Sometimes I think love changes shape before we even notice it.
You start out open and sure, feeling seen in a way that feels new, and then slowly the balance shifts. It’s not one moment or one fight. More like a steady wearing down, quiet things you stop saying, small things you overlook because they don’t seem worth the argument.
And then at some point you realize you’ve been adjusting who you are just to keep the peace.
It’s strange how the need to feel close can make silence feel safer than honesty. You tell yourself this is what love means — patience, compromise, understanding — even when part of you starts feeling smaller around the person you care about.
It’s not self-delusion exactly. It’s more this fear that if you face what’s changing, you’ll lose what made everything feel alive to begin with.
There’s a moment, though, when you start catching yourself.
In how careful your words sound. In how tired you feel after being with them.
You start tracing the outlines of yourself before all this. The version of you who didn’t double-think every feeling.
It’s disorienting, that quiet awareness that something warm turned heavy and you can’t name when or why.
And what do you even do with that kind of knowing?
You stay for a while, hoping it’ll feel simple again. Sometimes it almost does.
But the longer you try to fix it, the more you sense the trade — small slices of self-respect exchanged for tiny doses of comfort. Not out of weakness. Just out of wanting the story to hold together a little longer.
After a while, love stops being the thing that steadies you and starts being the thing you need to recover from. You still care, maybe even more than before, but caring doesn’t make you whole anymore.
And you start understanding, slowly, that
Love isn’t supposed to cost you the parts of yourself that made you loveable in the first place.
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