I didn’t plan to write until I saw a picture on a piece that I read on Medium, titled ‘Love is Change‘ by Demetra Gregorakis. The piece is irrelevant, it’s the picture that spoke to me.
The ‘you’ve changed’ conversation after relationships occurs a lot and the person on the receiving end of it tends to think ‘oh have I?’ or ‘was I meant to stay the same, I’m better than you’, which is what that picture shows. Yes growth is inevitable and is always needed, during or after a relationship. I mean no one really wants to meet an ex looking worse than they did during the relationship. The break up, not together stage is known to be the time that you gather yourself and work on your glow. However you should never stop working on your glow anyway.
Sometimes, yes sometimes you might have gone through a better stage of growth than an ex but feeling cocky about it isn’t needed. A friend of mine once saw his ex walking and she looked ‘worse off’ than she did in the relationship and he went off to twitter to state that (which I’ll admit, I found funny at the time) but then her current boyfriend saw it and a whole issue began and months later he regretted it. Even though the ‘you’ve changed’ conversation didn’t occur, it did in his mind and he felt like he was the person on the right (picture).
Some people find their bearings later than others (I’ve been trying to understand that lately), some people grow faster than others and that’s normal but you shouldn’t look at the other person like that (picture). The picture to me shows the dumper meeting the dumpee and saying to the person ‘you’ve changed’. The dumpee will then tend to think ‘of course I have, look at all you missed out on, your loss’ and go on with their day thinking they’ve achieved some sort of medal of looking better than your ex/being in a better state than your ex.
Growing is part of life, growing after a relationship is needed before you can go into a new one but it’s not always your ex’s loss. I’ve been in situations even recently where I’ve had someone in my life that I felt I could offer no more to. I mean she had grown while she knew me and she can say that too but I felt like the next stage of her growth, I couldn’t offer her the tools she wanted from me, so I had to let her go. Maybe not in the way I should have, but something had to be done. She might see me and I might say “oh you’ve changed, you’ve grown” and she might say “I’d hope so”. I’ll go off thinking ‘wow, I’m so glad’ and she might go off thinking ‘YES! That showed him’ either way I really couldn’t care less, I would be disappointed if people that knew me didn’t grow because it’s more of a ‘didn’t you learn anything while you were with me’.
As long as we click and you’re willing
You can’t be a friend of mine and be stagnant
You can’t say you know me and not have grown while you’ve known me
I elevate in ways
I water you
I plant new seeds
Hak Gway
POTS 