It’s Not You, It’s Me, But Actually
By Anonymous
As much as no one wants to have their heart broken, no one wants to be the person doing the heart breaking, either. At this moment in time, I have now been in both positions.
I dated someone for four years, and then on and off again for a year after that. The first time around, he crushed me. Cheated, lied and manipulated me. He broke my innocent heart into a thousand tiny pieces and left me feeling like a fool. Some time passed, and then he started to work his ass off to get me back. It’s actually really impressive looking back on all the things he did to right his wrongs. And although I do believe he has changed and become a great man – the damage has been done.
I’ve always wondered about broken love – can it be fixed? Is it even worth trying to fix? Well, we tried. We tested the waters with our relationship again, on and off for about a year. Although we had some great times together, there were still so many issues. Although he definitely earned my forgiveness for breaking my heart, resentment was still there whether or not I wanted to admit it. And the resentment came out in ugly ways – our relationship became very one-sided and I felt entitled to do certain things, which is wrong. I also felt unable to commit to something I wasn’t positive about, and then everything started to get really messy and unhealthy.
He was my first love and my best friend. We have been through so many tough times together and no one knows me like he does. We are extremely comfortable with each other (maybe even too much), have a lot of fun together and will always care about each other no matter what. And that is something that is really fucking hard to walk away from.
But it wasn’t working. I love him, and always will, but I am not in love with him. We both tried extremely hard to make it happen again, but somethings just can’t be forced, for whatever reason. It wasn’t him, it was me. I know that is such a cliche, classic break up line but in this case it is the simple truth. I can’t make myself feel how I used to feel. At 21 years old, I can’t commit to something that I feel so skeptical about. And I didn’t want to continue being involved in something that was starting to become unhealthy, one-sided and unfulfilling for us both.
Going back to my initial statement at the beginning of this post, breakups suck. I have always been a sucker for the whole fairy tell ending phenomenon after growing up with parents who have been together since they were young teens, but the hard truth is that it doesn’t always work that way. Real love doesn’t always succeed.