He used to stand in the doorway like a gatekeeper, arms crossed, eyes moving over me not with admiration, but with possession. There was something cold in the way he looked at me – like he was searching for something to disapprove of. Some detail to correct. Some part of me he could shrink. “Go change,” he’d say. Flat. Final. No room for conversation. Sometimes he’d say it twice, just in case I hesitated. Just in case I thought I had a choice.

And I did go change.

Not because I agreed. Not because I saw what he saw. But because it was easier than the argument. Easier than explaining how it felt to be stared at like I was both his and somehow wrong.

The problem was never the outfit.

It was how I carried myself in it.

It was the quiet confidence in my shoulders, the way I stood tall without asking for permission. It was how I looked when I wasn’t small. That unsettled him. My presence. My ease. My self-assurance. He wanted me to look beautiful, but only in a way that felt manageable to him. Safe. Contained. Beautiful in private, never in public.

So I learned to second-guess the way I dressed. I started looking at myself through his eyes before I ever stepped outside. I began to hide the parts of me that felt powerful, because it seemed to make him uncomfortable. And over time, I didn’t just change my clothes. I changed the way I moved. The way I spoke. The way I existed.

It took me a long time to realize the issue was never with how I looked.

It was with how he felt next to someone who didn’t need his approval to be whole.

And when a person can’t handle your light, they’ll start trying to convince you that dimming it is love.