Always A Fighter

A sad fact of life: It is easier to leave your current partner and find someone else who will give you what you want rather than staying when things have gotten difficult to try to make things work and reach a compromise.

In my earlier relationships, I have always been responsible for leaving. Why will I put up with endless fighting when I can just find someone else who won't fight with me? I justified leaving each relationship I had by rationalizing that I can just find one whose interests and principles match mine and who will be easier to get along with than my current partner. I highly value myself and I should fight for my ideals and what I want, even if it means having to leave another person for it. I was not afraid of being alone.

If we were to base our relationship pattern with how we were as babies -as suggested by most psychology and self-help books- then it can also be concluded that I had been a "leaver" since birth. I came into this world a week earlier than expected. I had left my mother's womb before I was completely "baked". Interpreted, it can be both positive -meaning I am more prone to be early for appointments. Or negative -meaning I am also most likely to leave a relationship too soon, probably before it is given a chance to hurt me.

But lately, I have tried to unhinge from my usual pattern of leaving. In my last two relationships, whenever I felt the urge to up and leave, I either control it and try to give another chance to my partner or when I've already expressed my need to be free, I listen and easily accept when they try to reason with me to stay.

In short, I had become a fighter not for my own cause but for the other person -fighting to keep them in my life, fighting to love them still despite any shortcomings they may have had.

But now that I am opening myself to lessons as part of my goal to a happier me, I am trying to strike the right balance between loving myself and being fair to the next person I will enter a relationship with. This means I won't just fight for anyone if they are not worth it simply to deviate from my old pattern (because the old pattern did not work).Being raised by parents who never wanted to meddle when I try to ask them to beat up past bullies at school, I know that waiting for someone to fight for you makes you weak. Fight for yourself because you are worth it.

Yes, I am back. And this time the fighting is for myself.