The Day I Stopped Calling Survival Love

The hardest pill to swallow is realizing that the person you dedicated your life to naively, wholeheartedly may not truly love you in the way you thought. Not because they’re evil. Not because they’re cruel. Sometimes it’s more complicated than that. Sometimes they never learned how to love. Sometimes it’s personal. Sometimes it’s both.

This isn’t a pity post. It’s an awareness.

I’ve been in the same dynamic with men for 17 years. Two major relationships. One lasted six years. My current one has lasted ten. Looking back, I see a pattern I couldn’t see while I was inside it: I didn’t choose love. I chose safety.

Growing up, I watched my mother want stability more than anything. I internalized that. My identity formed around survival. I told myself the only thing I needed in a partner was someone who could take care of basic needs. In exchange, I would take care of everything else the house, the emotional labor, the children, the logistics of life. I violated my own boundaries quietly, slowly, convincing myself I could adapt, fix, or eventually reshape the relationship into something fulfilling.But accountability matters here.

I take accountability for my prior nature as well.

I didn’t understand myself. I didn’t understand my boundaries. And it takes time to understand who you are sometimes years, sometimes decades. It takes even longer when you’re trying to figure yourself out without support. I was immature. I did things to call attention to myself. I pushed buttons. I reacted instead of communicating. I wasn’t some passive victim floating through a bad dynamic. I was participating in it.

And my participation came from lack. When you don’t know yourself, you reach for validation instead of clarity. You test people instead of trusting them. You act out instead of speaking plainly. I can see now that the immaturity wasn’t one-sided. It was shared. Two people trying to love each other without fully knowing themselves. That matters. Because this isn’t about blame. It’s about recognition.

What I didn’t realize back then was that every romantic choice I made was an energy exchange rooted in survival. I was building relationships from fear of instability, not from wholeness. And survival is exhausting. It drains you in ways you don’t recognize until you’re emotionally depleted and wondering why you feel invisible in your own life.

For years I told myself: I have it all. My physical survival needs are met. That should be enough, right?

But emotional and sexual starvation are still forms of deprivation. You can live in a stable home and still feel lonely. You can share a bed with someone and feel unseen. Long-term relationships reveal who we really are over time, and in that revealing we discover what no longer fits.

I kept trying to change him. I stepped into a mother role instead of a partner role. I thought I was helping. I thought if I managed everything, eventually he would notice and show up.

Instead, I became the “nag.” And I hated that version of myself.

The truth is, attraction dies when one partner becomes the parent. Desire requires polarity. It requires two adults meeting each other, not one adult managing another. My nervous system was screaming what my mind refused to say out loud: I don’t want a dependent. I want a partner.

Therapy helped, but only like a bandage. We’d go, we’d improve briefly, and then the same dynamic would return. Change only sticks when both people are committed to growth. Over the last year and a half, I’ve done the inner work on my side unpacking triggers, traumas, patterns. That work changed me. It gave me a new vantage point. And from that vantage point, I saw a hard truth: Counseling cannot save a relationship if one person refuses to evolve.

He invests in tangible things, money, objects, visible assets. He refuses to invest in intangible growth: therapy, emotional development, or anything that isn’t immediately measurable. That difference isn’t inherently wrong. But it reveals a mismatch in values. We are good friends. We function as a team in certain ways. But romantically, it’s painful to admit what’s missing.

And as time passed, something else became clear.

I started to understand the traits I want in a partner and the traits I no longer accept.

I want a man who takes initiative instead of defaulting to passiveness. A man who can recognize my flaws and speak to them from a place of love and improvement, not control. Someone who believes in mutual accountability, working together to grow, to maintain a healthy emotional space, and even a clean and supportive external environment. Partnership isn’t just internal; it shows up in the way a home is cared for, in how responsibilities are shared, in how daily life is built together. I’m done being the one responsible for fixing things that can only change if the other person chooses growth.

I’m not the mother of my partner.

We are equals.

And becoming a mother clarified that more than anything. I have an enormous well of nurturing attention and responsibility, and it belongs to my children. They are entitled to that energy. They depend on it. I do not owe that same maternal labor to a partner who refuses to meet me emotionally and mentally as an adult.

That realization wasn’t anger, it was clarity.

I have dreams of a wedding. Of partnership. Of emotional intimacy. Of being met. Those dreams aren’t unrealistic. They’re human needs I buried to maintain a structure that kept me safe.

And then there are the children. This is the part that breaks me open.

My daughter sees everything. She wants her parents to be happy. Last year, that’s what she asked Santa for. She tries to push us toward connection, as if it’s her responsibility to repair what we can’t fix ourselves. No child should carry that emotional weight. When children start regulating the parents, the roles have inverted. That’s where damage happens, not from separation, but from chronic tension that never resolves.Kids don’t need a perfect family. They need emotional honesty and safety.

The question I had to face wasn’t “Will leaving break the family?” It was: What version of love are my children learning by watching this?

Because whatever feels normal to them becomes their blueprint.

I toggle between fear and clarity. Part of me wonders if creating physical space would improve the dynamic. Another part fears the label of a broken family. But I’m beginning to understand something important: restructuring isn’t the same as destruction. Sometimes space doesn’t break a family. Sometimes it reorganizes it into something healthier.

The deepest grief in all of this isn’t just about him. It’s grief for the years I abandoned myself to keep the system intact. It’s mourning the version of me that believed disappearing was the price of stability. But grief is also evidence of awakening. It means my inner compass is turning back on.

The problem isn’t that he doesn’t love me. The problem is that the type of love he can give no longer matches the type of love I now require. That’s tragedy, not villainy. Two imperfect people meeting each other at a stage of immaturity neither of us understood at the time.

And here’s the pivot: I’m taking action.

Not impulsively or out of rage. Not out of desperation. Out of authorship.

I’m stabilizing myself first — emotionally, financially, psychologically. I’m stopping the fantasy of who he could become and assessing who he is right now. I’m separating clarity from blame. I’m allowing myself to want emotional intimacy, partnership, romance, and respect without apologizing for it.

Those aren’t luxuries. They’re adult relational needs.

Suppressing them doesn’t make you noble. It makes you disappear. And I’m done disappearing.

This isn’t a story about collapse. It’s a story about waking up inside a life you built and deciding to become an author instead of a passenger. Awakening often feels like crisis because it disrupts old arrangements. But disruption isn’t destruction. It’s evolution.

I’m standing on a bridge between who I was and who I’m becoming. I can’t see the land clearly on either side yet. But bridges are built to hold weight. And I’m walking - not falling.

And for the first time in a long time, I trust where I’m walking.