Some honesty.

[meggygrace]

I think a lot of girls don’t truly know their self worth. I know I didn’t. I stayed in a bad relationship for a little over a year simply because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find someone better or because no one else would want me. My last relationship was not abusive, and I want to be clear about that. But it chipped away at my self esteem little by little. My boyfriend forgot my birthday. And, while that may seem like a very small problem, the way he handled it made me feel so unimportant - he lived four hours from me and we both had school so we were unable to see each other, I waited for half the day for him to say “happy birthday” but he didn’t so I reminded him. He said “Oh, yeah, I know.” Which he clearly didn’t. There was no “happy birthday” after that, there was no apology, no belated birthday card, nothing. Long distance relationships can be hard. Especially when only one person is willing to contribute (i.e. Me). I went to see him whenever I could, I took time off of work and spent $65 (which may not seem like a lot but it adds up quickly) on a train ticket every time I went to see him. He very rarely came to see me, and when he did he actually came to see his family who lives in the same town I do (but as I said, this was rare). He claimed it was “too expensive” and he didn’t want to take time off work. Which made me furious because he A. Worked more than I did, and B. Got paid more than I did. Yet I was still willing to spend a good amount of my paycheck to go see him and willing to lose more hours despite the fact that I had very few to begin with.
I’ve never felt the need or want to be “spoiled” in a relationship but whatever my relationship was with him was the opposite of spoiled. We probably went on a total of 4 dates during our year+ of dating - twice to the movies, once miniature golfing and once to a fast food restaurant (we sat in the restaurant and ate so I guess it might be a date?). I was content just spending time with him but I do admit, spending 90% of our time watching Netflix in bed got extremely monotonous. Whenever we “went out to eat” (which meant going to a fast food place and bringing food back home), I paid because it was the only way he would want to go out. Any time I wanted to get out of the Netflix rut, it meant I would be the one to pay for whatever activity it was we were doing.
When in a long distance relationship, one of the only ways of staying close is through texting, phone calls, or FaceTiming. He never wanted to talk on the phone and FaceTiming was out of the question as well. That left texting. At the beginning, it was okay but quickly thereafter the amount of texts I received dwindled. And, I’m not the needy kind who has to be responded to constantly but when 5 hours goes by without a response it begins to get frustrating. I always told him that it wasn’t the amount of texts that bothered me, it was the quality. He had stopped using pet names, he had stopped saying “I love you” (except for when I brought up the subject of breaking up), he had stopped caring. And when I asked him why I was receiving 2-5 texts a day, it was always because he was “busy” golfing.
There was also an incident where I was texted by my best friend saying she had seen my boyfriend on Tinder and that he had been active 17 minutes ago. She sent me a photo to prove it. I was so outraged, I texted him telling him we were over. He claimed he “didn’t know what I was talking about” and that “his sister must’ve accidentally clicked on the app while she was using his iPad”. I’m not so stupid that I bought that, but I was stupid enough to take him back. I was in a very difficult situation and I’m not prepared to talk about what that situation was. But I stuck with him for 9 more months after that and things didn’t get better.
I broke up with him two weeks ago, something I should have done long, long ago. A part of me feels completely lost because I had been through so much with this person and I had actually really loved him and saw a future with him (although, looking back I’m honestly not sure why). The other part of me knows that I did the right thing. He would’ve been a horrible husband to me.

I wrote this because I want those of you out there who might be in a relationship that isn’t good for you to know that you will still be wanted and loved even after you leave the person you’re with. Don’t settle, there’s someone out there that will love and cherish you the way you deserve to be. That’s something we all need to learn I think.