I might just start titling these posts: things 1~100000 I wish someone had told child-me.

But.

Yeah.

It’s invaluable to learn how to make the disconnect between “I am worthy of”, “I deserve”, and “I am owed”.

Some of you might be side-eying me right now about how “I am worthy of x” is almost precise synonyms with “I deserve x” and that’s fair!

In the case of relationships, however, I am choosing to make a distinction because despite my agreement that there shouldn’t be hierarchies in relationships, I do believe that there are differences between what you might want and expect from one person versus the other.

It’s also because otherwise, for me at least, it is too easy to fall into “I deserve X and I’m not getting X, so maybe either I’m not worthy or I should be mad at the person who isn’t giving me X” and let’s just bypass all that, okay?

You are worthy of love and respect. You get to be the true you and to be fully accepted as the unique miracle that is you.

That “being worthy of” is a statement in of itself and relies on no specific person to complete it.
Deserving is another thing. Within a relationship, you deserve honesty and open communication. You deserve reciprocity, and all the consequences thereof.

To be clear, “deserving” requires the willing participation of another person and I think what many people neglect to remember is that often “reciprocity” doesn’t look the way they thought it should.

Y’know, the consequences filed under “I loved someone and thought I was showing them love but they not only didn’t feel loved but they were actually quietly getting more and more resentful by the day”.

“Owed” is where things get sticky.

Because, the thing is, you cannot be owed anything without the other person’s agreement to that “debt”.

And in most cases where people think they’re owed something in a relationship — welp.

I think the difficult part here is admitting that the other person is totally at liberty to declare themselves free of any obligation to you, regardless of what you’ve spent on them. Be it money, time, emotion, or labor.

None of it matters if the other person doesn’t believe themselves in need of reciprocal behaviour.

Look, I get it.

I was in a relationship for eleven years with someone, thinking we were heading towards marriage, possibly kids, and definitely growing (old) together.

I spent so much money on that person, both directly in gifts, helping them pay off student loans, supporting them through underemployment and trying to get back to finishing their college degree, and in trying to build a forever home with them. Moving costs, furniture, electronics, down to food and clothing…

With the money I spent, there was the corresponding emotion.

Did it matter in the end?

Not to them, no.

All that I’d given over slightly more than a decade, they didn’t think it worth anything.

We’ll ignore how he refused to admit he wasn’t ever going to marry me and essentially stringing me along for years.

We’ll ignore how he broke the (fairly useless, but hey) promise to stay friends after our parting of ways.

You’d think as the person who spent eleven years with him, some of the toughest ones to boot, he’d take the time to send me off at the airport considering he said he still considered me his best friend.

Nah.

He told me the night before he couldn’t go with me to the airport because he was going to spend the night with his new girlfriend.

I look back and I genuinely find it funny how people lie to themselves and to others.

I don’t think he’d even been with her a month at that point, and he couldn’t wait that one night.

I was moving to Taiwan, essentially a completely foreign country, to move in with my parents because of my chronic illness that didn’t permit me to work outside the home.

I was leaving behind a relationship of eleven years, because he wasn’t willing to give up his up and coming life to be with me. Which I find completely reasonable, because I wouldn’t have been either.

I was leaving behind my entire social circle, all my friends.

I was also leaving behind a life I knew and loved and all the things I’d bought in celebration of that love.

I was moving to Taiwan with three suitcases and nothing else to show for eleven years.

Yeah, I judge him for what he did and didn’t do.

But is it useful for me to believe he owes me, whether in money, time, labor, or emotion?

Nah.

That’s just another anchor around my neck.

Because it’s not about him and his comfort and whether he sleeps at night.

It’s about me and my comfort and whether I sleep at night.

It only hurts me to believe he owes me when he doesn’t.

Did I deserve better?

I believe so, but that belief is useless outside of “next time perhaps don’t be with someone who lets you do everything and then just so happens to stop loving you when you can’t do everything anymore”.

For me, that’s where the value in divorcing “owed”, “deserved” and “worthy of” comes in.

No one owes me anything they don’t think they owe me, so my inability to wring water from a stone is because you don’t get water from stones.

I deserved better, but the person in question was a liar, so the failure of X to give me “better” is on him, not on me. In extension, assuming no wrongdoing on my part, any failure of someone to be decent is on them, not me, liar or otherwise. That said, as mentioned before, that knowledge is pretty useless outside of “don’t sew trousseaus for people unless you’re paid to do so”.

I am worthy of love, but no one in specific is required to give it to me. It is a general fact, like how the moon moves the tides.

You don’t ask life to refund your travel money when you’ve already taken the trip, when you’re already somewhere, even if you hate the place you’re at.

There is only gathering yourself to make another trip and hoping you land somewhere safe and welcoming.