I was in a relationship for two years that I knew, pretty much the whole time, wasn’t right.
I’ll spare you the details, because they’re not really the point. The short version: he wasn’t in it for the right reasons, and he wasn’t able to show up the way a partner should. That part matters less than you’d think.
Here’s what it actually did to me. I was an anxious mess for months. Because some part of me knew something was wrong, and I didn’t feel like I had the evidence to do anything about it. I kept waiting for proof. Some undeniable thing I could point to and say see, THIS is why I’m allowed to leave. And in the meantime I just marinated in the anxiety, because my body knew and my mind wouldn’t sign off.
And here’s the thing I couldn’t see at the time, the thing that breaks my heart a little now:
How I felt WAS the evidence.
The wrongness I felt in my body was reason enough. All on its own. I didn’t need him to do something unforgivable to earn my exit. I didn’t need a smoking gun. “This doesn’t feel right, and it hasn’t for a long time” was a complete sentence. It was always a complete sentence.
But I didn’t believe that. Because that would’ve required me to treat my own feelings as important. As valid. As enough. And I didn’t.
His capacity became the standard. Whatever he was able to give became the ceiling, and I just quietly lived under it, anxious and waiting for permission I was never going to get from the outside. I didn’t think, “is this enough for me?” I thought, “is this what’s available?” And I took what was available and called it my portion.
And that — not him — is the thing I actually wanted to heal. Because it wasn’t a him problem. It was a me problem, running quietly underneath my conscious awareness:
We broke up. And I was single for a few years after that.
And during those years, I ran into something I could not explain. Because on paper, I knew I was a catch. I knew I was a great, interesting, loving, amazing person. I wasn’t insecure about my worth in some obvious surface way. I could’ve told you all my good qualities.
So why wasn’t I meeting anyone? Why wasn’t I even putting myself in the position to meet anyone? Why wasn’t I out there, open, available, letting it happen?
Something was off, and it took me a while to see it, because it was hiding behind “I just haven’t met the right person yet.”
The truth was: I was blocking it. I knew I was amazing AND I wasn’t letting love in. Both were true at the same time. And that combination is the whole thing I want to talk about today, because I don’t think it’s rare. I think it’s one of the most common things there is, and almost nobody names it.
You can know you’re wonderful and still not let yourself be loved well.
Those live in completely different parts of you.
Your tolerance for being loved badly is a receipt showing exactly how loveable you believe you are.
Not how loveable you are. How loveable you believe you are. Those are very different numbers, and the gap between them is where all the suffering lives.
You don’t find out what you think you deserve by asking yourself. You’ll lie, or you’ll answer with your values instead of your patterns. You find out by looking at what you’ve accepted. What you stayed in. Who you kept making excuses for.
The friend who only surfaces when she needs something.
The relationship you stayed in long after you knew.
The love you called “fine” while some quiet part of you knew it wasn’t.
Those aren’t bad luck. They’re not just other people being disappointing. They’re a mirror.
Nobody can love you above your own ceiling. They can try. Someone can show up and adore you, really adore you, and if it’s above what you believe you deserve, you won’t let it land. Or you’ll pick it apart. Or you’ll find it boring, because boring is what safe feels like to a nervous system that equates love with tension. Or you’ll sabotage it. Or you just won’t stay.
I did the fully-blocked version. I didn’t even let it get close enough to reject. I just quietly stayed out of the game and called it circumstances.
I want to be careful here, because “you don’t love yourself enough” is both true and completely useless as advice.
It’s not that you think you’re garbage. I didn’t. You might have a perfectly good relationship with your own worth on the surface. The block is deeper and quieter than that.
It’s that somewhere, your body learned that love comes with conditions. That it has to be earned, managed, kept small, or braced against.
Maybe you watched love be conditional growing up.
Maybe you were adored when you were easy and withdrawn from when you weren’t.
Maybe you got the message that your needs were “a lot,” so you filed them under “don’t.”
Maybe you loved all the way once and it detonated, and your body decided the whole category was dangerous.
So you did the intelligent thing. You lowered what you’d let in, so you’d never be that exposed again. Blocking love, tolerating the low-bar version, staying out of the game entirely — those aren’t flaws. They’re protection. Your body kept you safe the only way it knew how.
But protection has a cost, and the cost is that you can’t be reached. Not really. Not all the way.
The one shift that raises your standards without a single hard conversation or dramatic boundary. (It’s not “demand more.” It’s quieter, and it works.)
The standards diagnostic — the exact signs you’re settling in love, friendship, and family. You’ll know your worst one in about ten seconds.
The reframe that finally explains why great love bounces off you — and how to become the woman it can actually reach.
The 5 questions I use to catch myself settling. Number four shows you your ceiling in real time.
Today’s tap. The tender one. We surface the bracing, soften it, and come home to being loved. It feels like an exhale you’ve been holding for years.
You don’t leave this one motivated. You leave it softer. Held. Home.
The door’s right here. [come home with me] 🤍
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