This is for the woman with a broken heart.
The woman who needed to shrink herself to feel accepted.
The woman who was emotionally and physically abused by a man who said he loved her and promised to love her all his life.
This is for the woman painfully wondering if she asked for too much.
The woman who felt she was too much to handle.
This is for the woman who is blaming herself because things did not work out as she was longing for.
This is for the woman who feels like she doesn’t deserve love and will never be truly loved.
This is for the woman who feels like the only chance in love she had is now gone.
This is for the woman who emotionally depended on a man who took advantage of her lowest points and her vulnerability.
This is for the woman who gave more than she imagined she would, just to feel loved, seen, and chosen.
This is for the woman who is agonizing right now. The woman whose chest hurts so much, and feels like she can’t breathe.
This is for the woman who is scared of silence because she feels like she can drown in her own thoughts.
This is for the woman who loved an illusion more than reality.
This is for the woman who was constantly humiliated, betrayed, used, ignored, and abused, but couldn’t clearly see what was happening, even if she was told so many times.
This is for the woman who kept silent to “protect” the same person who didn’t protect her from himself.
This is for the woman who thinks she will never find love.
This is for the woman who wants to heal so bad from this relationship.
This is for you.
I want to start by saying, from the bottom of my heart and with so much reverence (because we are entering a sacred space in your story and heart) that I am so sorry you are going through this. It is painful, I know. It feels like you are dying, literally dying. It feels like a part of you has been ripped away. You might feel like you do not even have the energy to get out of bed, shower, or eat. You tell yourself that maybe if you didn’t ask for too much, he would still choose you, if only you just stopped asking for “too much”, he would have stayed, but with so much love I tell you that it would have not changed the end of this story because it wasn’t about what you asked from him or what you gave from yourself. An abuser, an immature person, someone who doesn’t know how to love would have ended up breaking you over and over again regardless of how many times you did things differently… as he requested. It would never be enough.
His actions are not a reflection of your worth, they are just a reflection of his own emotional immaturity, selfishness, and poor character. And I know that this one is hard to believe because we have been so used to feeling worthless, useless, disposable and this relationship only deepened the wound and confirmed the lies. But the truth is that your dignity and your worth has never changed and never will: you are precious, unique, worth dying for. You are worthy of love, protection, and respect.
Please hear me out very clearly: IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT. It was not your fault to be disrespected, mistreated, and abused. It was not your fault to be bitten, to be ridiculed. It was not your fault to be manipulated, gaslighted, lied to, and cheated on. It was not your fault to be treated so poorly by a man-child. Someone doesn’t need to scream at you to abuse you, to destroy you, and to make you question your worth.
No, you are not exaggerating. You are not making things up in your head. Unfortunately, during the abusive cycle, we tend to forget so many things. It can be a way for our brain to protect us from painful experiences. And then, after we start to process and re-process what we have gone through, the weight of reality can feel unbearable. It is a challenge to understand that the same person who said the right things was the same who was breaking us.
No, you were not asking for too much. He wasn’t man enough to realize he was giving you less than the bare minimum. You started to settle for less and less. You started to adjust yourself to what he wanted, what he needed, what he was willing to give… until you gradually started to lose yourself. You lost your spark, your joy, your peace.
It can be so easy to place the full responsibility and blame on ourselves. Especially if the other person excuses their own behavior based on what you did and what you didn’t do. And, even though we do have our own share of responsibility in staying in this relationship and the mistakes we made, none of them (none!) justify the cheating, the manipulation, the gaslighting, the lying. NONE.
I know that this moment feels like death and our brain will play us tricks because it is just trying to protect us. Our minds will bring up the good moments, the fantasy we created in our minds, the ways you felt during the good times, but it is not because you were happy, it is because our brain tries to keep us safe at all costs. It is important that you write down everything that happened in that relationship. Everything that broke you, every time you betrayed yourself, the ways you were losing yourself, the way you were treated. This is not to make you feel worse, but to face reality, as hard as it can be. And remember that someone who tells you he loves you and makes you feel like giving the minimum is a huge sacrifice is not your person and doesn’t love you.
Ask for help the times you need to. It feels embarrassing to talk about the same person and the same situation over and over again, but we need time to process and the people who love you will not see you as a burden. In fact, the people who love you want to be there for you because their hearts hurt when yours also hurt. Please reach out to your support system: your parents, your siblings, your closest friends, your therapist, your spiritual director, Jesus! Talk to them, let them hear you and speak truth in your life because
- When they say you do not deserve this, they mean it.
- When they say you are better off without him, they mean it.
- When they say you were not asking for too much, they mean it.
- When they say you do not deserve to be treated this way, they mean it.
- When they say you deserve to be loved and respected, they mean it.
- When they say this suffering is hard to bear, but things will get better, they mean it.
A heartbreak can sometimes come with excruciating pain and the way we handle this is influenced by
- Our attachment style (anxious, avoidant, secure)
- Our wounds (abandonment, rejection, injustice, etc.)
- What we gave from us in the relationship
- The lies we hear in our heads and the decision of believing or unmasking them
- If we surrender this pain to God, so He can restore us or not
I know that it is not easy to hear that this is a beautiful moment to let God make us anew and to deeply work on our healing and restoration because the least thing you can associate a heartbreak is beauty, but “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8, 28)
Try to take one step at a time. You don’t have to heal all at once, you don’t have to have everything figured out now. You just need to let yourself feel whatever you are feeling: anger, sadness, discouragement, loneliness, pain… feel it all, embrace it all, and surrender it all to God. I remember being on my bathroom floor crying my heart out, broken, and I just said “Lord, I praise You, I trust in You.” Because, at that moment, I couldn’t give Him more than my broken heart and that was more than enough to Him.
I know it doesn’t feel like it, but this is a unique moment to let God restore us and pick up the pieces and make us anew. A dear friend of mine shared with me about Kintsugi, the Japanese method of repairing broken pieces with gold. Rather than “discarding” the item or hiding its broken parts, this method honors the history of the item, making it more beautiful and way more precious. Ask God to restore your heart, your mind, your soul, your entire being. He will restore it, I promise you He wants to. May He repair our hearts with gold, but especially with His own flesh. This doesn’t erase the past, but it honors your story. The scars are a sign that you are no longer there and that there was more to life than that relationship.
Your story doesn’t end here. God wants to heal you. He respects our freedom and the decisions we make, but He is such a good Father, that He is just waiting for you to abandon yourself in His hands and let him heal you to make wonders in your heart and in your life. Jesus sees you and says “welcome back, my child”.
You are God’s child, let Him sustain you, heal you, restore you.
“But now, thus says the LORD,
who created you, Jacob, and formed you, Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name: you are mine.
When you pass through waters, I will be with you;
through rivers, you shall not be swept away.
When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned,
nor will flames consume you.
For I, the LORD, am your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your savior.
I give Egypt as ransom for you,
Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my eyes
and honored, and I love you,
I give people in return for you
and nations in exchange for your life.”
Please know of my prayers for you.
With so much love and tenderness,
Mari
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