You don't need to audition for love
For years I stayed in friendships and relationships where I was the only one reaching. Here's what changed — and what I found on the other side.
Ziv Vosberg
6/15/20264 min read
I grew up absorbing a belief I didn't choose and couldn't name for a long time:
Being alone is shameful.
It wasn't said out loud. It didn't need to be. It was in the air — in the way aloneness was treated as something to be avoided, hidden, explained away. In the unspoken message that your value was measured by whether someone was beside you.
So I made sure I was never really alone. I stayed connected to people who weren't putting in equal effort. I reached further than the other person was reaching. I showed up more, initiated more, gave more — quietly, persistently convinced that if I just tried hard enough, they would eventually meet me where I was.
And when it didn't work, I had an explanation ready: I'm not likeable.
What staying looked like
It looked like friendships where I was always the one reaching out first. Relationships where I made myself smaller, more agreeable, more accommodating — hoping that eventually I would become someone the other person could really love.
It looked like tolerating treatment I would have recognized immediately as insufficient if a client had described it to me. Accepting less than I deserved because the alternative — being alone —
felt like confirmation of the story I was already carrying.
Here's the cruel logic of that belief: when you're convinced you're not worthy of love, you gravitate toward relationships that seem to confirm it. Not because you want to suffer, but because the familiar feels like home — even when home is painful. The person who doesn't reach back, who keeps you slightly uncertain, who makes you work for every crumb of connection — they feel like proof. And some part of you keeps trying to disprove them, to finally earn the thing that was never really on offer.
I know this pattern intimately. I have lived it.
The thing that started to shift
It wasn't a dramatic breakthrough at first. It was more of a gradual reorientation — a slow turning of attention toward myself rather than toward whoever was failing to show up.
I started asking different questions. Not 'why won't they make more effort?' but 'what do I actually want? What do I enjoy? What feels alive to me, regardless of whether anyone else is interested in joining?'
And then — quietly, without announcement — I started doing those things. Alone.
When someone couldn't come, didn't want to, or simply wasn't putting in the effort — I stopped waiting. I stopped performing enthusiasm I didn't feel in order to keep people engaged. I stopped shrinking myself to fit what someone else was willing to offer.
And something unexpected happened: the people who fell away when I stopped performing — I realized I didn't miss them the way I thought I would. What I had been holding onto wasn't really connection. It was the exhausting work of trying to manufacture connection from someone who wasn't offering it.
Being a therapist made it impossible to keep lying to myself
There was another force at work in this shift — and I think it's worth being honest about.
I spend my days sitting with clients, helping them recognize when they're accepting less than they deserve. Helping them see the patterns — the reaching, the shrinking, the belief that they have to earn their place in relationships. Helping them understand that love is not something you perform your way into.
At some point I had to reckon with a simple truth: I couldn't preach one thing all day and then live by completely different rules for myself.
The work called me into integrity. If I genuinely believed what I was telling my clients — that they were worthy of love without having to audition for it, that they deserved relationships where the effort was mutual, that being alone was infinitely better than being with someone who made them feel like not enough — then I had to live like I believed it too.
That accountability was uncomfortable. And it was one of the most important shifts I ever made.
The lake in Japan
I want to tell you about a moment that I come back to often.
I was in Japan, sitting alone at the edge of a lake. My feet in the water. No one beside me. No plan to meet anyone, no one I was waiting for, no performance required.
And I was completely at peace.
Not the brittle peace of someone telling themselves they're fine. Real peace — quiet, easy, unhurried. I sat there and I thought: having someone here wouldn't make this moment any better. This is already whole.
That thought — that simple, ordinary thought — was something I genuinely couldn't have had a few years earlier. Because a few years earlier, being alone at a lake would have felt like evidence. Like proof of the story. Like something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
That moment at the lake wasn't the end of anything. It was just a quiet confirmation that something had genuinely changed. That I had stopped needing someone else's presence to make my life feel valid.
What I want you to know if you're reading this
If you're staying in a friendship or relationship right now where you are the only one reaching — I see you. I understand the pull of it. I understand the fear that if you stop reaching, there will be nothing left. I understand the belief, however buried, that this is what you deserve.
I want to tell you what I wish someone had told me: You do not need to audition for love.
You do not need to perform, shrink, or exhaust yourself into being worthy of someone's attention. There are people in this world who will love you without requiring a performance. Who will reach back. Who will show up. Who will make you feel, without effort or anxiety, that you are enough exactly as you are.
You will not find those people while you are spending all your energy on the ones who are making you prove it.
The path there isn't dramatic. It starts with a small reorientation — toward yourself, toward what you actually want, toward the quiet dignity of doing things alone rather than with the wrong people. It starts with tolerating the discomfort of aloneness long enough to discover that it isn't what you feared.
It might start with sitting at a lake somewhere, feet in the water, and noticing that the moment is already whole.
I've been where you are. I've done this work — in my own life, and alongside hundreds of clients. And I can tell you with complete honesty: the other side is real.
If this resonated, I'd love to connect. Book a free 15-minute consultation at ziv-vosberg.clientsecure.me — no commitment, just a conversation.
ABOUT
Ziv Vosberg, LMFT #130319
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Telehealth across California
(408) 831-8804
zivlmft.com
GOOD TO KNOW
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