Hi all,
I am here to ask whether some of you have dealt (or still deal) with a problem I have experienced in a few relationships in the past. Which is to often feel like happiness within a relationship might be just one little mindset fix away.
By that I mean cases where I will find myself unhappy within a relationship but without anything that resembles an objective reason for that. And I still love the person very dearly. I don't want to hurt them, and my mind races: I don't want to leave them. I don't want to do this to them. They deserve the best of me. I just need to stop wanting out. And frankly, I shouldn't want out. This should work. If only I could just appreciate the fact that such a great person loves me and cares for me and is doing their part to make things work, I would have it all.
In the moment, I am incapable of just telling myself "meh, this just isn't working for me". I just feel like this person with me is a Godsend. That to walk away is to spit in the face of the universe or something. If only I could will myself into being happy with them, it'd make everything so much easier for everyone. And it just feels like it is feasible. Like it's just right there. I'd just have to... want it. As if the fact that I don't bring myself to be happy isn't because it cannot be done, but because i am somehow stubbornly refusing to do it.
This mindset has caused me multiple times to delay break ups, and often to end up getting caught in a bunch of back and forth, before it finally ends for good. Wasting months if not years in the process. And even when it finally ends, I am forever tortured with the illusion (?) that "of course it was right there, within arms length... what was I thinking". Only years later, once I no longer carry any emotional burden from that relationship, am I able to internalize "this wasn't working".