What happens when your partner doesn't see the value in you...

“Making someone love me” is the most painful, most fruitless of efforts, because love cannot be manufactured in this way.

In one scenario, I stay with this partner, wonder why he doesn’t love me, and begin living in a world of my creation where I believe that, unfortunately, I am not worth loving.

I would ask myself why I consider it worth my time to be with someone who does not find me valuable. Identifying this answer will over time protect me from finding myself in this same predicament over and over.

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I believe this non-love is the best I can do and spend all my time and energy attempting to preserve the very thing that causes me pain.

What happens?

If my “partner” didn’t see value in me and hurt me searching for something in others, I would remind myself that I cannot change people, “make them see” or “make them love me”.

Should I have left it alone and kept quiet? I came out as gay to my adult kids last week. Age 61 married 15 years, divorced for 20. I feel so guilty for ruining their lives by living a lie.

I would work hard at only being interested in people who are equally interested in me.

I would realize that it’s not my partner who is hurting me. I am hurting myself, by agreeing to stay with someone who is looking for something he is not finding in me.

I would leave this partner to grant him full freedom to go find whatever he is looking for and spend the time and energy that I put into that relationship getting to know myself. What I would find is someone flawed and worthy of love.

Can it be true that people know your name, not your story, they’ve heard what you’ve done, but not what you’ve been through, so take their opinions of you with a grain of salt?

There is another scenario:

What happens when your partner doesn't see the value in you and continuously hurts you by searching for something in others knowing it hurts you?

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