“Because you heal doesn’t mean they will. If you heal and they don’t, you’ll remove what you had in common. Compatibility is season-based.”
Can we talk about how hard this hit me when I first saw it on TikTok?!
I will admit my personal posts on TikTok are a little ratchet and mock the shit-show that has been my experience with online dating, co-parenting, and single-life. However, TikTok has been unexpectedly comforting over the last few years as I’ve gone through the ups and downs of divorce and heartbreak. This was one of those posts:
@i_am.the_phoenix Not everyone heals at the same speed & Once you heal, There's no turning back. #soulfamily #empowerment #healingtiktok #mindfulness #foryoupage #fyp ♬ This can be found at charismotivational - JFRE
It got me thinking. Why do we put so much pressure on young adults to get married and have kids? Why is 30 considered old? Why did me and so many of my millennial peers feel pressured to check the boxes at such a young age? Because we needed to fit in? Because society is afraid that if we don’t while we’re in our 20’s we’ll never find a man and run out of time to procreate?? How can a person with little to no relationship or life experience be expected to make an informed decision about who they want to spend the “rest of their life” with?
We need to kill the expectation that relationships/marriages are meant to be “forever”. Some relationships are meant to be lessons that help us wake up to our trauma and toxic patterns so we can heal. Not everyone is willing to face it. It takes a great amount of courage to admit that you’re not happy and do something about it, because we’ve been taught, as women, we’re not supposed to leave, we’re supposed to fight for our family, fight for our partners, but in most cases, our partners are not fighting for us, or willing to do the healing in order to maintain compatibility.
I especially feel this with my last two significant partners. We have nothing in common at this point. I’m not the same co-dependent, unhappy person I was five years ago, or six months ago. I’ve done the work to heal, understand and appreciate myself, and break the patterns and cycles that were causing me to feel stuck and unhappy for so long. Sadly, some choose to continue running from themselves, because growth is hard, and messy, and it forces you to face things about yourself you don’t like. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t make someone else happy and you can’t fix it for them. If they hate themselves, all the love you have to give will never be enough. The hard truth is that you have to wish them well and keep it movin’ sis, because you deserve so much more.