“He doesn’t deserve you.”
Oh honey, no one is more aware of that than me. There have been so many staff meetings with him that I’ve endured and for many of them I’ve wanted to give him a good kick in the head to set him straight. And I wonder why, why, why do I still care about this jerk when he so obviously is not deserving my love? What’s wrong with me? (Hint: if my brain’s response to your words is “What’s wrong with me?”, what you said is definitely not helpful.)
But you only see all the reasons he doesn’t deserve my love. I see not only that but also all the reasons he was worthy of my love. I see all the kind things he did for me. Most of them were during our relationship, but some of them date back to the first shift I worked with him and others are from after we broke up.
Whenever you say this, I mourn the times when he was worthy and deserving, when he was loving and gentle and kind. And I mourn not just for me, but for him, for his loss of goodness and innocence, because I remember what he was like before he was hit with all the responsibilities and disappointments of the adult world.
And whenever you say this, the dam full of every hurtful thing he’s said or done ever bursts open inside of me, along with every anxious doubt I’ve ever had, which just makes me depressed.
Also, anyone remember that part from the 2017 Wonder Woman? That one quote? “It’s not about deserve. It’s about what you believe. And I believe in love.” Love has never been about deserve (which is precisely why building a romantic/sexual relationship on love alone can be incredibly dangerous). So trying to convince me to stop loving someone with an argument about who deserves what really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me because that’s just not how love works.
(Note: I’m changing the format of the Annoying Thing People Say After A Break-Up posts. Instead of each annoying thing together in big long posts, I’m going to do them in smaller tidbits because that feels more organized to me.)
The Intersection of Everything 