Is it my relationship, or am I the 'problem'?
After another failed relationship at 32, I laughed with my friends: “I’ve been in long-term relationships since I was 15—that’s literally half my life!”
Each relationship ended for different reasons. But the voice I kept hearing whenever they did was: “Come home to yourself.”
I'm not sure if it was the voice of reason, my higher self, or some invisible benevolent source guiding me along.
That phrase echoed in my mind for over a decade.
And yet, the longing to belong, to find home in another person—was a stubborn pattern I didn’t know how to break.
Does your romantic relationship affect your well-being more than you’d like to admit?
the longing for permanence
There's a longing for permanence, for security, for knowing.
So that you can fully step into the connection without doubts or fears,
wanting to be told—but more importantly, feel it inside your bones—
that some things CAN last forever.
the questions that haunted me
Did I contribute to the failure of my previous relationships with this deeply misguided desire to hold onto something that isn't meant to be concrete but a dance between two willing participants?
Was I born in the wrong time—when you can swipe on an app for 30 minutes and find 20 'candidates' in your inbox?
Were all the relationships that didn't work a symptom of misaligned values, or lack of chemistry, or compatibility?
Did I miss all the orange and red flags due to an old existing pattern inside myself
that kept attracting similar types of connection wearing different faces?
“When you meet the one, you’ll just know.”
Does this hold any truth—only for the fortunate few? Or an idea rooted entirely in romanticism and bullshit?