I Want To Be Someone’s Forever Person, Not Your Forever Toy

Every time feels like a breakup, which is really ironic considering our separations occur because you won’t give me a real relationship. I say my piece, put myself out there, pour my heart out, and you still say “I don’t have time for a relationship” — that is if you bother to respond at all. What follows is a couple weeks of silence, but you eventually resurface.

It starts slowly, ending our stalemate on social media. You start liking my posts and pictures again, the notifications letting me know you’re making your way back in.

Eventually you send a neutral text, striking up a conversation. After a while, you’ll invite me to do something. And I tell myself it’s alright, that it’s just a friendly hangout. And it is. Until the night ends with me melting into your arms, your mouth on mine, all that resolve gone. And thus the cycle continues.

And the shittiest part of it all is that I’m smarter than this.

I know “I don’t have time for a relationship” is a cop-out excuse. You have time for whatever you make time for. True you have a busy social life, but you could invite me to join you on trips to visit friends or to go out to a concert. After knowing you for over a year, I’d love an opportunity to go to your hometown with you and meet your mom. If you didn’t make me and the rest of your life mutually exclusive story lines, you could have plenty of time for a relationship.

I’m a very independent person. After five years of being single I’ve created a life I love, full of people I care about, and I have no problem spending time with those people or doing things I enjoy doing alone. I don’t require every minute of your free time. This is something you would know about me if you ever took the time to ask me anything. But you never asked.

And regardless of how many times I mourn what could have been with the most recent “end” of our…whatever this is, I welcome you back each time with open arms. Those amazing people in my life I previously mentioned don’t ever seem to understand it, and I don’t blame them. Hell I don’t understand it.

If I could turn my back on you and walk away once and for all, I would do it in a heartbeat, if for no other reason than to just stop the madness.

But I see past the bullshit to the best parts of you, and those parts stole a chunk of my heart. Until I get it back, I can’t let you go. I give people a million chances, even when they don’t deserve it, and some take advantage of that. A part of me knows you’re never going to give me what I’m asking for, not after this long, and all the shit I’ve let you get away with —

— but another part of me holds out hope that you’ll wake the fuck up one day and realize what you’re missing out on.

Either way, I wish you would man up. Give me a reason to stick around, to let you hold on to that chunk of my heart. Or tell me you don’t deserve it, give it back, and let me go.