Mirrors

What I’m about to share is deeply personal,

and while I’ve spoken about parts of this journey before,

I’ve never shared it with this level of honesty or clarity.

But this chapter of my life is too important to stay hidden.

It shaped my evolution, my boundaries, my understanding of love,

and the woman I am today.

For some, healthy romantic relationships seem to unfold naturally.

For others—including me—they require unlearning old survival patterns,

rewiring attachment wounds,

and facing the truths we once didn’t have the strength to look at.

A big part of my work has been recognizing

how easily I’ve attached to fantasy—to potential, to possibility,

to the version of love I imagined rather than the one I was actually living.

I am not sharing this from a place of hurt.

I share it from wholeness.

From insight.

From the far side of the transformation these experiences demanded of me.

Mirrors

Intimate relationships are mirrors—

unyielding, revealing, and often far more honest than we are prepared for.

I learned this not through one relationship,

but through the overlapping complexity of two very different ones

that shaped me in ways I couldn’t see at the time.

After my divorce, I entered a ten-year relationship with a man in active addiction.

Around that same period, I also found myself in a years-long, undefined connection

with a man who was deeply afraid of intimacy—present one moment, distant the next,

open with his heart in flashes but unwilling to offer the consistency

that real partnership requires.

Over time, that undefined connection shifted.

What began as emotional intimacy eventually became an affair—

a turn in the relationship that forced me into a deeper reckoning.

And in that reckoning, I confronted something profound:

how attached I had become to the fantasy of what we could be,

even when the reality showed me he could not meet me.

Two mirrors.

Two truths.

Two versions of myself coming into focus at once.

With the addict, I saw my longing for stability—

for companionship, family, solidity.

But I also glimpsed the wounds I didn’t yet know were steering me:

the belief that I was fundamentally broken,

that I didn’t deserve better,

that if I could fix him, I might not have to face myself.

I didn’t just stay—I left repeatedly,

only to be pulled back into the same orbit.

What we had was a cycle,

equal parts comfort and pain,

a bond that soothed my wounds even as it deepened them.

I knew I deserved more,

but breaking free felt harder

than returning to what was familiar.

The undefined connection held up a different mirror.

He was emotionally accessible in ways the addict wasn’t—

able to share truth and vulnerability—

but only in moments that asked nothing of him in return.

With him, I saw clearly my soft boundaries,

my deep desire to be chosen,

and the way I clung to possibility

more than I held onto reality.

Both mirrors revealed something true:

I wanted safety and emotional depth.

I wanted presence and honesty.

But I kept choosing people who could not offer either in a sustainable way.

During one of the breakups with the addict,

I made a choice that quietly changed my life:

I didn’t run to anyone new.

I dated lightly but remained celibate for nearly two years,

forcing myself to face my own patterns—

the loneliness, the shame, the belief

that closeness had to come through someone else.

It was the beginning of breaking my cycle of serial monogamy.

The beginning of learning to stay with myself

instead of disappearing into someone else’s story.

As the undefined connection stretched on,

I confronted my own needs—

saying what I wanted,

saying no when he couldn’t meet it.

His limitations became my clarity.

And then came my most recent relationship—

a mirror sharper than all the others.

It revealed my deepest wiring:

how quickly I love,

how easily I forgive,

how instinctively I absorb inconsistency

because it echoes the old fear of being left—

the little girl abandoned by her mother,

the young woman disowned for choosing her own path.

And here, too, I saw my attachment to fantasy—

how much of the relationship lived in my mind,

in the hope of who he might become,

in the future I imagined rather than the present I was living.

I understood my desperation to be chosen.

I saw how swiftly I diminished my needs

to keep the connection alive.

I came to understand how beautifully I loved

and how rarely that love had been returned in full.

For years, I had built the version of myself

who could attract healthy love.

But I had not yet built the version

who could walk away from anything that looked like love

but asked me to ignore the hurt, the longing, the insecurity, the empty promises,

and work hard to earn my place — to prove I was worth choosing.

This last mirror forced me to meet her—

the woman who chooses herself

no matter how loudly old wounds or beautiful fantasies beg her to stay.

And for the first time,

I didn’t flinch from the reflection.

I looked straight at it and chose me.

Intimate relationships are mirrors.

They reveal what remains unhealed,

what we’ve outgrown,

and what we’re finally ready to choose differently.

And if any part of my story mirrors your own—

if you’ve loved in ways that cost you,

if you’ve stayed longer than you meant to,

if you’ve held onto fantasy when reality was asking you to let go—

I want to offer you this:

You are not alone in that.

You are not damaged for having learned love the hard way.

You are not defined by the places you’ve bent or broken.

You are capable of choosing again.

Every time you look honestly at your patterns,

you reclaim a piece of yourself.

Every boundary you set,

Every truth you speak,

Every moment you decide to stay with yourself

instead of abandoning your needs—

you are reshaping your future.

There is hope.

There is possibility.

There is a version of love that does not require longing or suffering to sustain it.

And most importantly:

your choices matter.

They are the bridge between who you were

and who you are becoming.

No matter what you’ve lived through,

a new reflection is always available—

sharpening slowly, steadily,

as you choose yourself

one brave step at a time.