The Four Letter Word

How many people have you said "I love you" to? I believe I've said it to about four guys and two of those four times I probably confused love with lust. I told my current boyfriend within a matter of weeks that I loved him because he saw a beauty in me that I had never seen in myself. His eyes tore down my shield and detoured through my pain to my heart. I am currently in my most broken stage is my life emotionally and I know it cannot be easy for him with my mood swings and inconsistency, but the way that he looks at me never waivers. His eyes always say that he loves me.

I am the product of three physically and mentally abusive relationships and no matter how much I tried to push those memories to the back of my head they always remained at the forefront. One day I realized that those situations / relationships make me who I am and I have to accept them rather than forget them. I also realized that whatever mate that I would potentially be with would also have to accept them. Most people do not know about my abusive relationships or they only know a little because I've been ashamed to say that I've allowed myself to be pushed against walls, knocked down stairs, and locked in my room. How could an educated and career driven young woman succumb herself to so much damage?

I didn't know what love was, so I allowed people to love me in their own way which often was not love at all. I associated love with tolerance rather than admiration and understanding, so I desired to be tolerated rather than hugged. In 2 of the 3 situations, I was financially at my peak which also severely hindered my decision making. I had to either let go of my relationship and live paycheck to paycheck or just deal with it until I could better prepare myself financially. Financial stability has definitely been a blessing and a curse to me.

I'm not as whole as I once was. I have a couple scrapes and bruises that reveal my pain, but my boyfriend accepts them. He does not ridicule me for them or pour salt on them. He instead acknowledges them and makes every attempt he can to show me what love is.

I know that this is different from my past relationships because the only thing that he has asked of me has been for me to let him love him and y'all I'm trying.

Self - Evaluation

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I had our first real argument. When I say 'real' I mean raising our voices and speaking over one another in an effort for our points of view to be heard. Throughout our day yesterday we just could not get it together and I begin to ask myself "Is this really the one?" Towards the end of our day he treated me to pizza and tequila (two of my favorite things) and my selfishness did not allow me to accept his gesture. I felt confused and hurt and eventually just put my head down and allowed the tears to fall. I felt like he did not understand me but then he said, "Baby, I just want to show you how much I love you."

Prior to that moment, no one that I've ever been involved with had showed me so much compassion. His words definitely wiped my tears away and my anger towards him became anger towards myself. I begin to realize that I could be the reason why this relationship fails and it caused me to do a very close self-evaluation.

What I discovered about myself in that moment:  

1. I cannot let things go. Even though my boyfriend made several attempts to make our day better I still held on to my anger. I realize by doing that, I pushed him away which caused the friction that he was trying to eliminate to reoccur. 
2. I am an awful listener. I always want to ensure that I am being hard which often causes me to unintentionally ignore the other person's comments. I say unintentionally because I understand that in order to resolve a situation I have to listen, but I'm afraid that if I listen too much to them, then I won't get my point across. 
3. I allow my past to linger in my present. Many (if not all) of the issues that my boyfriend and I have been encountering have been due to unresolved issues from my past. He is the perfect guy, but the memories from my past force me to block him out every time he tries to get closer to my heart. 
4. I am an emotional wreck. I went from speaking calmly to yelling loudly and then crying in a matter of minutes. I sent my boyfriend on an emotional roller coaster (I apologized for this once we both were calm). I have to learn how to silent my emotions sometimes if I want to have a thorough and effective conversation with my boyfriend.

Examining yourself can be a hard thing to do because you have to pinpoint your flaws and admit that you are not as perfect as you thought that you were, but once you admit to having flaws you can work on them. One of the things that I love about my relationship is that my guy pushes me to better myself so we can have a better us and he also accepts my flaws.