Well, your favorite skank is back.
I know, I really didn’t think I’d be back here either. Jared* and I had something special. We loved each other to a depth I had never thought possible…but sometimes that’s not enough.
I had gone back and forth on if I wanted to write this. For awhile I kind of wanted to keep it private but then I felt like I’d be lying. I was 100% honest about falling in love, it’s only fair to be honest about falling out of it.
So. Here we go. Put on some Adele, pour a glass of wine, and buckle up for the bullshit.
A few things to note:
- It had been a tough year for Jared but things were starting to really turn around at the time of the break up.
- I wanted to get married in the next 4-6 years and he didn’t know what he wanted. Every time the marriage conversation came up, it would end with me sobbing and Jared feeling awful.
With this in mind, I immediately started to panic when I received a text saying we had to have the discussion we were putting off. For 2 hours I sat in my apartment trying not to throw up but when he came up to my door without a bag and the worst face, I knew.
We moved to my room and sat on the bed. No kiss to say hi or anything. He didn’t speak so I said, “Well if you’re going to do it, just get it over with.” He then said, “We need to break up.”
And then my world stopped.
I don’t remember what exactly was said when but, it came down to that he couldn’t give me what I wanted and it wasn’t fair to me. That I deserved someone who put me on a pedestal the same way I did for them and wants to talk to me as much as I want to talk to them. The thing was I never thought I wasn’t getting that.
The main point he kept bringing up was I wanted to get married and he didn’t know if he wanted that too. We had gone to a few weddings and they essentially were the nail in the coffin for our relationship. He saw how excited my friends were to take the next step and how much they loved each other but he didn’t feel the same about me.
Listen buddy. It’s someone’s fucking wedding day. You bet your ass those motherfuckers are going to be excited AF to be marrying each other because they just spent like $30,000 on a god damn party. This is the day where you’re the most in love. You can’t compare your day to day relationship to a couple on their wedding day because you’ll lose every time.
There were a few other things peppered in like we weren’t “100% compatible” and had different senses humor. I mean that’s not true for anyone BUT OKAY.
Still, I begged him to stay and take it all back which wasn’t my best moment. I only wanted to be with him and I was so sure I had found my person. Everything I had wanted up to that point I felt I had and it fucking destroyed me that he didn’t see what I saw.
He held me the whole time as I sobbed and tried to change his mind. He said our relationship “hadn’t progressed forward” and so I doubled down. He was moving in a month and I said I’d get my car, pack it up, and move with him. I didn’t care. Don’t want to get married? Fine. I’d live. He said no.
Probably about an hour into my bullshit I realized that it was truly over. I remember between sobs looking into his eyes and having a moment of clarity. He was done. He was going to leave and I wouldn’t see or speak to him ever again. I’d have to date again. Fuck that noise. Text someone for days, meet up, and be disappointed? NOPE. Then came round two of full out sobbing.
During all this, I heard my roommate in the kitchen while he and I reached the point where we were ready to be done with the sob fest. I didn’t want her to see me looking like a fucking shit show so we laid on the bed and cuddled one last time.
I told him how much I loved seeing him with my family and that’s what made me want babies with him. I just loved him so fucking much I wanted to put more of him in the world. He told me that I was the best girlfriend he ever had and I did everything right…but like apparently not because here I am writing about my god damn break up. BUT I DIGRESS.
He kept saying that I was going to meet someone who would make me so happy. That his psychic/medium mother confirmed it. I just wanted to meet Jared all over again and relive everything. To see his face light up the way it did on our first date. To hug him again while he did the dishes. I wanted all of it.
When we broke up, I asked for him to mail me my things. He said he’d reach out in 2 weeks in case I wanted to meet so I could get closure. That fucking pissed the living shit out of me. I didn’t want to see him. He fucking ruined my life. Stop trying to be the nice guy and own up to the fact that you fucking wrecked me. Also JUST GIVE ME MY SHIT.
By the week 2 mark, I was feeling “fine”. I more of less felt numbed out but I was able to go to work and enjoy time with friends. I walked out the door at lunch for a doctor’s appointment and I saw his name pop up on my phone. Everything went black for a second and I felt my stomach flip.
I probably shouldn’t have said that but god damn, I wanted him to fucking hurt. He knew I wanted to get the fuck out of New Jersey the entire time we were together. If he wanted to really do “the right thing”, he would have dumped me before I renewed my lease.
I sobbed when I got home. Hard. But it was weirdly comforting knowing I got my dig in. I said everything I needed to in less than 10 words.
About a week later, I felt the urge to creep on social media. I typed his name into Facebook and it just listed our mutual friends. When I hit enter I saw it. He deleted me. I went through every other platform and he unfollowed me. I can’t explain it, but that was the last straw. For the most part, I was keeping it together. I would cry myself to sleep but I was doing great at work and if anything, I was doing my job better. I was working out, seeing friends, and on my way to finding my new normal. This undid a lot of that.
It felt so fucking personal. How dare this fucker cut me out AGAIN when I apparently did nothing wrong. I’m sorry that seeing my face gives you hell. It fucking should.
So then I sobbed at work and my boss walked in on it. (Isn’t life grand?) I got home and saw my box of stuff next to the stairwell. Great. It would come in that day. Took it upstairs and opened it up to find a letter sitting on the top. Here we go again.
I read it and started sobbing like someone had died. I was so loud that I was concerned someone would call the cops so I had to get a pillow to muffle it. (#CityLiving) To sum it up, the letter basically said that I was such an incredible support, deserved love, and was an amazing person. That I “would find great love” because I was great love.
I believed everything in that letter was true. I did. But at the same time if everything in it was true, why the fuck would you break up with me? And, why would you send me another emotional mess to clean up?
Like any crazy bitch would do, I texted him and asked him to call me because I had questions. FUCK IT. I held my tongue long enough. I was done with him getting to be “the nice guy”. I was pissed that all this was what he wanted and how it felt like this whole break up was about him and his feelings.
So we talked. And these were the answers I got.
- He wrote the letter because if he was in my situation he felt he would have wanted it but he was sorry that it made things worse.
- He didn’t say those things to me when I gave him the chance to talk because since he wasn’t the one broken up with, he didn’t feel like it was his place to say anything.
- But it was apparently his place to write me a fucking letter?
- If I got anything from the letter, it was to know my worth.
- Once again, if I’m this great why would you let me go?
- Also, I know I’m a damn catch. I don’t need you to tell me so you can feel better about yourself.
- He had been telling himself that he was “doing the right thing” and all that nice guy shit when moments were hard.
- This pissed the living shit out of me
- He also admitted that he too had been crying at work on occasion, still loved me, thought about me every day, and that things had been hard for him.
- Also, what I texted him really hurt.
- I took sick pleasure in knowing that.
- He broke up with me because we had “different goals”. When I asked what mine were he said, “To be a stay at home mom, on a farm, in Maryland”.
- Only 1/3 of that is true
- I apparently joked so much about not working, he really thought that was what I wanted and he didn’t want to live it.
- His goal was, “to take over the world”. Specifics were not identified.
- I lost my shit when I heard this. How can I not be supportive of a goal that hasn’t even been identified?
- It really did bother him that we had different senses of humor. That we didn’t find 100% of the same things funny.
- This also made me lose my shit.
- No couple, ever, finds exactly the same things funny. We all come from different places and have had different experiences. Because of that, some of us are drier, some are darker, some love puns. BUT OKAY YEAH.
- When asked to give more detail he said humor is very important to him and he just had high standards…I TELL JOKES ON STAGE, OWN A FUCKING PUPPET, AND WRITE THIS SMUT FOR ALL YOU FUCKERS. YOU REALLY THINK HUMOR ISN’T REALLY IMPORTANT FOR ME TOO?
- He wasn’t ready for our relationship to be as serious as it was and he didn’t know what he wanted from the beginning.
- He was the one who used the word “boyfriend” first
- I was sitting next to him when he told his brother he wanted to live with me
- We fought over baby names
- He said repeatedly during our relationship that I was the love of his life
- He said I was the only girlfriend he had ever seen a future with
- He had doubts the whole time but really started considering pulling the plug in May.
- My lease ran out in July so I could have moved had this discussion happened earlier
- Our 1-year was in July so we could have avoided all that shit and I’d have some extra money to buy myself more vodka right about now
- It was the marriage thing that did it at the end of the day.
To say I felt weird after that call is an understatement. I had my own theories and ideas and the call confirmed everything. All these things were in his head and it all came down to his own fucking bullshit. On the flip side, despite him trying to say all these things to make me feel better it only dug up my own insecurities. I hadn’t been enough for a lot of different things in my life. I was never thin enough growing up. I wasn’t smart enough in school. And as it turns out I wasn’t funny enough for Jared either. I did everything fucking right and it still wasn’t enough for him to want a future with me.
That was painful.
It took some time to work through that and it’s something I’m still working through. When someone you thought would always be in your corner hurts you like that, it fucks with your ego and it’s been tough to process.
I’ve been asked how I’m doing and truthfully I don’t know. Pretty much every morning I wake up with knots in my stomach, I have trouble falling asleep, my hair has been falling out, and my eating patterns make absolutely no sense.
For the most part I just feel a bit numb and I’m just going through the motions sometimes. When I have a moment to think about everything, I just feel farther and farther from the life I knew. I keep expecting to wake up from all this shit and hear Jared say, “Good morning babe!” as he leans in to kiss me.
As for dating, I’m feeling slightly lost. I’ve been looking inward at my own goals and been questioning if another person can even fit into them right now. At the same time, I feel this crazy internal pressure to get back out there because if I want to have children, I need to be aware of “the clock”. (No joke, every time I watch This Is Us I have an urge to hold a million babies and cry). So right now I’m kind of dating passively. I’m not putting in any more fucking effort than I have to and seeing what the fuck happens.
But during all this shit, a friend told me that when you’re healing there are days that you can only handle being open to it. And that’s okay. Being open is the first step to giving yourself grace and sometimes that’s enough to start big change.
Here I am. Being open to healing with all of you. I don’t know when I’ll be back to my full self, or even what that would look like, but I’m open to seeing where I go from here.
