When Patience Becomes “Self-Abandonment”

She left school believing that being needed meant being loved.

Desperate to fit into a new and unfamiliar world, she quietly set herself a mission to become indispensable as a friend, a family member and a girlfriend.

It started with small things. Over-giving. Always being the one to make the effort. Carrying the emotional load. For a while, it seemed to work. She was accepted into friendship groups. She was included. She was chosen.

But inclusion came at a cost.

She was overjoyed to be noticed by the man who would become her husband. Even early on there were disappointments. Forgotten plans. Evenings prioritised elsewhere. She made excuses. She told herself patience meant understanding. She would never admit that he had simply forgotten her.

The pattern continued.

As the main earner, she contributed more than she should have. At first there was gratitude. Eventually it became expectation.

When illness came, quiet doubts about their future surfaced, but she silenced them. She agreed to donate a kidney, keeping herself fit and strong so he would have the best chance at a healthy future. For a time, life improved. Gratitude returned. Hope flickered.

But patterns rarely dissolve without awareness.

Life became harder than before. She found herself living alongside addiction, still believing that staying was loyalty, that endurance was love, that patience meant not giving up.

Until one day she realised something important.

Patience is not the same as self-sacrifice.

Walking away cost her almost everything materially. What she kept was her dignity and her awareness.

Awareness that she had been living around someone else’s life rather than fully inhabiting her own.
Awareness that endurance is not patience.

She rebuilt slowly. She released friendships where she carried too much. She formed new connections where nothing was demanded of her. She began to notice her own needs. Her own voice. Her own boundaries.

What she did not understand at the time was this.

Patience is not about waiting for someone else to change.

It is about slowly becoming the person who no longer accepts less.

This month, I will be sharing more about what that becoming looked like.