What is the hardest part of a breakup? My experience.

What is the hardest part of a breakup? Feeling their void. I was dating a guy on and off for the past 1 year. We were friends for 1.5 years and then we dated for 1 year with endless break-ups and make-ups. If anyone told me 3 years ago that I would be engaging in an on and off relationship, I would have laughed because that’s ridiculous. Now being in the moment and dealing with yet one more breakup with the same guy, I have realized this is the endpoint.

Have I said these lines before? yes. Did I go back to him? yes. I am the queen of insanity because every single time I expect a different outcome from dating the same guy. But the endless breakups have finally taught me to honor that we are not compatible. I have stopped talking to my friends about it at this point but like me, they too have lost faith in my inability to maintain a breakup. Too often my friends remind me “have self-respect”- yes I agree. I need to respect myself enough to walk away from a relationship that is consistently filled with heartbreaks. Yet I wanted to squeeze out every little bit of the faith I had in this guy. This is the guy who made me feel grounded at times when I was in my mental state of chaos. But this is also the guy who often made me feel like I am walking on eggshells and it is wrong of me to vent/rant/cry/grief to my loved ones about the losses I experienced.

He always told me to “stop fretting over something you can’t change”. I made the mistake of interpreting that as him grounding my chaos when in reality it was just that he did not want to be there for me in the difficult times. Furthermore, he often looked down on me when I cried about my difficult weeks of doing graduate studies with a 15 hours part-time job and many other volunteering commitments. He rebutted the conversation with “I work 20 hours a week and I have 7 classes”. In fact, I completely blocked out the memories of him accusing me of causing problems for myself and also, dropping me off at a train station at 11 pm after an award ceremony that I invited him as my plus one. These are hurtful memories I blocked out because I thought he cared for me. And he did? Of course, he did? He once bought me a bubble tea. He went to hotpot with me because that’s my favorite food. He drove me home at night after our dates from his house and after he got what he needed. These are shreds of evidence I gave myself that yes he cares about me.

Little did I realize that I let myself live with the basic friendship expectation from an intimate romantic relationship. He never said the words that I craved like “I miss you” or “I was thinking about you today” because somehow there are guys who can’t express basic human emotions. We had chemistry but we lacked compatibility. I wanted a career, marriage, and kids, and he just wanted to focus on his career. Ultimately, we broke up because he did not want to label our relationship or say he was committed to me. His rationale was “why do we need to label this relationship- I am not seeing anyone else” and that was it for me. I was with a guy who could not accept me as his own because he was afraid of the term commitment.

I do not miss him anymore and I know this is the final break up. We have both put in 150% effort in our own ways. I was all in, affectionate, vulnerable, and I took the risk of being vocal even when my affections were not matched. And he showed up and made time for me despite his busy schedule. I had low expectations and that’s where I went wrong. After countless breakups and makeups, I have decided for myself that we both deserve better. We can no longer scavenge to find love in an empty jar just because we are too afraid to feel the void.

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