The Story Of My Breakup
Hi, my name is Kaylee, and I was in a two-year relationship- my entire college experience. I met David on our first day of classes in our calculus class. We ended up walking back together and talking for hours shortly after we became attached at the hip. Best friends, if you will. We did everything together. It got to the point where people would come up to us and ask where the other was. We weren’t dating for the first few months because we were both in long-distance relationships with other people. Eventually, those relationships ran their course, and we thought it was only fair to each other and to ourselves to give it a go between us.
We ended up falling deeply and madly in love. We became even more attached to each other than we had been as friends. That’s not to say it was a perfect relationship. Hardly. We had our fair share of problems. There were a lot of things about the relationship that weren’t right for me- AT ALL! Despite that, it was complicated, and he was my absolute best friend. He didn’t treat me how I deserved, constantly blaming me for things that he would do wrong, making me feel crazy forever expressing how I felt. He never included me with his friends, and my life was always secondary to his. He never told me he saw a future with me and never made me feel secure in our relationship. There’s more where that came from, but that’s for another time and another place. This isn’t to say that we didn’t have a beautiful two years together, and I don’t regret it, but I think one of the biggest lessons I learned through it all was I should have left every time I got the chance. But I didn’t- he did.
He left me on a Tuesday morning out of nowhere. Just the day before we were singing country songs, and he was looking at me like maybe for the first time, he might think I was more than just a college girlfriend. I never in a million years could have imagined him walking into my room that day telling me it was over. It was a short conversation filled with tears and me sitting there confused and helpless about what to say. He told me he couldn’t not be in my life and that we had to stay friends forever, but needed to be single in college and couldn’t be with me knowing one day he would have to leave. I ran into him coincidentally the next day and told him I couldn’t believe how callously he ended it, how absolutely out of nowhere, and that it only took him one day to decide we weren’t worth fighting for. I looked him in the eyes and told him that I needed us to be friends, but I could never be with him again, and he knew that when he left. He said that that wasn’t how he saw love, and I hope one day you do and you meet someone you couldn’t even imagine leaving.
We didn’t talk for three weeks after that. There was no “are you okay?” or “how are you doing?” You would think that even as a friend, he would care enough to ask after ripping my heart out of my chest without warning. We talked three weeks later because of our class together. Every once in a while, we started to work together to try and be in each other’s lives. I was trying to move on and started to see someone new. When I told him, he acted like he couldn’t care less and even encouraged it. This guy- by the way -he had never met and had no connection to.
It was then I found out the cold hard truth- he was seeing someone… and not just anyone, my friend: a girl I had confided in that knew everything about our relationship and even at a point lived with me.
Flashback to the week before he left me, I told her I thought he was the love of my life, and the next day they got lunch to go over something together for school. I’ll never know what happened that day, but I know now from friends and through the grapevine that it was that lunch that ultimately led to him deciding to leave me. She was the only one who never once texted me after he left. She then confronted me about it (less than a month after he left me) and told me she was going to be with him.
Ever since, she’s gone around telling everyone we were never friends. When I asked him about it, he told me he thought it was so lovely she asked and the right thing to do when anyone else with eyes knew she was trying to save face and couldn’t give two shits about me. I heard a little later than they had hooked up. I wanted to swallow it down, pretend it was okay, like it wasn’t him spitting in my face and letting everyone know that he couldn’t care less about me. Every time I texted him, he’d reply shortly, and when I said I was sad, all he would say was, “I’m sorry that sucks.” All the while, he was with a girl who had stabbed me in the back and felt absolutely no remorse- or at least if he did, I’ll never know.
Eventually, I called him up and told him I couldn’t be in his life if he was going to be with her. I only wanted to be in his life if he made mine better, and he was not. He made me question our entire relationship.
He doesn’t say hi to me in public anymore. He won’t even look at me. When he sees me at a friend’s place, he doesn’t even acknowledge I exist. They’re dating now, and lots of people feel pretty uncomfortable about it. I guess he didn’t want to be single. I guess he didn’t want to be with me. Regardless, he wasn’t right for me, and before you go getting all sad for me- I’m doing well!!!! I’m super happy and have never felt more loved by my family and friends in my life. It is the darkest time in your life when you get to see who cares. I became way closer with my friends in college, made new friends, and even had some truly whirlwind romances with new guys.
It still hurts, though, when I think about them together. In college, you don’t get to break up and never see them again. It isn’t like the real world where (some of the time- albeit not all of the time) you can say goodbye and move on in peace and never see them again. They live in my building and go to the same parties and people’s apartments. We are in the same circle, and I have to hear about every. Single. Thing. they do. It’s emotionally exhausting, always wondering if I’m going to run into them. The amount I wish I never had to deal with it again is infinite- but I do.
So here is how I cope with my ex moving on right in front of me right after he left with a girl who knew it all after spending every single day of my college experience with him:
I go back to all of the restaurants we used to go to with friends
I only talk to people who I can trust about it
I try to put on a brave face every time anyone mentions it
I don’t talk about it to his friends
I focus my energy on other things (school, getting a job as a hobby)
I focus my energy on other relationships (friends, family)
I get new hobbies (painting)
I foster dogs
I keep myself busy
Most of all, though, I remember that no matter what- I got out of a relationship that I wasn’t meant to be in
Eventually, it gets easier. That constant pain in the back of your heart will fade, and you will learn to look at the relationship for what it is, which is everything you don’t want in your next one. You can look back fondly on the good memories and learn from your mistakes, and hope that next time, you’ll know better than to stay with someone who could ever be capable of doing this, to begin with. Eventually, you might even be happy for them. The best thing to do is hold your head up high and never let anyone (except for those who love you) see you sweat. If you don’t feel comfortable in a situation they’re in –excuse yourself; you don’t need to be there, say you have some work. Don’t let them make you feel small. Never let them dictate the life you have just because they didn’t care what happened to it.
By Jordan Ekstein, Vanderbilt University 2022