Needabreak

I used to think this way, but I've learned that it's best NEVER to surrender judgment. Nor is it ever a good thing to care for anther more than myself.

I'm not saying this from a selfish perspective, but rather I have learned that ALL people are flawed to some degree, including myself. We have our good moments and our bad moments; our achievements and our moments of crises.

And most of all, people change over time. Our needs change, our dreams change. If I put another person up on a pedestal, and try to freeze a "perfect" relationship in amber, then I am only surrendering my own judgment, my own responsibility as an autonomous individual to hold others accountable for their behavior toward me.

So many of us here on this side of the forum (myself included) have, in our search for a misguided notion of love, blinded ourselves to who are partners are, and tried to make them into something that they are not, and that they don't even necessarily want to be. This is a terrible burden to place on someone else.

Even worse, some of us open ourselves up to real damage and abuse. When we expect another person to ALWAYS be there for us, to ALWAYS act in our best interest, to NEVER do anything that might hurt us, that is unrealistic. We end up accepting whatever treatment they dish out toward us. This is an abdication of our own responsibility to ourselves and to a relationship.