I just need to share this because in some ways, it feels cathartic to get this all out. I replaced real city names with fake names — Collegetown is the city where we both went to college, Okaysville is my ex’s hometown and where I currently live, Citydale is where my ex currently lives, and is about an hour commute away from Okaysville.

We found each other in February of 2018. We were both in our senior year of college in Collegetown, on the cusp of graduating, but we’d met years prior freshman year. We’d always been acquaintances as we had mutual friends, but we were never close enough to hang out one-on-one. It was him and our good friend’s joint birthday party. Ironically enough, I was trying to hook up with the other guy that night, but ended up with my ex instead.

We then started a tentative relationship — obviously, we were both graduating and had no idea where we were going. He was going back to his hometown of Okaysville, while I was local to Collegetown, but we decided that we would work on it. I visited a few times over the summer and ended up getting a job in Okaysville, while he moved for his job to Citydale, about an hour away from Okaysville. It was a best case scenario situation, and we’d made it work by alternating visits between the two cities.

In retrospect, there was a lot that I sacrificed for him. One of the things was that over the weekends when he’d come to Okaysville, we’d spend time at his parents’ place rather than my studio apartment. It meant that in 2019, I was packing up my stuff and living somewhere else for almost all of my weekends. We also shared little in common, though in my defense, he had very few and narrow interests that were specialized to what he wanted to do for his career. I’d attempted to listen and ask him about it, though at some point, it became frustrating to hear him talk about things without explaining any of the context to it. To top it off, he never seemed to ask more about my interests and spent a lot of his time with me on his phone. While we were in Citydale, I’d point out things and attempt to make conversation (things like, “oh, that store is new” or “wow, that house looks cool”) and he’d have little to no answer to what I’d say. I know I wasn’t making groundbreaking conversation, but I’ve found that the smallest things can just be interesting to talk about.

Still, I tried. I tried, but it was also difficult because we had such different love languages — his was primarily physical touch, while I prized gifts and acts of service. It was easy for me to feel withdrawn and unloving when I felt he wasn’t trying, and I’d withhold sex from him as it was my only bargaining chip. There were times when I felt like he didn’t actually care about what was in my head as much as how I looked physically.

By March 2020, when the pandemic hit, I was facing the fact that I had never explored my neighborhood and had virtually no friends in Okaysville — and on top of that, I hated my job. While he came back to Okaysville for a few weeks when it was safe, I didn’t want to live with him and his parents and mostly stayed at my apartment, save for the weekends and some weekdays. He asked me to drive to Citydale from Okaysville, even though I had intense driving anxiety and there was a stay-at-home order from the government. Our relationship was already beginning to feel strained even before the pandemic, but the pandemic had made it worse.

But we stayed together. I think it was because amongst all the bad, I had truly loved him still for the moments that felt special. Him painstakingly cooking elaborate and beautiful meals for me, us laughing at the same things because we shared the same, deadpan sense of humor. Him never complaining as I cried and whined because I got too drunk, and both of our reluctance to go out on weekend nights because we were homebodies at the end of it all.

Things kept falling apart though. I think it was easiest for me to see that in the relationship that we weren’t working. I’d spoken to my therapist since the summer of 2020 about how jaded I felt in the relationship. I started grad school part-time, and I had even less time to spend with him.

Last December, I finally bought tickets to go home for Christmas. The weekend before I was going, we decided that we would do a mini-Christmas with his family in Okaysville. I was festive and happy and in one of those moods where I’d wanted to work on this relationship. I’d gone to pick him up at the station and was honestly really excited to see him. But immediately, when he got into the car, I knew something was wrong. He was stoic, quiet, and unaffectionate. I kept on asking him what was wrong, but he claimed he was just tired. We went to dinner the night after with his parents, and I’d made one of our usual jokes, and he didn’t play along. I tried to hold his hand, but he wouldn’t.

My heart hurts for myself there. I was confused and desperate, and it was only the Sunday morning that I found him crying in his room, saying that we needed to talk.

He broke up with me, but in my heart, I know it was mutual. I don’t think we’d fallen out of love, but we didn’t know how to make this work without causing each other immense amounts of sadness and pain. His parents were out, but when they came back, we had to compose ourselves and act as if everything was okay. I drove him to the train station and cried hysterically on my drive home. He called his parents on his way home, and his mother had cried as well.

Quite honestly, the grief is the hardest right now. I feel like I’ve lost a partner and a family as well, as I’ve gotten close to his family over the past 3 years. They’re virtually my only friends in Okaysville and I feel incredibly lonely. I have moments where I wonder if staying broken up is worth sacrificing the safety I felt with him, and there are moments when I feel like everything is okay.

Most recently, I realized that my ex’s roommate is following this girl that we went to school in Collegetown with. His roommate didn’t go to school with us, and I didn’t know that they knew each other, so of course, my mind is going a mile a minute thinking that my ex is with her now. There’s absolutely no basis for that other than the fact that his roommate is following her, and even if it is true, it’s none of my business who he decides to date. I think I’m just bitter over the fact that I feel like I sacrificed so much, while he continues to live his life as normal.

Anyways, I know that time heals all wounds, but I’m scared that it’ll take forever for me to let go. I wish I was still angry at him, but I’m not. All I can do is press on and move forward, and every day, I take that step to be further away from him.

TL;DR - My boyfriend of almost 4 years broke up with me last December even though I'd already been seeing the signs that things weren't great in 2020. I'm still feeling the aftereffects and I'm scared it'll never go away.