12/11/2025
They Treat You Like You Treat You
The romantic partner you choose is the most honest mirror you will ever face.
They reveal how your nervous system loves.
They reflect how you handle tenderness, rejection, and repair.
They treat you like you treat you.
That’s the brutal truth most people can’t bear to see.
Because if you’re in a relationship that’s breaking your heart, the first place you have to look is not at them, it’s in the mirror.
You didn’t choose them by accident.
You chose them because their particular kind of love feels familiar.
If you grew up earning love, you’ll choose someone who makes you earn it again.
If you grew up calming chaos, you’ll choose someone whose unpredictability keeps you on alert.
If you grew up never being truly seen, you’ll choose someone who doesn’t fully look at you and call it chemistry.
That’s how deep the nervous system’s loyalty to the past runs.
It doesn’t want joy. It wants what it knows.
So when you find yourself wondering, Should I stay or should I go? you’re rarely just deciding about your partner.
You’re deciding whether you can keep living inside the version of yourself that keeps repeating this pattern.
You might tell yourself, They have too many flaws. They’re selfish. They don’t listen. They’re not emotionally mature enough.
But underneath that is a quieter, more terrifying truth.
You are starting to love yourself more deeply than they do.
And your body knows it.
Your body is whispering, This doesn’t match who I’m becoming.
But before you leave, you must get brutally honest about your own part in the pattern.
You can’t tell the difference between growth and escape until you’ve done this.
Ask yourself, really ask.
Am I aware of how my criticism lands?
Do I know how defensive I get when they touch my pain?
Do I understand the thousand subtle ways I’ve hurt them?
Have I become the very thing I say I can’t stand?
If you can answer these questions with humility and clarity, your decision will come naturally.
If you can’t, you’ll just re-create the same heartbreak with a different face.
This is where most people get stuck.
They want to be free without being honest.
They want to grow without grieving who they’ve been.
They want new love without becoming new themselves.
But you cannot fake emotional maturity.
The universe will keep handing you the same lessons in different bodies until you finally choose differently.
Sometimes that choice is to stay.
To do the hard work of learning empathy, emotional regulation, and repair.
To stop weaponizing knowledge and start using vulnerability as your language.
To stop diagnosing your partner and start discovering yourself.
And sometimes that choice is to leave.
To stop settling for love that starves you.
To stop waiting for crumbs when you’ve learned how to bake a whole loaf.
To stop betraying yourself to maintain peace that isn’t real.
Both choices require courage.
Both will break your heart.
But one will rebuild it stronger.
The greatest success in love is not endurance.
It’s evolution.
It’s staying in a relationship for decades because both of you keep growing.
It’s leaving immediately when your self-love outgrows the container you built together.
Don’t confuse longevity with success.
Don’t confuse familiarity with safety.
Don’t confuse surviving with loving.
The measure of a relationship is simple.
Does it make you smaller or softer?
Does it close your heart or open it?
Does it keep you waiting to be understood, or does it inspire you to understand?
You can stay if you’re growing.
You must leave if you’re disappearing.
Your partner’s behavior may be the problem, but your tolerance for it is the pattern.
And patterns don’t change when you switch partners.
They change when you wake up.
If you want to know how much you love yourself, look at how you’re being loved.
If you want to know where you’re still asleep, look at what you’re tolerating.
If you want to know who you’re becoming, look at who you no longer have the energy to explain yourself to.
Love is not a rescue mission.
It’s a reflection.
You attract exactly the level of care you believe you deserve.
So before you say, They don’t love me enough, ask, Where have I not yet loved myself enough to stop calling this love?
That’s the moment you start to heal.
That’s the moment your next relationship begins, even if you’re still standing in the old one.
Because no matter how beautiful or painful it gets, your partner will always treat you like you treat you.
So treat yourself better.
And watch the whole world change.
Derek Hart
