Vachon Imagined

When we accept that our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and stories are things happening within us, we no longer ask other people for permission to validate them.

So often, we want people to say the right thing. We want encouragement, reassurance, understanding, and ultimately, for people to change. These things can be wonderful. But they are not necessary when you know and accept yourself.

Relationships reveal you. They also give you a place, when manipulation is not the main driver, to say what you think and feel and simply be heard.

When someone loves you, when they care about you more than their agenda, their ego, their own needs, reputation, and most importantly, the person they think they are, they do not argue with your reality. They listen.

They say, What can I do to make this easier for you?

They don’t need to agree with every thought you have. They don’t need to take responsibility for every feeling you experience. But they can respect the fact that it is your experience.

Defensiveness changes this completely.

Once defensiveness enters the relationship, and becomes a habit, people begin denying you. They tell you what you feel. They tell you what happened. They explain why your experience isn’t valid. And slowly, something dangerous happens: you begin questioning yourself, and you lose trust in yourself.

You become insecure about your own perception. You rehearse what you want to say because you already know how it will be received. Eventually, you stop speaking altogether because you have learned that speaking will not bring understanding.

That is where manipulation begins.

You are not being accepted. You are being handled.

When you realize that you are being manipulated and blamed, you may stay for a while trying to get the other person to see what they are doing. You may explain it differently, speak more gently, speak more firmly, hoping that eventually they will understand.

But eventually, you have to accept that this person may never be the one to give you that understanding.

And then you have a choice.

You can appreciate what they are capable of giving without demanding from them what they cannot give. Or you can walk away entirely.

Either way, you cannot abandon yourself to keep someone else.

The most important person in your life is yourself. Not the version of yourself someone else approves of, but the self you are responsible for knowing, trusting, and accepting.

From there, you can meet and love other people.

You can love them without needing them to validate your existence. You can listen without surrendering your own reality. You can stay when there is love, and leave when there is manipulation.

The first leaves you with yourself.

The second teaches you to abandon yourself.