous girlfriend, she is a faithful girlfriend. There’s a limit to this, but if she doesn’t get jealous when someone else has his attention, it’s most likely because someone else has hers. Her jealousy symbolizes her care and fear of losing him. But he should have never given her so many reasons to be jealous. He convinced her that she was just insecure and that she was trying to control him. He made her feel crazy so that he wouldn’t have to admit to his unfaithfulness and could continue flirting and hooking up with different girls while benefiting from her love.
She used to trust him completely. They had no secrets and communicated well. She could even unlock his phone if she wanted to, not that she ever had a need. However, once her suspicions arose, he suddenly started placing his phone face down and fell speechless when she entered the room. He grew cold toward her, stopped confiding in her and lost interest in her.
“Sometimes how people treat you is a projection and reflection of how they feel about themselves,” she thought. “If I can help him love himself, then he can learn to love me again,” she thought.
She thought wrong.
She was there for him through everything, but all of her love and support was only preparing him for someone else. She didn’t want to change him, she loved him for who he was, she just wanted to change how he was treating her. The problem was that he wasn’t willing to fix that, at least not for her.
After the relationship
After admitting to all of the cheating and lies, he left her.
He liked her because she was loyal, something he couldn’t be. All she ever wanted was for him to be happy. She just hoped it would be with her. She wasn’t perfect but she tried her best for him. She nurtured him in a way he never reciprocated. He stayed with her because she helped him start healing himself.
Then he left for someone else and was better for them, not her.
He left all happy and healed while she hurt. Once he was done with the homewrecker with no morals he moved on to the next girl. And the next. And the next. And the next.
He used to say things like, “I’m so lucky,” “You’re my world,” “I never want to lose you,” but once she made him feel like he was enough he decided that he was too good for her.
He had found his high again, sexual fulfillment through hookup culture. Could he evolve past casual sex? Of course he could, she had taught him how to love. First he would have his fun, then hop into a relationship and be better for another girl because he couldn’t bear to be alone with himself for too long.
Maybe he’ll reach out and apologize to her, claiming that she deserves better, that he’s trying to be better and that he will never hurt anyone else like that again. Is that supposed to make her feel better? That he’s just going to give another girl everything that she wanted? No. If anything, it just reinforces the fact that he could be better, he just wasn’t willing to be better for her.
Maybe he really does feel guilty? Guilty enough to move on immediately like nothing ever happened. Or maybe he misses the love and care she gave? He knows that no one will treat him the way she did. Either way, it wasn’t enough for him to change for her, but he’ll do it for someone new and exciting.
She gave life to her relationship by romanticizing it and putting in more than she got back. Relationships are supposed to be two-way, so when he stopped putting in effort it forced her to give all of her love until it drained her. Now exhausted, she felt empty.
Yet, she still loved him and knew to some extent that she always would. She put out a “f*ck you and her, it’s your loss” attitude and tried to hide her new raging insecurities from being cheated on by acting confident and unbothered, but really she was thinking “why her, and not me?”
She tried to find comfort in the fact that he would never find anyone better, but felt it unfair that she was so heartbroken while he was having the time of his life.
As much as she wanted to let him go, she couldn’t. The good times were so good that they almost outweighed the bad. She would occasionally have a “La La Land” moment in which she visualized a future together that would never exist. It was easy to long for something she had wanted for so long, she just wasn’t delusional about it anymore. Deep down she knew that if someone really loved her then they wouldn’t make her feel so sad.
When her relationship ended, she realized how ordinary he was. It was her love and energy that made him seem so special. She had given him her whole heart, just for him to break it. He would always mean a lot to her, as her love for him was genuine, but she hoped that one day he would regret what he did and realize that he lost someone great.
Despite everything, she knew that love lasts while infatuation is fleeting. She hoped that one day he would mature enough to realize that too. She would no longer try to fix or change someone who only put her down, she had learned her lesson.