Dear Stranger,

A close friend of mine asked me something recently that I have not been able to stop thinking about.

She looked at me and said, why do you go back to them? Even after everything they put you through. Even when you know how it ends. Even when you know they are going to use you and leave, why do you still go back?

And I sat with that for a second. Because it is a fair question. From the outside it probably looks like weakness. Or like I have not learned my lesson. Or like I love punishment for some reason I cannot explain.

But my answer was this. I go back because of the promises I made. Not theirs. Mine.

Just because they hurt me does not mean I get to lose myself. Just because they failed their word does not mean I have to fail mine. I know what I stand for. I know the kind of person I am trying to be. And that person does not disappear just because someone treated me badly. My character is not a response to how people treat me. It is something I carry regardless.

But there is something deeper than that too. Something that keeps me up at night more than the pain ever did.

What if they genuinely needed me? What if behind all the mess and the history and the hurt, there was a real moment where they needed someone and I was the one who could have been there? And I was not. Because I was protecting myself. Because I had decided I was done. And then something happened. Something I could have changed if I had just shown up.

That thought, that specific thought, is something I cannot live with.

I am not afraid of being hurt again. I have survived that before and I will survive it again. What I am afraid of is standing somewhere in the future knowing that someone needed me, knowing that I had the ability to be there, knowing they asked, and I chose not to go. And then carrying that for the rest of my life.

If I show up and it goes badly, okay. That I can accept. I tried. I was true to myself. I fulfilled what I believed was my responsibility and it did not work out. That is something I can make peace with.

But if I do not show up, and it needed me to, and I find out later that I could have changed the outcome, that is a weight I do not want to carry. Not now, not ever.

So yes. I go back sometimes. Not because I am naive. Not because I have forgotten what happened. But because I made a promise and I meant it. And because being a person of your word does not come with conditions. It does not switch off when someone disappoints you. That is actually when it matters most.

Now, about promises. The reason any of this even hurts is because I used to assume everyone treated their word the way I treat mine. When I said I will stay, I stayed. When I said I will be there, I showed up. No conditions, no fine print, no version of it that depended on my mood that day.

So when someone said forever to me, I heard it the way I would say it. Completely. Seriously. Like something they were not willing to put down.

I was wrong.

I have watched people say forever with a straight face and vanish like the word never left their mouth. I have heard I will never hurt you from the exact person I spent months trying to heal from. And I could not understand it. Not just the pain of it but the logic of it. How does a person say something and simply not mean it?

But then I realized the mistake I was making. I was measuring their words with the weight of my own intentions. I was hearing their promises and running them through how seriously I hold mine. That was never fair. I was placing my own character onto someone else and then being blindsided when they turned out to be different.

Not everyone carries their words the way you do. And learning that is not about becoming bitter. It is about becoming clearer.

So these days I do not fall in love with what someone says to me. I watch what they do when nothing is at stake. On a regular day, with nothing to prove, with no reason to perform. Whether they show up when it costs them something. Whether the person they are in private matches the one standing in front of me.

Because eventually, a person’s actions will introduce you to the truth their words were working so hard to hide.

So dear stranger, if you have been hurt by someone’s promises, it is not because you were foolish. It is because you were measuring them against yourself.

And you were always going to be a difficult standard to meet.

- with love, AJ