Selfish Appetite [5 Seconds of Summer]

[8]

"Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself."

- -

Sloan

Interpersonal relationships.

Love, passion, friendship, sex. 
We create bonds revolving around each of these things. 

What draws us to another person? What draws us to create a bond? 

Which traits from each person, connect to each other like dots awaiting to be matched to something? Why does our brain tell us "them, it's them"? 

If you ask a psychologist, they will start talking about emotional intelligence, the ability to understand others based on whether or not you've been in the same place- or empathy, and lastly, they will talk about your overall personal, predisposition for love. 

Some people, no matter how hard they try and want to, cannot feel love toward others. 

We base detection of love and other feelings on various indicators. 

We pick up emotional clues, we observe body language, the tone of voice, other non-verbal means of communication. 

We find ourselves intensely interested in what the other person has to say, we listen, we observe- it's how we show them we're there. We show sensitivity, we try to understand where they're coming from. 

My point is, we try. 

Once our heart is locked on someone, we try like hell to show compassion. We keep trying to show them that we're here, and we're here to stay. I think partly, we want to do as much as we can, in hopes of receiving the same amount of care. 

Humans are sociable beings, we rely on love and acceptance as much as we rely on our hearts to keep pumping our blood for us. 

I nearly broke myself, or rather, I did break myself, trying to prove a million things to Ian. Things I thought people didn't need to prove, when it comes to your other half- back when I thought he really was my other half. 

No matter how hard I tried, he made me feel small, inadequate. 

I tried to create excuses for him. 

I wanted there to be a perfectly good reason, as to why the man I loved couldn't love me, even though he uttered the three words daily. As to why the man I loved hurt my body as he did my soul. 

He said the three words every day, but after a while I noticed how void of meaning they were. 
How void of meaning our relationship became, when I stopped putting in the effort. When I started to see him for who he was. When I realized that his eyes were never on me if they didn't need to, his smiles were fake, his feelings masked.  

I expressed those concerns to him, but all I got as a response was his shouting, seething, and calling me ungrateful. He told me to stop using my academic studies on our relationship, there was nothing to fix, everything was great and I was grasping at straws. 

The truth is, that he lacked empathy. 
Ian only felt one thing throughout his body: rage. Nothing else. 

Facing his lack of ability to love someone, made him cruel and cold sometimes. Suddenly, it was my fault for bringing this issue to him, for making him realize it, I was the one wrecking us.