To the girl in the long term relationship who’s afraid to let go.

I want to tell you a story. When I was 15 years old I met a boy that was funny, and cute, and he was nice to me. We texted all the time. He made me smile. So naturally we started dating. The first year of our relationship was wonderful. We never fought, we saw each other all the time. And then he graduated high school and I still had two years to go. My junior year he started hanging out with a girl who made me very uncomfortable. She would tell my boyfriend how she was horny and she would flirt with him in front of me. I begged him to stop talking to her. He told me that I was overreacting. That she was just a friend and I shouldn’t be so caught up on this. He would tell me that I was trying to take his friends away. He had other friends that were girls, and I didn’t mind because they never flirted with him. He made me feel so guilty that I apologized for the way I felt.

I was always the person who had to apologize. Any argument we got into was my fault. I once was so frustrated I asked him why I was always the one to apologize. To which he told me, “I’ll apologize if I’m ever wrong.” He got jealous easily. Male coworkers, a boy I was in a play with, classmates, you name it he would tell me that those boys “make me nervous.”

New Years eve 2016 I invite him to join my family for a get together. He tells me he’s already been invited to a party at the other girl’s place. That hurt.

No matter how often I thought about leaving I couldn’t bring myself to do it. We’d been together for almost 3 years. I couldn’t throw that away. So I continued to date him.

Then summer rolled around and I spent two months out of state helping my family move into their new house. He wouldn’t text me sometimes for days and wouldn’t tell me why. Whenever I got frustrated over this he’d break down and cry and tell me that he didn’t mean to hurt me. He would tell me I was the best part of his life and he wouldn’t be alive without me. He would tell me that he was too depressed to treat me better.

I felt like if I left him I’d be a terrible person for leaving someone who possibly had depression. That if I left and they did something, it would be all my fault. So I would apologize for getting upset, and I’d squash the bad feelings down.

Then I went to college. I was three hours away from him, but his job gave him every weekend off. I thought seeing each other wouldn’t be a problem. I couldn’t afford a parking pass to keep my car on campus, but he told me that it was fine. He told me he’d see me. It had been a month and he still hadn’t come down. The only time I mentioned it he snapped at me and told me not to “bug” him.

I was so incredibly unhappy in my relationship, but I remained faithful. One night I had a sleepover at a friends dorm and I told her everything. It was the first time I had ever gotten all these negative feelings off my chest. She asked me if I was happy. I said no. She asked if I even wanted to be with him anymore. I said no. She then told me, “If you don’t want to be with someone, and you truly don’t believe you can work it out, that’s a valid reason to leave someone.”

I thought about it for days. I didn’t want to throw away years of a relationship. I felt obligated to stay with him because he was the person I lost my virginity to. However, I realized that none of that made up for the fact that this man had no respect for me, and he didn’t prioritize our relationship anymore.

So I finally broke it off. He got angry and told me he never thought I’d leave. He told me it was my fault for going to a college so far away. He told me I just threw away three years of my life. But him saying this only solidified my choice to leave.

I now am with someone who treats me like a priority. He goes above and beyond everyday to treat me like a princess.

So to anyone who may find themselves in this boat. If you know leaving is the right thing to do, but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. Just remember that your happiness is so valuable. There is someone for you out there that will love, respect, and prioritize you. And finally don’t hold on to a mistake even if you spent a long time making it. Relationships are about give and take not just taking or giving. If you’re giving all your heart, love, and energy to someone who doesn’t even give you a moment of their time then that is not okay.❤️