I'll admit, I fell into a trap. The kind of trap I devised so well on my own, I didn't even see myself falling into it. The kind of trap that causes you to revisit your happiness and self-worth for countless miserable hours until it's absolutely exhausting and you feel like a pile of shit. And then it dawned on me: my happiness and self-worth was becoming emotionally tied to a man. The boyfriend to be exact.

This is the kind of thing I've seen countless friends do, and every time I would think, "Wow, you seriously have that little of respect for yourself?" And then unintentionally the same thing happened to me. They say when you point your finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself for a reason. This was entirely true in my case. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that when I thought I was standing on my own two feet, I really wasn't. Because when he was happy, I was happy. When he was sad, I was sad. I carried the weight of his world on my shoulders, and I paid for it with my own happiness. I'm sure many women can identify with this kind of emotional attachment that occurs when you find a man you really love. Waiting by the phone for him to text, call, anything. Being essentially miserable until the next time you see him. Canceling plans you had with friends when he asks you to hang out. Putting everything else in your life on hold for him. Yep, I'm guilty of the same thing.

Strangely enough, the more I consider how pitiful I've become, the more self-empowered I become simultaneously. I don't need a man to be happy; happiness comes from within. That may sound cliche, but it's one of the biggest truths in this life. It's easy to want to focus on the future with this person and how great things could be if you were to get married and continue a life together. But the reality is that we only have right now to live for. We can't live for the future or for the past. And we certainly can't tie up the very center of our happiness in another person. I am the type of person with so much compassion that it's incredibly difficult for me not to want to solve the problems of everyone that matters to me. But I've come to terms with the fact that it's impossible to do what's right for me and to continue on my journey to my own happiness when I'm so preoccupied in helping someone else. I have a lot to be grateful for in my life, and all that became foggy when my happiness hinged on the actions of my significant other.

So now I'm making a stand. I'm reassigning my self-respect and self-worth in a way that makes it impossible for any decision he makes in his own life to dampen mine. I feel like a lot of good will come out of this.