When Home Doesn't Feel Like Home

When Home Doesn't Feel Like Home

There is a strange kind of loneliness that happens when you're not actually alone.

It's being in your own house and still feeling unwanted.

It's sharing a bed—or a home—with someone you love, while feeling like your presence doesn't really matter to them.

It's becoming quiet because every time you open your mouth, you already know you're probably going to be met with defensiveness, disrespect, or an argument.

And eventually, you stop talking.

Not because you don't have anything to say.

Because you've said it so many times that you're exhausted from repeating yourself.

I feel unheard in my own house.

I feel alone.

I feel unwanted.

I feel disrespected almost every time I try to bring something to my partner. I've been told, verbally, that my feelings don't matter.

And when the person you love tells you that they don't care how you feel, something inside you changes.

You start wondering...

Why am I still trying so hard to be heard by someone who has told me they don't care?

I've waited for apologies that never came.

I've waited for accountability.

I've waited for him to recognize what his words and actions have done to me.

I've waited for him to see the connection between the way he treats me and the way I've changed because of it.

Then there are the moments after we argue and separate ourselves. 

I'm in another room, trying to process everything that just happened, while I can hear him on the phone with his friends—laughing, joking, talking like everything is perfectly fine.

Sometimes he'll have music playing so loudly that it sounds like there's a party happening on the other side of the wall.

And I sit there listening.

Wondering how someone can seem so much happier when I'm not around.

Maybe that's not how he feels. Maybe he's just distracting himself. Maybe he's genuinely fine while I'm sitting there falling apart.

But that's what it feels like from my side of the wall.

It makes me wonder if my absence brings him more peace than my presence does.

And then, sometimes, after all the arguing and distance, he'll suddenly want sex.

That's another part I struggle to understand.

How can we go from barely speaking, hurting each other, and feeling completely disconnected...to suddenly being expected to be intimate?

I don't want to feel wanted only when my body is wanted.

I want to feel wanted when I'm sitting beside him.

I want to feel wanted when I'm talking.

I want to feel wanted when I'm upset.

I want to feel wanted when sex isn't involved at all.

I don't want to be someone he reaches for when he wants sex and retreats from when he wants peace.

I want to feel like my presence is something he actually wants.

And I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to be waiting forever.

I've had multiple people tell me to leave.

And maybe that's one of the hardest things to admit.

I love this man.

I have loved him enough to tolerate disrespect for more than a year while hoping things would change.

Hoping he'd finally understand. Hoping he'd look at me and realize that I'm not asking for perfection.

I'm asking for the basics.

Love.

Respect.

Honesty.

Accountability.

Effort.

Emotional safety.

That's it.

I don't need a perfect relationship.

I don't need someone who never makes mistakes. 

I need someone who cares when they hurt me.

Someone who can listen when I'm trying to explain why something hurt.

Someone who can say, "I was wrong. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel this way. Let's figure this out."

Someone who doesn't make me feel like having feelings is an inconvenience.

Instead, I've found myself distancing myself.

Staying in another room.

Keeping my thoughts to myself.

Living in an "out of sight, out of mind" relationship while still sharing the same house.

And that's a terrible way to live with someone you love.

At some point, I started realizing just how deeply this was affecting me. I became so overwhelmed and so emotionally broken by feeling unworthy of the love I was asking for that I became suicidal.

That's a sentence I never wanted to write.

But it's my truth.

And I'm not saying it to make anyone feel guilty.

I'm saying it because this is what feeling emotionally abandoned can do to someone.

When someone repeatedly feels unheard, unwanted, dismissed, and disrespected, eventually they may start believing that they are the problem.

Maybe I'm too sensitive.

Maybe I'm asking for too much.

Maybe I should stop bringing things up.

Maybe I should just accept things the way they are.

Maybe I'm not worth the kind of love I'm asking for.

But I am.

I am worth it.

And so are you.

I've spent so much time hoping that if I loved him enough, communicated enough, explained myself enough, or waited long enough, something would finally click.

Maybe he'd see me. Really see me.

See the woman sitting in another room because she doesn't feel safe enough to talk.

See the tears.

See the loneliness.

See the person who isn't asking him to be perfect—just asking him to care.

And now, because direct communication has become so difficult, I've found myself using social media and text messages as some of the last ways I know how to communicate what I'm feeling.

Maybe he'll read my words differently than he hears them.

Maybe he'll finally understand.

Maybe he'll finally see what I've been trying to say all along.

Or maybe he won't.

And that's the part I'm struggling with.

Because how long can you keep explaining your pain to someone who doesn't seem willing to understand it?

How long can you wait for an apology?

How long can you love someone while slowly losing yourself trying to make the relationship work?

I don't have all the answers.

I'm still here.

I'm still hurting.

I'm still trying to figure out what comes next.

But I'm beginning to understand something:

Love isn't supposed to require me to abandon myself just to keep it.

I shouldn't have to become silent to keep the peace.

I shouldn't have to hide in another room to feel comfortable in my own home.

I shouldn't have to beg to be heard.

I shouldn't have to prove that my feelings matter.

And I shouldn't have to become someone else just to receive the simple love I've been asking for.

Maybe love isn't always enough.

Maybe sometimes you can love someone with your entire soul and still recognize that the way you're being treated is hurting you.

Maybe sometimes the hardest thing isn't leaving someone you don't love anymore.

Maybe it's figuring out what to do when you still love them—but you don't love who you are becoming beside them.

Until We Speak Again,

A Tired Soul

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Leave a comments with your thoughts. Have you feel misunderstood in your own home? Cried yourself to sleep next to the one you love? Is love enough to save a relationship? Let's talk!