I Wasn’t Lucky To Be With You — I Was Lucky You Left

I Wasn’t Lucky To Be With You — I Was Lucky You Left ©iStock/Jeff Bergen

You had a lot invested in making me think I was the lucky one in our relationship. I couldn’t see it for a long time, but you were on your game from the start. With you, love was always a competition and you tried to make me feel like the winner, all the while undermining my sense of self until I was grateful you appeared to care about me at all. But now I see reality, and I know the truth. I wasn’t lucky you chose me; I was lucky you walked away.

  1. You talked down to me. A big part of your strategy in keeping me feeling grateful to be with you was the way you’d try to make me feel small. You constantly talked down to me in order to make me think I was stupid. It made me feel crazy, because I know — I’m not stupid, I’m not a dumb bitch who’s lucky you put up with me — but you had me almost believing in your lies. I am so damn relieved to think that I narrowly escaped that BS.
  2. I let you walk all over me. You wore me down until I was unable to question your decisions. I would try to put up a fight, and sometimes I’d even win, but for the most part it was easier to let you have your way. That’s not the kind of woman I am, and it makes me sad to think of all the time I wasted while you walked all over me.
  3. I don’t think you even tried to be faithful. The shallowest excuses would come pouring out of your mouth whenever I started to suspect that maybe you weren’t being honest with me. I eventually just got tired of investigating it because you wore me out. I think some small part of me was hoping you’d like one of them enough to finally leave me. Isn’t that so sad?
  4. Your self-pity was contagious. You were so good at making me feel so bad for you. In retrospect, I see the manipulation that was at work, but at the time, it wore down all my defenses and made me hop right into fixing-you mode. I did double the work for none of the rewards.
  5. The highs weren’t that high. Our good times were so intense, they blinded me to how dark the bad times were. When it was good, it was like nothing else existed. The lows just made the highs look better. The contrast was everything. In the harsh light of the aftermath, I can see that the highs were never really that wonderful at all. They just seemed that way in contrast.
  6. You’ve got your head in the clouds. You seem to think that the problem isn’t you, but the truth is, you’re never going to have a relationship without the same issues that seem to follow you everywhere you go. You’re not the one who causes them, or so you think; maybe you believe you’ve been cursed or something. But you’re never going to own up to the true issue at hand, which is that you honestly suck as a human being and need to change.
  7. We weren’t ever going to be healthy. For all the reasons listed, and for so many more. I wasn’t in a good place with my own self-esteem, otherwise I never would’ve been trapped into a relationship with you. But I also wasn’t ready to admit that to myself, so we were stuck in a destructive cycle. I think people can change, and maybe one day, you will. But I couldn’t be the thing that forced you to do it, so I’m lucky you left.
Becca Rose is a writer with high hopes for her student loan debt. She's a musician and aspiring novelist, but don't ask her to write poetry, because she's terrible at it. She has written for HelloGiggles, The Toast, The Huffington Post, and more. You can find her on Twitter @bookbeaut
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