The thing about love is, choosing yourself first doesn't mean you're being selfish.

It's actually quite the contrary.

Recently, I had a conversation with one of my best friends about staying in a relationship. She was staying in a relationship that wasn't making her happy anymore in fear of the emotional repercussions it would cause her significant other.

It was always the same problem that caused her to doubt herself in going further with the break-up — she didn't want her girlfriend, who had promised her she had no place in her life if things were to end, to spiral down to a sense of bleakness that had previously consumed her life.

She thought it was selfish to leave the relationship knowing how it could potentially affect her girlfriend despite how unhappy she felt.

But she was also, in every sense of the word, scared to let go of something, of someone that had meant so much to her in the past few years.

Scared because it meant potentially losing someone she loved.

But, that's also the thing about love. While love isn't a losing game, love also isn't an ultimatum.

A relationship shouldn't mean you lose yourself in the process.

I've gone down that road — there wasn't a lot of beauty in the self-sacrificing, just a lot of regrets and what if's (what if's were probably the worst thing about it).

And the thing is, love shouldn't hurt, not in the way that it would cause you to sacrifice your own happiness.

Sometimes, in order to grow as a person, it means growing independently outside of the relationship. It means finding who you were before the relationship. It means loving and hurting and taking every lesson that comes with both and using that to better yourself as a person.

And it's realizing sometimes love isn't enough reason to stay, especially not when we have to sacrifice our own happiness in the process.

It may seem like the hardest thing to do in the world but we have to make ourselves a priority before anyone else.

Even if it means breaking someone else's heart to save our own.