There is a dangerous idea that all sorts of people hold about relationships, and I want to come out against it, with your permission.
If, in a relationship, you tend to be the one who gives everything, who bestows without limits, who automatically places the partner's needs before your own — you may as well go and live inside the kitchen sink, because you are more or less a doormat.
It is unbelievable that there are still people who think that giving your soul without accounting in a relationship is something to be proud of.
Do not blame the other person if, instead of loving you back day and night, they use you. I would do the same in their place. Most of us would.
That may not be pretty, and it arouses in you the automatic tendency to deny it and protest that you are not like that.
Untrue, and untrue again. You are like that. I am like that. We are all like that. If someone turns himself into a ladder, he should not be surprised that people climb him.
You have nothing to claim against your insensitive partner. There is not even legitimacy in whining the well-known modern lament that he does not see me.
He is not exploiting you. He is responding to the fact that you removed your self from the relationship.
Our deep aspiration is to maintain a bond with a person capable of challenging us, confronting us, even needling us in measured doses.
Because that is the only way we grow.
And if we are not growing, we are not optimistic.
So a moment before you sign a permanent lease inside the mop bucket, remember this and do not forget it.
If you grant only love without conditions, do not be surprised if the other returns to you a list of conditions without love.