Imagine this scenario: You and your long-term partner just broke up. You run to your best friend for consultation and they reply, “Well, you deserve better anyways!” or “You can do better.” This is meant to be a compliment; you were already so far above that person that they were lucky to have you.
Honestly, I hear it all the time. “You deserve better,” as if I don’t know my own worth. Listen, I am an amazing, accomplished, powerful, badass woman. I deserve anything and everything I want. What I don’t understand is if I’m deserving of all this “better,” why don’t people rise to my level?
I am apparently willing to get down and dirty with the plebeians below me, so why aren’t they willing to better themselves for me? Especially if you hear “You deserve better,” from your partner; “You deserve better” equates to “I’m not willing to try in this relationship.” In this case, I am simultaneously deserving of better, but am unworthy of the attempted betterment of my partner.
I don’t like hearing, “You deserve better,” because it makes it seem like my problem to hold, when in reality there’s nothing wrong with how I am. If I deserve better and my partner genuinely wants to be in a relationship with me, they would work to be better.
“You deserve better,” also seems to patronize me for not finding a person who’s, “deserving of me.” Excuse me for not finding this mythical person; I don’t have the ability to see the future. I can’t perform some magic test to determine if a person I meet is manipulative or a liar.
Emotions don’t listen to logic, and when you’re infatuated with someone, you ignore signs that tell you that, “you deserve better.”
Don’t shame me for being human.
“You deserve better,” also is putting another person down in order to build yourself up. That’s no way to build confidence. It’s a false sense of security in one’s self. Whether the other person was garbo or not, subtly sh*tting on them is not going to reaffirm your self-confidence in the long run.