The Things I Thought Were Normal Until I Realized They Weren’t

For a long time, I thought I was just bad at relationships.

I thought I was too sensitive.

Too emotional.

Too difficult.

Too needy.

I thought maybe I just needed to communicate better. Be more patient. Choose my words more carefully. Try harder.

So I tried.

And I tried.

And I tried some more.

I became really good at adjusting myself to keep the peace.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that constantly changing yourself to prevent someone else’s reaction isn’t the same thing as having a healthy relationship.

It took me a long time to understand that some of the things I’d accepted as “normal” weren’t normal at all.

Walking on eggshells

I learned to pay attention to moods.

The tone of a voice.

The way a door closed.

The expression on someone’s face.

I could walk into a room and immediately know whether I needed to be careful.

I became an expert at trying to prevent conflict before it happened.

At the time, I thought that was being considerate.

Looking back, I realize there is a difference between being considerate of someone’s feelings and being afraid of their reaction.

Apologizing just to make the argument stop

Sometimes you apologize because you genuinely did something wrong.

And sometimes you apologize because you’re exhausted and you just want the fighting to end.

Those aren’t the same thing.

I became familiar with saying “I’m sorry” even when I wasn’t entirely sure what I was apologizing for.

Sometimes the apology wasn’t about accountability.

It was about survival.

And when you do that often enough, you can eventually start believing that everything really is your fault.

Being told you’re too sensitive

Have you ever tried to explain that something hurt you only to have the conversation become about how you reacted?

You’re upset.

You’re told you’re overreacting.

You try to explain why.

Now you’re accused of starting an argument.

Eventually, you stop bringing things up.

Not because they don’t hurt anymore.

Because you’ve learned that talking about the hurt creates another problem.

So you swallow it.

Again.

And again.

Until you barely know what you feel anymore.

Questioning your own memory

This one can mess with your head.

You remember a conversation one way.

Someone tells you it never happened that way.

You remember what was said.

They insist you misunderstood.

You know how something made you feel.

You’re told you’re imagining things.

Eventually, you start questioning yourself before you question anyone else.

Maybe I remembered it wrong.

Maybe I misunderstood.

Maybe I’m making too big a deal out of this.

That constant self-doubt can be incredibly damaging.

And no, not every disagreement about what happened is automatically gaslighting. People genuinely remember things differently sometimes.

But when denying, rewriting, or twisting events becomes a repeated pattern used to make you distrust your own perception, that’s something worth paying attention to.

Feeling responsible for someone else’s emotions

I became very familiar with the question:

“What can I do to make this better?”

If someone was angry, I tried to fix it.

If someone was upset, I tried to fix it.

If someone was unhappy, I wondered what I’d done.

I thought loving someone meant taking responsibility for their emotional state.

It doesn’t.

You can care deeply about someone without being responsible for every emotion they experience.

That was a hard lesson for me.

Thinking love meant constantly proving yourself

I thought if I just loved harder, gave more, forgave more, understood more, and tried harder, eventually things would feel safe.

I thought maybe if I could prove that I wasn’t going anywhere, everything would settle down.

But healthy love shouldn’t require you to constantly audition for your place in someone’s life.

You shouldn’t have to earn basic respect.

You shouldn’t have to convince someone that you deserve kindness.

And you shouldn’t have to become smaller to make a relationship work.

Losing pieces of yourself

This might be the part that hurts the most.

Because abuse isn’t always one giant moment.

Sometimes it’s hundreds of tiny moments.

You stop saying certain things.

You stop wearing certain things.

You stop seeing certain people.

You stop expressing certain opinions.

You stop bringing up certain subjects.

You stop being spontaneous.

You stop trusting yourself.

And one day you look in the mirror and realize:

I don’t recognize myself anymore.

That’s the mirror I’m talking about.

Not the literal one.

The one that shows you how you see yourself.

When you’ve spent enough time being told who you are, what you feel, what you remember, what you meant, and what you should think, eventually you can start looking at yourself through someone else’s reflection.

And finding your way back to your own reflection takes time.

Maybe you thought these things were normal too.

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking:

Wait.

I do that.

I thought everyone did that.

I thought this was just what relationships were like.

Maybe you’re still in the relationship.

Maybe you’re trying to decide whether what you’re experiencing even “counts.”

Maybe you’ve already left, but you’re still carrying all of these patterns with you.

If that’s you, I want you to know something.

You don’t have to figure everything out today.

You don’t have to put a label on your entire relationship tonight.

You don’t have to make a life-changing decision because you read a blog post.

But you can start paying attention.

Pay attention to how you feel.

Pay attention to patterns.

Pay attention to whether you’re allowed to have feelings, boundaries, opinions, friendships, and a life of your own.

And most importantly, pay attention to the person you’ve become while trying to keep someone else happy.

Because sometimes the first step toward healing isn’t leaving.

Sometimes it’s simply realizing:

What I thought was normal wasn’t healthy.

And once you can see it clearly, you can finally begin figuring out what comes next.

A little note from me

I’m writing these posts from lived experience, not professional expertise. Narcissistic and emotional abuse can look different from relationship to relationship, and not every unhealthy interaction means someone is a narcissist.

But if something here felt painfully familiar, I hope you know you’re not the only one.

You are still in there.

And you’re worth finding.

— Whitney