We all know the cliché breakup line, “It’s not you, it’s me.” Maybe you’ve said it, maybe it's been said to you. Either way, it's used when we either a) have no valid reason to leave someone, b) don’t want to say why we really want to break up with them, or c) it’s them and not you.
But maybe it is really us and not them.
We all go about relationships differently, and we all need love in different ways. Some of us need to hear why we are loved, some of us need to be shown why we are loved, and some of us don’t really need anything. We give love differently, too. Some people need to touch, some people need to talk, some people need their space. Basically, people are different. (Obviously.)
How many times have you let a relationship fail because someone didn’t love you the way you wanted? How many times has someone left you because you didn’t love them the way they wanted? I hate to admit it, but we are selfish in relationships because we don’t think. We don’t think about them. We think about how we love to be loved, and then we love our significant other in that same way. You may think you are being as giving and loving as one can possibly be, but you are only giving and loving in the way you desire.
And maybe that’s not what they want.
When I say that we are selfish, I mean we don’t think about how others take love. Sometimes, it’s hard to think how someone else thinks. In fact, it’s really hard -- especially on topics like love because it's such a complicated and undefined thing. We sit and think that our definition of love is the only right one because how are we supposed to know otherwise? How am I supposed to know how you want to be loved?
When we say, "It’s not you, it’s me," it can be very truthful -- and not just a scapegoat for a breakup. We all love differently, but we also have all been in different kinds of relationships -- romantic or not. We all have pasts that can be complicated and impact our future relationships. You can brush off a bad relationship, but subconsciously, you go about relationships differently afterward. You love differently when you are cheated on. You love differently when you lack a father. You love differently when you’ve been through something traumatic.
So yes, it really is me. I’ve been through things that affect me daily, and so have you. We have all had good and bad relationships with family and friends and boyfriends and girlfriends. We all have had something bad happen. And it sucks, but we have to open our minds and think about how love is so diverse and complicated. We need to think about how we can expand our already elaborate idea of love and how it should be.
We can think about how we can love others, but we also need to be considerate of ourselves too and learn how we need to be loved. We need to face our realities and situations and accept that maybe we are a little needy. Maybe we need attention a lot more than we want, but that’s okay. Relationships and love are all about discovery, compromise, and understanding. In order to be loved and give love, you have to understand you and the one you love. You have to understand and confront the cards you’ve been dealt in life and how that affects you.
And that’s where it gets complicated, because when we typically say, “It’s not you, it’s me,” we don’t understand that it’s not okay. We might not understand why we feel the way we do, so we say the simple phrase to avoid confronting that. Why do we want this to end? What didn’t I like about this? Why can’t I just put into words how I truly feel? It’s difficult to admit that yes, it is you -- you put up a wall or you shut people out. You aren’t as open as you used to be. You’re not the same person you used to be. You go about relationships a certain way… but why?
Maybe this punchline of breakups is less of a joke and more of a hard-to-face reality.
