No one teaches you how to admit you might be addicted to the hope of someone. Nor how to stop being loyal to someone who isn’t emotionally equipped to receive what you’re offering. Some part of you knows that. Let me explain….
A lot of ppl are afraid that if they stop hoping, somehow they’ve failed. You haven’t. Sometimes chemistry doesn’t equal compatibility. At some point, you’ve got to stop clinging to the potential of what this could be, & look at the reality of what it is.
You’ve got to ask yourself brutally & compassionately: Do I feel safe here?
Or am I just addicted to the hope that maybe one day, they’ll become what I need? And if the answer hurts… that’s okay. Let it hurt.
Bc the pain of facing the truth is still better than the pain of living in a loop that slowly kills your spirit. The healing begins when you stop waiting. Bc you’ve finally started listening. You don’t need more hope.
You need peace.
You need truth.
You need reciprocity.
And sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is stop romanticising the potential & start responding to the reality. Even if it breaks your heart.
Start here: You don’t feel safe.
You feel hopeful. And those are not the same thing. Hope has kept you loyal to versions of people that only exist in your imagination. Hope has had you rehearsing timelines where they wake up, where they realise, where they finally become…
You’ve already seen what you needed to see. The question now isn’t what are they doing? The question is, why do you keep negotiating with the evidence? It’s time to stop asking if they’ll change.
Ask instead: What version of you keeps tolerating emotional poverty while calling it love?
This is radical acceptance.
It’s not passive. It’s not about giving up.
It’s the opposite. Radical acceptance sounds like:
“I wanted this. I really did. I saw the best in them. I stayed longer than I should’ve. I prayed, I tried, I over-explained, I softened every edge of myself so I wouldn’t scare them off. And still… they didn’t choose to meet me there.”
That’s not weakness. That’s not failure.
That’s information. Now what do you do with it? You grieve. Fully. Then, you get radical. You stop making excuses for the grey areas. You stop spiritualising red flags & calling it divine timing. Sometimes, it’s not timing. It’s trauma.
Hold yourself in the in between.
The detox. The shaking. The missing.
The part where your brain still craves the hit of dopamine that came from their half effort attention.
This is the withdrawal. Then rebuild but from clarity.
