So I’ve only had one long-term relationship in my life. In total it was about 5 years but the breaking up, took around 18 months from when the relationship started to deteriorate to when I finally, finally, called it a day and meant it.
As much as it’s romanticised , break ups aren’t a set period of getting over it. It’s not just; you break up, you cry into your ice cream for 3 weeks and then you start picking up the pieces. For a lot of couples there can be a lot of to'ing and fro'ing because if you really are trying to stop loving someone and they were very much a significant part of your life, t’s more a case of slowly untangling yourself out of very long, knotted web of feelings, habits, places and people. If it cut deep, it can also stay with you and be carried around as baggage years after you thought you were over it.
Having stayed single since the break up, while I’m definitely, definitely over it (moved on, don’t want it back, could never see me being in it again, around that person etc. etc.) I still 3 years on, have the occasional rose-tinted reminiscent thought. Especially with Christmas coming up and all the cutesy coupley things there are to do. So if you never ever really forget, then yeah for some people breaking up can take a really long time, and I think that’s OK.
On top of that, as women, we are definitely judged if we move on too quickly, and if we stay single long enough, we'll get the “why” questions instead. Either way you’re not going to win so if you’re going through a break up where you have to focus on yourself to get through it (seriously there is no other way to do it) then I want you to know that you should take however long you need to and deal with it however well you want to. No judgement.
To make you feel better, I’m going to tell you how long it’s taken me to get over my break up. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t very long from being officially single (it was relief pretty instantly) that I stopped feeling visibly upset but it has taken me a really long time to get to the point where I considered myself so single for a long enough period of time so that I was never going back.
Now please bear with me because I’ve officially been single for 3 years now and because hindsight is such a wonderful thing, I’m going to have to dig deep and try to remember how I was feeling through every stage of it. As with all awful experiences, to move on you have to get to a point where you stop looking back.
So let’s start at the beginning…
I had a wonderful relationship for 3 years. A huge reason I fell in love with my ex-boyfriend was because he was kinder to me than I was to myself and extremely patient. I could literally tell him anything, he never judged me and he was there for me when I went through one of my previously mentioned depressive episodes. He was also chivalrous, romantic and affectionate; not like any guy I’ve ever been involved with before (I had a penchant for wanting what I couldn’t have before him).
If you asked any of my friends, they would also say I definitely wore the trousers and he was "all about me". He wasn’t interested in other girls (he didn’t even look) and he let everyone know how proud he was to be with me. I know he fell in love with me for who I was and whilst I’d say the first year I wasn’t as invested, he more than proved to me that I could trust him, over and over again. So much so that when we eventually moved in together 2 and a bit years later, I really let everything go and believed I’d be with him forever. And with that I was blissfully happy.
Now before you all look for a bucket to throw up in, we definitely had our issues. I was (still am) stubborn beyond belief so I don’t think we would have got through some of our arguments way back when, had it not been for the fact that he was often the first person to say “I’m sorry”. I mean… he was wrong 99% of the time (obvs) and a hot head, but while I take a long time to get angry and he’s the opposite, it takes me a hell of a lot longer to cool down whereas he always wanted to make up right away.
There were also trust issues on his side. I never understood it because I'm just not built that way but he was very possessive and gave me an incredibly hard time about things that I wouldn’t have even thought of. Examples being; accusing me of fancying my best friend’s boyfriend because we got on, a waiter looking at me in a restaurant (not me looking at him) and once my facebook status saying my location was Highbury instead of Camden, so I must have been lying to him about where I was?! A lot of that though, went away after the first year after many arguments where I refused to back down.
Any way the point is, because I knew the relationship I was getting into, knew him inside out and took my time (2 years) to fully commit in my head, the relationship breaking down came out of left field for me. I mean here was my boyfriend who had always been obsessed with me, now looking through me and treating me like I was disposable. It also happened not long after I had really shown him I was all in; we were saving for a house, living together and planning our futures. So when roles reversed, rather than being the trouser wearing person I’d always been, I would say I spent 3-4 months of trying to convince my boyfriend to love me again (sad right?!).
It didn’t work obviously - the harder I tried, the more he pulled away. I actually remember being in the bathroom at about 2am crying my eyes out while he slept upstairs because he’d said to me in an argument that all the times he ever said sorry he didn’t actually mean it, and just did it to move past the disagreement. It was a bottom of my stomach cry / wailing. Not because he said that to me but because in that moment, with 100% clarity, I realised that he didn’t love me as much anymore. How could he, if everything he ever said to me when I thought we were learning to understand each other was not only a lie but something he didn’t care if I knew?! This was the first sign of cruelty from him too, to not care that he was going to say something that would really hurt and for me to just deal with it.
So our relationship was already breaking a long time before I left him. I count it all as the break up and that’s what I think often isn’t considered. Some relationships are already over before they are over, but you have one person still clinging on for dear life and unfortunately in this situation, at that time, it was me.
So time went on, and the relationship I knew (us being best friends) wasn’t the same any more. Always the first to console and reassure me, I knew even if he wasn’t ready to break up with me properly, his behaviour meant he didn’t care if we did. I’m emotionally aware enough that I knew that even then.
Other than being more invested in our relationship, my behaviour, treatment of him and life hadn’t changed in any way, so at this point I still wouldn’t say, we lost a good thing because of both of us. That’s not me giving myself an easy time so I feel no guilt. Hand on my heart, I know now and I knew then I’d done absolutely nothing wrong and that’s why it was so much harder to accept. Even now, I am scared of relationships because when I had a partner who was so in love with me, wake up one day and decide he wasn’t any more 3 years in, why couldn’t that happen again? It’s heartbreaking and I don’t ever want to feel like that again.
Knowing this at the time, I started to look for reasons why this was now happening. Starting on his laptop I looked at his recent search history on Facebook and up popped a girl from work who he wasn’t friends with – ding ding. It is true what they say “if you go looking for something, you might just find it”. He’d also very recently gone missing on a night out and a check of his email account, told me he booked an Uber at 4 in the morning to a random house in Brixton (he’d told me he’d been out in Islington and stayed at his friend’s hotel). I might have loved him but I wasn’t stupid.
Yet still!!! I wanted to be with him and us to go back to the way we was. I put a call into my mum and told her I was terrified he would break up with me because he wasn’t acting the same. She asked what was he doing and while I couldn’t prove anything, I said I just knew. She told me I was being silly and to speak to him. Like I said before, everyone knew how much he loved me.
That night I did speak to him and when I said “I feel like lately you don’t want to be with me anymore”, the boyfriend who would have previously rushed to comfort me stayed silent. I asked if there was someone else and he said no but there was a girl at work that liked him. He also thought we needed space so why didn’t I move out and go stay with our friends for a couple of weeks?
That last sentence was another devastating crack in my heart. It was that Summer. Not what followed, but that moment right there that solidified "I am not thinking about you any more. I am not thinking about us. I am thinking about me". For those of you who have read my “about me” section, he also knew in depth what had happened in my life and how being homeless was my ultimate fear. I really had lost him and even now looking back, that was what I couldn’t get over.
So being the stubborn cow I was, even when he told me in the morning that it wasn’t me, miraculously changed his mind, said instead that he thought he was depressed and he actually didn’t mean any of it, I still went to stay with my friends hoping he’d miss me. And you know what? He didn’t. Honestly I feel pathetic even writing this. So once again I asked him if I could come home (seriously where the fuck did I go?!) and while he agreed he wasn’t particularly happy about me being back. Two short days later, I got some of my sense back and thought “fuck this shit”. I can’t deal with him treating me like this while I’m living with him and I am not in any kind of strong place being here, so I am going to move out. I started looking immediately.
It took me 5 days to find somewhere and put down a deposit and at that point I think panic set in for him, and he'd realised he’d pushed me too far. Even now, I think he wanted to be single but once it got real, he had realised what he was losing and started to panic.. a bit. I say a bit because while he was showing that he was worried about me leaving and making it very clear with words that he loves me and we would get through this, he did not once ask me to stay. That whole time I was looking at flats, furniture, being interviewed by people for a room, I was hoping that he would turn around with a big gesture like he used to, and beg me not to leave. But he never did.
So while he was panicking a little because I think he thought, I would never really go anywhere really, me being in a new place without him, it was much easier for me to walk away from it all. It would be that much harder for him to talk me round. So what followed was him helping me move but being extremely loving and wanting to work things out. I was back in control of the situation and showing it, but deep down I was hurting badly. I really missed him and I’d gone from every night seeing my best friend and being in a relationship which was going somewhere, back to flat sharing with strangers (who were complete dickheads by the way – more on that in another article) and 3 years into a relationship at the age of 29, we’d gone backwards.
This time too, I wasn’t going to be the one putting in the effort (like I did when I was younger) to meet him half way. Me being far away was his fault, so like fuck was I going to be the one living out of a suitcase. And guess what?! I saw him less and less as the effort was no longer there.
It got to the point that I was so unhappy feeling single but with all of the baggage of a relationship and having nothing positive to say about it, that I threw in the towel. I was ashamed of how we’d ended up and as a person who was always proud of the relationship I had, I no longer considered what we had as special. I also didn’t like me in it, which for me was the nail in the coffin. I’d lost my self-respect in the last 6 months of putting up with his bullshit. I’d rather be on my own than be one of those girls who is with someone just to say I have something. Also I was 29 (not 69), a fucking good girlfriend, hot (yeah I said it) and an amazing human being. Why on earth am I settling for this shit?!
Cut a long story short, he was so devastated, he went out the next day and banged someone else. Three days later he saw the error in his ways (I didn’t know about said banging) and begged for another chance. Said that he’d make more effort, it would be on my terms and he wanted to win me back. I was still very much in love with him and had missed him now for months so I said yes, and we were back to being us properly again for about 6 weeks. That however all ended one night when I called him on my way home at 9pm and the idiot picked up his phone by accident while he was in a car with the girl he’d previously banged (more than once) talking about the sex they’d had together. I cannot put into words how blindsided I was. My boyfriend was stupid, possessive (the irony), selfish and immature at times, but a cheater? Someone who claimed to love me so much was able to sleep with someone else after 3 years with me, whilst I was in tears at home claiming he loved me? I would never have believed it if someone had told me. So to hear it for myself where there was no mistaking the arrogance of what I heard... that if that wasn’t a sign or gift from God, I don’t know what would be. I wasn’t upset any more, I was angry (needed!) and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
We were actually over and I had 6 months of having the time of my life. I went out loads, turned 30, went to Vegas and got into the best shape of my life. Fuck you mate, fuck you. I also got with multiple hot guys guilt free (still now I look back at that time and think how do I do that again?) and enjoyed being completely selfish for the first time in about 4 years.
Once the novelty rubbed off and 6 months of ignoring his calls, Christmas present, Birthday card, the flowers he sent me on Valentine’s Day, and multiple whatsapp essays, I told him I wanted to meet up. We then spent 6 months of “seeing each other”. I didn’t want to commit (I wasn’t seeing anyone else) but I I desperately wanted the guy I fell in love with to reappear in my eyes again. I found out in that time though that he didn’t exist anymore because I didn’t look at him in the same way. I never ever thought he’d hurt me that way and if he did it would be an accident. The 6 months we were seeing each other weren’t great either, I was still dealing with his same old annoying shit except I wasn’t in love and happy to compromise on it because of that. It was average and in the time we’d spent apart, I knew I’d wanted more and had, had a taste of it having dated other men.
So then it really was over. I don’t regret trying again with him because I’d forgiven him at that point and if I hadn’t I might always have though “what if?” . I also ended things with us not hating each other and me taking my power back. Had it ended properly at any point before that, I would have always questioned my self-worth. I’m not ignorant or confident enough to say otherwise. I know it would have got to me. It also helped that he remained sorry for so long afterwards and he still didn’t want it to end. It validated my feelings that I’d been nothing but good to him. I also knew that I could love someone else just as good and have it returned.
My biggest lesson from all of it, is that however much you love someone, love isn’t enough for a relationship to work. Life is hard and shit happens. Looking at him after all that time, I saw a man who wasn’t going to be an equal partner to me and this is what took me 18 months to come to terms with. That was the real getting over it.
The first time he was unhappy and had his head turned, he was cruel to me. What if one of us lost our jobs? I had a miscarriage? A close family member passed away? A whole other multitude of shit happening, how would this relationship make things easier? I’d seen it wouldn’t and I accepted we were cut from different cloth because our values weren't aligned when the going got tough. I also know that no matter what happened, even when I was really angry with him after hearing that phone call, I could never do to him what he did to me and so we didn’t love the same way.
Ironically I know this is a very long blog post, as it was a very long time of getting out of that relationship, emotionally and physically. I felt instant relief after our final conversation and physically lighter from not having to carry that load around with me anymore. I just wanted to be me for a while. I still am just me now and I honestly couldn't go through that compromising, hard work again. It should never be that hard. Like I said, life is hard enough, love should be what makes it easier.
3 years on, I still think about him from time to time. I haven’t moved on with anyone else, but I have moved on. I also recognise it’s not him I miss (I don’t), it’s how I felt when I was with him. Other than my flatmate, every single one of my friends is in a long-term relationship, engaged or married. My entire team at work is too. At 33, I also thought that would be me at this point and so occasionally I feel angry that I wasted 5 years with someone all in all, that I thought I’d have a future with. But then I have to remind myself, that I wouldn’t be grateful for what I have now and can you imagine if this all happened after marriage, kids, a mortgage?!
I am also grateful that I know what it feels like to be in love and to have that person. I do want it again some day when it’s right. I am over my ex, but I don’t think you ever really get over having your heart broken. Instead you gain a new understanding of yourself, what you value and what you won’t accept. It does stay with you, so if it takes you longer to look back and not get upset, that’s OK. It just means what you felt was genuine and it’s going to shape your future in one way or another for the better, once you get there.
Danielle x
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