Dating Pattern 46563: R.I.P Captain Save-a-Hoe
I Have Hung Up My Cape...
I wish I could save everyone. Sweep in, fix their lives, soak up the praise, and hand them peace. That makes me sound like God—but honestly, I’ve spent enough time acting like it. I’ve gone to crazy lengths, drained my finances, and wrecked my own stability trying to rescue people who cannot be saved. I moved a stranger into my friend’s apartment just so they’d have a roommate. I lent out my car. I even wrapped my own mother into my codependent mess—all in the name of love.
Being a savior has two faces for me. One is the mother: controlling everything, managing someone else’s feelings, contorting myself into whoever they need. The other is the rescuer: monitoring every move they make, terrified they’ll unravel the fragile order I built for them. Both patterns spring from the same need—I need this person to be the lover and supporter I’m missing. So when everything I construct falls apart (and it always does), I’m there to catch them. And the cycle starts again.
But this time, I’m finally letting go.
It sucks. It’s heartbreaking. I’ve shed another layer of something that made me feel useful. Codependency recovery, I’ve learned, is mostly grief. Grieving relationships that cannot be. Grieving people who can no longer be in your life. Grieving your past trauma. And grieving parts of your personality—just to find the real you underneath. I hate this process. I hate learning the same lesson in new disguises. But if I want healthy relationships, if I want to know what I can and cannot do, I have to keep going. So I’m shedding this skin too. I’m hanging up my cape.
I’ve cried about this for months. I’m on the verge of another epiphany—I can feel it. Like a rollercoaster climbing toward the drop. All that anxiety on the ascent. When I break these dating patterns, the drop is terrifying—the G-force, the speed, the loss of control. But then comes the cleansing. The relief when the ride stops. The grounding when I step off, steady in my decisions.
I’ve already broken the workaholic pattern. The divorcee pattern. The broke-people pattern. But I haven’t broken the mothering, the caretaking, the rescuer—not yet. The biggest beast is the mother in me, and I know she’s tangled up in my Mother Hunger. I truly hate that book. I haven’t recovered from it yet.
I’m at the end of my rope. After this last buildup of frustration, irritation, and anger—not yet resentment, but close—I called uncle before it got there. I have to pull the plug on my own issues before I hit the wall, before I burn out and spend months recovering.
So today is the day. I’m hanging up my cape forever. No more Captain Save A Hoe. I cannot keep doing this cycle—no matter how much it hurts to watch the people I love struggle on their own. I have to hold my own grounding instead of getting swept into theirs. I’m no longer willing to drown with them, drag them along, jump in after them, talk them off ledges, or react to every crisis that falls from the sky.
I’m done saving. Now I’m learning to let things fall where they land.
P.s. Enjoy this song Mayyadda- RIP Captain Save a Heaux