‘It’s Not You, It’s Me’: How to Believe it Really is Them and Not You

By Claudia Osei

We’ve all heard the famous breakup line, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’. Or perhaps we’ve heard something similar, like, ‘You are amazing, but I just have so much going on at the moment’. Those daunting words, even though they are meant to make you feel better, just end up making you doubt yourself more. 

You start wondering, are they just trying to spare my feelings? Maybe they are saying this because, after all, you ARE the problem. If they really wanted you, all the other problems and commitments wouldn’t matter, right? 

Well, you don’t know that. That’s the key. 

To really believe that it IS them and not you, the key is to always think of the maybes. Maybe those other things and everyday problems were a lot to handle. Maybe you were just too good for them, and maybe that intimidated them. Maybe they just really feared commitment, and it doesn’t matter how special you were or how well things were going – some fears are built to last a while. 

The point is: why do you immediately think that you must be the problem? We live in a world of a million probabilities. Unless they outwardly said that you were the problem, you should not doubt yourself. Even if they did say that you were the problem, you should not doubt yourself because sometimes people are just not meant to see who we truly are, so they create this warped version of us. 

Of course, we all need to work on ourselves; there will be times when we really are the problem. But I promise you; you will most likely know when this is the case if you self-reflect and are honest with yourself. So, be honest with yourself. Are you really the problem, or is your doubt about whether or not the person is being honest when they said it wasn’t you but them coming from a place of not being secure with yourself?

To really believe that it is not you but them, understand this: no one owes us their presence. As humans, we sometimes feel entitled to people’s time. We expect the person that we love to automatically love us back the same way, but sometimes it doesn’t work out like that. Sometimes we are just not meant to be. And it’s not because there is something wrong with you or them. Rather, it’s because your lives are not meant to align. And that’s fine. 

More on this entitlement that we have. Have you ever met the most gorgeous person in the world (maybe not the most gorgeous in everyone’s eyes, but in yours), a person whose personality complements yours, a person who you cannot fault, but despite that there was something missing? Or a person that your friend considers gorgeous, but you don’t. You may even see the beauty of that person, but there is still something missing for you. There isn’t that spark. 

We’ve all met people we thought were amazing inside and out but that were just not exactly our cup of tea. This is what I mean by ‘entitlement’. We humans believe that someone should feel the same because we do, and if they don’t, it’s because there is something wrong with us. How can we be so entitled? We ourselves will meet people that we cannot fault but that we end up letting go of because something was just not right. 

If I ask you what was wrong with that person, you would struggle to tell me. The only thing that was wrong with that person was that they weren’t meant for you, the same as the only thing that was wrong with you was not being meant for someone else. I know that doesn’t make it any better when you really want someone that doesn’t want you. But at least now, I hope you understand that unless there was an explicit reason behind this person not feeling the same, there is only one explanation: it is not you, it is them! 

Ultimately, there was something missing for them, and that is fine. Their actions are not a reflection of the amazing person that you are.