Men’s inconsistency has taught me more about myself than it ever taught me about true love. Their pattern always reveals one obvious thing :
They want fire, but only if it doesn’t burn them and they want beauty but only if it doesn’t come with standards.
For two out of three years I spent in my long-term relationship I tried to mold myself into the kind of the girl he seemed to prefer. I changed my clothes, experimented with styles that I don’t feel comfortable with and wore makeup that didn’t even compliment my features.
I wasn’t expressing myself with him, I was performing for his approval.
And even after all of that, I caught him secretly searching for another girl behind my back that is completely opposite of my features, my vibe and my overall self.
That moment broke something in me and just remembering how I stayed up the whole night staring at the ceiling wondering how someone I loved could make me feel so worthless and replaceable. And still, I kept shrinking myself so he could comfortable.
By the last year of our relationship, I was exhausted. Something inside of me snapped, not out of hate but out of survival. Instead of feeling emotionally safe with him, I was in survival mode. I became harsh with my words, kept my guards up, not because that’s who I am, but because I had finally stopped protecting his comfort at the cost of my own peace.
And surprisingly, that was the year that he messed up and caught cheating behind my back. Not because I wasn’t enough but because he couldn’t handle me finally choosing myself. It took me along time to finally learn my lesson, I spent months blaming myself for not shrinking myself and getting defensive around him. Finally, I realised that he preferred the version of me that bowed to this satisfaction and he loved me the most when I was half myself. And when I finally do, he was intimidated with my standards.
Men like him don’t want a partner ; they want a convenient mirror.
What hurts the most is looking back and realising I was never the problem. I was just with someone who didn’t have the spine to match with the woman he claimed to love. I was looking at him with rose-coloured glasses all these times, when in reality he was just someone who settled for safe and predictable ego-boosting versions of love instead of doing the work to grow with the woman he wanted.
That’s exactly why so many men end up cheating or ruining their own families because they tend to choose the woman who makes them feel stable instead of the ones that makes them become better. They choose convenience over connection and then blame temptation when the truth is they never chose honestly in the first place.
But here’s the part I’m most proud of, I’m not angry anymore, I’m just grateful by this lesson and it showed me exactly the kind of love I will never tolerate again. I didn’t lose anything when he chose to betray our relationship, throwing years of memories down the drain just for the sake of lust. He lost someone who saw the worst version of him yet still chose to stay by his side, I know I’ve given the best of me during the relationship. It has been a year since it happened, I’ve stopped trying to look like the woman a man desires, I don’t shrink to fit someone else’s fantasy and most importantly I highlight my features with makeup instead of hiding them.
I am the woman a man has to rise to deserve, and so are you.
