This Girl's Worth

Tell me if you resonate with this pattern of thinking. Suppose this is a love letter to the one person who broke your heart.

When I met you, I thought you could be the one. I was so deeply in love. You were going to be my man, my husband, the father to my kids, my business partner. I put my everything into making us work. I poured into you, I cultivated you, I did all I could to love your pain away. I tried to be everything you never had, or at least you said you never had, and more. That’s what love is. You made me feel like I was the definition of love.

After some time, I noticed how you never loved me quite as deeply as I loved you. I was sacrificing myself and bending over backwards. In the beginning, I didn’t ask much of you, but I was at least expecting reciprocity.  I expressed that a million times, but of course nothing changed. So now, we’re in a rhythm of a one sided relationship, and I am unhappy.  It made sense to stay because of how much I loved you. In the beginning, I was getting to know you and didn’t expect much, but now, after I’ve shown you how much I love you, I’m devastated that my needs aren’t being met. I don’t feel like you even see, hear, or care about what I give to you. It feels like you expect it. So, what do I do?

I tried harder. I needed you to love me. I’m showed you that I loved you by slowly releasing my boundaries, by expecting less, by doing things more of the things you liked. I took an interest in the things you wanted to do. I tried to read your thoughts to be the perfect person for you. Of course, you didn’t appreciate that either, which made me feel emptier and emptier, except now, I don’t even recognize myself when I look I look in the mirror. 

How could not see how much I loved you? How much I would have done anything for you? All I wanted was love, appreciation, for you to show and tell me I’m enough for him and to reciprocate the love I gave. You made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, like I wasn’t lovable. You failed to tell me you never really loved me. 

If this was you, I’m sorry.  If reading this triggered you, this post is for you. Ideally, we would be able to love people and it would pay off.  The more we decide to see the good in someone, we hope that some point, they will honor us and be everything we need. Unfortunately, there is one major flaw: why do you have to work to be seen, heard, and loved? One crucial piece of the conversation is missing, boundaries. There should be a part of your self esteem on the inside that says, “I’m not getting what I need, so some things have to change. If there wasn’t, it’s okay. This isn’t the end. Recognizing it means that you can begin to dismantle your codependency.

Codependency is the toxic thinking that you must earn other people’s love and consideration and that relationships operate from obligation, not wants or desires. If your reasoning for why you took abuse, mistreatment, lies, and not receiving what you need is “because of love”, this is codependent thinking.

In the story, obviously, you didn’t do anything wrong, but your reasoning doesn’t account for that. Instead, codependent thinking assumes blame of self no matter what. Somehow, another person’s decision to hurt me is a reflection of me, not a reflection of them.

Really, you can frame that same story to say I am giving my entire self, I am sacrificing my entire being and the ends do not justify the means, so what’s wrong with me? Why aren’t I lovable? Why aren’t I good enough for him?

A healthy sense of self would say, I have a lot to offer, and this person doesn’t meet my needs, so I need to honor myself. 

Again, don’t be discouraged. As we discover our worth, we learn how to honor ourselves. Pay attention to the ways that codependency might be showing up below.

1) You excuse bad behavior.

You call it just always wanting to see the good in others, having a big heart, or being too forgiving.

Really, someone does something that crosses your boundaries and for whatever reason, you do not change your boundaries with this person.

For example, you find out your boyfriend cheated on you, you get upset, they apologize and promise it won’t happen again. You feel that they really love you, so the love is all you need to get by. You forgive, you trust them, you may have insecurities from time to time, but overall, you assume they will never do it again knowing how much they hurt you.

😂 That was cute.

When someone hurts you, when someone crosses your boundaries, you get to dictate the terms for your healing, with means boundaries need to be put in place and they need to be upheld and respected at all costs. The consequences don’t consider all parties. For example, you can’t say that you can’t breakup because it will hurt them, they obviously are sorry (this was my process and I’m not the only one). If you need a break, you need to breakup. You matter more than their crocodile tears. All guilty people are emotional.

If this is you, you need to make people explain their reasons for their behavior, slow down before accepting apologies, and set boundaries and consequences for crossing your boundaries that will be conducive to your healing. Don’t worry about how the other person feels about your boundaries, worry about if you are hurting yourself and not honoring yourself by not enforcing them.

2) You struggle setting boundaries.

Most of the pain of codependency is the struggle of setting boundaries. Boundaries allow us to feel safe. Boundaries can change at any time, but we have personal boundaries to make sure that we’re a working machine, we have relationship boundaries to make sure the relationship can flourish, and we have boundaries with children to create a safe environment and teach them good morals, and God has boundaries with us, we can’t do, say, believe everything and still go to heaven. Boundaries are unavoidable.

Poor boundaries come from both ends. If you have a habit of running through or touching people’s things out of curiosity, asking too many questions, or become everyone’s savior, those are boundary issues. Other boundary issues include never setting them and just assuming that everyone knows what unacceptable (your lines).

You may be right, most things are unspoken, but they still should be spoken. You can’t walk into any situation and expect anyone to understand your personal terms and conditions. You need to communicate them.

And when these boundaries are crossed, they need to be reinforced. People should face consequences for crossing boundaries that break trust, cause harm, or endanger others.

3) You feel bad for setting boundaries and often feel obligated.

Setting boundaries can feel like you’re being uptight or beating a dead horse, especially when you’ve communicated how something makes you feel. What’s worse, is when someone crosses your boundaries, you feel bad for having to reprimand them.

An example is that I had a guy friend who told me he loved me and wanted to be with me. His whole intent was to manipulate me to have sex with him. Time and time again, I declined, but he kept inching closer and closer, until he forced himself on me to kiss me. I just let it happen and didn’t push him away because I felt bad. Afterwards, I told him it was not okay.

So he violated me, and I felt bad. 🙄Why did I feel bad? Because I knew he liked me and I kept hanging alone with him. Also, all the other tests he gave me, I never corrected him for, instead, I just took it as another sign of how much he liked me. I also told him I didn’t like him that way and I didn’t want to have sex or be physical, so I did my part, right? Mostly yes.

Two main things are happening, I assumed responsibility for what he was doing and I knew I struggled to set proper boundaries, so I felt trapped. The proper boundary, which is what I set a little too late, was to cut contact with this person who repeatedly violated my boundaries. This should have happened in the beginning. Not two months after him constantly testing me and me just taking it.

Guiltiness from setting boundaries almost always means childhood trauma was present. It is uncomfortable in the beginning, but an absolute necessary step to start expressing when you’re uncomfortable wihh something, if you don’t like something, and when someone crosses the line. Not only should you communicate it, you should be prepared to do something about it.

In the end, you pay the consequences for failing to speak up. And no, speaking up doesn’t mean you aren’t sweet, loving, caring, and giving. Don’t be scared of the criticism or what people will think, be cautious of a life people taking advantage of you.

4) You don’t say yes or no, but you let people proceed.

The b word, boundaries. Your yes should mean yes and your no should mean no. You also should have a right to say yes or no all the time. Even if you initially said yes, you can change your mind and say no.

Which means you can decide to go on a date with someone and during the call, they make you feel uncomfortable and you can change your mind. A codependent personality says, I already said yes, so I just can’t say no all of a sudden.

Yes you can. There is absolutely no obligation.

A copendent personality also says that no response means yes, not no response means no. An example, if you’re on this date and the guy asks if he can kiss you, you stall and he takes it upon himself to kiss you. There should be something inside of you to say, “He didn’t give me a time to respond.” Codependency will try to find the positives or take the blame for you not responding by justifying it. A healthy person would say, no response means no, so technically, he violated you. But you see how that can tricky when you don’t have a clear sense of boundaries?

5) You don’t ask for what you need.

You give until you run on empty, and then get frustrated you’re not being poured into.

One of my couple’s therapists described it brilliantly as, relationships operate on agreements. If you’re like me, you give from the goodness of your little heart and you don’t ask for much but to have some support when you fall.

However, the point is not to love so hard that you keep falling. Setting boundaries allows you to love deeper and longer.

In the beginning, when any relationship is forming, you need to set your standards. If they can’t meet them, you have to be willing to walk away.

You can’t force them to become what you need, you can’t wait until tomorrow for them to grow into loving you the right way, you have to be willling to walk away. You can’t be upset if you never set the standard for what you need if in return, your needs are never being met.

6) You don’t enforce your own boundaries.

I would express how I felt and attempt to set boundaries, but left all of the reinforcing in someone’s hands.

I would say, If you do this again, (insert threat to end relationship here) will happen. I meant it too, but what happened when it happened again? I got mad. I became frustrated. I may have not talked to for a few days.

Then what would happen? All it took was an apology, for them to cry, or a handwritten letter for me to not follow through with the consequences.

By not following through with my own consequences, or not enforcing own boundaries, I’d put all of the ownership into their hands. I expressed my frustration, and since they apologized, they must understand the severity of their actions?

Nope, and how could they? You don’t even follow through with your own consequences. You hold no one truly accountable. The first time this happens, that’s being forgiving, but when the pattern persists and we don’t stop the madness and hold people accountable, we can only blame ourselves for allowing that in our lives.

At a certain point, no one is just doing something to us, once we see it’s a pattern and we don’t do what’s in our power to remove that, we allow it.

Please note, what we allow and give permission to are two different things.

7) You cry wolf too often.

At this point, you don’t even know how many times you said you’re going to leave. The intent may be 100% there, you are over it, but you can never get your heart and your head in the same place.Or, even worse, you do breakup, but you always allow him to come back.

The first one says, I’m all talk and the second one says, I’d rather have you than my sanity. Either way, the end result is resentment.

While it would be nice to live in a world that follows Biblical love, the one that urges us to look after one another more than ourselves, codependency uses this false pretense and sets us up for continuous disappointment. Biblical love is not the absence of boundaries, it is the absence of exhalation of self.

All relationships require growth, understanding, forgiveness, and grace, but when these relationships require constant forgiveness and complete invalidation of our existence or boundaries, then there is a problem. There is an even greater problem when something deep down inside of us, a healthy sense of self has given up your ability to walk away from things that will destroy you.

We have to figure out what keeps us obligated, what keeps us giving up so much of ourselves. What is that voice deep down inside that cares more about their happiness than our own? Why does their mistreatment of us make us feel as though we are not good enough? That inner voice needs to be canceled. It’s time for a new program in your mind.

We are internalizing the world’s shortcomings as our own. While you may think, ” At least codependency isn’t hurting anyone else like narcissists or borderline, etc.” But, codependents hurt themselves. Codependents attract narcissists and toxic people because they have this desire to not ruffle feathers, step on any toes, and to please for those they love. Because we pour so much energy into the wrong people and we don’t enforce boundaries, we end up missing out on some really good people. This is how many of us play parent, therapist, or my person favorite, build a man.

When we enforce boundaries, the wrong people get weeded out very early in our lives. Why? Because they are not going to put up an act for forever to get what they want. If people face consequences for their actions, they are less likely to act. It also gives people time to reveal intentions. Those who come to lie, steal, and destroy won’t hang around long if you create accountability and take ownership for your needs, wants, and feelings.

Good news, if this resonated with you, codependency can be healed. It is something you can work out through therapy and surrounding yourself with the right people. It can also be worked out by setting boundaries; you have to be honest about what you want, what you need, and what you won’t accept, and have to take ownership over enforcing that. It is never too late to set boundaries, even for things that happened in the past, so don’t feel guilty about doing it. It’s necessary for your healing.

Truthful moment: in setting boundaries, some people are going to give you a hard time. You will lose some relationships. This is natural and normal. The toxic people are weeding themselves out.

I’m excited for you on this journey. It’s hard, but the reward of a healthier whole you is far greater than a bunch of broken relationships with a self sacrificing you. You deserve someone who loves you when you’re not bending over backwards to make them happy.