An excerpt from Thought Catalog:
When you love more, when you can feel that your partner does not return so much of what is essential to you, you start to love yourself less. You see yourself as worthy only to the degree that this person whom you love so much has deemed you worthy, and if they are not loving you with as much passion or conviction as you love them, there must be something wrong with you. There is almost no fault in them which you are not ready to excuse, ready to brush over with the incredibly forgiving rendering of your admiration — and yet your flaws all become tangible, justifiable reasons for them not to be happy with you. In many ways, the more indifferent they become towards your overtures, the more resolved you become to convincing them otherwise.
While being with them can give you a heady rush of pride and profound gratefulness at being allowed this time together — and to bask in the glow of being their chosen one, even for a moment — it always comes with a distinct wave of shame over simply being not up to the task. Everyone that he/she knows, anyone that they talk to, anyone that walks by is competition, and is likely so much more deserving than you in your eyes.
And the treatment that you will accept from them knows almost no boundaries. Nothing, to you, is wholly inexcusable or something you don’t in some way deserved. Even if being loved by them comes with a thousand asterisks, or is accompanied by put-downs or bouts of complete apathy, it is better than not being loved at all. Slowly you begin to adjust yourself to what you imagine they are looking for, uninterested in pleasing yourself so much as getting that residual pleasure from making them happy, if only for a minute. By the time they leave you — and they almost always will — you will look around and realize just how much of yourself you had given away. Your interests, your style, your loud laugh, your crazy friends: they were all collateral damage in the face of wanting to make them love you as you love them.