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Gratitude And A Leap Of Faith.
Submitted by: Anonymous
IndiaGrateful.
I’m 21 years old. Ever since I was young, one of my dreams has been to find the one person I would spend my life with. Being a girl and seeing my sister get married young, I knew that I had to get clear on what I wanted and how I wanted it to be. I’d already read The Secret and knew about being grateful and visualization, so I wrote down a list of everything I wanted in my significant other, or SO.
When I got into my current relationship, it was everything I had dreamed of. We were best friends first, understood each other and were very compatible, I couldn’t find anything bad. My SO was very different than me when it came to expressing his feelings. He did it in his own way and things were good.
Then 9 months into our relationship we had to move to different cities because of our jobs and we found ourselves in a long distance relationship. Slowly, the relationship started feeling very dissatisfactory. He would only rarely make time for me, would never express his feelings, and even when I talked about how I missed him or how much I liked him, his replies would be passive. He never said it back to me. It started to feel like he was steadily caring less and less about us. Every time I would bring it up by saying please let’s make more time for each other, call each other more, etc. he’d say that he doesn’t really think about all that, he just gets busy with life and that me bringing it up all the time was making him uncomfortable.
It broke my heart because I had truly believed this was it. A friend of mine advised me that I should now prioritize myself, and not stick to the things that made me unhappy. But I did not have the strength or the courage to break up. And it was very hard because the reality around me was not ideal. I wanted to believe this could get better, I wanted to believe that I could make this better, I wanted to use love and gratitude to go back to how good things had been.
It was very hard for me to believe, especially since I felt like crap for giving so much of myself and not receiving it back, but I did not want to lose hope. Finally, it came to a trade-off, I could not let myself get hurt anymore and I knew I deserved better. So I gave the relationship one month. I told myself that I would be positive about my life, even if I could not be positive about the relationship. I would give my SO only love and affection, even if not verbally because it hurt to not see it reciprocated. Through this one month, I wanted to do everything to make me feel better inside, and hopefully give enough love to restore the relationship to its previous state. And if not, then I would be strong enough to say, enough, and still, be okay with it.
So I gave it a month. Every day I woke up, I worked out to improve my fitness and I meditated for a few minutes intermittently throughout the day. I asked the Universe to shower me with good signs, and I tried my best to give love. Every day I wrote about everything that I was grateful for about the relationship, the moments we had in the past, trips we had taken, and things he had done for me. A part of me was extremely scared because I was so attached but I told myself I had to do this, for myself and for my wellbeing.
Slowly, it felt like things were changing. There were more texts, more displays of affection, more initiative from his side to be with me. He asked me if I could call him, speak to me, and he texted me. It came to the point where he apologized for how he had behaved and for all the times he had hurt me and he told me that I really mattered to him, that I was really important and he did not want to lose me. We spoke about everything openly and decided we should renew our attitude towards each other. And that’s how everything got better.
Today we are at a point where we are very sure of each other, we prioritize each other and I am absolutely and completely happy in my relationship and with my SO!
I want to thank everyone on this website who’s ever posted a story here. I am grateful for all the reading I’ve done on the internet, for my best friends, for my family, for my SO, and for everyone who has given me faith and hope and taught me that things will work out. I am forever grateful.