Knowing My Value

After living years with chronic health conditions such as chronic migraine and endometriosis, remembering my value as a person was a struggle. My self-esteem was drastically reduced. I felt like I was less valuable as a person because my health conditions prevented me from doing everything I wanted to do. Since I could not do all the things I used to do, my self-worth was drastically reduced. I had to take a journey to learn my personal value.

It felt like a one-sided relationship

I will not say that my entire marriage was bad or even that most of it was bad. I know that he loved me in his own way. Unfortunately, he eventually became complacent in our relationship. After this point, I spent so much time trying to change his behavior. It became extremely hard to get him to play an active role.

There eventually became a time when I felt more like a maid than a wife. Regardless of what I did or said, I could not get him to see what he was doing to me or help me around the house. He knew about my health issues, yet he still treated me like I was superwoman and could do it all alone.

My marriage turned toxic

The negative treatment and emotions begin to affect me. I started to see a therapist, who helped me see just the toll our marriage had on me. It took counseling for me to realize the toxic effect everything in my marriage was having on me. She also wanted me to see how I was allowing my chronic health problems lower my self-esteem.

Trading one bad relationship for another

Sadly, it seems that I traded one unhealthy relationship for another unhealthy relationship. Maybe I have a magnet for the wrong kind of men? I started dating a guy who had his career together and seemed to be getting his life together. While these things were good, personality issues slowly became apparent with time.

He had an ex who had cheated on him, so he was extremely insecure, which led to him being very jealous. He also was an extremely different person when he got mad over something. While I had my own self-esteem issues, I did not allow them to affect the way I treated him in our relationship.

Another unhealthy relationship

His issues became our issues like they normally do in a relationship. His insecurities led him to have a problem with me going anywhere without him. Heaven forbid he sent me a text message, and I did not respond immediately to it. Due to his behavior when he was angry, I ended up leaving him three different times. For me, that third time was the last time because I truly realized how toxic our relationship had become by that point.

After I left him the third time, I refused to go back to his place or start dating him again. It took him being alone for two weeks for him to understand where I was coming from when I spoke about him treating me poorly. It was too late though because I refused to be stuck in another relationship where I would be taken for granted.

Lesson learned

Part of living life is learning lessons. We learn from watching what other people go through, and other times we learn lessons from what we experience.

Our actions in a relationship show people what we are willing to tolerate in a relationship. Most people take note of this and treat you accordingly. In my case, my husband did not do anything around the house because I allowed him to get away with it for so long. He also seemed to think that I would not go anywhere despite him ignoring my requests for help. Additionally, by continually giving the boyfriend another chance, he realized that I would keep coming back; therefore, it did not matter how he treated me.

Your worth

While I will not say that you can never teach somebody your worth, I would not count on such a lesson to work. If they do not automatically appreciate and value you as a person, they will likely never do more than the minimum. I learned that I should not have to beg a man to value me. If I were important enough to them, they would treat me appropriately on their own.

Additionally, having health issues does not lower my worth. We are all worth so much and deserve to be treated as such. I know that I am not the only person with chronic migraine who forgot their self-worth. Hopefully, everyone can be reminded of their worth and choose to take action to demand the proper treatment.

While I do not think that I will ever be the wildly confident woman I was before having health issues, I know that I cannot allow myself to be a doormat. Despite my painful conditions, I must remain the strong woman who does not tolerate being treated poorly.