the life i built to keep love from leaving

“I didn’t have language for it at the time…but it took me years to realize that I had been disappearing in plain sight.”

For most of my life, nearly 50 years, I’ve been a people-pleaser. It started when I was very little and followed me into adulthood. And while, as an adult, I’ve been able to pinpoint the when and the why—which, in many ways, makes perfect sense—it had already taken such deep root in me that it began to shape the way I related to people and navigated situations.

When I was little, I needed it for emotional survival. But then, somewhere along the way, what once protected me became something I believed I still needed to hold onto and without even realizing it, I became very good at being who I thought others wanted me to be.

I can’t tell you how many times this pattern led me into choices I knew were wrong—the clearly “thou shalt not” kind—or decisions driven by fear… by the ingrained belief that I might be rejected or discarded if I didn’t comply, agree, or keep the peace.

So, I became generous with my “yes,” giving it away indiscriminately to whoever asked or demanded—because “yes” felt easy, and “no” felt selfish. I contributed to behaviors, arguments, and situations I knew were wrong, continually giving my heart away to people who didn’t steward it well—people I still allowed to come back for the easy win.

I confused permissiveness with goodness—with being a good girl, a dutiful daughter, a best friend, and a faithful wife. I said “yes” to avoid the emotional discomfort of the hard conversations that needed to take place. That wasn’t generosity.

There’s a history behind this I’m only just beginning to understand. And the deeper I look, the more I can see how much of my life has been shaped by the need to keep love from leaving.

I think that there’s usually a reason we become who we are—a beginning of sorts; some defining moment, or series of moments, that takes part in the forming of who we’ll grow into as adults, what shape our identity will take, and how we’ll show up in relationships… whether as the go-getter or the wallflower, the truth-teller or the “yes” girl.

Now, before I go further, I want to say that I’m going to briefly reference childhood sexual abuse. I won’t go into detail, but it’s relevant to the rest of this story and to the deeper root of what I’m sharing. Sadly, this is more common than we’d like to believe—and more often than not, still kept secret.

When I was little, about five or six years old, I didn’t have the words to express what was happening to me. Suffice it to say that what took place—and where—are still vivid in my memory. Even now, those times can surface unexpectedly - usually when I feel I’m being emotionally controlled or pressured by another - and can feel just as hurtful and confusing as they did more than 50 years ago.

Coincidentally, something else happened around that same time—something bound up with what was already going on, something that, after it occurred, solidified who I became from then on.

Now, as I sit with the truth of it, I understand how it became more damaging, for me, than the other.

My mother called it the “Kid Store.”

She told me that if I didn’t straighten up and mind her, she would call and trade me in for a child who minded and loved her mother. I was a little girl, and I believed her.

The second time she made the threat, she made the call. I didn’t know it was my aunt on the other end of the line; I only knew what I heard. I remember being beside myself—crying and begging her not to give me away, promising to be good, promising to mind her.

Something sharp settled into me in those moments, something that became my truest belief: that love could be lost… and that it was my responsibility, somehow, to keep it. No matter the cost.

For me, it was the beginning of people-pleasing as emotional survival.

I’ve often considered whether or not those two experiences became linked in that moment. Whether some part of me feared that telling the bad thing that was happening might somehow make me easier to give away. I can’t say for certain, but I’ve wondered if that played a role in why I kept that secret for so many years.

If you’re close to my age, the chances are high you’ve heard the term “tough love,” usually linked to a teenager or young adult—someone with the capacity to understand consequence.

I hadn’t made this connection until recently—actually, while writing this post—but what might be considered “tough love” for someone older can land very differently in a child.

A child doesn’t have the capacity to filter a threat like that. They don’t hear discipline; they hear the possibility of losing love, of losing their place, of being unwanted. And that kind of message doesn’t just pass through as some random correction from a parent.

It takes root.

As I’ve begun to understand this more clearly, I’ve also had to take an honest look at how it’s shown up in my closest relationships—especially in my marriages.

For a long time, I carried a lot of anger toward both of my husbands—toward the ways I felt unseen, unheard, or mistreated. And some of that anger is real. Some of it’s valid. But if I’m honest, not all of it belongs to them.

Some of it’s directed at myself.

For the ways I stayed.
For the ways I said yes when I meant no.
For the ways I allowed things I knew, deep down, weren’t right.

That’s a hard thing to sit with.

Because people-pleasing doesn’t just affect how we’re treated, it affects what we tolerate. And in some ways, it can even become its own form of manipulation. Not in a calculated or devious way, but in the sense that we’re trying to manage outcomes—keep the peace, avoid conflict, hold onto connection—by not fully showing up as ourselves.

I can see now how that played out in my own life.

I remember Michael often telling me that I was “the love of his life,” and I know there are probably women out there who would love to hear those words from their spouse. For me though, it didn’t fully land.

And I never said it back. Part of me thought: If that were true, you wouldn’t have treated me the way you did.

But there was another part, too, a part that didn’t know how to receive those words at all. That didn’t believe I could be loved with that kind of intensity.

And that’s where this goes deeper than behavior.

Because it’s not just about learning to say no. It’s about learning to believe that I’m worthy of a love that doesn’t have to be earned, managed, or maintained through self-abandonment.

I can see now how that followed me into marriage—that love was something I had to hold together. To maintain it. Protect it. Manage it. Even at the cost of myself.

And there’s another piece of this that I’ve come to understand over time. For me, what I went through as a child shaped how I saw my own worth and a lot of that became tied to my sexuality.

When I got married the first time, that played out in ways I didn’t recognize at the time. About six months into our marriage, Jeff told me he thought we should get divorced. He said he didn’t think he’d ever be able to please me sexually.

That was very confusing because for the two years we’d been together before that, that had never been an issue.

But what stands out to me now isn’t just what he said… it’s what I did.

I didn’t fight for clarity.
I didn’t question it.
I didn’t even stop to ask what was really going on.

Instead… I mirrored him.

I wasn’t just trying to keep the peace… I was trying to keep love from leaving.

Looking back at the Kid Store incident, I can see how my response—I’ll be good, I’ll mind you—did more than shape my behavior. It shaped what I allowed myself to feel.

I learned to shut parts of myself down. Not consciously, not with intention… but because some part of me understood that showing too much—feeling too much—might put me at odds with what someone else wanted from me.

And if being out of alignment meant risking love, it felt safer not to feel at all.

For a long time, it’s felt like there’ been something hard covering my heart—like a piece of petrified wood. Once alive, once soft, but over time, something that had hardened in order to protect.

That became complicated in marriage, especially when I was with someone who needed me to emote in order to feel secure in the relationship. What felt natural to him felt almost impossible for me.

I didn’t know how to give something I had learned to shut down.

And trying to do both—keep the peace and meet that need—became exhausting.

That worked for a long time, until it didn’t, and showed up differently in each of my marriages.

With my Jeff, it was easier to stay in that place. We had similar upbringings, and in many ways, related to one another on a more surface-like level. A lot of my deeper emotional processing happened outside the marriage, with girlfriends.

But even then, there was something I wasn’t receiving from him that I longed for—something I might have called a need at the time, that was tied to my own sense of self-worth.

With Michael, it was completely different. The emotional dynamic was more intense. There was more of a pull from him for me to show up in ways that proved my love for him - a need for me to express and emote - that didn’t come naturally to me.

What I had learned to suppress… was now being asked for.

Often.

Sometimes in ways that felt tied to other parts of the relationship, too, and I didn’t know how to meet that without losing myself which, in a repeatedly eff’d up way (and because we often go with what we know), I just kept doing again and again.

But here’s the thing: keeping the peace isn’t the same as telling the truth. And for most of my life, I chose peace.

Not because I was weak.
Not because I didn’t care.
But because peace felt like the safest way to keep love from leaving.

The horrible truth of this is that the peace which emanates from self-abandonment isn’t peace at all… it’s a kind of chaos.

And I’m discovering, slowly, that telling the truth doesn’t mean everything falls apart. It doesn’t mean that love automatically leaves, or that I lose my place, or that things change for the worse.

Sometimes relationships shift.
Sometimes dynamics break.
Sometimes things that were barely being held together… stop holding completely.

And that’s been one of the hardest parts for me because I spent so many years believing it was my job to hold it all together—to make it all work out.

Now… I absolutely recognize that there are parts of this I won’t ever get to work through with them. Conversations that won’t happen. Questions that won’t be answered. A kind of closure that won’t ever come from them.

Thankfully, I’m beginning to understand that healing doesn’t have to come from the other person. Some of it is happening now—in quiet times of reflection, in my relationship with God and the healing He wants to bring, and in the process of writing and looking honestly at what I’ve lived through all these years.

I’m starting to understand something different:

Love isn’t something I have to maintain through performance, to protect by disappearing, or to earn by being easy, agreeable, or making myself small.

Because telling the truth—even when it’s uncomfortable, creates tension, or risks being misunderstood—is part of how I come back to myself.

And I’m still figuring out what that looks like. Still learning how to say no, how to speak honestly, how to feel what I spent years trying not to feel.

It’s not always easy, and I have a long way to go, but I know that, for me, it’s the right path forward.

 “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
— Isaiah 43:18–19