End of an era - broken up with for the 5th time.
It’s so overwhelming to even think about how to encapsulate this in a single post, other than I was broken up with for the fifth and final time by my partner of 3 1/2 years.
To provide some context on the following, we both came from pretty abusive traumatic upbringing. I have done years of therapy and have come a long way in my healing process. He has only just begun his process in the last year to two and has not been consistent or dedicated other than the last month. I had previous addictions with cannabis use and binge drinking but have been sober from cannabis since 2021 and alcohol when I met him in 2022. He has struggled with alcoholism since he was a young teenager and has only been sober for very short bouts. He was actually only a week sober when we met on the dating app, which I didn’t find out until after the fact all of that to say we both bring a lot of shit into our relationship.
We had a wonderful relationship in many aspects, nearly all aspects, but there was one key sticking point we could never figure out - 99% of the time when I brought up a complaint or difficult emotion about our relationship or him or even a general insecurity or fear, I was always met with defensiveness, coldness, and a near outright refusal of providing any reassurance, empathy, compassion, comfort, or love.
Last night, we had a wonderful evening and upon returning home, a small blip brought up some difficult demotions inside of me. I sat with them for a few minutes and decided to bring it up calmly, without accusations, “I” statements, defining that this was a fear and not something that was actually happening. And yet, the same cycle repeated until we fought for hours, and he ultimately left my home instead of sleeping over as we had intended, making me feel abandoned in the end like I had many times in the past when this happened.
I allowed him to reach out today, allowing him the opportunity to try and repair with me while holding the firm boundary I’ve ever held in my life in a romantic relationship that I was not gonna tolerate this another time. That I had already tolerated it many times, that it had led to so much stress in our relationship to him ending the relationship multiple times in the past over the same issue, not getting resolved.
And when he did finally reach out, it just evolved into another fight, neither of us willing to budge. But I did stand my ground that I feel like his emotional immaturity and defensiveness is what’s causing the majority of our upset because he will just never receive me emotionally when I am vulnerable scared upset, or hurt. So he said “I can’t give you what you need, bye”. And hung up the FaceTime. Just like that, over.
It’s a shame because there’s so many qualities about this man that I love, but I feel secure in the fact that this is a dealbreaker for me, it’s a need and not to want, and I’m not willing to continue without feeling like I can have a partner to turn to with my deepest, darkest emotions and fears.
Here’s the turning 40 this summer and being single and starting over 🥲 fucking hell.