He Took My Kindness For Granted

He took my kindness for granted and lost the one person who cared about him the most.

In the beginning, our love was something everyone else wanted. He listened, he cared, and he would have done anything for me. I fell in love with a kind-hearted and understanding guy, or so I thought…

Slowly, his kindness began to fade away. He began to use the type of person I was to his advantage.

He knew me as the person who would apologize for anything and everything. He knew that if he made me feel bad enough for something or twisted my words around to make it seem like it was my fault, I would say “sorry” and I did. I said sorry so many times for things I did not even understand what I was apologizing for. I felt like I was crazy.

The worst part of it was that I could count on my hand the number of times he apologized to me and actually meant it. Getting an apology from him was like pulling teeth. I was always in more pain after it was said and done.

His apologizes meant nothing; they were just empty words and promises. He became the type of person that just said things to say them. Even when I knew this, I still tried to believe him… I hoped the words were true.

I continued to find myself apologizing at the end of any argument of ours. I don’t know how he did it. How he always found a way to flip the situation into being my fault. I left every conversation of ours feeling upset and confused. He always found a way to make me feel crazy.

He told me I was selfish and unappreciative of him because my standards were too high. He told me that I was too much to handle sometimes because I felt too much. He told me that I could never be satisfied because I was never happy with what I had.

When in all reality, it wasn’t my standards that were high; it was my hopes that he could do better. I wasn’t unappreciative of what he did for me, I was unappreciative of the way he treated me. I wasn’t satisfied with what I had because of the lack of effort he put into our relationship.

Instead of reminding him of these things again, I kept my mouth shut and apologized. I did that because I hated fighting and I didn’t want to lose him. He used my kindness to his advantage.

I loved him with every fiber of my being. I would have done anything to make him happy. He knew this—he knew I hated fighting. He knew I couldn’t stay mad at him even when I was hurt. He knew how much I wanted him and he used that to his advantage.

He never made an effort to be present in our relationship. He knew it was there and that was good enough for him. I was his last resort and he called that a relationship.

He chose to place me at the bottom of a tiny box and throw away the key. The only time the box was opened was when it was convenient for him. Even when he opened the box, he typically chose everyone and everything before choosing me.

The sad part was that on the days he decided to choose me, I fell for him again. I became the happiest person in the world on those days. Days like that made me believe things were going to be good again. They gave me hope. Hope that he had finally listened to all our conversations. Hope that he had realized how much he was hurting our relationship. Hope that he had noticed the lack of effort and communication, he was putting into our relationship. Hope that he was going to change. That’s the crappy thing about hope—when it lets you down, it hurts like hell.

The thought of leaving him crossed my mind many times, but my kind heart knew the man he could be. This hope pushed me into giving him second chances that he didn’t deserve. Fool me twice shame on me, right?

Wrong, shame on him. Shame on him for telling me he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, but treated me like complete crap. You don’t get to treat someone you love like that. You don’t get to take advantage of a person’s kindness and then expect them to stay with you.

At first I thought leaving him meant that I was giving up or wasn’t strong enough to deal with our issues. Then I saw a quote that said, “A person who values you, wouldn’t ever put themselves in a position to lose you.” This hit home. I had given him every opportunity to work on things. To fight for me, to fight for us. I wanted him to fight for me so badly it hurt my soul. No part of me wanted to leave him, no part of me wanted our story to end.

I had to walk away in order to save myself. I needed to save myself from the pain and loneliness he had been causing me. I found the courage and strength to remove myself from the toxic mess we called a relationship.

I was braver than he thought I was. I showed him that he had lost his chance to change and grow with me. He lost it by taking me for granted. He thought I would continue to allow him to walk all over me. He was wrong.

In the end, he was the one to put the final nail into the coffin of our relationship. He told me something that broke my heart completely and still echoes in my head from time to time. He told me that he knew he was taking me for granted, but he never thought I was strong enough to leave, so he never changed.

Well, look who’s sorry now.