When your partner asks for a break, it sounds like what they’re really saying they want things to be over without having to end the relationship. However, my ex assured me that he wasn’t ready to walk away, he thought we just needed some time and space. Imagine my surprise then at seeing him with someone else while we were supposed to be on a break.
- It was the biggest betrayal of my adult life. He didn’t even bother waiting for the three months deadline to pass before jumping into another relationship. It was like he already had a new girl on standby and he just needed to get me out of the picture. I’ve been through several breakups but this one hurt the most because he never even had the guts to end it—he just got a new girlfriend and left me to take the hint. Cruel, right?
- It made me rethink the entire relationship. I wanted to believe him when he said we were going to be alright, that the break was just so we could figure things out. After he began dating someone else, I couldn’t look at our relationship the same way. If he could hurt me like this, what other cruel things did he do while we were together that I ignored because I loved him? Did I really know him? Was he lying to me the entire time? Did he ever really imagine a future for us or was he simply stringing me along? What we had is always going to be tainted in my memory now.
- I wasted time trying to fix things with a man that was already gone. The worst part about getting played like that is the time I spent working hard to make sure the relationship didn’t fall apart when there was no relationship to save in the first place. All that time, energy, and loyalty was wasted for nothing.
- It left me feeling blindsided. I don’t think I’d be half as hurt if he had just come right out and ended things with me instead of being sneaky and pulling away like that. I wasn’t prepared to learn that he was seeing someone else, so the news knocked the wind out of me. For weeks afterward, I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself. It was like I was stranded out at sea with nothing to keep me from drowning.
- It was foolish of me to give him too much control. I realize now that I’ve always been too considerate of his feelings even when he never gave a damn about mine. Taking a break was his idea and I went along with it because I wanted him to figure out that he was happy with me and I was too exhausted with my own troubles to fight him on it. He decided the terms of the break, what we could and couldn’t do, and how often we’d stay in touch. Then he went ahead and tossed the rules aside like they meant nothing.
- He made it seem like it was my fault for agreeing to the break. When I confronted him about us and his new woman, he said that our time made room for it to happen even though that was never the outcome he intended, and it stung even more than his screw-up. How dare he break us up and blame me for the consequences of his own actions? It was just like him to be manipulative like that.
- I’m more closed off to the idea of communicating my fears now. I don’t ever want to put myself out there and expose my true feelings to someone only to have them affirm it and then turn around and disregard it like it means nothing, like it wasn’t worth the trouble of making sure it didn’t become a reality. If the relationship is going to end, let it end. I’m not going to go out on an extra limb to save it.
- I knew a break would change everything. Truth be told, the minute he asked for a break I knew it was over between us but I couldn’t stop myself from hoping that I was wrong and we were going to make it. Serves me right, I guess. Even if we really did make it back to each other, something in the relationship would have shifted, some valuable essence that we could never get back.
- It made me hate him and everything we had. I pride myself on remaining friends with my exes because we always found a way to break up amicably but I can’t bring myself to forgive this one. I’m just going to go on despising him and everything that could have been but wasn’t.
