“Feeling safe in someone’s energy is a different kind of intimacy. That feeling of peace and protection is really underrated.” ~Vanessa Klas
The first time I said, “I love you” to a romantic partner, I was met with silence.
Nine months into what I believed was a deep, mutual relationship, I felt certain we were on the same page. But when the words left my mouth, he froze. No words back. No reassurance. Just silence. The next thing I knew, he disappeared for weeks, leaving me sitting in the wreckage of my own vulnerability. I was left questioning everything—why had I shared so much? Why had I opened my heart, only to have it shut down?
In that silence, I created a story about myself that followed me for years. I convinced myself I wasn’t worthy of being loved in return, that there was something inherently wrong with me. This belief seeped into every relationship afterward. I started waiting for the other shoe to drop, convinced love was something I had to earn instead of something I deserved.
In college, the pattern continued. I dated someone who treated me like a backup plan. The days he chose me were filled with excitement, butterflies, and joy—but those days were few and far between.
Most of the time, I was left waiting by the phone, hoping to be picked. When he didn’t, I was once again questioning my worth, wondering what I had done wrong. The cycle became so familiar, I didn’t even recognize it anymore.
What I didn’t realize then was that by showing up in relationships this way—allowing myself to be the back-burner girlfriend, staying timid in my love, my confidence, and my desires—I was teaching others how to treat me. I was telling them, through my actions, that I didn’t expect more, that this was enough. But it wasn’t enough. Deep down, I knew I deserved more, but I didn’t yet believe it.
I carried these same patterns into my first marriage, thinking if I just worked harder and gave more of myself, maybe, just maybe, he’d love me the way I longed for. But love isn’t about fixing someone, and it certainly isn’t about fixing yourself. Yet for so long, I believed it was. I convinced myself I’d finally be enough if I could just perfect myself, become the ideal partner.
But after eleven years, I knew I couldn’t keep sacrificing my joy for a relationship that wasn’t right, so I left—not because I had all the answers, but because I knew I couldn’t stay.
It wasn’t until I found myself in my therapist’s office after my divorce that things began to shift. I thought I needed to fix what had been broken in me by my ex-husband, that my brokenness was why love had failed.
One day, I walked into therapy, slapped my hands on my thighs, and cheerfully exclaimed, “I just want to be happy!” Who was I kidding? I treated happiness like a box to be checked off, a goal to master. But my therapist, in her quiet wisdom, simply said, “It doesn’t work that way.”
I was furious—triggered even. How dare she tell me it wasn’t that simple? But deep down, I knew she was right.
You can’t force your way into happiness, and you can’t fake your way into feeling whole. I had spent so much of my life trying to fix others and mold myself into someone worthy of love that I hadn’t stopped to consider that maybe I was already enough. But I had to understand why I kept showing up in relationships with people who couldn’t love me in return.
Why was I choosing emotionally unavailable men? Why was I so convinced that I was the problem?
I see these patterns in myself and in many others. One of my clients once sat across from me and said, “Molly, I’m a hard woman to love.” Those words stuck with me. I could see the weight of that belief in her eyes—the years she’d spent carrying it.
I asked her, “When did you decide that? When did you start believing you were hard to love?”
She paused, and we began to dig into her story. There were moments when she hadn’t been chosen, when she felt she had to earn love through perfection and pleasing others. She brought that belief into her marriage, shaping how she showed up. She was defensive, always expecting rejection, and that created a wall between her and her partner.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy—believing she was hard to love made it so. Through her healing, she realized she wasn’t hard to love; she was lovable just as she was.
Her story mirrored my own. I had spent so many years believing I had to earn love and prove my worth. In doing so, I allowed relationships that were far from what I truly wanted. I didn’t know it at the time, but by being the back-burner girlfriend and staying small in my desires, I was setting the standard for how I would be treated. I was telling myself and others I didn’t deserve more.
But here’s the truth: we are all worthy of love. Not because of what we do, not because of how perfect we are, but simply because we are.
That realization didn’t come easily for me. It took years of peeling back the layers of limiting beliefs and asking why I kept settling for less. But when I finally understood that I was worthy of deep, committed love, everything changed.
After my divorce, I made a promise to myself. I wasn’t going to settle again. I sat down and wrote a list of twenty-two things I wanted in a partner. Not because I was trying to create an impossible checklist, but because I needed to get clear on what I truly valued. I needed to hold myself accountable so that I wouldn’t fall back into old patterns.
That list became a reminder of my worth, a reflection of what I deserved. I had to hold myself to this to be sure that I didn’t somehow convince myself that four out of twenty-two would do.
Then, I finally met my current husband.
We met in our local grocery store. I kept passing him in the aisles and finally got up enough courage to stop him in the cleaning aisle, of all places. We small-talked for a few minutes, and I walked away both equally excited and embarrassed about my boldness.
We had both been through divorce, so we cautiously entered this new relationship, but before long, we were building something real. Something grounded in truth, in mutual respect, in love that didn’t feel like work. And as we grew closer, we began to heal—both individually and together. He wasn’t perfect, and neither was I. But what we had was real, and that was deeply beautiful.
I remember one moment in particular, early in our relationship. He suggested that I start weight training, and immediately, I felt defensive. The old story came rushing back: “He thinks I’m not enough. He doesn’t like the way I look.
But instead of letting that story spiral, I did something different. I took a lesson from the beautiful author Brené Brown and told him, “The story I’m telling myself is that you don’t like my body.”
His response? Pure love. He reassured me that it wasn’t about my appearance at all; he had recently listened to a podcast about women’s bone health and the benefits of weight training. He was thinking from a place of love about my long-term health and our future together.
That conversation could have gone a completely different way if we hadn’t chosen to be vulnerable, to trust each other enough to speak our truths. It could have gone differently if I had let my narrative spiral and never opened up the discussion.
That’s what real love is. It can be messy, it’s imperfect, and it’s also so easy—when it’s right, it doesn’t feel hard. The beauty is in the vulnerability. The beauty is in realizing that the hurt we’ve carried and the walls we’ve built weren’t ever really about us, and that journey is what brought us together.
The back burner, the infidelity, the lies, the waiting to be chosen—that was never about me. It was about them. It was about their journey, their walls, and their fears. And once I understood that, I was free. Free to love without holding back. Free to accept the love I had always deserved.
If you’re reading this and you’ve felt that same sting of rejection, that same pattern of being put second, I want you to know this: It’s not about something you’re lacking. It never was. The hurt you’ve experienced doesn’t define you. You are not unlovable. You are not broken. You are worthy of a love that sees you fully, that cherishes every part of you.
But first, you must see it in yourself. You have to believe that you deserve more. You have to make that list—whether it’s twenty-two things or just one—and hold yourself to it. Not because you’re waiting for someone to complete you, but because you know you are already complete, and you want to share your amazing life with someone.
And when that love comes, it will be everything you’ve been waiting for. Not perfect, but real. And in the end, that’s all that matters.
Because love—real love—isn’t about being chosen. It’s about choosing yourself first. And when you do that, everything else falls into place.
