I Stayed Too Long in a One-Sided Love

I Stayed Too Long in a One-Sided Love

by (Mujeeb ur Rahman)

There’s a special kind of heartbreak that comes not from being left, but from staying too long, too quietly in a love that was never truly returned.

I didn’t realize it at first. In the beginning, it felt like love. You smiled at me in a way that made me forget the world. You said just enough to keep me hoping, just enough to make me believe that maybe, if I gave more, you’d feel the same. But that maybe became my prison.

I gave you my attention, my affection, my best and in return, I got moments. Small, beautiful, fleeting moments that meant the world to me… and almost nothing to you.

You were distant, inconsistent, and emotionally unavailable. But I kept making excuses for you.

He’s just busy.

She’s afraid to love.

They’ve been hurt before.

So I stayed. I stayed through the silence, through the cancelled plans, through the days I felt like an option. I convinced myself that patience was love. That waiting was loyalty. That one day, you’d wake up and see me really see me and realize I was worth choosing.

But the truth is, I was never chosen. I was always the one who chose you, again and again, while you barely reached for me.

I remember the way I held my phone, hoping for a reply. How my heart jumped at every notification, how I reread your short messages as if they held hidden meaning. I created stories around your absence, romanticized your silence, called it mystery when it was just disinterest.

I wasn’t in love.

I was addicted to the idea of love.

To the fantasy of who you could be if only you loved me back.

People told me to let go. They saw what I didn’t want to see.

But I was too invested. I had put so much of myself into you, I didn’t know who I was without the hope of us. I clung to your half-effort because I thought that was better than nothing.

And that’s what one-sided love does to you.

It makes you smaller. It teaches you to be grateful for crumbs. It convinces you that your needs are too much, that your feelings are a burden, and that loving someone should hurt.

But it shouldn’t.

Love should never make you question your worth.

Love should not feel like begging.

Love should not leave you empty.

The hardest part wasn’t losing you it was realizing I had lost myself in the process.

I became quieter, more careful, afraid to say too much or ask for anything. I started shrinking my heart to fit inside the small space you gave me. I stopped looking at myself with pride. I stopped seeing my own light.

It took me a long time to leave. Not physically, but emotionally.

I had to mourn the version of you I created in my head.

I had to grieve the love I gave that was never truly received.

And hardest of all I had to forgive myself for staying.

But I did leave.

And when I did, something beautiful began to return me.

I remembered how full my heart could be without waiting on someone else to fill it.

I started to reclaim the parts of me I had buried to make room for you.

And I learned: love isn’t proven by how long you stay in pain. It’s shown by how willing you are to walk away from it.

One-sided love is not love. It’s hope, stretched thin.

It’s a heart asking for water in a place that only gives dust.

So now, I choose myself.

I choose peace over confusion.

I choose love that loves me back.

And I promise myself I will never stay where I’m only half-held again.