There’s a specific kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come from a breakup. It comes from realizing: he didn’t need a partner. He needed a therapist. And I needed a project.
Have you ever found yourself wanting to fix someone you're interested in? Picture this: you're two dates in, he charms you with the openness and oversharing, and now you're sitting across the table completely starstruck with the possibility that he could change for you. I used to call it love.
The way I’d explain away his inability to communicate — He’s just been through a lot. The way I mistook his silence for depth. His volatility for passion. I didn’t see it at the time, but what I felt wasn’t love. It was obligation dressed up in romantic delusion. It was Wounded Bird Syndrome.
Wounded Bird Syndrome — also known as “I can fix him” disorder — is the tendency to fall for people who are clearly in pain, unavailable, emotionally underdeveloped or stuck. And instead of walking away, we see it as a calling.
We think: If I just love him harder, softer, more purely — maybe he’ll come alive again. Maybe he’ll rise. Maybe I’ll be the one he finally chooses. But what we’re doing isn’t love. It’s caretaking. It’s codependency. It’s emotional martyrdom in a silk robe and good lighting.
The truth? We don't love them. We love who they could have been. We loved the version of them that showed up once every six weeks and made us believe it was all worth it. We sit in the glory of thinking that we could possibility be the one to crack the code. To fix the broken boy and turn him into a man who could finally hold us with both hands.
But what I’ve learned — slowly, painfully, in therapy and in night creams — is that if love feels like a full-time job where you're constantly managing someone else’s moods, needs, trauma, triggers and emotional weather report... you’re not in love. You’re in survival mode.
There’s a quiet grief in walking away from a person you thought you were meant to save. It feels like failure. Like abandonment. Like you’re letting them drown.
You were never their lifeboat.
You were just someone who forgot your own life trying to keep theirs afloat.
And maybe the most loving thing we can do — for them, and for ourselves — is to let go of the story where we play the saviour. We'll never be. And now, we need to write a new one, where we are the loved one. Not the rescuer. Not the fixer. Just someone worthy of being chosen without needing to bleed first.
Final Thought:
It wasn’t love. It was a need to feel needed. It was a fantasy. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t mutual. Love doesn’t require a rescue. It requires recognition. And next time, I’ll wait for that.
* Now that we're done stressing over him. It sounds like we need to use our Quantum Mud Mask. Don't forget to get yours now!